A comfort zone is a
psychological state
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definitio ...
in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and (perceive they are) in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
and
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
.
Bardwick defines the term as "a behavioral state where a person operates in an anxiety-neutral position."
describes it as "Where our uncertainty, scarcity and vulnerability are minimized—where we believe we'll have access to enough love, food, talent, time, admiration. Where we feel we have some control."
Performance management
White (2009) refers to the "optimal performance zone", in which performance can be enhanced by some amount of stress.
Beyond the optimum performance zone, lies the "danger zone" in which performance declines rapidly under the influence of greater anxiety.
However, stress in general can have an adverse effect on decision making: fewer alternatives are tried out
[Staal, Mark A]
"Stress, cognition, and human performance: A literature review and conceptual framework."
(2004), NASA/TM-2004-212824, IH-054 and more familiar strategies are used, even if they are not helpful anymore.
Optimal
performance management
Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organization's goals in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of a whole organization, a d ...
requires maximizing time in the optimum performance zone. The main target should be expanding the comfort zone and optimal performance zone.
See also
*
Flow (psychology)
In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process ...
*
Personal boundaries
Personal boundaries or the act of'' setting boundaries'' is a life skill that has been popularized by self help authors and support groups since the mid 1980s. It is the practice of openly communicating and asserting personal values as way to ...
*
Yerkes–Dodson law
The Yerkes–Dodson law is an empirical relationship between pressure and performance, originally developed by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological ...
References
{{Reflist
Personality
Sociological theories