Listening to Others - NOT

I am not particularly competent at taking verbal instruction and this confuses me because I can remember at the age of 9,  thinking  -  "I may not be very good at conversation but at least I'm a good listener."    In hindsight it seems that I wasn't very good at that either.  At the age of 6 my tonsils were removed to improve my hearing.  I have no idea whether the operation worked or not, but I suspect I was born not listening.

In my world there are many types of not-listening:

1  Bored
2  Distracted
3  Hyperfocused
4  Talker going too fast
5  Secondary noise blocks input channel
6  Heard but forgot immediately
7  Think I know better!
8  Asleep

Of all of these  " blocked input channel"  causes me the greatest difficulty. It is most evident when I am on the phone and a caller is relaying important information.  Any loud background noise silences the caller  as if the line was suddenly cut off.  I could never work in a call centre unless I had my own little soundproof room.   I know this phenomena  influences my life beyond the phone but what you don't hear doesn't bother you  so I rely on friends and relations to tell me when I have missed a  world event.

"Talker going too fast" is also a major problem, particularly when they are giving instructions.  Walking away from a conversation when you haven't grasped the crux of the matter destroys confidence.  The only way I have found to deal with this is to dive in head first, the very second comprehension ceases, and say "I haven't got a clue what you're talking about".    This way there is no shame.  After all conversation is a dual responsibility and some people are hopeless at delivering.

"Heard but forgot immediately" is also a problem for me but not in the way you might think.  My brain takes in information and then hides it for a while.  If the hiding place is deep then it takes a while for the information to be available  for my consciousness to use.  Any time from 2 seconds to 2 months is the norm
for my memories to float back up to the surface.  Its  not that I don't have good memory, its that the access to that memory is random.  I  try to write things down that are important because I can never be sure when my memory will pop into view.

Most of the others don't bother me  but they drive other people nuts.  If I am bored, distracted, hyperfocused or asleep then I am probably in dull company and  I have retreated into my own introverted world.  It is amazing how many of us attempt conversation without having established a connection first and then wonder why the other person hasn't heard a word we have said.

Finally on the subject of   "Think I know better", I am shamefully guilty.  As we get older we start to realise that our elders were wiser than we thought and we were fools not to listen.  It is the youngsters coming up behind that show us the truth, when their "Think I know better" egos rise up.  Experience and maturity can deliver conversations of gold and of all the words spoken,  these are, without doubt, the nuggets worth listening to.