I think you may mean "subconscious". Of course, I'm usually unconscious. :p

I may very well mean that. Whatever it is proper to call that portion of the brain or consciousness where "automatic" stuff lives, that's the word I mean. :)

In general, this works for me too, but there have been a couple of times when I tried to work and shouldn't have. I simply COULDN"T let go of the outside stuff. One game in particular, the biggest game I ever had in my life, it was even in the paper that morning because it was so important. I didn't do well. Even my partner noticed. I was too distracted by the fact that my 5 year old was in the hospital with something wrong and the docs couldn't figure it out. He went in on Sunday afternoon, monday evening game and they were still scratching their heads. I should have called early Monday afternoon and turned it back, but it was SO BIG. and I wanted it SO BAD!

Oh well, live and learn. I won't do that again!

Very early in my career, I was at a camp and the presenter talked to the group about breaking the game into manageable sections. He was a D1 guy and they have scheduled timeout/commercial breaks every 4 minutes. He tried to break the game up into 4 minute segments and only focused on that segment.

He found that breaking the game up into smaller, more manageable pieces made it easier to totally concentrate. Concentrating for 40 minutes is much more challenging than doing it for 4 minutes. The same principle applies for HS games. Break the quarters into 4 minutes and at a dead ball, timeout, Ft, etc. take a VERY QUICK mental break. Just enough to take a breath and re-focus yourself for the next 4 minutes. If it is a TO or break between quarters, take a little longer break, but use the time to re-focus.

Refereeing is, like other have said, a respite for me and I love it for that. I have found that this works for me, but as others have said, some things are too big to totally get out of your mind.

Hope that helps.