Judy Woodruff Quotes

The horrible truth is we are linear beings; we can't multitask, and we shouldn't keep interrupting important connections to each other with the latest message coming in.

Attention is the fundamental instrument we use for learning, thinking, communicating, deciding, yet neither parents nor schools spend any time helping young people learn how to manage information streams and control the ways they deploy their attention.

We are all amateur attention economists, hoarding and bartering our moments - or watching them slip away down the cracks of a thousand YouTube clips.

Smart hiring managers in the modern world should be asking, “How long can you concentrate on a task before you have to take a break?” I wonder how many of them do?

Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness.

If I had had a thing like an iPad when I was a kid, then I never would have gotten into the habit of writing things down by hand.

So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.

Colleges sort as much as they teach.

The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

The thing with focus is that it's not this thing you aspire to, like, 'Oh, on Monday I'm going to be focused.' It's every single minute: 'Why are we talking about this when we're supposed to be talking about this?'

I am aware, as everybody has to be, that there's more competition for one's attention nowadays.

With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time.

Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.

Focused attention necessarily has an edge, but as focus changes, the edge shifts.

I was always getting in trouble for whispering in class.

I am not a multi-tasker. When I do one thing, I fully concentrate on it and leave the other thing aside.

I see a lot of moms and dads frustrated because their kids have their devices at the dinner table and they can't seem to get their attention as much as they used to.

I think that we get so distracted with our smartphones... It takes your body and your brain time to switch between tasks. If we can focus on what we're doing, we'll be more productive at that task.

There are too many distractions on a computer.

I went to basic school for 10 years, and then I went to college.

I can't tell you how many times I've been writing and then found myself seven clicks deep into a Wikipedia entry that I don't even care about. Self-distraction appears to be my version of sleepwalking.

When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: "We *know* all that!" "Oh," I say, "you *do*? Then no *wonder* I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.

HOBBES: All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.

Multitasking divides your attention and leads to confusion and weakened focus.

Three years in jail is a good corrective for three years at Harvard.