robertogreco + hanifkureishi 2
Taming the Wandering Mind | The Moral Sciences Club | Big Think
february 2012 by robertogreco
"Reconciling oneself to the fact that projects "take the time they take" can be a necessary step in finishing projects at all. My mind is not simply prone to distraction, it is prone to rebellion. The wrong kind of pressure makes it resist its own commands, sends it spinning out of its own control. Bearing down, reining in, whipping harder doesn't get "me" back on track so much as set me against myself in a showdown I always lose winning. Better to just glide on the thermal of whim until the destination once again comes into sight and a smooth approach becomes finally possible.
Not to say that one can drift one's way to success. Aims must be fixed and kept in mind, even if one knows it's worse than useless to charge right at them. One must develop a sense of one's attention as one develops a sense of a powerful but skittish horse, calmly riding wide of known dangers…
We need to reconcile ourselves to our own temperaments, stop trying to fight or drug ourselves into submission…"
medicine
drugs
howwework
howwewrite
allsorts
productivity
focus
willpower
self-mastery
self-improvement
self-accommodation
gtd
effort
adhd
2012
hanifkureishi
attention
distraction
willwilkinson
from delicious
Not to say that one can drift one's way to success. Aims must be fixed and kept in mind, even if one knows it's worse than useless to charge right at them. One must develop a sense of one's attention as one develops a sense of a powerful but skittish horse, calmly riding wide of known dangers…
We need to reconcile ourselves to our own temperaments, stop trying to fight or drug ourselves into submission…"
february 2012 by robertogreco
The Art of Distraction - NYTimes.com
february 2012 by robertogreco
"Biological determinism is one of psychology’s ugliest evasions, removing the poetic human from any issue."
"As we as a society become desperate financially, and more regulated and conformist, our ideals of competence become more misleading and cruel, making people feel like losers. There might be more to our distractions than we realized we knew. We might need to be irresponsible. But to follow a distraction requires independence and disobedience; there will be anxiety in not completing something, in looking away, or in not looking where others prefer you to. This may be why most art is either collaborative — the cinema, pop, theater, opera — or is made by individual artists supporting one another in various forms of loose arrangement, where people might find the solidarity and backing they need."
anxiety
conformism
confomity
medication
medicine
ritalin
psychology
frustration
boredom
humiliation
diversity
human
labels
labeling
education
schools
attention
winners
losers
winnersandlosers
stigma
society
2012
hanifkureishi
dyslexia
adhd
learning
distraction
"As we as a society become desperate financially, and more regulated and conformist, our ideals of competence become more misleading and cruel, making people feel like losers. There might be more to our distractions than we realized we knew. We might need to be irresponsible. But to follow a distraction requires independence and disobedience; there will be anxiety in not completing something, in looking away, or in not looking where others prefer you to. This may be why most art is either collaborative — the cinema, pop, theater, opera — or is made by individual artists supporting one another in various forms of loose arrangement, where people might find the solidarity and backing they need."
february 2012 by robertogreco
related tags
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