Conversation with my wife

[bierman]

Talking with my wife last night about the quest for "focus without thought". I was relating to her some of the things I read in about folks in recent threads finishing a stage or practice drill and not really remembering a thing about what they had just done. How they had been in the "zone" where they let their subconcious really take over and do what it needed to do to make the shots. My wife is not a shooter, but she is a GM class typist. She has been tested at over 140 words per minute with no errors. So when I told her about the "zone" she completely got what I was talking about. She says that is the only way she can type as fast as she does. She can type an entire page and not be able to tell you what was written on that page. She likes to joke that she is just a human optical character reader when she is typing for speed. She only sees what she needs to see to transfer the letters from the document in front of her into the computer. If she "thought" about what those letters meant (ie. actually read every word on the page) she would slow way down and begin to make mistakes. To shamelessly steal from "The Inner Game of Tennis", she puts her Self 2 (the doer) in charge when she types, trusting completely Self 2's ability on the keyboard. She has been typing this way for years. I can remember talking to her on the phone, very early in our relationship, and hearing someone just burning down a keyboard in the background. I asked her who was typing that fast and she responded "Me". I could not believe she could hold a conversation with me while typing that fast at the same time. But I have since learned that the key is she was not "thinking" about typing, but was merely observing the letters on the page, letting her Self 2 direct the fingers where to go and they were going there with near flawless accuracy.

I asked her what the key was to typing that fast. She told me that she started typing very fast when she stopped worrying about errors. She decided to relax and see how fast she could move her fingers without thinking about errors and the speed was there. Not 100% accurate at the time, but she did not worry about that. Now that she knew the potential was there she learned to relax and just observe what was happening. If an error occured (when something did not "feel" right), her concious self noted it, corrected it and moved on to the next character. Once she discovered the "zone", fast and accurate typing was her reward. I asked her how she gets in the "zone" but she could not really explain it. It is just such a natural thing for her now, that she really does not even think about it; it just is.

I am a bit ashamed to admit that I have been married to this woman for nearly 18 years and only now realized, within the last 24 hrs, that she understands, much more clearly than I do, what it takes to truly excel at something. Never really saw a coorelation between shooting and typing until now...

Edited October 28, 2009 by bierman

[Graham Smith]

It's pretty much the same with everything. For example, how much time do you spend thinking about driving when you are going to work? You think about the traffic and the lights and a hundred other things, but you don't actually think about the minutia of controlling the car. You don't think about how your gripping the steering wheel and where your foot is positioned on the pedal - if you did, you'd be involved in an accident in no time.

There is something in physics known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Basically it says you cannot accurately know both the speed and the position of a subatomic particle. Or more correctly it says that the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.

I'm trying to learn to think about shooting the same way. Stop trying to concentrate on all the details of every shot and just concentrate on the "big picture". Think about where you want to put the bullet and let the "subconscious" take care of the rest.

[Al Capizzo]

Indeed. I don't know where the phrase originated, but "life is all of a piece", isn't it? We could as easily be reading "The Inner Game of Typing".

[GrumpyOne]

Back in the day, working at AT&T (as a Western Electric installer), we use to have to make a certain amount of wire wrapped connections per day (2,200) using a very specific color code. When I first started, I was lucky to make 1,200 per day, following the natural progression of the color code, first white/blue, then blue/white, them white/orange, then orange/white, etc. This took time, as you had to find each individual pair of wires out of sometimes hundreds of wires, put one in your wire wrap gun, then put it on the terminal, and pull the trigger. Finally, one of the old guys showed me how to do it; Shut everything down except your eyes and fingers, you know what the color code is, it doesn't matter which wire you pick up, you know where it goes. Get into a rthym with your trigger finger, pull it at the same time, every time, even if you don't have a wire in the bit, your other hand will catch up eventually. Last time I bulk wired, I was wiring 3,600 per day, and goofing off.

[VegasOPM]

Good post. I'm trying to get over my pathological hatred of deltas and mikes. I have finally realized that I cannot get to where I want to be by shooting to avoid missing. The best at anything tend not to be the ones that approach it conservatively.

[L-10_shooter]

That is a great realization, thanks for sharing. I am finding that shooting and being in the "zone" can be connected to alot of daily things. Like Benos stated in his book, a golf swing is similar to shooting a pistol.......who would have thought?

[benos]

bierman,

Thank you for the awesome post.

Typing is my shooting now - so I can especially relate.

I've noticed that I type the best when I'm only aware of the words in my head; I'm not thinking about anything aspect of typing whatsoever.

And I seldom type from something I'm reading, so I've learned I type best when I don't look at the screen.

And please thank your wife for me.

be

[bierman]

Brian,

I will let her know. We are both glad you enjoyed the post.

[benos]

Cool. And thank you both for inspiring me. My keyboard work this morning was spot on.

be

[fuzzysights]

I am sure your wife also enjoyed it when you told her she had given you the insight! My wife can't figure out why I enjoy shooting shooting so much. I try to explain that it is a mental escape because when you are shooting nothing else exists. I think I might see the edge of the zone sometimes, but then I overthink it.