Daniel Goleman Quotes

I've got a terrible memory; it's probably because I'm always concentrating on what I'm doing now.

Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember.

In the camp, this meant committing my verse-many thousands of lines-to memory. To help me with this I improvised decimal counting beads and, in transit prisons, broke up matchsticks and used the fragments as tallies. As I approached the end of my sentences I grew more confident of my powers of memory, and began writing down and memorizing prose-dialogue at first, but then, bit by bit, whole densely written passages. My memory found room for them! It worked. But more and more of my time-in the end as much as one week every month-went into the regular repetition of all I had memorized.

Astonishing things can be done with the human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of business.

I may be on set acting, I may be in the studio recording, I might be teaching dance class all in the same day - so how can I manage all of those needs, prepare for all of those things, and still grow and train in all of them? The best you can do is, when you're focusing on one, be there and be present.

Really focusing on what I have to do right now... no matter what role I'm playing - it alleviates everything around me and makes everything a lot more simple.

It's better to do one thing at a time and give your full concentration.

I'm the kind of guy that I cannot just lock myself in the room and just think tennis for 24 hours.

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.

Whatever I'm doing at that moment, I try to only focus on that because I'm already ADD.

Sometimes I have lapses of attention, and I can lose some points very quickly.

I love cooking. It's what clears my mind, since it's pretty hard to multitask when you're chopping vegetables.

We need to blinker ourselves, to better monitor our attentional focus. Enforced periods of no email or Internet to allow us to sustain concentration have been shown to be tremendously helpful. And breaks - even a 15-minute break every two or three hours - make us more productive in the long run.

When I'm performing, I have to tell myself, 'Wait a minute. You need to be here right now. You need to hold these memories and remember time is golden.'

Every one complains of a poor memory, no one of a weak judgment.

Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we use this energy. Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how use it. And it is an energy under control, to do with as we please; hence attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.

The whole point is to discipline the mind.

I try to find some sort of meditative hobby to do on set, and it's different for every film. There's a lot of downtime, but I don't like reading on set because it feels like you're taking yourself out of your world, instead of being present. And then, you feel like you're not ready to do whatever you have to do.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.

Giving something your time isn't the same as giving it your attention.

Take five minutes to center yourself in the morning...Set your intention every day.

If people would reflect that one can only do one thing at a time and therefore there is never more than one thing to do at a time, there would be less fatigue in the world.

Any school would gain, if the students began the day with meditation, cleared their heads and got themselves centered.

The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.