Communication Skills - 6

DISTRACTIONS

As an author, I'm constantly reminded to remove distractions and write. Turn off the Internet, close down Facebook, turn off the phone.

We have become a techno-crazy world where common sense and simply courtesy have been replaced by the latest Snap Chat or Instagram image. Where a family at a restaurant all will be plinking on their phones instead of, you know, talking to each other.

So, in social settings this is key. Intelligent conversation or business discussions can be ruined by a text from the guy in the next office...or the restroom.

I can understand the necessity for this. Talk to someone, develop a one on one, face to face relationship. Turn off the phone, turn off the pager, turn off the Kindle (unless you're reading my book, then I can understand if you tell the person to wait. Better yet, share my book).

How would this point work with getting a date with the lady in my building? Well, at the time of this writing, I see her only during a brief lunch break. She doesn't spend the entire half hour in the break room, so my window of opportunity is small.

For me, removing distractions would include not only my phone or my Nook, but other people.

If you remember my first point in this series, I mentions my terror of talking to women. Bolstering myself to talk to this woman, then asking her to dinner followed by drinks and improv music at Java Joes would be much easier if nobody else was within sight. Preferably I would have nobody within a half mile radius, but that mean most of downtown would have to be vacated. I'd settle for nobody at the neighboring tables, at the coffee machine, or a crowd in front of the television, or anybody entering or leaving through the office building entrance.

For this utopian scene to exist means the time frame for talking/questions is even smaller. It reduces still further because she doesn't always visit the cafe during lunch break, or else not at the time I'm there.

I suppose to make this happen, I'd have to be quick, as mentioned before. Get in, a fast hello, get to the point, accept her answer and get out. Hope nobody is a witness.

No distractions to throw me off track.

How do you avoid these?