Quotes About Mind

Five years of reporting on attention have confirmed some home truths," Gallagher reports. "[Among them is the notion that] 'the idle mind is the devil's workshop'… when you lose focus, your mind tends to fix on what could be wrong with your life instead of what's right.

Entertainment-focused websites designed to capture and hold your attention for as long as possible...provide a cognitive crutch to ensure you eliminate any chance of boredom. Such behavior is dangerous, as it weakens your mind's general ability to resist distraction, making #deepwork difficult later when you really want to concentrate.

There is, however, an important corollary to this idea: Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don't simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction. Much in the same way that athletes must take care of their bodies outside of their training sessions, you'll struggle to achieve the deepest levels of concentration if you spend the rest of your time fleeing the slightest hint of boredom.

the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.

to actively try to work through these decisions will lead to a worse outcome than loading up the relevant information and then moving on to something else while letting the subconscious layers of your mind mull things over.

conscious mind is able to follow the precise arithmetic rules needed for correctness. On the other hand, for decisions that involve large amounts of information and multiple vague, and perhaps even conflicting, constraints, your unconscious mind is well suited to tackle the issue.

Bluma Zeigarnik, describes the ability of incomplete tasks to dominate our attention.

unconscious thought theory (UTT)—an attempt to understand the different roles conscious and unconscious deliberation play in decision making.

Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don't simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction

The idle mind is the devil's workshop

the phrases used by Csikszentmihalyi to describe what generates flow include notions of stretching your mind to its limits, concentrating, and losing yourself in an activity—all of which also describe deep work).

Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example, the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.

more neuronal bandwidth available, allowing them to move around more information and sift through more potential solutions than your conscious centers of thinking

providing your conscious brain time to rest enables your unconscious mind to take a shift sorting through your most complex professional challenges.

A temporary detox is a much weaker resolution than trying to permanently change your life, and therefore much easier for your mind to subvert when the going gets tough.

Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea." This advice comes from Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, a Dominican friar and professor of moral philosophy, who during the early part of the twentieth century penned a slim but influential volume titled The Intellectual Life.

Maybe memory was just a wicked curse, and the kind of mind what could wipe out painful recollections a blessing. Maybe .....

It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and the temerity to style themselves "New York Society.

Precisely—the bodies were a mirror image of some savage set of experiences that were central to the evolution of our man's mind.

Mientras una parte de lo que percibimos penetra a través de nuestros sentidos a partir del objeto que tenemos ante nosotros, otra parte (y tal vez ésta sea la mayor) surge siempre de nuestra propia mente. William James Principios de psicología

Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind. William James, The Principles of Psychology

It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and temerity to style themselves "New York Society.

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.