Here are some other techniques people use to access and maintain the zone:

• Introducing a long delay between when you do the work and when it is shown to the world. Annie Ernaux writes about this in A Simple Passion, a memoir about how she becomes obsessed in a banal way with a man who is having an affair with her—the thought that others will read

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The mental states where new ideas can be born are hard to open up. And they are continually collapsing. The things you have to do to keep them from caving in will make people frown upon you—your tendency for isolation, working deep in the night, breaking norms. The zone is a place at the margin of society. But strangely enough, this fragile margin... See more

I read a David Lynch book about meditation when I was like 16, and I didn’t realize how influential it was until I got older and started to realize that I was doing the technique he talks about automatically. It was called Catching the Big Fish or something, but the idea is, you close your eyes and let all the ideas go through your head. You don’t... See more