Noise E-Book

Joseph McCormack

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 276

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Teaches managers and leaders to cut through the static and hone their focusing skills 

In the current digital age, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to stay focused. Smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and other devices constantly vie for our attention. In both business and life, we are constantly bombarded with tweets, likes, mentions, and a constant stream of information. The inability to pay attention impacts learning, parenting, prioritizing, and leading. Not surprisingly, attention spans have gotten shorter. Already being pulled in a dozen directions every minute, managers and business leaders often struggle to address important issues and focus on everything that needs attention.

Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus teaches managers and leaders how to help themselves and others sharpen their focusing skills. In this follow-up to his first book Brief—the proven, step-by-step approach to clear, concise, and effective communication—author Joseph McCormack helps readers cut through the static and devote their attention to what is important. This engaging, informative book will help you:

• Apply effective, real-world techniques to hone your focus and reduce interference
• Learn the lessons taught to organizations such as Harley-Davidson, BMO Harris Bank, MasterCard, and the US Army
• Understand how modern technology can actually strengthen your focus if used correctly
• Avoid becoming a casualty of “weapons of mass distraction”

Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus is a valuable resource for leaders and managers seeking to develop laser-sharp focus and apply it to everything you do.

Leseprobe

Joseph McCormack

{noise}

living and leading when nobody can focus

Cover design/Art direction: Megan PalickiIllustration design: Joan Bueta

Copyright © 2020 by Joseph McCormack. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:Names: McCormack, Joseph, 1965- author.Title: Noise : living and leading when nobody can focus / Joseph McCormack. Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2020] | Includes index.Identifiers: LCCN 2019030965 (print) | LCCN 2019030966 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119553373 (Hardcover) | ISBN 9781119553359 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119553366 (ePub)Subjects: LCSH: Distraction (Psychology) | Noise. | Leadership.Classification: LCC BF323.D5 M33 2020 (print) | LCC BF323.D5 (ebook) | DDC 153.7/33—dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030965LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030966

This book is dedicated to all of my brothers and sisters (Mary Carol,Jean, Matt, Peg, Annie, Kate, John, and Patrick), a constant source of encouragement, laughter, inspiration, and love. From my childhood to the present day, they are the best family one could have. In particular, I dedicate this book to my late brother Johnny, my best friend and closest collaborator, whom I miss dearly every day and work hard to honor.

CONTENTS

Cover

Foreword

Addendum

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One Weapons of Mass Distraction

Chapter 1 Noise, Noise, So Much Noise

Kenny Chesney Gets It Right

Hearing Decline and the Loss of Focus

Access to Information Will Only Increase

Attention Spans Will Remain Elusive

Our Minds Will Become Anemic and Impenetrable

Note

Chapter 2 Huh? We’re Going Collectively Deaf

So, Why Do We Tune Out? A Variety of Reasons

The Impact of the “Elusive 600” on Our Listening

How Words Become Worthless—and Triggers for a Tune-Out

My Mom Thought I Had a Hearing Problem

Notes

Chapter 3 Brain Basics: Are Your Penguins Falling Off the Iceberg?

Our Brains Are Changing

Working Memory in Decline

Brains Are Like Computers

We’re Losing Impulse Control

Our Brains Get Hooked

How Often Do We Check Our Smartphones?

Notes

Chapter 4 Living in an Info Junkie Crack House

Training and Education Will Be the Gateway Drug

Impending Health Impacts?

A Potential Threat to Consider

Who Can Stop This?

More Brain Celery

Notes

Part Two The Big Tune-Out Is Coming (Imagining the Unthinkable—Six Short Stories to Wake You Up)

Chapter 5 Always Stuck at School

Serious Triggers

New Protective Behaviors

Terrified Parents

Disturbing Statistics

Our Children in Isolation

Is It Addiction?

