Fast track into 'the zone'

This sounds like fun: hooking your brain up to a 9-volt battery to achieve the Zen-like state of being 'in the zone'.
Actually the device is slightly more sophisticated than a battery, it's a research device that delivers transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Basically, electrodes send a 2-milliamp current through part of the brain, making those brain cells more excitable and responsive to inputs - a technique being used to accelerate learning. A US defence project is using it to make snipers more efficient killers more quickly. And some amateur enthusiasts have reportedly tried it on themselves with mixed results, including temporary blindness.
Some researchers are taking a less dangerous route to try and isolate then reproduce that effortless feeling of flow. NewScientist reports that Advanced Brain Monitoring in Carlsbad, California, looked at the brain waves of Olympic archers and professional golfers and found a surge in alpha waves and reduced activation of the cortex when attention was focused on the target. The critical or 'thinking' faculties shut down, attention became focused. There is no think, only do.
A kinesiologist at the University of Nevada has managed to get novices to reproduce this flow state by focusing their attention on an external point away from their body. In whatever activity the subject was being taught, they learned faster when they focused on outcomes rather than what they were doing.
These efforts to harness the brain's potential to learn more quickly could be put to all manner of exciting uses, or book titles for that matter: Become the World's Richest Poker Player in a Day; Game the Futures Markets in One Easy Step. Or perhaps more mundane uses, like producing world-saving geniuses at twice the rate and in half the time, and helping the rest of us schmucks absorb enough information to keep pace in an accelerating world.