Pause/Erase: Discovering Your Zone

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), 1819-1880

If I were to connect the dots with a lot of the blogs I am reading one message stands out more than anything else: there is simply too much in the world to keep track of. We are always “on,” always connected to the email Inbox, text messages, Twitter, Facebook, blog subscriptions, magazines, tv shows, and so on. People are being stressed by having constant access to this content and are having problems keeping up with it all. The common solution to these problems is to find ways to eliminate, cut back, and take breaks. People are looking for ways to live simply, to take digital sabbaticals, to stay focused, and be productive.

But why not consider an alternative solution, a radical and scary concept: pause/erase.

I collect these terms into one slash word for one main reason: you can not separate this concept into two steps. They should exist together and be a yin/yang for a new way of working, of exploring, of consuming.

The One Step

When you find yourself taking a pause, erase that item and move on. Before you erase, pause and remember, then erase.

Examples:

You are reading a lengthy blog post, but you pause to look at the unread count for your email. Pause, erase the blog address from your browser (or bookmark it) and move on.

You are watching a TV show, but decide to hit “Guide,” look at the schedule of shows to come, or use a TV guide. Pause, erase by turning of the TV, and move on.

You are in an art gallery, standing in front of a great work, but your eyes dart to the side to look at something. Pause, erase by moving to the next piece, and move on.

When working out, you do several reps but then stop to look at someone else or are too tired to finish all reps in order. Pause, erase by moving to the next exercise or leave the gym.

Before you erase and move on from these items, think about what caused you to move on and why you lost focus on what you were doing.

Your mind has to be focused and prepared to do something from start to finish in order to feel like you accomplished something. No one sets out to climb Mount Everest, stop at the first camp up the mountain, and say they climbed to the summit. Reaching the summit of any task requires the complete focus and energy of our mind and body. To break away from a task means we lose that energy and flow for that particular task.

As a writer, an athlete, an artist, there exists The Zone where their individual or team energies are so well focused that anything seems attainable, and nothing distracts them from reaching that goal. As an outsider, watching people in The Zone is inspiring and always gives us a sense of, “Wow! They are unstoppable.”

Here is a great example of what I mean:

This is what the play-by-play said in the papers, and more about the play can be found here.

MARINERS 3RD: Bradley singled; Davis flied out to center; Filer
balked [Bradley to second]; G. Thomas singled to right [Bradley
out at home (right to catcher), G. Thomas out at home (catcher
to left to catcher)]; Martinez breaks ankle on collision at
plate; Thomas takes 3b on throw; Martinez (on ground) throws
into lf; Bell throws home and Martinez makes catch and tag while
seated;

If Buck Martinez was not in The Zone and broke focus, he would not have managed to throw the ball to 3rd Base, let alone receive the throw again to tag out the runner. If he had broken his leg and only managed the one out, people would have remembered his play as being a good play with an unfortunate end. Instead, that one play is immortalized as being one of baseball’s greatest plays ever. It is the one thing that will be remembered about Buck Martinez for a long time to come.

We can all achieve greatness if we discover that Zone for ourselves. By using the action of Pause/Erase, it will help us discover our Zone naturally without stressing ourselves out about trying to stay focused. It will be a natural sequence of events and with practice, we will find the perfect conditions in order for us to find that focus and energy to create the best works of our lives, to achieve a fitness level that we thought was out of reach, or to have a memorable experience in a museum or elsewhere.

Pause/Erase can be used in a different way, as well. It can help us clear our inboxes, RSS feeds, stacks of unread books, and anything else which requires us to process, read/use, and store/organize afterwards. We need to give ourselves permission to erase these items from our lives and not concern ourselves with consuming everything that crosses our pathways.

Take a look at your RSS feed subscriptions, and ask yourself: is it really necessary for me to follow 200 blogs and read 1,000 items a day? Of course it isn’t. Allow yourself to Pause/Erase the folders with the largest items that go unread by marking the folder as “Read.” If there is a blog you really enjoy, find inspiring, and do not want to miss one item, create a different folder for those blogs. Only read that folder for a week and see how much you miss reading the other blogs that are going unread. Do the same with your Inbox. Filter out your family, main friends, your boss and key team members, allow the rest to go unread. The important messages will be sent again, or do as Tim Ferris suggests in his book (The 4 Hour Work Week) and hire someone to process your email for you. The same goes for that large stack of books going unread. Either begin the process of reading them, or donate/sell them so you do not find yourself looking at the stack and worrying about whether you are going to read them all.

Pause/Erase is a technique to bring us back to the reality that our ancestors lived in. Back when the first jewelery or tribal masks were being created, or ceremonies and traditions were being developed, the distractions beyond those tasks were minimal. As life has become easier for us to live and survive in, the larger the pull has been to distract and stress ourselves over taking in everything. Trying to read everything is an impossibility that we should not be concerned about.

It is time for us to Pause/Erase and start living a true life.

Footnote

This post is an exploration of a new way of living that I am trying to build into a new site. The site is a bit different than everything else out there right now, too. I want to use a blogging platform to contain one work, without the steady updating of the site. I want people to visit a complete site that they can use as a resource to live their lives and be more productive with work if that is what they want. I am not going to act like an expert in everything, but instead point people in different directions if that is what they want.

The site will be titled: mantra:ztd (zen to done) and be inspired by zenhabit‘s book named Zen to Done and his writings on focus with the possibility of other “mantra” sites being developed, but one step at a time.

I would appreciate any thoughts about this concept, and whether this post is the right direction or if I should rethink things.

By James McCullough

James M

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