Talk:Comfort zone

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Randyoconnor. Peer reviewers: Bolinli1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Comments

I would be interested in knowing who first used the phrase and when. 82.69.28.55 12:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The 1991 book "Do It: Let's Get Off Our Buts" by John-Roger and Peter McWilliams, Prelude Press, Los Angeles, ISBM 0-931580-96-X, contains a lot of discussion of "comfort zone." I don't know if the term was original with this book, but the way they introduce the term, this may have been the source. It was part of a "Life-101" series of books. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.223.10.227 (talk) 20:32, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary includes a number of usages earlier than 1991: 1977 U.S. News & World Rep. (Nexis) 7 Nov. 71 We find more palatable means of getting them [sc. employees] back into their comfort zones, where they can make contributions that won't be damaging to them or to the organization. 1981 P. C. NEWMAN Canad. Establishment II. i. 23 Toronto is outside my comfort zone. 1988 Toronto Sun 13 Apr. 85/4 If certain of the Jays were indeed in some sort of ‘comfort zone’ before, there is little evidence of that now. There is nothing like a little uncertainty to keep a team from becoming complacent. 1990 Law & Order May 73/1 They are able to talk their victim into what has been described as a ‘comfort zone’. This is a location where the killer feels comfortable or safe and can control the victim.--ASegar (talk) 18:58, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Changes made to article

The article had a lot of grammatical errors so I fixed those. I also changed some of the wording around to make the sentences make more sense. Some of the sentences were also filled with a lot of pointless words so I removed those as well. I tried to change the contents box but it wouldn't let me. Hanmar94 (talk) 21:05, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Contents box is automatically generated from section titles.--Penbat (talk) 21:09, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Already flagged as fringe, and failed verification, too

I've just removed this statement from article:

In this zone, a steady level of performance is possible.

References

It was already flagged as fringe, and when I checked the fringe source (I concur on its fringe status), there was no mention of "steady performance". 'Steady' is hard to define to begin with. We shouldn't make claims about such a thing without at least some effort to pin this down. I also don't think "comfort" and "steadiness" are especially cognate in this domain.

I read quite heavily in the pop literature, and this is not how these concepts are normally positioned. Often the concept of "flow" is invoked instead, which is an intensified level of focus, free from many distractions. But even so, you won't be steady in flow unless your life is steady surrounding the flow circumstance. Flow is not a magical cure for nervous exhaustion.

In sports, you have a classic chicken and egg problem: are you steady because of comfort, or are you (decreed) comfortable because of steadiness? It's popular these days to suppose that much judgement is retrospective, from outcome back to emotion. One author who takes this stance is Lisa Feldman Barrett, but there are many others. — MaxEnt 01:40, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Main image moved to talk page

The three psychological states.

Three states according to what or who? Why drawn in these proportions? And what kind of danger? The image file itself is flagged for not being in an ideal format, and the image page gives no answers to any of these obvious questions.

Finally, why does comfort subset optimal performance? That's a surprising reified notion of comfort, if you ask me. As much I'm biased toward having more rather than less, and fixing quality problems incrementally, I don't think this image contributes in its current form. — MaxEnt 01:48, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Came across this entry, while searching for something else. The first sentence definition was extremely wordy and clumsy to boot. I rewrote it for clarity. -- Professor of Psychology.