Quotes About Distraction

If I was at home, I'd find myself checking email and looking at the Internet when I should be working. In the library, I can get an awful lot done in a couple of hours, but it can become quite sociable, which you have to watch out for. There are a lot of people you can pop out and have a coffee with.

I think social media is an interesting beast - you can't get too caught up in it. People can get caught up in it sometimes, but I think it's important to live in the present and not on the computer screen.

My contention is that most students get distracted by music and social media because our current state of education is not sufficiently engaging to command their full attention.

If I did have social media, I would spend way to much time on it. It is way too addictive for me.

Shallowness and ignorance have been our lot in the mass consumer societies we inhabit, where we were too distracted to act politically, apart from periodically deputing political elites to take life-and-death decisions on our behalf.

When I am shooting a film, then everything goes soft focus. My family also complains that I don't give them time.

Soft addictions are an alluring, seductive aspect of our culture - they are easy to attain and socially acceptable, they are even encouraged in many cases. Yet they are lethal to the spirit.

I was in rehab for nine months, and I needed some solace and distraction. I was in town one day and I sort of stumbled into a jazz jam session, and kept going back.

I wanted to focus on creating a solid foundation, creating my blueprint, and understanding who I was. You can get distracted easily, and people take you off course with just a compliment. I wanted the focus to be on Karen Civil the businessperson, not what I wore, not what I looked like.

I wish I wasn't so in love, wasn't so interested, in the Internet. I wish I spent less time online and more time outside and in my head. Writing requires solitude and deep, deep daydreaming, and the Internet just kills that - its lure is toward the external; it asks you to flit from place to place.

Silence and solitude are more distracting to me than chatter and commotion.

If you're constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what's on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.

Having emotional intelligence allows you to manage your emotions, show empathy, and prevent you from getting distracted. It also helps you solve problems and be a more likable person.

Most people have their best ideas when they take their minds away from problems they're trying to solve.

Our brains are designed to solve some of our most complex problems when we're distracted by routine habits.

I've solved my phone addiction by deleting all the apps I was addicted to - email, browser - and getting my wife to add parental controls, to limit access even further.

I've long believed that the work-out life has lessons for the writing life. I've 'solved' a lot of books while at the gym, in part because I'm not trying to solve them at that precise moment.

Game shows are like golf and tennis are for some men. It's not like going to work.

We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.

Some people are on their darn computers all day long.

I think that every show on television has its place. I think Married With Children or, I don't know, The Nanny... some people want to go home, turn on the TV and be able to iron their clothes or grab a sandwich. Come out and catch a joke and not have to follow the story.

I barely watch TV. Somehow, I make it work with just the Internet. On TV, there's always so much crap, and you have to flip around.

I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and I can notice I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom.

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.