Tom Stoppard Quotes

When I was younger, I was able to write with music playing in the background, but these days, I can't. I find it distracting. Even when the music is just instrumental or has lyrics in a language I don't understand, the clash between the voices in my head and the song can be very disorienting.

If you're making a bunch of little decisions - like, do I read this email now or later? Do I file it? Do I forward it? Do I have to get more information? Do I put it in the spam folder? - that's a handful of decisions right there, and you haven't done anything meaningful. It puts us into a brain state of decision fatigue.

I'll read anything. In fact, I'll read while I'm doing other things, which is not a good idea.

I find that I can't work and listen to radio - either I find I don't like it and it distracts me, or I do like it and I want to listen to it.

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.

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

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.

I don't like to listen to music while I'm working.

I'm not very good at multi-tasking. Most people aren't, but they think they are. The mind is really better when you're really focused on one thing.

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.

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

There's no such thing as multitasking.

If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.

It’s very difficult to stay alert indefinitely.

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.

Your brain is cooked when you write hard for three or four hours.

I used to listen to 'Woman's Hour' every morning, but I've discovered that I can't have words on when I'm working.

I multitask and always have the TV on in the background. If I need to focus, I generally have to turn off the TV.

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.

I definitely take notes, but I feel like sometimes if I take too many notes, it kind of bogs down my mind a little bit. So, I just write down stuff that I need to remember for the game.

You wouldn't read 'Anna Karenina' and try to work on the computer at the same time, would you?

The only way I could work properly was by using the absolute maximum of observation and concentration that I could possible muster.

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.

The irony of multitasking is that it's exhausting: when you're doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently. You're also cheating yourself because your're not doing anything excellently. You're compromising your virtuosity. In the words of T. S. Elliot, you're 'distracted from distractions by distractions'.

Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out our pow'rs, and leaves a blank behind.