task immersion Quotes

When I work I forget all the rest.

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

I think you can lose yourself in any creative activity - if you enjoy your job or enjoy a task, you can lose yourself in that.

The ability to focus on a single task for an extended period is a talent that’s underappreciated - especially by extroverts, who continue to exercise an unhealthy hegemony over most workplaces.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

I find that if I get up and push myself, I get lost in what I'm doing, and I forget about everything else until I stop doing it.

I've come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks.

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us... Ideas come. Insights accrete.

Concentration's like a shower. You don't turn it on until you want to bathe... You don't walk out of the shower and leave it running. You turn it off, you turn it on... It has to be fresh and ready when you need it.

The man who has not learned the secret of taking the drudgery out of his task by flinging his whole soul into it, has not learned the first principles of success or happiness.