You’ve probably heard the term ‘in the zone’ in relation to professional athletes. When they’re playing at the best of their abilities, and nothing they do seems wrong. A good example of this: NBA players when they are shooting the lights out and no matter how they shoot the ball, it just seems to go in. That’s ‘in the zone’
Well, apparently you can be ‘in the zone’ at work too. I’ve experienced this the last 2 or 3 weeks. Understand that I work best when there’s a challenge to be solved, and deadlines to be caught. This was the case the last few weeks; I was working on a project that had a deadline not too far away and was quite interesting for me.
Once I got into developing the application, it just seemed that I was so focused and determined to get this done, that for the last 2 weeks, I hardly took breaks during daytime, sans time to eat. I didn’t bother surfing the net like I used too when there wasn’t tight schedules, didn’t email too much with buddies, and in general was ‘in the zone’ at all times. I even looked forward to coming to work everyday (even Mondays!!!) and regretted it sometimes when I had to leave at 4 because I was so in to what I was doing. Now this was something different from me, because normally I can’t wait to go home and absolutely get bummed out over coming to work on Mondays. The challenge of a project that was going to be of use in a production environment just seemed like an accomplishment to me, and it just brought out that fire in me.
I guess what I’m saying is that in everything we do or are faced with, if there’s a sense of purpose and challenge to it, by default we are created to rise up to the challenge and get it done. A purpose, be it in life or work or play, will bring out the best in us.
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