Notes

Chapter 6 A Misleading Leader

Streaming Information

Losing Momentum

Powerful Monologue

All Talk, No Action

Chapter 7 The Loss of Civil Discourse

Her Civic Duty

Uninformed and Confused

No Respect

Tower of Babel

Catching Her Attention

Note

Chapter 8 Mind-Filled Momentum at Work

Connected While Exercising

Last-Minute Briefing

Driving Connected

Yet More Tasks and E-mails

Diving Right into the Weeds

Trying to Salvage Success

Notes

Chapter 9 2050: A Parenting Odyssey

Technology Was Only a Mild Interrupter for Them

A Carefree Time

Deep Loss of Daily Contact

Struggle to Disconnect

Technology Is with You Everywhere You Go

It’s Just Living for Them

Why Did We Worry So Much?

Parenting without a Voice

Fighting a Force

Chapter 10 Safety Briefing with Near-Tragic Results

Note

Part Three Time for You to Tune In: Awareness Management (AM 101)

Chapter 11 Awareness Management 101

Lighting the Path Before Us

Lives Can Become a Blur

Missing the Moment Entirely

Our Minds Are Spinning Beach Balls

The Elusive 600: Your Enemy or Your Friend?

Runaway Thoughts

Waking Your Mind from Mindlessness to Mindfulness

Directed, Undirected, and Misdirected

Commit to “Awareness Management”

What If We Don’t Manage Our Awareness?

AM Pre-set Buttons

Notes

Chapter 12 Take Aim: Set Your Sights on What Matters Most

Essentialists versus Non-essentialists

No More Deafening Noise

Pointless Routines

A Minimalist Decision: Keep It Simple

Aim Small, Miss Small—Tips to Direct Your Focus

Post It: Simplicity Isn’t Complicated

To Simplify Is a Deliberate Decision

Notes

Chapter 13 Saying No to Noise

Just Say No

The Power of Self-Mastery

Overcoming FOMO

No, Here’s How You Do It

Addictions Weaken Willpower

Running to Yes on the Road Toward No

Self-Control Is a Personal Way to Stop the Noise

Impulse Management: A Few Daily Distractions

Feel the Peace of Singlemindedness

Five Small Steps to Make That Little Word a Big Part of Your Life

Note

Chapter 14 Quiet Time: Restoring and Recharging Your Mind

Dimly Lit Dinnertime: Our Brains Barraged and Batteries Drained

The Extrovert Ideal and the Allure of Open Spaces

Why Be Quiet? (I’ve Got Something to Say About That)

Risky Isolation

Rewarding Isolation

Steps Toward Quiet

Contemplatives in the Middle of the World

Notes

Chapter 15 Present Listening: A Gift Worth Giving Now

Why Is It So Exhausting to Listen?

Professional Listeners: It Pays to Be Interested, Not Interesting

Becoming a Present Listener—Seven Critical Considerations

A Special Reward for Special Forces

Selling Yourself Short with Others

The Payoff of Present Listening

Part Four Getting Others to Dial In: Focus Management (FM 101)

Chapter 16 Focus Management 101

Changing an Environment That Doesn’t Want to Be Changed

Putting Fun Back into a Party

The Role of a Focus Manager

A Program Manager for a Life Filled with Simplicity and Clarity

FM Pre-set Buttons

Note

Chapter 17 Wanted: BRIEF Communicators

When So Many Words Become Worthless

Losing the Meaning

You Can Change It

Message Lost in Translation

Winston Churchill’s Brevity Memorandum

Concise Communication: A Necessary Curriculum Requirement

BRIEF Basics

Clarity Is Your Number 1 Priority

Notes

Chapter 18 Communicate Like a Magician

Brain Science Behind Sleight of Hand

The Power to Make the Restless Rest

A Baker’s Dozen of Communication Techniques, Tips, and Tricks

Notes

Chapter 19 Preparing the Environment for Noise Abatement

The Failure of Open Floor Plans

Screens Everywhere at Work

Home Rooms Unplugged

Old-School Schools

Remaking Healthy Environments to Filter Noise Naturally

Notes

Chapter 20 Herding Cats: Facilitating to Focus More, Fidget Less

The Joy of a Canceled Meeting

Teaching Students to Tune Out

Need Some Help Leading at Home?

