The Art of Focus - NYTimes.com - 1 views
www.nytimes.com/...brooks-the-art-of-focus.html
focus mindfulness children childhood appeasement self-control
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in order to pursue their intellectual adventures, children need a secure social base:
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The way to discover a terrifying longing is to liberate yourself from the self-censoring labels you began to tell yourself over the course of your mis-education. These formulas are stultifying
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The lesson from childhood, then, is that if you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say “no” to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say “yes” to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.
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Don’t structure your encounters with them the way people do today, through brainstorming sessions (those don’t work) or through conferences with projection screen
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Focus on the external objects of fascination, not on who you think you are. Find people with overlapping obsessions.
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this creates a space internally into which one can be absorbed. In order to be absorbed one has to feel sufficiently safe, as though there is some shield, or somebody guarding
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Instead look at the way children learn in groups. They make discoveries alone, but bring their treasures to the group. Then the group crowds around and hashes it out. In conversation, conflict, confusion and uncertainty can be metabolized and digested through somebody else.
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66 percent of workers aren’t able to focus on one thing at a time. Seventy percent of employees don’t have regular time for creative or strategic thinking while at work.
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I wonder if we might be able to copy some of the techniques used by the creatures who are phenomenally good at learning things: children.