> I envy anyone who can just focus on the problem and remove all surrounding context. Still trying to figure out how I can add stress distractions while timing

> I envy anyone who can just focus on the problem and remove all surrounding context. Still trying to figure out how I can add stress distractions while timing myself. This is indeed a good thing to be able to do. I'm pretty good at it, but when I'm in an interview situation, I almost always have at least one moment where I start to panic a little and have to tell myself, "you know what you're doing, just relax and turn the crank." And of course, there's an implied "...but maybe you'll just choke," which I have to put out of my mind. In other words, a huge part of being able to focus on the problem and remove the surrounding context is a sort of confidence that I can probably do fine, so I can temporarily stop worrying about how I'm looking at any exact moment.