In noisy surroundings, your techniques to learn to center attention and ignore distraction?

Boaty_McBoatyson
2026-03-14T21:34:41Z

TL;DR: I just need your help to erect some kind of mental deep sea bunker in my soul :-)

Context: My job brings me into private homes with lots of permanently switched-on large televisions and with lots of super-talktative and socially starved human beings ambiently living around these screens.

The job is personal assistance: to remain emotionally present and relateable for hours on end. Quite an effort, not only because I get easily distracted by television sounds and screens (war-footage + sports = random mainstream deluge of endless pixel poison). I did not grow up with television and my audio-visual filtering capability is very poor. I get fixated by any stream of noise and trapped within it. This job makes me want to get better at filtering.

Thus I would much appreciate if anybody who knows this type of problem, would share techniques to filter and/or ignore external stimuli. More useful answers would take into account that being rude or flippant is not an option, and it would not be socially acceptable for me to regulate the televisions.

What would be some terms that I could use to find books about the topic? Any experiences you can share with me? Thanks <3

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~life/1t7k/in_noisy_surroundings_your_techniques_to_learn_to_center_attention_and_ignore_distraction

Votes: 31

Comments: 16