Quotes About Attention

There is too much distraction at the day-to-day, hour-to-hour level of commitments to allow for appropriate focus on the higher levels.

There are no interruptions—there are only mismanaged inputs.

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece. —Nadia Boulanger It's

give all our attention to the opportunity before us.

You've probably made many more agreements with yourself than you realize, and every single one of them—big or little—is being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you. These are the "incompletes," or "open loops," which I define as anything pulling at your attention that doesn't belong where it is, the way it is.

Even if you've already decided on the next step you'll take to resolve a problem, your mind can't let go until and unless you park a reminder in a place it knows you will, without fail, look.

Getting things done requires two basic components: defining (1) what "done" means (outcome) and (2) what "doing" looks like (action). And these are far from self-evident for most people about most things that have their attention.

The Zeigarnik Effect, as it has come to be known today, states simply that the brain naturally remembers and holds on to anything that is interrupted or incomplete. These interruptions and incompletions are called open loops.

We (1) capture what has our attention; (2) clarify what each item means and what to do about it; (3) organize the results, which presents the options we (4) reflect on, which we then choose to (5) engage with. This constitutes the management of the horizontal aspect of our lives, incorporating everything that we need to consider at any time, as we move forward moment to moment.

the focus we hold in our minds affects what we perceive and how we perform.

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece. —Nadia Boulanger

1) capture what has our attention; (2) clarify what each item means and what to do about it; (3) organize the results, which presents the options we (4) reflect on, which we then choose to (5) engage with.

There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can give . . . our attention to the opportunity before us. —Mark Van Doren

Never give consideration to things you do not want to happen.

Smart, dedicated people lost their lives all the time as they trained to be the best they could be to serve their country. Celebrities broke a nail and they immediately took to Twitter, alerting their millions of followers to the "injury," which in turn elicited thousands of replies from people with apparently not enough going on in their lives. And all the while brave men and women died in silence, forgotten by all except their families.

had a way of looking one over without seeming to that any Secret Service agent would be proud of

That was the problem with an eight-figure gorilla of a client. It took all of your time and attention. Old clients dried up and died away. New clients were not cultivated. His complacency had come back to bite him right in the ass. He

folderol of attention was to die on a football

had a way of looking one over without seeming to that any Secret Service agent would be proud

So what is needed is for man to give attention to his habit of fragmentary thought, to be aware of it, and thus bring it to an end. Man's approach to reality may then be whole, and so the response will be whole.

if there is listening through a "listener," then we are not listening.

Q: Are you saying that thought has a kind of possessive quality which stays, gets stuck, and then becomes habitual? And we don't see this? Bohm: I think that whenever we repeat something it gradually becomes a habit, and we get less and less aware of it. If you brush your teeth every morning, you probably hardly notice how you're doing it. It just goes by itself. Our thought does the same thing, and so do our feelings. That's a key point.

Where is it written that one should only care about big things?

As simple an act as reading or writing a sentence must be surrounded by perceptory nap and weave . . . an itch, a stray memory from childhood, the distant sound of a barking dog, or something left over from the lunch that is found caught between the teeth.