Quotes About Concentration

Our society's sort of turning into a two-class system, where... most of the wealth and privileges are being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. And there's the rest of us... that have to go out and work and struggle and live and die and try to find some happiness and contentment and security.

What it turns out is that we think we're multitasking, but we're not. The brain is sequential tasking: we flit from one thought to the next very, very rapidly, giving us the illusion that what we're doing is doing all these things at once.

Writers have a reputation for being distracted. That's because writers are distracted. They are always tuned into that other voice, the one in their head that rarely turns off.

When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused.

What bothers me about TV is that it tends to take our minds off our minds.

Mindfulness means being aware of how you're deploying your attention and making decisions about it, and not letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.

No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do.

You see that the people who are drawn to alternative medicine are often fairly healthy and they go to alternative medicine for what I call the 'symptoms of life.' Fatigue, joint pains, inability to concentrate, perhaps, the kinds of things that anyone over twenty-five gets at some point.

If you give yourself to your task at once, you won't have to do it twice.

When you multitask, you believe you're being exceptionally productive, but really, you're fooling yourself. Each time you switch tasks, you have to backtrack a little and remind yourself where you are in the process and what's next. Invariably. you are spending twice as much time on parts of the task.

I watch the ball fiercely to see its height and speed off my opponent's racket so I can decide how I want to hit it.

I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!

Other people can think ahead all they want. I just focus on the task at hand and try to move on.

Children want one thing at a time, and want that one thing passionately.

I am living here and now. The blessing of my life is that I am totally concentrating on the present moment. And I want to be because there is nothing but the present moment.

It is in Virginia and Georgia that the war now rages and where it will continue for at these points - Richmond and Atlanta - the enemy's main strength is concentrated.

He made sure she didn't fall, but he also made sure she had to focus on keeping her balance instead of judging her singing because one of the biggest reasons athletes choked was from overconcentrating in crunch situations. Tension disrupted rhythm. An experienced player going through a bad streak only made it worse by focusing so much on the outcome he lost touch with his natural instincts. it was exactly the kind of mental disconnect he suspected had happened to her.

I want the quiet concentration of each everyday task to fill me with an active love of living and a passive acceptance of dying

No one's brain is different enough to make constant interruptions, distractions, and task-switching an optimal environment in which to function. No one's.

To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.

Do you find this...distracting?

Eyes on the forest, not on the trees.

Why...do you find this...distracting?

I know every arrow must count, and they do. In the eerie light,