Creating is hard, especially when your mind has an idea of what the ideal work is. Our mind has its way of constantly reminding us when we have fallen short of the glory we set out to create — your choice of words, the dented line, the weird way your voice sounds when you talk. Because of this noise, we constantly fall out of the zone, then procrastinate, and eventually hate ourselves for procrastinating, not being able to go back to work because it’s not connected to emotional overwhelm.

Where is the Zone?

The zone is just wherever you’re engaged in your work. Distractions don’t matter, and only the zone is a priority. The thing about the zone is that we want it all to be perfect, and when anything kicks us off, we fear going back, but that is the moment when it’s best to go back to the zone. My experience with the zone is like I said earlier: I sit to write, but after 10 words, the doubts creep in, and I just want to close the system and leave the work until I feel ready.

Getting back the zone

  When we lose this thing that seems so integral to our creative work itself, how do we get it back? Well, it’s simple: prioritize the zone over everything else. I believe the issue arises when we keep things above just getting into the zone—the way we want the work to look, how we want it to sound, and doing it at a particular time. We believe that once those things don’t hit a home run, then the project has fallen into a major lapse, but the lapse only happens when we keep other things outside the zone, above the process. Our main goal should be getting ourselves back into the zone. It doesn’t matter how badly it looks or that it’s all not coming together according to plan; we can review later, but what we should focus on is returning back to the zone. It doesn’t matter what hits you if the magic ever happens; it will happen because you stayed in the zone. So let the zone be a priority.