Fundamentals of Facilitation: At Work, School, or Home

Making It Easy for Everyone to Work, Learn, and Live Together

Note

Part Five Pre-sets: Simple Programming for Noise Reduction

Chapter 21 Personalizing Your Pre-sets

Personal Pre-set Programming: Customize Your Settings to Manage the Noise

“The Lineup”: Playing to Win by Keeping Score

Chapter 22 That Sounds Wonderful

Recommended Reading

References

About the Author

About The Brief Lab

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Foreword

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Foreword

Joe graciously mailed me a pre-release copy of NOISE, the book you’re now holding. After reading it, I conducted a little experiment:

I disabled my e-mail alerts, shushed my social, and nuked (most of) my notifications.

Muzzled. Gag-ordered. Zipped.

Mind you, I didn’t delete any of my accounts. I’ve in no way pulled a Henry David Thoreau and left the digital city for the analog woods altogether. This is neither a “Finished with Facebook!” freakout, nor a “malaise of modernity” manifesto. Rather:

I simply realized I was done with being distracted.

Field Notes from Three Months in a Quiet Place:

Once you get below a certain threshold of “omnipresent sound and fury,” you start to take more notice of those few distractions that

do

sneak through. Like a single person gabbing in a library, you

hear

them more intensely than any single, screaming voice in a crowd. Case in point: I found myself wondering, “Is it in

any

way acceptable that

Yahoo! Sports

is daring to bother me about Florida Atlantic Football Coach Lane Kiffin right now? On a Tuesday morning? This is a library!” So, I turned off those notifications, too.

You start to develop a calming, confidence-building sense of flow and control. You begin … [

Scout’s Honor: As I sit here writing this, my Apple Watch taps me on the wrist to let me know that Americans eat 554 million Jack in the Box tacos a year, and no one knows why. Sorry WSJ … You’re now shushed too.

] Nuts! I lost my train of thought. What was I saying? Oh yes: You begin to realize that context-switching is a productivity killer, and that every time you’re dragged off course by an unexpected distraction, you’ve just lost real time and money. Your mind takes time to accelerate into whatever it is you’re focusing on next. Too many “nexts,” and you’re forever stuck in first gear.

My various digital

assistants

had become my digital

bosses

. By constantly demanding my attention, my phone had pulled rank and began to call the shots. I’d really like to finish this Foreword right now, but

bossypants

has swooped in and demanded that I focus on tacos. By simply resetting my relationship with my devices to

pull

as opposed to

push

, I find that they’re profoundly less … pushy. Suddenly, my phone is back to taking orders as the trusty personal assistant I’d originally “hired” way back in 2007.

This important book, NOISE, is ultimately about Attention Economics. About the idea that a “wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Nobel Prize–winning economist Herbert Simon wrote that quoted bit in 1971. Before smartphones. Before the Web. Before cable TV.

Nearly 50 years on, Joe McCormack brings us the means to prosper in this “poverty.” NOISE isn’t a radical license to unplug and live in an uninformed bubble, but a playbook to help us be radically intentional about the sources—and formats—of information worthy of our precious time and attention. Not earplugs: a hearing aid.

Consider NOISE both a challenge and an encouragement to attend to your plan—not the next “ding.”

—Mike Bechtel

Futurist, Deloitte

Professor of Corporate Innovation, University of Notre Dame

Addendum

Moving beyond digital interventions, I’ve since posted a paper sign outside my home office door that says: “Dad’s Busy Earning Your Roof, Meals, & Allowance. Emergencies Only!”

I hear racing footfalls of my 7- and 9-year-olds, building to a crescendo.

Knock Knock Knock.

“Dad’s working, guys. Is it an emergency?”

“Yes. Well … kind of.”

“Okay. What’s up?”

They proceed to throw open the door to notify me that a new season of Stranger Things has just dropped.

Unable to shush my children, I consider disabling Netflix.

Preface

Can you stop the flood?

Your best bet is to get out of the way or find a boat to float to safety. We are in an unnerving moment in history: information is becoming more of a threat than a reward.

You can’t get out of its way, so how do you handle all of it and not have it overwhelm you?

When I wrote BRIEF: Make a bigger impact by saying less in 2013, my biggest concern was helping people learn to be clear and concise. Basically, get your point across or get dismissed.

Dedicating myself the past few years to spreading the message that “less is more,” I am alarmed by a growing trend that the need for brevity reveals: information is so readily accessible that it is now burdening us.

It all sounds like senseless noise.

