Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

The mind is easily distracted; it loses its focus and becomes restless. If it is not directed positively, its power will be diffused.

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight, put your mind on the strategy of the fight, and you will not feel the other fellow's punches.

Task switching is hard because we do not control what is on our mind. Despite our efforts, the original task continues to occupy our mental bandwidth. Although we can control where our time goes, we cannot fully control how our bandwidth is allocated.

I just prefer instrumental. I don't need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don't need people feeding their fantasies into my vision.

Some people think they are concentrating when they're merely worrying.

Also, because people like to multitask, in a way if you've got a bit of music on in the background and the lyrical content is making you want to listen to it, then that would probably put you off the texting you wanted to do. I think people like things that just make that right kind of noise, but leave your brain free to do something else.

I don't put the focus on things that don't matter.

If your mind is scattered, it is quite powerless.

It's amazing how many things busy people are doing that never will be missed.

To focus our mind on the task at hand-with fierce concentration-m akes for a productive use of time.

Productivity is less about what you do with your time. And more about how you run your mind.

Keep out of your mind, and out of your office, and out of your world, every element that seeks admittance with no definite, helpful, useful end in view.

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy - very busy - without being very effective.

But as the business grows, you get more attention, and then you realize that the whole world is trying to get time from you. Which is amazing. But every time you give it to the world, you give less to what you’re doing.

Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.

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

What distracts us will begin to define us. We don't need to swing at every pitch.

Don't become a slave to non-crucial matters.

It doesn't really matter what time it is if you haven't determined what to do with your time.

It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great.

Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.... Our motto seems to be, "Let's do a little bit of everything."

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.

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves.

The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success.