Quotes About Focus

So, do I win this test of patience, then, Admiral?" His eyes swung into focus. Sharp, intent, steady focus. And then his lips curved in a slow, wicked smile that made her realize she was in over her head, here. Far over her head. The smile grew wicked. "Obviously . . . not.

Your job as a writer is to say as truthfully as you can what you see and how you feel. Writing is a high-wire act. It's best not to look at the other circus performers but to attend to the wire.

Think of a ballet dancer at the barre. Plie, eleve, battement tendu. She is practicing, because she knows that there is no difference between practice and art. The practice is the art.

To forget oneself-to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative endeavor.

I'm always telling myself that my primary goal is to be the best I can be at this time, and if I keep that as my focus, I'll always be okay with myself and where I am right now.

Inspiration is for amateurs.

The solution is to ignore the bad habit and put your energy toward building a new habit that will override the old one.

Think of your windshield as an energy source for your brain. Use pictures (the walls of many talent hotbeds are cluttered with photos and posters of their stars) or, better, video. One idea: Bookmark a few YouTube videos, and watch them before you practice, or at night before you go to bed.

Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement.

Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint.

This is the way high-purpose environments work. They are about sending not so much one big signal as a handful of steady, ultra-clear signals that are aligned with a shared goal.

Q: Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is

Q: Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement.

1) talent requires deep practice; (2) deep practice requires vast amounts of energy; (3) primal cues trigger huge outpourings of energy.

It's possible to predict performance by ignoring all the informational content in the exchange and focusing on a handful of belonging cues.

The main challenge to building a clear sense of purpose is that the world is cluttered with noise, distractions, and endless alternative purposes.

Purpose isn't about tapping into some mystical internal drive but rather about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal.

Simple, humble spaces help focus attention on the deep-practice task at hand: reaching and repeating and struggling. When given the choice between luxurious and spartan, choose spartan. Your unconscious mind will thank you.

Creating engagement around a clear, simple set of priorities can function as a lighthouse, orienting behavior and providing a path toward a goal.

When you're making movies you've got to get obsessive.

I genuinely believe that if you want to get in the film business, get in the film business.

The anterior cingulate fires up as the end result of a series of events. First, estrogen levels fall. Meanwhile, serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitter, also decreases. The deficiency in serotonin causes the anterior cingulate gyrus to fire up. To make things worse, just about this time the PFC tends to quiet down, which is why women may have a hard time focusing and controlling impulses. So we see emotional difficulties, intensified feelings of sadness, and disturbed sleep.

Gene-Jack Wang and colleagues at the Brookhaven National Laboratory found that treatment with Ritalin over a year increased the dopamine transporters (proteins that help clear dopamine, the neurotransmitter that helps us focus) out of the brain's synapses, meaning that there is less dopamine to do its work. Taking the stimulant seems to increase the need for it.

Where you bring your attention always determines how you feel.