Quotes About Attention

The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.

Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it. High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise.

People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them.

It follows that in the reporting of strikes, the easiest way is to let the news be uncovered by the overt act, and to describe the event as the story of interference with the reader's life. This is where his attention is first aroused and his interest most easily enlisted.

While trying harder helps just about everything, telling someone with ADD to try harder is no more helpful than telling someone who is nearsighted to squint harder. It missed the biological point.

Instead of describing ADD as an inability to concentrate, this model presents it as the ability to concentrate on everything. The world always is alive and ripe with sources of interest.

Another, less polite way of saying it: People with attention issues tend to have acute bullshit detectors. We hate hypocrisy maybe more than any other human failing, and we can spot it a mile away.

The term attention deficit disorder completely misses this point. It is not a deficit of attention that we ADD-ers have, it is that our attention likes to go where it wants to and we can't always control it.

In the world of ADD, there are only two times: there is now, and then there is not now.

If we weren't so dreamy and curious we could stay on track and never get distracted.

We've got an overabundance of attention, more attention than we can cope with; our constant challenge is to control it.

Without knowing it or meaning to, we are training ourselves to be constantly on the alert for interruptions; to seek out messages incessantly, to process data rather than discover, invent, think, or feel, and in general to lose the propensity or even the capacity to ponder, pause, imagine, or give full focus to anyone or anything for more than a few restive moments.

Tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers. Worry becomes what attention turns into when it isn't focused on some task.

The tension of constructing an explanation, from A to B to C to D, apparently so simple a task, irritates many people with ADD. While they can hold the information in mind, they do not have the patience to sequentially put it out. That is too tedious. They would like to dump the information in a heap on the floor all at once and have it be comprehended instantly. Otherwise, as Douglas says, it's just not worth the effort. It's too boring.

Structure is the vessel needed to contain the mercury of the ADD mind, to keep it from being here and there and everywhere all at once. Structure allows the ADD mind to be put to best use, rather than dissipating itself like so many tiny beads of mercury on the floor.

A model that explains the "itch" at the core of ADD

The mind of someone with ADHD is in fact constantly at work. Our productivity may not always show it, but this is not because of a lack of intent or energy!

As is known by clinicians who work with the ADD population, and by parents of ADD children, and by adults who have ADD, one of the most frustrating aspects of ADD is the inability to profit from one's experience, the inability to focus on consequences, the inability to navigate through tasks or social situations or the world at large by using what has been learned previously.

Worry becomes what attention turns into when it isn't focused on some task.

In a neurotypical brain, when the TPN is turned on and you're on task, the DMN is turned off. But in the ADHD brain, the fMRI shows that when the TPN is turned on, the DMN is turned on as well, trying to muscle its way in and pull you into its grasp, thereby distracting you. In ADHD, therefore, the DMN competes with the TPN, which in most people it does not do.

If there is one takeaway in distilling down the complexity of the DMN and the TPN, it boils down to the fact that the toggle switches between them are off in those with ADHD.

These situations allow the ADD person not only to get into forward motion, but also to forget, to disregard that they need brakes in the first place. In an emergency, it's full speed ahead. What a relief.

The clinician's challenge is to find a way to allow the ADD person to put on the brakes. From a biological perspective, one of the most successful strategies has been the use of medications.

Trapped in the past or future in the DMN, you're likely to abandon projects you once started with enthusiasm, make careless mistakes, or, worse, fall into a state of misery and despair, for no good reason whatsoever. All