Focus is a huge problem. People’s attention spans are shrinking, and it’s no joke. It’s harder and harder to tune in to the essentials and tune out what drowns us.

There are two sides to the coin.

Certainly, one side of the issue is brevity—cutting through the clutter. Essentially, think of it as an adaptive strategy: get to the point before someone tunes you out.

Yet, the other side is how to avoid tuning into nonstop static in an always-on, connected life. How can we stay mentally focused when faced with such information inundation?

As I start seeing progress on one side of the issue, developing lean communicators and setting a higher communication standard, I feel there’s also a larger battle we are losing.

The point of this book is to set off an alarm: the world is going deaf. We’ve gone far beyond the promise of the information age and are now so consumed by it that it threatens our existence.

Here’s a dire picture of our world moving forward:

Managers don’t know how to talk to their subordinates.

Leaders cannot rally their distracted followers.

Spouses talk past each other, and relationships suffer.

Children constantly tune out their parents.

Parents can’t listen to their kids.

Fans follow sports but don’t really watch the games.

Sales professionals don’t comprehend what their customers really need.

Civil discourse is lost in senseless arguments and pointless persuasion.

Days are wasted consuming empty brain calories.

Progress, insight, and learning stall.

We all grow apart.

Our lives in an information age are like facing a tsunami. Being able to hold onto something sturdy, permanent, and solid means a chance to survive and thrive. Giving into the endless sources of distraction and empty information means getting swept permanently out to sea.

The threat of infobesity is profound and potentially permanent for generations to come.

What matters most to me is helping people get better at surviving this calamity. I’ve spent so much time over the past few years witnessing a deep erosion of focus that I’m motivated to help those willing, interested, and able to withstand the societal shift that threatens our ability to communicate and connect with each other.

We need to maintain what makes us really human.

Our focus as a society is dwindling as our addiction to screens, technology, distractions, and interruptions grows. We’re becoming mentally anemic, consuming useless information with little value.

This is an enormous issue that will forever change our lives. Will the implications of incessant information consumption make us all collectively deaf to one another?

This was my motivation writing this book. How can we adapt when getting drowned out in so much noise in all facets of our lives?

It’s time for noise abatement.

Acknowledgments

The title of this book is a story unto itself.

For several months, the initial project operated under the working title In One Ear, and Out the Other. Though catchy, it didn’t completely capture and communicate the true essence of the book’s message. One day, I had a brainstorm session with my close collaborators, project manager Ania Waz and editor Karen Quinn, in my office in suburban Chicago.

Through that clarifying conversation, NOISE emerged. I cannot thank both of them enough for their untiring commitment from beginning to end on this journey.

Excited and energized with the new title, I started spreading the word to my co-workers, collaborators, and close friends. For a year, the vision got clearer, and people’s enthusiastic reactions motivated me onward. In particular, my siblings never stop encouraging me, specifically my sisters Peggy and Ann, and my brother Matt—all of my family, for that matter.

I’ve always seen this book as a companion to BRIEF and, in some ways, even a prequel. Designing the cover, I knew the two titles needed to look like alike—almost siblings—paired and meant to be read together since their content goes hand in hand. I cannot thank enough Megan Palicki and Joan Bueta, two talented designers, who also helped me with the first book and for whom I have the highest admiration for their creativity, taste, and strong brand sense. They didn’t disappoint and brought the vision to life, not only with the cover but also with their many illustrations. Thanks again for being there for me and staying part of the family.

I also counted on a number of individuals for ongoing support in writing this book. First off, Brian Neill and Vicki Adang at John Wiley & Sons. Also, Joyce Duriga, Marc McCormack, and Mickey Novak, with research and editing.

My co-workers continue to believe in me and my vision. In particular, I need to thank Charley Thornton and our team in Chicago who lead our corporate practice. As for my Southern Pines, North Carolina, team, I appreciate the constant support and fun-loving spirit of Michelle McKinney, Steve Cain, and Jill Catron, who encourage and affirm me day to day as we serve our military clients.

Finally, I need to thank my clients, both present and past, for taking on our challenge and asking us to do even more for them. Setting an elite communication standard is only a viable vision if there are people, teams, and organizations with the commitment, courage, and discipline to embrace it every day. Thanks for stepping up and setting the tone.

