Quotes About Distractions

Bells] speak to us of our freedom, which responsibilities and transient cares make us forget.

Sleeping, while I am sleeping, if I can sleep, helps as an escape. Tasks, busyness, gardening, tidying up: distractions. Mustn't think, mustn't be conscious, mustn't reflect. This escape from consciousness is at the heart of suicidal energy. It is not wanting to hurt the self. It is simply wanting not to hurt. When I am depressed, it seems that the only way not to hurt is to cease being a center of consciousness.

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks. - Winston Churchill Whatever you do, do it well.

Don't let the things that matter least to you rob time from the things that matter most to you.

Do you know what accounts for most research delays? Interruptions that have nothing to do with the research whatsoever.

Vivimos en una época de profundos «ruidos» y distracciones. El mundo es cada vez más turbulento. Es difícil sobreponerse al impacto que las tecnologías digitales ejercen sobre nuestra manera de pensar, vivir y trabajar. Sus beneficios son extraordinarios, pero también hay desventajas.

A los hombres que me apartan de mis vicios sólo para hacerme perder el tiempo, mi compañía no les resulta agradable.

If you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say 'no' to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say 'yes' to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else." For

to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. This doesn't mean that you have to eliminate distracting behaviors; it's sufficient that you instead eliminate the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention. The simple strategy proposed here of scheduling Internet blocks goes a long way toward helping you regain this attention autonomy. Work

The key here isn't to avoid or even to reduce the total amount of time you spend engaging in distracting behavior, but is instead to give yourself plenty of opportunities throughout your evening to resist switching to these distractions at the slightest hint of boredom.

While the ability to rapidly communicate using digital messages is useful, the frequent disruptions created by this behavior also make it hard to focus, which has a bigger impact on our ability to produce valuable output than we may have realized.

The reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is well established: network tools.

big trends in business today actively decrease people's ability to perform deep work, even though the benefits promised by these trends (e.g., increased serendipity, faster responses to requests, and more exposure) are arguably dwarfed by the benefits that flow from a commitment to deep work (e.g., the ability to learn hard things fast and produce at an elite level).

le distrazioni digitali di bassa qualità rivestono un ruolo importante nella vita delle persone, più di quanto queste immaginino

To summarize, to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli. This doesn't mean that you have to eliminate distracting behaviors; it's sufficient that you instead eliminate the ability of such behaviors to hijack your attention. The simple strategy proposed here of scheduling Internet blocks goes a long way toward helping you regain this attention autonomy.

resist switching to these distractions at the slightest hint of boredom.

Very few people work even 8 hours a day. You're lucky if you get a few good hours in between all the meetings, interruptions, web surfing, office politics, and personal business that permeate the typical workday.

Constant communication is not something that gets in the way of real work; it has instead become totally intertwined in how this work actually gets done—preventing easy efforts to reduce distractions through better habits or short-lived management stunts like email-free Fridays.

If you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say 'no' to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say 'yes' to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.

To summarize, to succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli.

when paying more than $1,000 a day to write the chapter in a suite of an old hotel down the street from a Hogwarts-style castle, mustering the energy to begin and sustain this work is easier than if you were instead in a distracting home office.

fighting desires—over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions—unless, that is, you're smart about your habits.

The subjects succeeded in resisting these particularly addictive distractions only around half the time.

Jordan had a name for the worries about what his friends are doing with their lives and whether his accomplishments compare favorably: "the cloud of external distractions.