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

'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.

Researching 'being-in-the-zone' has the potential to develop both broad policies for impacting health and well-being through the promotion of participation in cultural activities as well as developing narrower, domain-specific techniques for promoting the possibility of peak performance. The strategy for delivering these impacts is two fold. First, we will ensure the event on sport and being-in-the-zone coincides with the London Olympics 2012 Cultural Olympiad and becomes a participant in that Olympiad. Second, a longer term strategy is that a range of non-academics will be invited to attend or to speak at network events ensuring impacts relevant to such participants are core to the network, and this will then be channelled into the design of the large grant submission.

The Cultural Olympiad will be ongoing during the proposed research network, with the London 2012 Festival ongoing from June 2012 until the Olympics and Paralympics from June-September 2012. The research network event on Sport will be timed to allow participation in the cultural olympiad based on a discussion event involving academics and practitioners discussing being-in-the-zone across sport and music. The event will meet the three themes of the Cultural Olympiad (celebrate London and the UK, inspire and involve young people and generate a positive legacy)

Of the seven themes of the Cultural Olympiad, an event is required to meet three and we will be meeting the following three themes: bring together culture and sport; encourage audiences to take part; and, use culture and sport to raise issues of environmental sustainability, health and wellbeing. Our Cultural Olympiad event will draw music and sport together in a way that provides an academic contribution to the Cultural Olympiad. We will present the ways 'being-in-the-zone' research can develop techniques to assist participation in sport and to promote health and well-being. Preliminary contact with Cultural Olympiad local Creative Programmer's indicates there is no point applying formally until funding for the research network is secured.

Our second strategy for developing impacts is to recognise that in opening up this novel area of academic enquiry which has clear implications for impacts in health and wellbeing as well as in promoting cultural activity, we will need to develop novel research data on which we can base detailed policies and techniques and that this will not be possible solely from the research network. We also recognise that this development of research needs to involve participants in cultural activities, their representational bodies and with Government policy makers to ensure important impact connections are made. The following are the kinds of bodies and individuals that we are in touch with and will involve in network events; Andy Shepherd, Saxophonist, Steve Waterman Band Leader, Nordoff Robbins (Music Transforming Lives), Parkour UK (Parkour Governing Body), Surfing GB, TIGA (video games trade association), Board of Open Source Initiative, ForgeRock, Dept. for Culture, Media and Sport.

We plan to use this engagement with non-academic participants in the network to develop as a key output a large research grant. This grant will have as key aims the full development, though novel action-research methodologies, of policy advice and practical techniques in relation to two areas: general policies for promoting for well being through participation in cultural activities; and, specific advice for promoting greater chances of cultural participants being able to 'be-in-the-zone'.