Discomfort is distracting

Thinking about your body means you might not be thinking of much else

When I first started doing a lot of public speaking, I realized that when you’re up on a big stage, people can see your whole body. This includes your feet. Many of the other female speakers at the events I was attending wore fabulous shoes. So I figured I needed some too. I bought a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos.

I did wear them a few times (for instance, if you watch my TED talk you’ll see them). But I soon learned the truth that stilettos make my feet hurt. I can’t really walk! Being uncomfortable on stage was a huge distraction. And I worried I was going to fall over, which is not helpful if you’ve got hundreds of people staring at you.

So these days I wear thicker heels from one of those companies that makes comfortable shoes. I harbor no illusions that they are as attractive as the Jimmy Choos. I also can’t really make myself care. I wear stretchy black dress pants and just hope my content is good enough to cover all these sins.

Good enough

Discomfort is distracting. Yes, in professional situations we all need to present ourselves well. T-shirts and sweat pants aren’t going to cut it. I believe that people of all sizes can choose clothes that make us feel confident. For those of us who aren’t supermodels, that often means paying attention to cut and color and things like that. We can seek out expert advice on hair and make-up.

But ultimately we have to show up and do a good job. And for most of us, that job actually isn’t about what we look like. So it is better to be reasonably comfortable, and be able to focus on the work we’re doing, and not whether our feet hurt.

How to focus

The same is true with an office set-up in general. I know in the early days of the pandemic a lot of people thought it was challenging to work from home, and that they were constantly distracted. There may have been various reasons for that, but if your back is hurting because you’re sitting on the living room sofa and trying to work with your laptop on the coffee table for 40 hours a week…that might be part of it.

So if you find yourself in a situation where you’re constantly thinking about how your physical body feels, consider that this is probably not helping you get things done. Sometimes these problems aren’t solvable. But there are a lot of reasonable-looking shoes in the world. Better not to distract yourself unnecessarily.