Serious question: how do you remain focused during talks? Does it come naturally to you? No matter how hard I try, my attention drifts to the voice and the intonation of the speaker and usually by the time I realize I’ve spaced out, I’ve already missed some key point, making it even more difficult to follow the rest.
@digital_carver True, that works for me as well, but like you said, those talks aren’t so common. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who has problems with the rest.
@neurofrontiers It depends. If I don't care or am not interested, forget it. If I want to stay focused, I take notes.
Eating candy works for the first but of a talk but then I crash and lose it.
@AmandaSiegel This is a good tip, I’ll give it a try. Thank you!
@neurofrontiers are they live talks or recorded ones? With the latter I speed up the playback to the point that not focusing will cost way too much time.
@barefootstache Live talks. With the recorded ones it’s easier, I can pause, rewind or skip forward according to what I need, plus adjust the playback speed to something I’m comfortable with.
@neurofrontiers
The only times I can remain focused well are when I can go beyond their words and build a fuzzy image of what they’re talking about, essentially recreating their mental model of the topic. That works when (a) the topic is at least somewhat within my reach, and (b) presented in a way that doesn’t skip any of the major steps in their reasoning (which is a surprisingly common thing speakers do).