Quotes About Distraction

One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens.

News is important information that may influence your investments. Noise is talk or buzz or some headline that prevents you from seeing a story clearly. News is useful. Noise is a distraction. Calling what's noise and news after the fact is easy.

Work is a great blotter up. It stops you thinking, which is useful. No, it stops you feeling.

The computer is really a useful gadget for consuming time.

I'm not really about spending every second on social media. I think there's a lot more useful things you can do with your time.

I hate the Internet. It's full of rubbish. I'm on it all the time, watching terrible, useless things and ossifying my brain.

Growing up, I spent my time doing useless stuff looking at computers.

What more chilling indictment of the modern world is there than this: that the condition of the smartphone user is that of a dumb animal. Moooo!

We're not interested in bombarding our users with, 'Hey, play this game, play this game, play this game.' It gets annoying, it gets in the way of messaging, and it gets in the way of staying in touch with people who are important to you.

I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer.

I love using TikTok for comic relief.

The last thing I will pay attention to is any of the usual Washington back and forth.

I was a player for 20 years. When there was something bothering me, I couldn't perform to my usual standard. When your wife is annoying you, for instance, it's not easy to do your best work, is it?

A true fad has little utility beyond its entertainment value. Think of the Mood Ring, the Pet Rock, the Slinky, Silly Putty.

I don't mind being distracted. I don't want to sit there in utter silence and type. If the phone rings, I usually answer it, speak for a few minutes and return to writing, or go for a walk in and out of the rooms. I don't mind a break.

Anything written or printed under a print or picture takes the attention from it and, if it is very black or white in any marked degree, will utterly destroy its beauty.

I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.

There are days when any electrical appliance in the house, including the vacuum cleaner, seems to offer more entertainment possibilities than the television set.

How did we kill time before smartphones? I honestly can't recall. I have a vague recollection of flipping through magazines in waiting-room-type situations, but what did we do, say, in line at the post office? Waiting for a bus? Waiting for someone to meet us at a restaurant? I mean, did we just look around or something?

A computer can be a useful and indispensable tool. But if we allow it to devour our time with vain, unproductive, and sometimes destructive pursuits, it becomes an entangling net.

Kissinger's monopoly on this historical record has driven many scholars to distraction. Groups of lawyers, scholars, journalists and archivists have used pronunciamento, lawsuit, and other crowbars in a usually vain effort to open Kissinger's Library of Congress cache.

Because we're in a small town and somewhat isolated from the fast lane of high tech, we've been able to grow and concentrate on our work instead of being distracted by the competition and getting caught up in the soap opera of Silicon Valley.

Running a successful, growing company in Silicon Valley can create an ironic sort of depression and delusion. The better you're doing, the higher the stakes, and higher expectations for you to win. Maybe that's why people say it's so hard. But that doesn't make it hard. That just makes it distracting.