Your attention is your most valuable resource. Choose carefully how, where and when you will allocate it.
Too often, we let ourselves get pulled in a thousand different directions, switching constantly between tasks and modes of thinking. The cognitive costs of this context switching are significant, and it can take a while to fully regain your focus after a distraction. Each time you get interrupted and divert your attention, it chips away at your ability to do deep, focused work.
We complain that we never have any free time yet we seek distraction…the reason that we seek distraction is that working on stuff that we care about is often scary. It brings us into contact with all the ways in which we’re limited.
Farnam Street, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed
To produce your highest quality research and writing, you need long, unbroken stretches of time to think deeply, without interruptions diluting your focus. Protecting these periods for your most important intellectual work should be the top priority in your schedule. Attention is a resource you need to increase if you want to do your most important work.
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