Quotes About Focus

But when it comes to solving problems, one of the best ways to start is by putting away your moral compass. Why? When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it's fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it's easy to lose track of what the issue actually is.

Flow is not the singular intensity of focusing "like a laser," as we often say. And it is not the miraculous illumination of a sudden brainstorm. Rather, it is more the feeling of drifting along a stream, being carried in a clear direction, but still tossed in surprising ways by the eddies and whirls of moving water.

Flow starts when we say yes to the fight.

But the easiest way to live in the moment is to put yourself in a situation where there's no other choice.

Danny Way explains: "It's either find the zone or suffer the consequences—there's no other choice available.

Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.

Applying this idea in our daily life means breaking tasks into bite-size chunks and setting goals accordingly. A writer, for example, is better off trying to pen three great paragraphs at a time—the equivalent of moving through Mandy-Rae's kick cycles—rather than attempting one great chapter. Think challenging, yet manageable—just enough stimulation to shortcut attention into the now, not enough stress to pull you back out again.

Not only is the distracted present a miserable place to be, it's also the worst kind of self-handicapping. Study after study shows that we're terrible multitaskers. By trying to improve performance by being everywhere and everywhen, we end up nowhere and never. The sad truth is that our lives are pulling us in every direction save the one where we're most effective.

Temple University sports psychologist Michael Sachs, who made an extensive study of these states, summed this up nicely: "Every gold medal or world championship that's ever been won, most likely, we now know, there's a flow state behind the victory.

And for flow junkies who get their fix through action sports, this has always been the dark secret. Ecstasis only arises when attention is fully focused in the present moment.

I've gotten really good at pulling the veil down," says Way, "at camouflaging reality, locking out my conscious mind and riding my focus into the zone.

This means flow packs a double punch: it doesn't just increase our decision-making abilities—it increases our creative decision-making abilities. Dramatically.

Companionship drives focus into the now

Correct predictions result in understanding. Incorrect predictions result in confusion and prompt you to pay attention.

A quick search on Google yields over 11.5 billion hits for the word "time." In comparison, more obvious topics of interest like sex and money rank a paltry 2.75 billion and 2 billion, respectively. Time and how to make the most of it, appears to be about five times more important to us than making love or money.

Risk heightens focus and flow follows focus. This means that the fight-or-flight response primes the body—chemically and psychologically—for the flow state. Athletes report moving through one to get to the other.

In flow, we are so focused on the task at hand that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Time flies. Self vanishes. Performance goes through the roof.

After all those neurochemicals are drained out, it takes a while for them to replenish so on the back end of flow state...I can barely string sentences together. I become stupid.

creativity triggers flow; then flow enhances creativity.

By using the tanks to eliminate all distraction, entrain specific brainwaves, and regulate heart rate frequency, the SEALs are able to cut the time it takes to learn a foreign language from six months to six weeks.

As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully.

A commitment to the concrete does more than just ease communication; it can lead to better reasoning.

Together with the topic of a text, the reader usually needs to know its point. He needs to know what the author is trying to accomplish as she explores the topic.

Linguists call this the container-locative construction, because now it's the container that's being focused upon.