Quotes About Concentration

flow - a state that some artists experience in their creative moments and that many other people achieve when enthralled by a film, a book, or a crossword puzzle; interruptions are not welcome in any of these situations.

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort.

We found that people, when engaged in a mental sprint, may become effectively blind. The authors of The Invisible Gorilla had made the gorilla "invisible" by keeping the observers intensely busy counting passes.

The observers almost never missed a K that was shown at the beginning or near the end of the Add-1 task but they missed the target almost half the time when mental effort was at its peak

He had noticed that the pupils are sensitive indicators of mental effort—they dilate substantially when people multiply two-digit numbers, and they dilate more if the problems are hard than if they are easy. His

The observers almost never missed a K that was shown at the beginning or near the end of the Add-1 task but they missed the target almost half the time when mental effort was at its peak, although we had pictures of their wide-open eye staring straight at it.

You could not compute the product of 17 × 24 while making a left turn into dense traffic, and you certainly should not try. You

anything that occupies your working memory reduces your ability to think.

Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that

As you can experience, the request to retrieve and say aloud your phone number or your spouse's birthday also requires a brief but significant effort, because the entire string must be held in memory as a response is organized.

People who experience flow describe it as "a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems," and their descriptions of the joy of that state are so compelling that Csikszentmihalyi has called it an "optimal experience." Many activities can induce a sense of flow, from painting to racing motorcycles—and for some fortunate authors I know, even writing a book is often an optimal experience.

psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West, and will refer to two systems in the mind, System 1 and System 2. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that normally attract attention.

However, attention can be moved away from an unwanted focus, primarily by focusing intently on another target.

pupils are sensitive indicators of mental effort—

Of course, not all slow thinking requires that form of intense concentration and effortful computation—I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos.

Even in the absence of time pressure, maintaining a coherent train of thought requires discipline.

When a single object takes an exclusive place in our mind, when our being reaches toward this object in a sort of contracted tension, movement ceases within us and suffering finds its home in us.

Doing two things like a half-wit never equals doing one thing like a whole wit.

Flow is engagement on steroids. Flow is that state of being in which time stands still, you're totally engaged in an activity, and the challenge of that particular activity matches up with your skill—so you're neither bored because it's too easy nor anxious because it's too hard.

There are at least four essential elements composing the foundation of the enlightenment process: purification, concentration, effort, and mastery.

Sam?dhi is the state of concentrated calm resulting from meditation practice."8 In another, we find "It implies not merely equilibrium, tranquillity, and one-pointedness, but a state of intense yet effortless concentration, of complete absorption of the mind itself, of heightened and expanded awareness.

If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.