Quotes About Focus

the Zeigarnik effect, our tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones.2

As they explained, "Whereas the importance of working harder is easily apprehended, the importance of working longer without switching objectives may be less perceptible . . . in every field, grit may be as essential as talent to high accomplishment."14

The better strategy is to get compensation right—and then get it out of sight. Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.

Set your phone alarm to beep every ninety minutes. Each time you hear the alarm, answer these three questions: What are you doing? On a scale of 1 to 10, how mentally alert do you feel right now? On a scale of 1 to 10, how physically energetic do you feel right now?

He said that in an attempt to understand the law—or, for that matter, just about anything—the key was to focus on what he termed the "one percent." Don't get lost in the crabgrass of details, he urged us. Instead, think about the essence of what you're exploring—the one percent that gives life to the other ninety-nine.

High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes. DeskTime never published the data in a peer-reviewed journal, so your mileage may vary. But the evidence is overwhelming that short breaks are effective—and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck. Even "micro-breaks" can be helpful.19

Set a timer on your phone for twenty-five minutes.

Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization." If

Take a deep breath, expanding your belly. Pause. Exhale slowly to the count of five. Repeat four times."7

A brief reminder of the purpose of their work doubled their performance.

Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus. That's helpful when there's a clear path to a solution. They help us stare ahead and race faster. But "if-then" motivators are terrible for challenges like the candle problem. As this experiment shows, the rewards narrowed people's focus and blinkered the wide view that might have allowed them to see new uses for old objects.

It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business in the morning and the last in the evening. Guard yourself against such false and deceitful thoughts that keep whispering: Wait a while. In an hour or so I will pray. I must first finish this or that. Thinking such thoughts we get away from prayer into other things that will hold us and involve us till the prayer of the day comes to naught.

specifically of the basic provisions of bread and fish, with no mention of fishing boats, lake cabins, or new video games. Perhaps the answer is in the point He has already made, that the truly "good" things we seek first are the issues pertaining to the kingdom of God. In a parallel passage found in Luke's gospel, Jesus clarifies His focus on the good things we should expect with

Daniel Ichbiah

the constant nagging in your mind of undone things pulls you out of the present—tethers you to a mind-set of the future so that you're never fully in the moment and enjoying what's now.

It's the central executive in your brain that notices that the floor is dirty. It forms an executive attentional set for "mop the floor" and then constructs a worker attentional set for doing the actual mopping.

satisficing is a tool for not wasting time on things that are not your highest priority. For your high-priority endeavors, the old-fashioned pursuit of excellence remains the right strategy.

That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they'll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it. Daydreaming

Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation.

The great tennis player John McEnroe used this to his advantage on the courts. When an opponent was performing especially well, for example by using a particularly good backhand, McEnroe would compliment him on it. McEnroe knew this would cause the opponent to think about his backhand, and this thinking disrupted the automatic application of it.

Daniel J. Levitin

Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.

Understanding how the brain's attentional and memory systems interact can go a long way toward minimizing memory lapses.

We all want to believe that we can do many things at once and that our attention is infinite, but this is a persistent myth.