Part OneWeapons of Mass Distraction

Chapter 1Noise, Noise, So Much Noise

To the hard of hearing, you shout.

—Flannery O’Connor

We’re all connected, all day and in every way.

Smartphones, laptops, tablets, and smart watches. Screens in cars, airports, gas stations, classrooms, offices, hospitals, and hotels. The constant buzzing of a 24-hour news cycle. The list goes on.

What? Did you just miss that? Maybe you got another text, news alert, or notification?

The daily experience is to consume information at every turn. It’s nearly impossible to avoid the barrage from morning until night. How much of it is relevant? What’s useful for us, and what is simply a waste of time and energy?

Our brains are hard at work, making it harder to focus and easier than ever to get distracted. Our attention spans are rapidly eroding, and we’re now at risk. Over the years, we adapt. Many of us don’t even notice this decline because we’re too busy fixating on the next distraction, text message, e-mail, meeting invitation, social media post, or funny video clip.

Infobesity is the new normal, and it can have dire consequences. Here’s a snapshot of where we consume information:

Overflowing e-mail.

Our inboxes are flooded with messages; most of them are irrelevant and yet they keep coming over and over to be read, judged useless, and then deleted.

Smartphone notifications.

Throughout the day, our phones vibrate and sound the alarm to be picked up and checked.

Checking our devices.

For most of us, it’s the first and last thing we do every day.

Social media streams.

We fear missing out on the latest posts and updates and try to keep up on the steady stream of commentary and tidbits being shared every few seconds by our personal and professional networks.

24-hour connectivity.

While we sleep, the flow of information doesn’t stop and can be consumed on every imaginable device, at any time.

Texting and messaging.

Immediate ways to communicate that we can’t seem to resist sending or receiving.

News feed frenzy.

A story breaks and unleashes the frenetic obsession to cover, repeat, recycle, rehash, argue, and opine until the content and audience are left exhausted.

Time spent online.

The amount of time online exceeds offline in the age of information overload and constant consumption.

All of this feels like nonstop, won’t-stop noise.

There’s a serious impact when we expose ourselves to these alarming conditions all day long. In a life with always-on access to information, we now face a shrinking, elusive attention span and an overstimulated, overfilled brain.

What can we do to adapt and manage this new reality?

Kenny Chesney Gets It Right

The country singer Kenny Chesney laments this common condition wonderfully in his song “Noise.” His lyrics tell the story of how our society has taken a turn for the worse, with so much noise surrounding us that there is no room for silence. We don’t ask for it, but we’re bombarded with constant chatter from talking heads and distractions from digital devices, and we can’t escape it anymore.

Hearing Decline and the Loss of Focus

When I was in college in Chicago, I remember an elderly Jesuit philosophy professor opening every lecture with an impassioned, personal, public service announcement. He would warn us of the impending threat of loud music on our hearing. It was in the late 1980s, and boomboxes and rock concerts were all the rage, along with the advent of portable music devices like the Sony Walkman. His dire concern, backed by extensive research, was that too much loud music would make us all deaf.

And once that happened, he said sternly, we wouldn’t be able to fix the permanent hearing loss.

Sorry.

There is a close connection between hearing loss and declining focus. You have loud music and volume levels and constant information and attention spans. You have listening capacity and mental retention. Noise affects our ability to hear; information overload affects our ability to pay attention.

It’s the perfect storm. Let’s take a look at how these things will impact our future.

Access to Information Will Only Increase

Kevin Kelly is a Wired magazine co-founder and thought leader on the future of communications, launching the first virtual reality conference in early 1990. In his book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, Kelly imagines our world down the road.

He predicts that in the future people will own few things but will have access to everything.

“In the coming 30 years the tendency toward the dematerialized, the decentralized, the simultaneous, the platform enabled, and the cloud will continue unabated,” he writes. “As long as the costs of communications and computation drop due to advances in technology, these trends are inevitable. They are the result of networks of communication expanding till they are global and ubiquitous, and as the networks deepen they gradually displace matter with intelligence.”1

It won’t matter where you live in the world, this access will be for everyone.

Other industry leaders predict the following:

Access to the Internet will be universal. Connectivity will be constant and there will be no need for signing in to a particular stream.

