# Just admit that you’ve zoned out

*Summary: Zoning out is difficult to avoid and common, zoning out without admitting it hurts your comprehension, therefore you should admit that you zoned out and ask people to repeat things.*

If you’re anything like me, you’ve “zoned out” before. You’ve probably even zoned out when you’re trying to learn something interesting. In fact, I’d bet that you’ve zoned out when listening to someone you respect teaching you something interesting, and that you didn’t admit it, and that this left you with a gap in understanding that you may or may not have filled in later.[^q2bq2b6stih] Perhaps I’m falling for the typical minds fallacy, but I don’t think I am. This happens to me very often,[^q2qo54ebfx] and I think it happens to others, and I think that any community focused on rationality or scholarship or understanding ought to account for this. I doubt we’ll be able to prevent people from zoning out, but I know we can encourage people who are listening to admit when they’ve zoned out and we can encourage people who are speaking to patiently re-iterate the thing they just said without taking offense.

One time I was explaining something to a friend of mine and she said the unthinkable. “Sorry, I zoned out. Could you repeat what you said after first bringing up mitochondria?” I was at first somewhat taken aback, but quickly realized that I’ve been in the same position as her. I repeated myself and took less than a minute to do so. I think her understanding was better than it would have been if she hadn’t simply admitted she zoned out. I’m thankful she did it, since it brought the fact that I could do the same to my awareness. If you’re in the right company, admitting that you’ve zoned out has barely any cost and real benefits.

Zoning out when someone is talking to you is far more common if the things they’re saying are boring or hard to comprehend or otherwise unpleasant. It’s perfectly rational to, as a speaker, take “people are zoning out” as evidence of a poor job. However, if you were unpleasant to listen to, nobody would ask you to repeat yourself. If someone admits to you that they stopped paying attention and asks you to repeat yourself, it doesn't imply any fault of yours. The right thing to do in that situation is to resist the temptation to be offended or annoyed and just go along with it. Of course, there’s always a limit. If someone admits to zoning out twenty times in thirty minutes, perhaps you ought to suggest that they get some sleep. If someone admits to daydreaming for 20 minutes straight while you talked to them, then it's probably time to end the conversation.[^ajd30tm8b66] Even so, most people don’t admit to this even once per week, and most fatal zone-outs are quite short. Telling others that you lost focus is done far less than it should be.

One of my favorite things about the rationality(-adjacent) community is that its members admit when they're wrong. We acknowledge that our knowledge is limited and that our intelligence is only human. We ask what unfamiliar words mean. We don’t try to hide our confusion or ignorance. It's a basic extension of the underlying principle of understanding and compensating for our cognitive shortcomings to also admit that we lost focus while listening, or got distracted by some irresistible thought that floated to the surface, or just needed a moment to let the things we just heard sink in. Paying attention for an extended period of time is actually kinda hard. Honestly, given that we had to sit in beige boxes for several hours a day for most of the year from ages 5-18 while someone preached to us about subjects we already knew, I’m surprised that reflexively zoning out isn’t radically more common. Or, perhaps it is and I’m just not aware of it because nobody admits to zoning out.

Just swallow your pride for one measly second,[^yhejtlicnkf] admit that you stopped paying attention, and say the magic words: “Could you repeat that?”

[^q2bq2b6stih]: Often when I only understand the first n minutes of a talk, it's because of a zone-out, and often I attempt to fill in the gaps too late for me to get anything. When there's a chain of reasoning that's supposed to be followed, zoning out can instantly end the game. 

[^q2qo54ebfx]: One reason I love reading books is that they're perfectly forgiving when I zone out. 

[^ajd30tm8b66]: This would probably make me mad because I would feel like my time and effort is being wasted, and I don't think I'm typical in this regard. Repeating the past minute feels like a pretty trivial cost, though. Let me know if your views on this are different from mine. 

[^yhejtlicnkf]: Easier said than done.