The Christian monastic orders perfected various methods for learning how to channel thoughts and desires.

Philosophers have been worrying about distraction at least since the time of the ancient Greeks, who saw it less as a matter of external interruptions and more as a question of character—a systematic inner failure to use one’s time on what one claimed to value the most. Their reason for treating distraction so seriously was straightforward, and it’

the bouncer is besieged in an unprecedented way. In addition to switching tasks like never before, our brains are also being forced to filter more frantically than at any point in our past.