Superfocusing

A few years back I was having a birthday party and during part of it we had to drive to another location.  I was in the car with a few friends and had just gotten a new book for my birthday.  Being a not-very-social creature, I started reading.  When I read, the entire world went away - it just disappeared and didn't exist.  I couldn't hear anyone talking or see the car moving.  I wasn't even conscious that I was in a moving vehicle until someone began to shake my knee and yell my name.  Turns out they had been trying to talk to me for the past minute or two and I was entirely unresponsive.

This is what superfocusing is like.  Aspies have some pretty cool things about them and superfocusing is one of the best.  We can't do it consciously (or at least I can't) but superfocusing is when we become so focused on an activity that the world doesn't exist.  Someone could be shouting in our ears and we won't hear a thing because we're so focused.

It's a very zen state of mind because there is only the present, the activity being done and nothing else.  I get like this when I read, just getting so into the book that there was nothing else.  I've heard of people doing it with just about every solitary activity - math, playing games, art, even just staring out the window.  For how uptight people seem to think we are, we do know how to chill out and ignore the world.