[Ailist] Lost in the Crowd - NYTimes.com (power of attention)

[Stephanie West Allen]

Hi, Bruce. I have not read OUTLIERS and also have it on order. I'm  
looking forward to the reading. What I liked about the Brooks column  
was what he said about attention. More about attention:

... [William] James believed that the transition from youthful  
distraction to mature attention was in large part the result of  
personal mastery and discipline—and so was illustrative of character.  
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over  
and over again,” he wrote, “is the very root of judgment, character,  
and will.”

Rest here:

http://westallen.typepad.com/idealawg/2008/12/many-lawyers-pride- 
themselves-on-their-multitasking-prowess-isnt-the-value-of- 
multitasking-a-myth.html

Or just go to the latest post at http://www.idealawg.net

What are your thoughts about attention?

Stephanie

On Dec 16, 2008, at 6:12 PM, Bruce Elkin wrote:

>> Excerpt from David Brooks column:
>>
>> Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously
>> focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as
>> diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks
>> that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power
>> to rewire their brains.
>>
>> Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can
>> do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose
>> from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This
>> individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the
>> ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If
>> forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-
>> control than rich without it.
>>
>>
>> Rest here:
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16brooks.html?_r=1
>>
>> Stephanie
>
> Hi Stephanie, all…
> Interesting article, but there’s a discrepancy between what Brooks  
> says Gladwell says and what Gladwell says when I’ve seen him on TV  
> and youtube.
>
>