Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-39352489-20190815210204

Anybody reading this forum probably likes trying to go fast in a car and appreciates that there’s science and technique to moving a heavy object as rapidly as possible through a series of curves.

Braking points, apexes, corner exit speeds, optimal throttle control techniques, and so on.

But it strikes me that racing — once one has the fundamentals more or less sorted out — also has a huge psychological component that sometimes seems to border on the spiritual.

There seems to be a very elusive (for me, at least) optimal balancing point between focus and attention, on the one hand, and relaxation and detachment on the other which, if achieved, can dramatically transform what is possible on the track.

Get the balancing act right, and suddenly everything seems to magically come together and track sections that had been a source of stubborn frustration now melt before you with ease. Get it just a little bit off, though (tense up too much, focus too intently), and every corner becomes riddle that you can’t quite seem to solve solve.

I can’t help thinking that seeking and maintaining this elusive balancing act is relevant and has parallels in many aspects of our lives where we’re seeking to perform at our highest possible level.

So a question or two for anyone who cares to play along:

Do you find yourself sometimes in that “sweet spot” where you can do no wrong on the track and everything suddenly seems to come easily and naturally?

How often are you able to get yourself into that zone, and how hard is it for you to get and stay there?

What conscious steps do you take, if any, to try cultivate that elusive mindset?

Asking purely out of curiosity.

For my part, I notice that sweet spot when I’m in it, but I very rarely get there. Maybe 1% of the time. And I’ve not hit upon any conscious techniques for getting there faster or more often. More track time alone definitely doesn’t help. The one thing I’ve stumbled upon accidentally is that I’m very often considerably faster and smoother when I’m distracted by something other than driving. Say, I’m on a phone call and only dedicating 20% of my conscious energy to driving. That observation suggests that to go faster, paradoxically, I probably need to not try so hard to go fast. It’s fascinating to me, this psychological side of the endeavor. 