Location: Home » Blog » Course News » In the Zone
In the Zone
Tuesday, 3rd November 2009 08:33 AM
After moving to this workshop we spent a couple of weeks building various bits and pieces to aid working, such as sheet stores, tool racks, storage cupboards. It was interesting how often we made quite elementary mistakes in doing the work, like cutting pieces too short or fitting some thing in reverse. It struck me that these are the sort of mistakes that students make on my courses. When teaching, mistakes by students are a constant worry, firstly because I have to think of a way of dealing with the error. But I also worry that it is a fault in my teaching.
I think the errors we were making were not just that we were in a hurry to get the workshop up and running. I believe it was also because we did not value the work so did not get "in The Zone" to do it.Thinking about it I realised that this may be why my students were making their mistakes. Perhaps I had not introduced them toThe Zone and how to reach it.
The Zone is the state of mind one has to be in to do the faultless work required for fine furniture making. It involves intense concentration, a no compromise attitude to quality, but also a calm and relaxed approach.
How does one get into The Zone? This has a lot to do with environment. Just standing at my bench with my familar tools around me helps to induce the Zone state of mind, if you are used to being inThe Zone at the bench then it has an association.Music can help, Bach is quite good, calming but not soporific. A short period of consideration of the next steps in the making process before starting can help. Almost a meditation.
How do you know when you are in The Zone? Not sure I can help here. It's a good feeling because you know the work is going well and you almost feel you could do anything.
I think The Zone may also be addictive. I said in my previous post that I was getting grumpy because I had not done any making for a while, that was not just because I was not doing income generating work, it was also a psychological state that I "needed" the comfort of The Zone. I sometimes feel the some when on holiday!
So I intend to introduce a discussion of The Zone to my courses in future.
I hope you have found The Zone and get to visit it regularly.
-
Zone what zone?
-
Still can't find it.
-
Ah that's it!
Comments…Add yours
Posted by Chris on 09/11/09
Ross, I think being in the zone is important to the economics of the business. Our work is dependent on producing as near perfect work as possible. If you are not in the zone then you have to redo stuff or "fiddle" with it to get it right, all things that take time and unfortunately "time is money". Also, as we have said before "you always get found out in furniture making", in other words if you don't get each stage in the process right all the little imperfections came back to haunt you as a piece that you know could have been better. However you don't have to use hand tools to be in the zone, in fact, when you make mistakes with a machine they are usuually much bigger!
Linda, the book sounds interesting, I will order it from the library.
Chris
Posted by Ross Bennett on 03/11/09
Hi Chris . Glad to know that you are "back in the Zone". It was good to see your "desk" in the new workshop the other day. Quite emotional really.One half of me was sad that you had departed the workshop at Scissett ,which, throughout the period of working on my own has given me comfort knowing that you were not far away for some words of encouragement or the odd router bit . The other half of me excited for you at the prospect of new beginnings and a bigger audience of clients that will appreciate what you really like to do.
The Gallery looks fantastic, and the work in it-I shall look forward to seeing it "evolve" as you move further and further into the Zone.
I should be interested to know your thoughts on the economics of "being in the zone". I shall take an informed guess that those dovetails shown in your pics were not done using a "Woodrat"! All the best. R
Posted by linda on 09/11/09
Hi Chris
Sitting in bed with my cup of tea and laptop and your blog won out over yesterday's online Observer!
Have you read 'The Unkown Craftsman, a Japanese Insight into Beauty' by Soetsu Yanagi?
All about The Zone, as is a lot of Japanese stuff... Anyway, know what you're talking about, all about being in the now and mindfulness and stuff... A great place to be!
Love, Linda