Being in the Zone: the Importance of Culture to Peak Performance in Sport, Arts and Work

“Being-in-the Zone”(比茨)指的是那些经常从事某种创造性活动的人，他们的表演能力突然提高，而且往往出乎意料地提高，经常让人觉得自己不仅表现得最好，而且表现得比他们想象的要好。比茨在软件编码等工作实践方面经验丰富，在演奏乐器或体育赛事等音乐实践方面经验丰富。音乐家、运动员和创意工作者在反思他们的活动时会讲述这样的时刻，这往往是因为这些时刻显然会产生一种对他们特定的创作实践的深刻责任感，以及对他们的身体和精神的积极感觉，因为他们能够‘进入这个区域’。处于状态是一种帮助许多人维持和继续日常和重复练习的体验，并提供了一种无可争辩的提供积极的心理和身体感觉的体验。处于状态在很大程度上被分析为一种内在的心理状态，主要(如果不是全部)依赖于心理学。即使当身处禁区作为团队活动的一部分发生时，如足球，它在很大程度上也被解释为参与者内部的事件。现在广为人知的一个例子是众所周知的运动心理学实践，即要求运动员将他们在运动中最好的时刻“可视化”。在这种理解中，顶峰或异常好的表现来自个人内部，因此被视为一种心理现象。然而，处于区域中也是一种文化现象。例如，在计算机程序员给出的软件编码的描述中，经常会有突然的密集编码的故事，但这种编码是否具有高能力(因此是在区域内)通常也是根据所解决问题的复杂性和所产生的软件代码的质量来判断的。问题的复杂性和代码的质量都是文化判断，例如，后者通常借鉴所谓的Unix哲学，即重视代码的简单性。在音乐和体育领域也可以举类似的例子，在这些领域，高水平的能力不仅在于以正确的顺序获得音符或获胜，而且还在于如何做到这一点。这种判断是一种文化判断，存在于亲身体验的个体之外。只有整合了关于在区域中存在的本质的文化见解，才有可能充分理解在区域中的存在。该项目试图开辟一种新的在区域中存在的文化方法，能够通过开发促进在区域中存在的实践来促进幸福感，并发展关于心理学和社会关系的重要的学术辩论。这种理解可以对参与文化活动以及对精神和身体的积极欣赏产生重要影响。了解身处区域提供了了解各种创造性活动的方法、令人信服的和强烈积极的欣赏。这种理解可以转化为关于如何对从事音乐和体育等活动产生积极欣赏的建议和实践，以及如何构建对精神和身体产生积极态度的建议和实践。正是这些经验教训将构成我们在2012年伦敦奥运会文化奥林匹克竞赛提案中传播这项研究的关键部分，并从讨论中获得初步结果。它还告诉我们，我们希望从该网络提交大量赠款，提供详细的经验性工作和行动研究，将这些经验性工作转化为政策结果，形式是关于如何促进更好地欣赏文化和创意活动及其对身体和心理的积极影响的实际建议。

'Being-in-the-zone' (bitz) is an expression for moments when someone who normally and routinely undertakes a certain creative action experiences a sudden, and often unexpected, increase in their competence in performance, often experiencing themselves as performing not only at their best ever but in a way they better than they had thought possible. Bitz is experienced in work practices like software coding, musical practices like playing an instrument or in sporting events. Such moments are recounted by musicians, sportspeople and creative workers, when reflecting on their activity and often because these moments clearly engender a deep sense of commitment to their particular creative practice and a positive sense of their body and psyche for being able to 'get in the zone'. Being-in-the-zone is an experience that helps many to sustain and continue in their routine and repetitive practices and provides an experience that inarguably offers a positive sense of psyche and body.Being-in-the-zone has largely been analysed as an internal psychic state, drawing primarily if not wholly on psychology. Even when being-in-the-zone occurrs as part of team events, such as in football, it has largely been interpreted as an event internal to the participants. One now widely known example of this is the well-known sports psychology practice of asking players to 'visualise' their best moments in sport. In such an understanding, peak or unusually good performance comes from within the individual and is therefore dealt with as a psychological phenomenon.Yet being-in-the-zone is also a cultural phenomenon. For example, there are within the accounts of software coding given by computer programmers often stories of sudden intense bouts of coding, but whether such bouts were of high competence (and so were 'in the zone') is also usually judged by the complexity of the problem addressed and by the quality of software code produced. Both the complexity of a problem and the quality of code are cultural judgements, for example the latter often draws on the so-called Unix Philosophy that values simplicity of code. Similar examples in music and sport can be given, where a high level of competence does not just inhere in 'getting the notes in the right order' or in winning, but in how these are done. Such judgements are cultural ones that exist beyond the individuals who experience being-in-the-zone. Only with the integration of cultural insights about the nature of being-in-the-zone will there be the potential for fully understanding being-in-the-zone.This project seeks to open up a new cultural approach to being-in-the-zone that will be able to contribute to well-being, by developing practices that promote being-in-the-zone, and develops important academic debates about the relation between psychology and society. Such an understanding can have important impacts on participation in cultural activities and on positive appreciations of both psyche and body. Understanding being-in-the-zone offers ways of understanding compelling and strongly positive appreciations of participation in various creative activities. This understanding can be translated into advice and practices about how to create a positive appreciation of doing such activities, like music and sport, and how to structure advice and practices that produce positive attitudes to psyche and body. It is these latter lessons that will form a key part of dissemination of this research in our proposal to enter the London Olympics 2012 Cultural Olympiad with early results from discussion. It also informs our desire to develop a large grant submission from this network which will provide detailed empirical work and action-research converting that empirical work into policy results in the form of practical advice about how to promote better appreciation of cultural and creative activities and their positive effects on bodies and psyches.