“There’s the old anecdote we were all taught in Psych 101,” Martin said, “which is that physical environment matters. I think a separate device matters here: sometimes you’re reading, and you’re in a slow section, and you have that random thought, like, what was that thing I wanted to buy on Amazon? And you’re there without thinking about it.” A... See more
If you touch an idea too much without actually making it, just like a dough or plaster, it dies. I think it’s better to make and bake it and throw it away than to imagine how it would have worked or tasted.
—Zeynab Izadyar
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
If that's not bad enough, the second inconvenient truth is that even with the ideas that do prove to have potential, it typically takes several iterations to get the implementation of this idea to the point where it delivers the necessary business value. We call that time to money