Find the Work That Puts You in the Zone

There are a few days each year when I feel like I am operating at full capacity.

They are the days of my leadership summits. For months beforehand, I prepare and coach everyone who will participate. On the summit days themselves, I give the opening and closing remarks and serve as moderator and facilitator for every discussion. From morning until night, I am fully engaged.

It is exhilarating. It is also exhausting.

What surprises me every time is the energy I find on those days. I would expect to be running on fumes. Instead, the energy comes naturally, almost easily. I'm in the zone. I love the work. I'm good at it. It is what makes me come alive.

That experience has taught me something important about reinvention, and about the difference between work that drains us and work that fuels us.

What Peak Performance Actually Feels Like

Researchers who study peak performance describe it as using a larger than normal proportion of your powers. It is the moment when you outperform what you thought you were capable of.

What stands out in that research is a consistent pattern: clear focus. People in peak states are fully absorbed by something they are deeply committed to or genuinely fascinated by. They also have a clear sense of their own values and goals. They don't need agreement or approval from anyone else. They are decisive and ready to act.

Here is the part that surprises many people. Peak performance doesn't come from gritting your teeth and squeezing out more effort. It tends to feel effortless, automatic, even spontaneous. Elite athletes describe it as being confident, focused and in control, with the body executing almost without conscious thought.

And notably, it doesn't mean the absence of nerves. Many top performers feel nervous right up to the moment they begin. The difference is that they trust their preparation and their ability, so the nerves become energy rather than interference.

Why So Few People Experience It at Work

If peak performance is available to all of us, why do so few people experience it in their careers?

Part of the answer is that most work isn't designed around what draws out the best in people. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 found that only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. That means most people spend their days doing work that doesn't fully absorb them.

Another part of the answer is that many of us stopped paying attention to what puts us in the zone. Early in our careers, we learned to pursue what was rewarded rather than what energized us. Over time, we became very good at work that drains us, and we forgot what work used to feel like when it lit us up.

As I've written before, working harder stopped working a long time ago. More effort applied to the wrong work doesn't produce peak performance. It produces exhaustion.

Your Zone Is a Clue

This is where reinvention comes in. The moments when you are fully absorbed, when time disappears and your energy rises instead of falls, are not random. They are clues.

They tell you what you are deeply committed to. They reveal the kind of contribution that comes naturally to you. They point toward the work where your full capacity can show up without being forced.

Most people overlook those clues because they happen in small moments. A project that felt different from the rest. A conversation where you lost track of time. A problem you couldn't stop thinking about, even on the weekend. Taken together, those moments sketch a picture of the work you were built for.

That is why I pay such close attention to my summit days. They remind me what my full capacity feels like, and they help me notice when the rest of my work is drifting away from it.

Look for Your Summit Days

So here is a question worth sitting with this week. When was the last time you experienced your version of a summit day? When did you feel fully alive in your work, using every part of who you are?

Write down what you were doing, who you were with and what made it absorbing. Then ask yourself how much of your current work looks like that, and what it would take to make more of it look that way.

You don't need to reinvent everything at once. Sometimes the next step is simply moving a little closer to the work that brings out your best. As I explore in Bring the Energy Back to Work, energy is often the most honest signal you have about where you belong.

Your best work rarely comes from forcing yourself harder. It comes from finding what draws out all of who you are.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.