E. L. Doctorow Quotes

I'm more of a visual person, but I think that reading's extremely important. But I'm very easily distracted. It takes certain books to really grab you in.

The average human attention span was 12 seconds in 2000 and 8 seconds in 2013. A drop of 33%. The scary part is that the attention span of a goldfish was 9 seconds, almost 13% more than us humans. That's why it's getting tougher by the day to get people to turn the page. Maybe we writers ought to try writing for goldfish!

When you think about advertisements, it makes sense that they want to hold and retain our attention.

We used to think that you could pay attention to five to nine things at a time. We now know that's not true. That's a crazy overestimate. The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Trying to juggle any more than that, and you're going to lose some brainpower.

I have a terrible attention span, so if something can keep my attention, I know that that's at least a great start.

It's hard to get people to focus on one idea.

The challenge CEOs will face three to five years from now is the same one that they face today. That is engagement. It's hard to keep people engaged in what they are doing. As this generation grows up around social media like Twitter where things are 140 characters, how do you keep them engaged all hours every day at work? How do you keep them focused on the big goals you have?

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

We say that children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean that they're bad at not paying attention - they easily get distracted by anything interesting.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

When I play, I become entirely absorbed in the game. It may be a form of concentration.

I highlight everything I find interesting, and then type out everything I've highlighted, and then print out everything I've typed, and reread these printed notes as often as possible.

These days you're not just competing with the tedium, you're competing with the cellphone.

People only have so much attention.

Experts say you can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.

While you're writing, you can't concentrate nearly as well on what the speaker is saying.

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.

There's no such thing as multitasking.

If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.

I can't watch a movie and watch just two minutes and turn it off, then go talk to my girlfriend.

I don't have the attention span for sports.

It takes me forever to read a book. I have such a small attention span.

I think people who multitask pay a huge price. They think they're being extra productive, and I think when you multitask so much you don't have time to think about anything deeply, you are giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do, and practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.