Quotes About Distraction

Here's why this matters: Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.

Teachers find many children emotionally distracted, so upset and preoccupied by the explosive drama of their own family lives that they are unable to concentrate on such mundane matters as multiplication tables.

a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task and makes up to 50 percent more errors.

Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth.

That's why a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task and makes up to 50 percent more errors.

Try creating an interruption-free zone during the day—turn off your e-mail, phone, IM program, or BlackBerry—and see whether you get more done.

America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.

God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving thing. Anyone else who exalts himself distracts us from what we need, namely, God.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

You will not be able to pray purely if you are all involved with material affairs and agitated with unremitting concerns. For prayer is the rejection of concepts." — Evagrius Ponticus

Any calls?" I asked. She didn't look up from her magazine. "What am I, your secretary?" "Yes." "Look, just leave me alone.

Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.

From John Vorhaus's character Vic Mirplo in The Albuquerque Turkey: Procrastinate later.

Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.

Don't stop and drift in the middle of the traffic lane, even if the fish are biting. The fish you catch might weigh many tons and have a propeller on the end and a bulbous bow on the other.

Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.

busying herself with inconsequential tasks.

he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality.

All I do is go to the movies.

Unfortunately, even as he removed his shirt to reveal shoulders good enough to make a girl go slack-jawed, his only thought was of the errant au gratin potato. "Here you go, Doll," he said, holding his shirt out to her. "Maybe you could get that cheese out, before it's too late.

Amusement, on the other hand, is sought for the sake of pleasure and is often carried to excess; it absorbs the energies that are required for useful work and thus proves a hindrance to life's true success.

My ideas sometimes get the better of me. Before I clearly explain one, another comes to mind and seizes my attention....

mass market consumption offers the facade of social equality without forcing society to go through the hard work of redistributing wealth. Low prices lead consumers to think they can get what they want without necessarily giving them what they want - or need. The ancient Roman phrase for this is panem et circenses, bread and circuses, the art of plying citizens with pleasures to distract them from pain.