Focus & Attention
Anything and everything related to focus and attention while living in an era characterized by the shortest attention spans
Focus & Attention
It’s widely believed that 90-95% of the thoughts people experience are repeated thoughts from the previous day. And many of those repeated thoughts are unhealthy ones. I believe this repetition occurs when we become unaware of our attention’s whereabouts. When left unchecked, our attention gravitates towards the dark place in our mind where bad... See more
Jen Hitze • Attention, Distraction, and Your Responsibility
Thoughts
The proper response to this situation, we’re often told today, is to render ourselves indistractible in the face of interruptions: to learn the secrets of “relentless focus”—usually involving meditation, web-blocking apps, expensive noise-canceling headphones, and more meditation—so as to win the attentional struggle once and for all. But this is a... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Perhaps that is why so many of us have half-done tasks on our to-do lists and half-read books on our bedside tables, scroll through Instagram while simultaneously semi-watching Netflix, and swipe between apps and tabs endlessly, from when we first open our eyes until we finally fall asleep. One uncomfortable explanation for why so many aspects of
... See moreCasey Cep • What Monks Can Teach Us About Paying Attention
“Attention isn’t free. It’s the most valuable thing you spend.”
Attention Required! | Cloudflare
Attention along with time → the most valuable thing you would spend
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... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Clarity isn’t about knowing what you want to do with your life, it’s about knowing what you want to do this week.
You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to know your next step.”
You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to know your next step.”
James Clear • 3-2-1: How to be great, the power of cold emails, and the dangers of working late
Clarity
Good writing is meditative writing. It’s a polished and cohesive train of thought, devoid of superfluous babble. If intrusive thoughts make their way into your writing and you neglect to edit them out, your work will suffer. Quality writing does not arise from a stream of consciousness or absent-mindedness. It’s a practice of meditating on a... See more
Jen Hitze • Attention, Distraction, and Your Responsibility
Writing is meditative
Chamath on the importance of slow compounding:
“The faster you build it, that is the half life: it will get destroyed in the same amount of time.”
Things tend to come and go, tip to one side and then the other, tide out and back in, grow and then rot, get created and destroyed, at the same speed.