Rehearse dealing with distractions

A well rehearsed person is a prepared person.  

This mantra applies to any type of human performance: Conversation, presentation, task completion, ideation session, customer meeting or demonstration.  The trick, though, is to actually rehearse under real-world conditions.  Sure, you may conjure up a crowd of insiders to pose as the audience or environment and sometimes they pepper you with distractions to see if you can weather them.  Mostly, though, the real distractions on game-day leave you ill prepared, knocking you out of your groove. 

You shrug your shoulders and say to yourself, "there's not way to create the real distractions I'll likely face, so I'll deal with them as they come up the best way I can." Hmmm, doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me!  Instead, let me offer an obvious but helpful solution -- Practice dealing with distractions in your regular life. 

For example, you are on a crowded plane, trying to answer your emails (or write a blog post for later). A baby across the aisle is screeching and a grammar school brat behind you is kicking your chair.  Breathe deeply, and continue you work.  Don't cheat and put on headphones, you don't get to do that in your 'performance life.'  Tune out the noise and the back of your seat and defiantly tune into your task at hand - creative typing.  

At first, you'll find it a bit unnerving, trying to do two things at once.  Soon, your 2nd brain (the reptilian brain) will take over the task of filtering out stimuli, while your 1st brain resumes your task of tapping out ideas on your keyboard.  Try this exercise every time you are faced with a highly distracting environment and it will become 2nd nature to you.  Then, when you are actually giving that presentation at work and someone is checking his blackberry, another person's phone is going off and there's a fire engine siren blaring on the street -- you'll tune it all out and make a stellar presentation.  

In his fabulous book, The Power Of Now, uber-guide Eckhart Tolle says that distracting noises irritate us because we have a wall that catches them (our attention).  Instead, he offers, "let the baby's cries pass right through you, no wall to catch them." Much like you learn to deal with pain at the dentist's office, you can over time deal with distractions in your life. 

As a professional speaker, my life is filled with distractions that can either take away from my focus (as well as my audience's) or just pass through us unnoticed.  I've had gun shot sounds in Bogota, a fire alarm go off at a hotel in Las Vegas and multiple phones ring during the key moment of my signature story.  I was blissfully unfocused on all of them.  But it required some exercise! 

The added benefit to this strategy is an improved quality of life. Up until now, daily distractions (crying babies, ringing cell phones, loud noises, rude people) are a source of anxiety and irritation in your life. Being interrupted in a task creates what psychotherapists call "decision shift," a stressor that can lead to depression and anger.  By looking at distraction as an opportunity to rehearse, instead of an annoyance, you are transmuting it from a problem into a solution.  Now, as I travel and attempt to write, the same annoyances that make every one around me c-r-a-z-y just make me smile, bear down, and take in a very necessary distraction-rehearsal session. 

For more on this topic, read: The Value Of Rehearsing

Comments

[Las Vegas periodontics]

I do really agree that a well rehearsed person is a prepared person.

[baby sling]

By looking at distraction as an opportunity to rehearse, instead of an annoyance, you are transmuting it from a problem into a solution.

[Bob Stephens]

GR8 Post Tim. Thanks.

[Dror Engel]

Thanks for the article Tim.

[Deb Lee]

I really like this idea. I get lots of practice doing this when I'm working from my "other" office, a.k.a. Panera or Starbucks. There's a lot of movement and a variety of sounds that I simply tune out. In fact, I find that I'm more productive when I'm working from one of those locations (vs my home office or living room). Thanks for a great article. =)