Quotes About Focus

Any single happy experience may be amplified or minimized, depending on how much attention you give it.

a stumble may be helpful, because it shows me where I need to concentrate my efforts in order to do better next time.

It didn't take me long to see that I did better when I had less time. Not several hours but ninety minutes turned out to be the optimally efficient length of time—long enough for me to get some real work done but not so long that I started to goof off or lose concentration. As a consequence, I began to organize my day into ninety-minute writing blocks

You can choose what you do; you can't choose what you like to do. You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want.

These tasks weren't urgent (which was the reason they didn't get done), but because they weighed on my mind, they sapped my energy.

I suggested that he write from 11:00 to 1:00 every weekday. During that time, he was to write or do nothing. No email; no calls; no research; no clearing off a desk; no hanging out with Jack, my adorable, three-year-old, train-obsessed nephew. Write, or stare out the window. "Remember," I added, "working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. You want to use your writing time for writing only. Nothing else, including no other kinds of work.

In their thought-provoking book Focus, researchers Tory Higgins and Heidi Grant Halvorson argue that people lean toward being "promotion-focused" or "prevention-focused" in their aims.

Because of their focus on justification, Questioners wake up each day and think, What needs to get done today and why?

It's easy to assume that we "should" undertake a particular clutter-clearing task. When we're very clear about why we're doing it, it's easier to use our time and energy productively—and also to recognize success.

To do the intellectually demanding work of writing, I leave my home office and my three beloved computer monitors to work at the wonderful old library that's just a block from my apartment. The atmosphere of a library helps me to think. When I want to take a break, instead of heading to the kitchen for a snack, I wander among the many floors of books.

One-Coin" Loophole: Whether we choose to focus on the single coin or the growing heap will shape our behavior.

When we distract ourselves, we purposefully redirect our thoughts, and by doing so, we change our experience. Distraction can help us resist temptation, minimize stress, feel refreshed, and tolerate pain, and it can help us stick to our good habits.

Besides clarity of values, another kind of clarity supports habit formation: clarity of action.

I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can't DO EVERYTHING I want.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.)

I'd noticed idly that a lot of people use the term goal instead of resolution, and one day in December, it struck me that this difference was in fact significant. You 'hit' a goal, you 'keep' a resolution.

I feel unsettled at any time when I'm not writing. And I mean that. There's a sense of peace, and of being in the right place, that I experience only when I'm writing.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.

For instance, if it's 9 a.m. and I have an appointment at 11 a.m., I'll think 'Oh, I have to go somewhere in two hours, so I can't really start anything serious' and then end up wasting my whole morning waiting for one thing to happen.

In The First 20 Minutes, Gretchen Reynolds notes, "I stand on one foot when I brush my teeth at night.

When life is taking its ordinary course, it was hard to remember what really mattered.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

God is in the details.

When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.