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

“Being-in-the-zone”（bitz）是一个表达，当一个人经常进行某种创造性活动时，他的表现能力突然出乎意料地提高了，他经常觉得自己的表现不仅是有史以来最好的，而且在某种程度上比他们想象的要好。Bitz在软件编码等工作实践、演奏乐器或参加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自己的活动时，常常会回忆起这样的时刻，因为这些时刻明显能让他们对自己的特定创意实践产生深刻的投入感，并对自己的身体和心理产生积极的感觉，因为他们能够“进入状态”。进入状态是一种帮助许多人维持和继续他们的日常和重复练习的体验，并提供了一种无可争议的体验，提供了一种积极的心理和身体感觉。进入状态在很大程度上被分析为一种内在的精神状态，主要（如果不是全部的话）借鉴了心理学。即使是在团队活动中，比如足球比赛中，进入禁区也主要被解释为参与者的内部活动。一个现在广为人知的例子是著名的运动心理学实践，要求运动员“想象”他们在运动中的最佳时刻。在这种理解下，峰值或异常好的表现来自于个人内部，因此被视为一种心理现象。然而，“处于状态”也是一种文化现象。例如，在计算机程序员对软件编码的描述中，经常有突然紧张的编码故事，但是这些编码是否具有高能力（因此是“在区域”）也通常由所处理问题的复杂性和所产生的软件代码的质量来判断。问题的复杂性和代码的质量都是文化判断，例如，后者通常借鉴了所谓的Unix哲学，即重视代码的简单性。在音乐和体育领域也可以给出类似的例子，在这些领域，高水平的能力不仅仅在于“把音符按正确的顺序”或赢球，而是在于如何做到这些。这样的判断是文化上的判断，存在于那些经历过“处于状态”的个人之外。只有整合了关于“处于状态”本质的文化见解，才有可能充分理解“处于状态”。该项目旨在通过发展促进“在区域”的实践，并就心理学与社会之间的关系展开重要的学术辩论，为“在区域”开辟一种新的文化方法，从而能够为福祉做出贡献。这样的理解可以对参与文化活动以及对身心的积极欣赏产生重要影响。理解“在区域内”提供了理解参与各种创造性活动的令人信服和强烈的积极赞赏的方法。这种理解可以转化为建议和实践，告诉我们如何对音乐和体育等活动产生积极的欣赏，以及如何组织建议和实践，从而对身心产生积极的态度。正是这些后一种经验教训，将成为我们在2012年伦敦奥运会文化奥林匹克竞赛中传播这项研究的关键部分，并从讨论中获得早期成果。这也表明我们希望从这个网络中获得大笔资助，提供详细的实证工作和行动研究，将实证工作转化为政策结果，以实用建议的形式，促进对文化和创意活动的更好欣赏，以及它们对身体和心理的积极影响。

'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.