“Do What?” (Why nobody heard what the hell you just said)

So you think when someone asks you to repeat yourself, it proves they weren’t listening to you? Maybe you’re right. But have you considered why that fails to account for how the human brain works?  

Let’s get caveats out of the way straight off. The following doesn’t apply if you’re a low-talker, mumble-mouth, marble-mouth, or have a strong Cajun, Appalachian, or other accent that’s near impossible to understand outside your neck of the woods. If you fall into one or more of those categories, you’re probably used to being stared at with bewildered eyes. Whenever you hear, “Mind repeating that … in English this time,” rest assured, the problem has nothing to do with them not listening.

Absent those issues, I argue you need to do something to get a person’s attention before you start talking to them. This could be something as simple as starting with “So, Karen …,” employing a throat-clearing harrumph, or flicking an earbud out of their left ear. If you fail to get their attention before venturing into your chatter, all sorts of things can spell trouble. We’re talking about wasted time, interrupted concentration, invalidated predictions, and masked noises.

Of course, if you’re in a conversation with someone, by all means, just keep talking—they already have the expectation of hearing from you. Anytime there’s a substantial lull in conversation, though, you must regain their attention. This holds true when my wife and I are sitting on opposite ends of the couch tapping away at our phones. Especially since part of our tacit understanding involves a deep, loving, respectable level of ignoring one another. Often, any sound, any grunt, even just a wave of the hand suffices to regain attention.

Starting with an attention getter is even more important when in an environment with many other people around. You and six co-workers are all in ear shot of one another, diligently plugging along on yet another bullshit assignment. Not only do you need to get the attention of your lone intended recipient, but you want to exclude the other handful of slackers. This saves a lot of time. It takes less than a second to utter your semi-competent co-worker’s name, stealing his mind away from his pending lunch order, before launching into your question:

“Was it ultimately decided during yesterday’s meeting whether they wanted our presentation on inefficient meetings to run 4 or 4.5 hours? I mean, yeah, I was physically there, but mentally … nope!” 

Leading with the name of the lone person whose attention you need, allows everyone else to keep right on pretending to focus on whatever they’re engaged in. Instead of the other five each spending 10 seconds listening to you before they realize you’re not even talking to them, they can continue secretly praying someone would tell Wendy her niece’s picture on her desk has got to go—not all newborns are cute! You invest only a second of your time to cumulatively save 50 seconds of your co-worker’s time. Unless, of course, your time is 50 times more important than their time. But I doubt I have any CEOs reading my blog.

The reasons people don’t hear you are both simple and complex.

The simple reason is, they weren’t listening to you a second ago, so they’re unlikely to hear the first thing out of your mouth. Their concentration is elsewhere. Someone might be daydreaming about smoking grass. They could be watching a YouTube video of dogs frolicking in the grass. Hell, they may have just smoked some grass, be thinking about dogs frolicking in the grass, while enjoying a smoothie containing wheatgrass. Regardless, their attention is somewhere other than on you. Don’t come up onto their lawn, unannounced, and expect them to immediately give you their undivided attention. The brain is quick, but not infinitely so.

The complex reason your friend might not hear you—despite your perfectly articulated, standard American accent—is because the brain is a complex prediction machine. Complex—see, it’s right there in the name. The amount of data our brains need to process each and every second is staggering. Any sights, sounds, smells, feelings, etc. that remain constant are essentially ignored so we aren’t overwhelmed every instant of our lives.

The brain ignores, but it also predicts—the original LLM. Large language models work by predicting the next word when creating text. It does this over and over and over and over. After having analyzed countless texts written by humans, LLMs can write rather well, and exceptionally fast, based completely on predictions. The human brain uses past personal experiences to predict what will occur next in our immediate environment. This way you aren’t surprised by the artificial light that continues to shine down on you from above as it has for the past three hours. It’s also why you don’t hear the first few words spoken by your wife after those three hours alone in front of your laptop. Your brain had not predicted the interruption to your monotonous typing.

It’s also common for other noises to hinder a person from hearing what you are trying to tell them. The concept of auditory masking is when the potential hearer is nearer than the speaker to the source of a loud sound. If, for example, you barge in and yell something to your sister while she’s in the shower, she’ll have a much harder time hearing you than you’ll have hearing her when she yells, “Get the fuck out of here, pervert!” So wait until the water is turned off … and at least let her wrap a towel around her naughty bits first.

All this is to help ensure you don’t need to repeat yourself. All this is to help ensure you don’t need to repeat yourself. Unless you’re like Jimmy Two Times in Goodfellas—“I’m gonna go get the papers, get the papers.” All this is to help ensure you don’t need to repeat yourself. But occasionally it’s important for emphasis. ALL THIS IS TO HELP ENSURE YOU DON’T NEED TO REPEAT YOURSELF. Also, lots of folks are just hard of hearing.

Regardless of why folks didn’t hear you, you may hear one of these common responses from them:

• Excuse me?
• Sorry?
• What was that?
• Come again?
• Pardon me?
• What do you fuckin’ want?
• Speak into my good ear.
• Huh?
• Say that again.
• One more time.
• Pete and Repeat were on a boat.  Pete fell off.  Who’s left?

However, there is an objectively most annoying response people can give when they want you to repeat yourself: “Do what?” What the hell kind of response is that!? It makes them sound like they’re in a psychologically abusive relationship. Like every time someone talks to them, it’s to demand they do something they don’t want to do. If you ever hear anyone say “Do what?” immediately call the National Domestic Violence Hotline on their behalf.

So, you still think people should always hear you perfectly from the second you begin talking to them? Listen … [Good, I’ve got your attention!] I’m sure there are good arguments you could make to convince me this is true. But, for the life of me, I can’t think of a single one. That’s not going to stop me from ending this post the same way I have the first 51, though. So, I guess, yeah, come to think of it … You’re Probably Right.

[052] February 22, 2026

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