Rebecca Solnit Quotes

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.

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.

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

The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.

It's a skill that people are born with. Either you're a focuser or you're a multitasky person. I am a full-focus person.

It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously . . .

These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics.

You'd think people would realize they're bad at multitasking and would quit. But a cognitive illusion sets in, fueled in part by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, in which multitaskers think they are doing great.

If you're studying from a book and trying to listen in on a conversation at the same time, those are two separate projects, each started and maintained by distinct circuits in the brain. Pay more attention to one for a moment and you're automatically paying less attention to the other.

I read slowly, I watch movies slowly, because I retain everything.

I love the web, but man, I look at my browser, and there are, like, twenty tabs up there, all jostling for space and time, all framed by a mosaic of other apps, other work, other entertainment... so even when I really am paying attention to something on the web, there's this peripheral haze.

I think the American people are bombarded with information from all directions, all day long.

Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.

In effect, dividing your attention means that neither (or none) of the things you're working on is really getting the full effect of your intelligence, and that it in the end takes you longer than it would if you did one thing at a time.

Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive.

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.

Genius. It is just attention to something specific. That's all it is. Law of Attraction makes it happen, and so anyone who gives attention to any subject for a period of time will evolve in the direction of that understanding.

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

The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can enver focus enough to learn.

I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.

Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they're not making any more of it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value.

The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.

Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.

I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient.