Distraction Avoidance Quotes

Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,” Cook said. “That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.

I definitely feel like it took me a while to learn the baseline things you have to do if you want people to hear you. That's why I've had the same haircut for the entire time that I've been on television and that's why I wear literally the same jacket every day. I keep all the clothes I wear on TV in my office on a little hanging rack. My girlfriend calls it all the colors of the German rainbow. Grays, blacks, a slightly greenish gray for the days that I'm feeling particularly festive. I'm not trying to accomplish anything in the way I look other than to be boring enough for people to hear me.

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of those actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined. So figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do.

There were a lot of distractions in Baltimore, and I think they were a problem for me.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.

When I am training, I don't want any disturbances. I have to be focused, not losing sight of my targets. I cannot evade the fact that I am now well known and I have made already some money, but you can learn how to deal with it.

I don't really care what's going on I just care about getting my job done the best that I can possibly do and deal with the other things in my life that take a lot of time and a lot of thought.

Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do.

Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that.

It's hard to edit. It's hard to stay focused. And yet, we know we'll only do our best work if we stay focused. And so, you know, the hardest decisions we made are all the things not to work on, frankly.

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

There was plays where I had to do certain things, but I wouldn't even know who caught the ball because I was so focused on getting my job done.

I don't even have a computer in my office. If I had e-mail, I'd never take the time to read research or absorb information. I want to think about what I'm doing, and that takes time.

I just have to play my best game. Not think about anything else - that is the only concern I have and that we should all have.

So many people spend so much time on things that aren't important. It's the difference between success and failure.

I get a lot of kids distracted. Sometimes they got to go cover left field, but they're over here talking to me, getting an autograph.

I'm trying not to pay too much attention to the rankings because calculations can distract you.

How do I use my platform? How do you join in a way that is useful and not distracting and not shining a light on you?

Stay focused when you're playing alive, so you're not distracted by something going on.

Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them.

If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on one.

I don't like to look at what other players are doing.