The 2 Comfort Zones

Many of us are aware of the comfort zone, a small but powerful pitfall we all stumble into once in a while, or stay in forever.

But there is also the 'willingly created comfort zone'.

Being in a position where all is under control and every nook and cranny of what we do is easily solved, there is no real challenge. It feels really rewarding as we know exactly what, how, and when to do it.

Let's take a relatable example: work.

Once we start our work, be it as developer, manager, designer, artist... you name it, we will put a considerable amount of time into a certain set of skills that make us 'valuable'. Once we realize that we've reached a polished state of our skills, we start to understand and integrate our environment, to further speed up our tasks, or know exactly where our 'non-tasks' can be delegated.

We might even stop learning new things, but it does not matter - we have reached a very stable and maybe even monotonous stage of our work.

We are in our comfort zone.

Now most sources I have read will tell you that for success, you need to jump out of the comfort zone. I would rather say, you need to expand or create a new comfort zone. Sounds counter-intuitive? Well, let's make another small example.

Assume you are 'the person' all people come to when there is a problem at your workplace, and only you can solve it. Recognition, respect, and a sense of fulfillment drive you to keep providing this specific solution. The issue: nothing new needs to be added to the solution. If you would leave, 'everyone' might lose out, as the person in charge of solving said issue is no more, so you become entrapped in the idea of 'fulfillment', being needed. So a comfort zone can also mean a trap zone.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but if you would get fired, or if the department or workplace you're at needs to cut people because they're not making enough money, and you're unlucky to be let go, you will be thrown into a new situation where you will have to create a new comfort zone. So every time you start a new challenge, whatever it might be, you won't be in comfort at the start.

Now if you are at the beginning of a new skill, challenge, or job, you actively will seek to create your new comfort zone. This is what I want to convey: do not get trapped into one comfort zone, but master the creation of many, so that if one comfort zone is gone, you have a greater comfort circle to fall back on, which makes it so much easier to add new challenges (if you want to, naturally).

Let me give you one last example from my own experience: creating videos for social media.

I'm very new to this topic, and just taking some videos from my mobile and uploading might be the quick and easy way to start. But if I want to be able to create videos of a certain quality and 'feel happy about the process of making them', I need to create a new system that works for me - one that makes the actual process of taking a new video the main focus. Not the thinking about a location, the camera, the video needing to be uploaded to my laptop, what editing tool I need to use, or how I'm going to schedule the video to be officially released to the social media platform.

As I expect myself to enjoy the 'creative' part, I need to create a comfort zone setup that will allow me to concentrate on the actual video recording process and editing. All other steps need to seamlessly blend in. But this is a blog for another time - once I get everything smoothly in place, I'll share my journey of creating this new comfort zone.