VO Mindset: Switching or Sliding?

Not the newest dance craze gripping the nation’s youth.
(Or if it is, I’m certainly not cool enough to know about it.)

The moment of transition between tasks can be hard to identify. It’s why we hang out on Facebook well past the point of making a quick reply to that one post in which we were tagged. Like a slightly obtuse last-guest-at-the-party, sometimes we’re just not quite sure when to leave. Recognizing that moment of disengagement comes with practice.

We can also bring baggage to the next task. If you’ve been working from home this past year (like most of us), you may have noticed a tendency to slide rather than switch.

The distractions are real. Over the course of a few minutes, we might go from petting the dog to wondering why the heck our neighbor needs to be using a leaf blower to looking at the mail and realizing we forgot to pay a bill to untangling a minor disagreement between other members of the household to thinking we should do a load of laundry to jumping in the booth to do an audition. Then we wonder why our reads seem a bit unfocused.

Switching – the transition between tasks – is a critical skill and one that often gets ignored.

Tactics For Cleaner Task Transitions

Switching. Not sliding.
I wish I was better at switching than I am. Things work better when making a clear shift from one task to another. Cleanly ending a process works wonders, such as getting up from the desk, closing the laptop, quitting Zoom when you aren’t using it.

Simple rules help focus:
Here are two I use –

When I’m writing, my hands remain on the keyboard.
When I’m in the booth, I’m not checking social media.

It gets back to the idea of the sacred creative space. A place dedicated to a specific task seems to help focus attention.

I’ve built up little anti-distraction hacks – simply slipping the phone into Do Not Disturb then flipping it upside down and turning off computer screen notifications reduces intrusions. (If you OPTION-click on that little hamburger menu in the upper right corner of your MacOS screen, all those “helpful” notifications are blocked until you turn them back on.)

For my VO work, I have the luxury of a separate room. I can close a door. Further, there’s an actual threshold into my booth. It’s been my workspace for long enough now that the act of stepping in and closing the door has a focusing effect.

Recently we did a bit of a spring push to jettison some unused items – did the rounds of recycling, craigslist sell-offs and donations. That meant there were fewer things nagging at my attention from the corner of the studio. I could feel the difference the following week.

Make the Decision to Switch

If we sorta/kinda drift from moment to moment, then we never manage to fully commit.

Focus is one of the reasons that we are often brilliant in VO classes, or when we are working with a coach. A good mentor or cohort often brings that crystallization of attention. This past year, I’ve found revitalization from simple things like accountability groups, reaching out to others, or just talking through stuff with folks who know nothing about voice acting.

It helps to realize that everyone has a similar struggle. Acknowledging the insidious barriers is a key step. Once we have this foundation, it’s just a matter of continuing to build our skill set.

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