Does anyone else struggle to concentrate in a conversation?

Birds - especially newly sighted ones - trump human conversation. In my opinion.

I'm far too easily distracted, too.

Zoom meetings are a good opportunity to multitask.

I got in trouble the other day. My wife was talking to me over the dinner table and I saw a pair of ring necked doves in the garden. I had never seen these birds in the garden before, so I pointed this out. Apparently, this was not the done thing, despite whatever my wife was saying being much less interesting than two very pretty members of the pigeon family making an unexpected appearance.

Most definatly. My head cant take it. It feels like its full. I have started writing letters to friends because i talking on the phone is too tiring. Its getting worse the older i get x

I posted about this on another topic thread. What happens to me is I’ll be in a conversation with someone and they’ll say something that ill that piques my interest or that I try to interpret in my head missing what they say after. I have to make a real effort not to do that. Otoh, they could just be boring. Which probably makes me just as boring.

I find when talking to people my brain pretty much stops and won't function. I don't know how to react to what's being said and have nothing to say back. I try so hard to do well in a conversation but I can't keep it going.

All this causes a lot of stress and anxiety. I can't cope with it and quickly get worked up.

I try - but find I struggle to really 'hear'/process what someone is saying, and react to it. 

I find free flowing conversation extremely difficult/impossible, and get anxious about  trying to get something in myself (usually I have to try and 'plan'/list things to talk about before speaking to someone) - and am so focused on trying to find a way to get the thing I want too say in somehow, i can't relax until I've  found a ay to say my piece.

And then I quickly get anxious because  I have nothing left to say anyway, just simple yes/no/ok type responses...

I learned to fake it and also developed fairly good recall and reassembly skills to the extent that people often commented on "what a good listener I was".  

Curiously, I find Yoda's "Reverse Polish Notation" way of speaking remarkably efficient, and the "yoda" patch makes my sat nav much more useful. 

But when some of my friends start telling me something, I know the information they offer is always about five minutes down the line*, and all I can do is "set my face to impassive", and wait... 

And sometimes, if they are feeling especially eloquent, wait a whole lot more.

I've field tested "spazzing out" and screaming "just give me the effing information!" and I can save the reader a lot of trouble. It never works... ;c)

*I'm just telling it from my perspective, doubtless getting information out of me is just as tiresome for them. Or maybe it isn't? 

I get similar to this a lot of the time. I'm also adhd as well as autism and at times I shut down from conversations and it's like I'm still saying yes and no but their voices are distant and I'm not really listening. This got me heaps at school and I'm often accused of not listening intentionally, it's not intentional it's just I switch off. Maybe the conversation starts to bore me? I don't know. I think it's a lot to do with being bored and irritable. If I'm hyper that particular day then I can't function and stay in the moment. All has an effect.

Most of my conversations are one sided. By the end I can hardly even remember what was said.

I have some questions.

1) When you say concentrate, do you mean that you're having issues with focusing as a stand-alone problem, or that things heard, is not being picked up by your brain? In the second case, you will automatically lose focus, and think about something else. That in turn leads that you don't concentrate on the conversation but concentrate on something else, which then actually is not a concentration problem but more of an attention issue. If the topic is interested, your attention will be greater, but it can still be limited on how much your brain is able to process. There are many things I pay attention to, concentrate ... which I have interest in, let say watch a documentary about an historic event, like WW1/2. At the end of it I still will feel that I missed lots of info and specially being able to reflect on the things I just watched. Much of it is in the back of my brain, but I need help to retain it, to be able to speak about it, but even then I will feel limited compared to how others will view it.

2) When you say that, you do listen when you are interested. How is this different? How much more involved can you be? 

3) You mention the other person had autism, but could talk for ages, isn't that strange? And he was speaking about your problems and questions. I mean wouldn't that be of an interest for you, as it's about you?