Cars will be seamlessly connected and allow users even more time to connect and communicate in traffic because they’ll be self-driving.

With everything online and apps running our lives, access to digital information will be needed for every facet of life, from payments, to work, to personal activities, and healthcare.

Privacy will be available only if you are willing to pay extra for it.

Information will find us instead of us needing to find it, in countless moments throughout our day.

Some of these predictions are already beginning to come true.

Attention Spans Will Remain Elusive

More and more information is competing for our attention.

Our brains feel divided, yet we somehow enjoy it. There’s a reward when we see a comment on social media or a like or share online. Any type of immediate online response reaction (like liking, clicking, swiping, or sharing) increases the release of dopamine in the brain, which makes people more inclined to keep swiping, clicking, and scrolling.

Because most of these interfaces are impersonal and subject to our instantaneous and shifting reactions, our communication with each other becomes less personal, affecting how we view and interact with each other. It’s harder to pay attention to people because they don’t behave the way technology does. These interactions with devices and applications mimic personal connectivity but won’t be real, giving us a false impression that we have a lot of friends or a lot of connections.

Our real, authentic, personal connections will decrease as we consume more noise.

With more interruptions from technology, it will be very hard for people to concentrate on the task at hand without being distracted. Constant interruptions, continuous distractions, and persistent loss of focus will challenge leaders to engage and maintain focus on strategic objectives for long periods of time. If leaders can’t accomplish this quickly, the likelihood of people losing interest and moving on to something else will increase. Parents and teachers will struggle too.

Our Minds Will Become Anemic and Impenetrable

It’s really the game of chasing and consuming useless information. You’re never getting to the core of something that has substantive value. You’re consuming information that is superficial. You’re never getting substance, just spending loads of time skimming the surface.

It’s like drinking Diet Coke and eating popcorn all day long. If there isn’t any substantial food in your diet, you will grow weak and get sick. That’s what happens when people spend the majority of their time online or playing games and using social media. As technology becomes more pervasive and people spend more and more time consuming these barren brain calories, they will become empty mentally and emotionally.

They will become isolated, frustrated, and hungry.

When we give in to distractions, our brains are divided and start to weaken. When we can access information anywhere and anytime, our brain constantly looks for ways to snack rather than eat a healthy meal. We’re nibbling on so much junk rather than focusing on a few things that are substantial and essential.

We quickly lose our focus and get in the habit of feeding on distractions rather than avoiding them.

Our brains then start to completely rewire themselves to seek the reward of ingesting empty information. It gets consistently tricked into thinking that it’s filling itself with quality information, but it’s just consuming useless information and dumbing itself down.

All of these factors and harmful effects rage around us—and within us. It’s real and it hurts us all. Think about your diminishing focus in those terms. It is your brain, and you’re really at risk.

[Brief Recap]

The nonstop noise of ubiquitous access to information is isolating us and shrinking our attention spans, overfilling our addicted minds with the empty calories of useless data.

{Tune-in}

There is an impending threat of losing focus as we constantly consume all this noise.

Note

1.

Kevin Kelly, “In the Future You Will Own Nothing and Have Access to Everything,”

Boing Boing,

July 14, 2016,

boingboing.net/2016/07/14/in-the-future-you-will-own-not.html

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Chapter 2Huh? We’re Going Collectively Deaf

We’ve all heard the expression “in one ear and out the other.” It says everything about the tendency to tune out.

So where does this infamous phrase come from? Reportedly, the first recorded use was from Geoffrey Chaucer, the Father of English Literature, in his poem “Troilus and Criseyde” from the late fourteenth century.

The original is written in old English but is translated like this:

These words he said for the moment all/to help his friend, lest he for sorrow died:/doubtless to cause his woe to fall,/he cared not what nonsense he replied./But Troilus, who nigh for sorrow died,/took little heed of anything he meant:/one ear heard it, at the other out it went.1

We can all relate to what Chaucer wrote. We’ve all tuned out information or chosen to ignore it, yet the reasons we do this varies from person to person.

So, Why Do We Tune Out? A Variety of Reasons

Here is a brief sampling of what’s going on when we are so dialed in that we decide to check out: