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 these notes about the tacky sex life of a middle-aged woman feels, to her, almost fictional. She will be far away when it happens. Therefore, she doesn’t feel a need to protect herself.

Thinking of the work in religious terms, as a service to, or a search for, God. Bergman, Grothendieck, and Pascal all do this. It might be easier to summon the awe and daring necessary to push out into the unknown and against social pressure if the alternative is failing God. Or a fiendish muse.

Working with talented and open-minded collaborators, if you have the chance, can be a way to enter the zone. Nick Cave, when asked how he’s been able to reinvent himself so many times as a musician, says that his bandmates, especially Warren Ellis, simply will not play anything that sounds like what he’s done before. He has surrounded himself with people whose influence is the inverse of the social pressure of normal society and his audience.

Another idea if you want to push against the mental pressure that kills good ideas, from Paul Graham’s recent essay on how to do good work: “One way to do that is to ask what would be good ideas for someone else to explore. Then your subconscious won't shoot them down to protect you.” I don’t know of anyone using this technique, but it might work.

Actively subvert expectations. Kristian Mattsson, who performs under the moniker Tallest Man on Earth, says he pays close attention to his emotions as he’s writing new songs. If he gets excited, purely , he immediately puts the guitar down—excitement means what he is playing something he knows others will like, something that retreads paths he has already explored and been socially validated for. The songs he’s looking for are the ones that he’s ashamed of liking.

Work so fast that you don’t have time to self-censor. While writing the intensely confessional My Struggle, Knausgaard forced himself to write five pages a day to overcome his tendency to freeze up in shame. Every time he acclimated to the pace of his writing, he increased the quota so he would always be overwhelmed—at one point he forced himself to write 25,000 words in 24 hours, about a third of a normal-sized novel. It is not the best writing he has done; it kind of melts at the edges. But it is true literature and, like Récoltes et Semailles and Bergman’s workbooks, it is a rare opportunity to observe an uncommon and fertile mind in real-time.

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