Quotes About Focus

What mankind wants is not talent; it is purpose.

A writer is thinking about what he's supposed to be doing, whether he's actually doing it or not, every waking hour. He's constantly pondering problems.

She herself feels unequal to the world's sufferings and fears that by narrowing her focus on the world to make it manageable, she has trivialized it.

Cicero said that even if his lifetime were to be doubled he would still not have time to waste on reading the lyric poets.

Spectemur Agenda

They needed the numbers, so they directed their creativity and resourcefulness toward getting those numbers, rather than toward effective performance.

Instead of describing ADD as an inability to concentrate, this model presents it as the ability to concentrate on everything. The world always is alive and ripe with sources of interest.

We often explain ADHD to children using a very simple analogy that certainly resonates with adults, too: A person with ADHD has the power of a Ferrari engine but with bicycle-strength brakes. It's the mismatch of engine power to braking capability that causes the problems. Strengthening one's brakes is the name of the game.

The term attention deficit disorder completely misses this point. It is not a deficit of attention that we ADD-ers have, it is that our attention likes to go where it wants to and we can't always control it.

In the world of ADD, there are only two times: there is now, and then there is not now.

If we weren't so dreamy and curious we could stay on track and never get distracted.

We've got an overabundance of attention, more attention than we can cope with; our constant challenge is to control it.

Without knowing it or meaning to, we are training ourselves to be constantly on the alert for interruptions; to seek out messages incessantly, to process data rather than discover, invent, think, or feel, and in general to lose the propensity or even the capacity to ponder, pause, imagine, or give full focus to anyone or anything for more than a few restive moments.

Most people with ADHD or VAST have low scores in Fact Finder (which does not mean bad; there are no bad scores on a Kolbe test) because their natural talent lies in their ability to cut to the chase and summarize information instead of digging into details.

Tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers. Worry becomes what attention turns into when it isn't focused on some task.

The therapist must become active and directive in helping the patient reorganize his life. Contrary to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapists, the ADD therapist must offer concrete suggestions concerning ways of getting organized, staying focused, making

Edward M. Hallowell

Structure is the vessel needed to contain the mercury of the ADD mind, to keep it from being here and there and everywhere all at once. Structure allows the ADD mind to be put to best use, rather than dissipating itself like so many tiny beads of mercury on the floor.

Happiness is not something that happens to people but something that they make happen." His research shows that people are happiest in a state he has named "flow." In a state of flow, you are one with what you are doing. Children know flow well. They call it play. Play is one of the childhood roots of adult happiness. But there are others—four others, to be exact—in the schema I outline in this book.

A model that explains the "itch" at the core of ADD

The mind of someone with ADHD is in fact constantly at work. Our productivity may not always show it, but this is not because of a lack of intent or energy!

People with ADHD are lovers in the sense that they tend to have unbridled optimism.

As is known by clinicians who work with the ADD population, and by parents of ADD children, and by adults who have ADD, one of the most frustrating aspects of ADD is the inability to profit from one's experience, the inability to focus on consequences, the inability to navigate through tasks or social situations or the world at large by using what has been learned previously.

Worry becomes what attention turns into when it isn't focused on some task.