Stop Looking for F'ing Tells

It doesn't hurt to look before its your turn to act, just as long as you can do so w/o telegraphing your hand, which is not hard at all. I usually look b/c it just makes things faster.

I disagree, I mean it is very hard to NEVER telegraph anything. As for me I very rarely have to think more than 10 seconds for a pre-flop decision and I think it is much more helpful to be looking for other people who may be telegraphing as well as things like estimated stack sizes of your opponents, all of those things can be nearly as important to whether or not you are playing a hand as the cards themselves.

not looking at your cards til it's your turn to act helps me focus on other people's reaction to their cards. It keeps my attention on my opponents, whereas if I check my cards and am dealt a hand I know that I'm going to fold, I might let myself get distracted. The only disadvantage I see is that if people know that you don't check your cards until your turn, they can watch your reaction to your cards every hand. Pokerface.

I think if you are worried about giving something away, its better to look early. Most people are looking at the person whose turn it is to act. You talk about looking ahead, and thats probably smart, but the average live player doesn't do that.

I do agree that if you look ahead and know you are going to fold, it takes your focus away from your opponents. I don't think its distracting when you are thinking about playing the hand b/c it just takes a second to look. However, it is beneficial to be more focused on more hands which you are if you don't look.

I think it really just comes down to preference. I don't think anyone should be that concerned about giving away too much info when making a standard pre flop open or call.

I disagree wholeheartedly. First of all people telegraphing their action is a tell in the first place, and I agree that is a good thing to look for preflop. Sitting there staring at somebody preflop looking for a tell after they make a standard raise is generally pretty silly since it is a very low stress proposition for them anyways, but you said stop looking for tells altogether. Why would you not try as hard as possible to gather all the information you can to make decisions. It is very effective to look at people's baseline behaviors and look at how their behaviors and body positions differ during stressful times no matter the stakes of the tournament. If a river card comes and your opponent purses their lips and their eyebrows lower a slight amount from their baseline then you know that they dislike that card and this information can help your decision making. For example in a recent tournament a guy check raised me all in on the flop, after he had recently seen me lay down a big hand preflop. I had top pair of 10's with a queen kicker but was leaning toward folding because I did not want to put my tourney life in jeopardy in a marginal spot against a player who I knew little about. Before I folded however I decided to try to illicit a tell. I stacked out my chips to count them, stacked them back up very quickly and grabbed the stack of chips from the bottom as if I was about to push them in, but without actually moving them, and I watched his reaction while his brain thought I had already decided to call. When I did this he exhibited a pacifying behavior along with his eyebrow position lowering which meant that the thought of me calling made him very uncomfortable. Upon seeing this I changed my mind, called for all my chips, he had second pair and I doubled up and went on to win the tournament. Had I not been looking for tells I would not have won those chips. Tells are very effective, I would advise that you actually study a bit more on what things to look for, how to interpret these things, and how to use the information to assist in your decision making, and it might help your game a bit.

I guess I did not say it explicitly but the don't look for tells advice was primarily focused around a few key points points, most of which pertain to pre flop.
1) As you eluded to with your low stress decision statement, staring people down as they make pre flop opens is way less useful than looking to see if people behind you are telegraphing (it is really splitting hairs whether to label a telegraph as a tell, I personally don't but it is not important, if you do than this blog could be titled start looking for the right tells)
2) tells are exaggerated by movies and television (you never see someone eat an Oreo when they have a monster and not eat it when bluffing like they show in rounders)
3) I think that it is actually important to not look at your cards until it is your turn to act, and while not looking before it is your turn I would recommend looking at people who are acting behind you instead of in front of you

In your example you are obviously correct to try to get a tell off of your opponent. If the pot is heads up than you should be giving all of your attention to your opponent. Poker is a game of incomplete information and the more you can gather the better off you'll do, so long as you know what to do with that information. My main point was that in a spot pre flop where there is a multitude of avenues you can look at for information, looking at people who have to act behind you will illicit more valuable information than people who are currently acting.