Focus At Work Quotes & Sayings

Toasted almond pancakes. Sweet soft 'okays'. Makin' me laugh more in a few weeks than I have in decades. 'Yes, Daddys' I feel in my dick. The first voicemail you left me, babe. I saved it and I listen to it once a day. If I lose focus, I see you on your back, knees high, legs wide, offering your sweet, wet pussy to me. You smile at me in bed every time you wander outta my bedroom in my shirts, my tees, or your work clothes and honest to Christ, it sets me up for the day. And no matter what shit goes down, I get through it knowin' whichever bed I climb into at night, you're in it ready to snuggle into me or give me what I wanna take. Your girl, a headache. You, never. And in a life that's been full of headaches, babe, having that, there is no price tag. You gotta get it and do it fuckin' now that there's a lotta different kinds of give and take. And you give as good as you get, baby, trust me. — Kristen Ashley

It's like, if you can't focus on a movie for 90 minutes without looking at your phone, then don't go to the movies! You've got some issues, so you should probably stay home and work on those issues, and not distract everyone with lights, and sounds, oh my gosh, the tapping on the screens, it makes me crazy! — Ginnifer Goodwin

Extroverts tend to tackle assignments quickly. They make fast (sometimes rash) decisions, and are comfortable multitasking and risk-taking. They enjoy "the thrill of the chase" for rewards like money and status. Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration. They're relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame. — Susan Cain

Suffering related to circumstances beyond my control, suffering related to consequences of my besetting sin, and suffering caused by others who refused to see their own sin. In all these instances, the Lord has been at work, refining my focus upon personal holiness, amplifying my ministry through very humbling experiences, and reminding me repeatedly to extend grace not just to the gracious but to those who lack a grace I took too long to come to myself. — James MacDonald

The first thing you have to do is take everything with a grain of salt. You know, you've gotta just look at the goal, focus on what you gotta do and take one step at a time as a whole, as every performance being that's it, that's one objective, and let's just move forward and work on that. — Stefano Langone

Governance has been at the heart of the work of the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations and is a clear focus in its report, 'Now for the Long Term.' — Mo Ibrahim

I want to... have fun with writing again. Enjoy my work, enjoy playing with the language and characters like a sculptor plays with clay. But there's this manic focus on numbers--how many books have you written and how many have you sold and it's all push, push, push, and no time for reflection--but at heart, books are about dreaming... which is just the opposite. So I don't know...
M.M. Bennetts comment to Nancy Bilyeau as related in Nancy's tribute "M.M. Bennetts: The Closest Friend I Never Met — M.M. Bennetts

THE CODE OF A GOOD TRAINING PARTNER I will show up on time for every workout, and if I can't avoid missing one, I'll let my partner know as soon as I know. I will come to the gym to train - not to chat. When we're in the gym, we focus on our workouts, we're always ready to spot each other, and we get our work done efficiently. I will train hard to set a good example for my partner. I will push my partner to do more than she thinks she can. It's my job to motivate her to do more weight and more reps than she believes possible. I will be supportive of my partner and will compliment her on her gains. I won't let my partner get out of a workout easily. I will reject any excuses that are short of an actual emergency or commitment that can't be rescheduled, and I will insist that she comes and trains. In the case where there's a valid excuse, I'll offer to train at a different time so we can get our workout in (if at all possible). — Michael Matthews

I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I'm writing. I don't see anything else, I don't think about anything else. — Haruki Murakami

Perhaps you have been wondering about how you will win the tournaments of life. This is an important moment of your life. Just know where your goals are. Dress in the jersey of action and enter the game of vision! Work with your talents, skills, and tactics and with determination!
Don't commit any foul; don't put yourself on an offside position. Be at the right place at the right time. Attack your failures and defend your goals; look up and watch the time because the whistle may blow at any time. Don't waste the chances you get! Target the goals and with winning in focus, you will be there! — Israelmore Ayivor

...the work of his favourite painter at the time, brett whitely, seemed to offer some focus for his rebellious attitude towards moribund suburban melbourne. cave was intrigued by the intensity and diversity of the themes that the sydney-based painter included in his landscapes — Ian Johnston

...above all, let your focus be on remaining a full person. Take time for yourself. Nurture your own needs.
Please do not think of it as 'doing it all'.
Our culture celebrates the idea of women who are able to 'do it all' but does not question the premise of that praise. I have no interest in the debate about women doing it all because it is a debate that assumes that caregiving and domestic work are singularly female domains, and idea that I strongly reject. Domestic work and caregiving should be gender-neutral, and we should be asking not whether a woman can 'do it all' but how best to support parents in their dual duties at work and at home. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Mathematics is about problems, and problems must be made the focus of a student's mathematical life. Painful and creatively frustrating as it may be, students and their teachers should at all times be engaged in the process - having ideas, not having ideas, discovering patterns, making conjectures, constructing examples and counterexamples, devising arguments, and critiquing each other's work. — Paul Lockhart

I dreamed of setting it up out here in front of where I am sitting now, on the tripod that I would have ordered too, and starting, taking my time, to focus on a curling line of water, a piece of the world indifferent to the fact that there is language, that there are names to describe things, and grammar and verbs. My eye, solitary, filled with its own history, is desperate to evade, erase, forget; it is watching now, watching fiercely, like a scientist looking for a cure, deciding for some days to forget about words, to know at last that the words for colours, the blue-grey-green of the sea, the whiteness of the waves, will not work against thefullness of watching the rich chaos they yield and carry. — Colm Toibin

Our souls, that is our selves, are like a jumbled heap of pins: interests, thoughts, emotions, volitions, and feelings -- our life at work, our life of play, our domestic and social life, our life in the limelight, and our life alone -- all a heap of pins pointing in all directions and getting in one another's way. But the slow approach of a magnet sorts the jumble out in a remarkable way, confusion becomes a pattern, each pin points in the same direction, and all is achieved by the focus of magnetic power. It is superfluous to add that the only magnet which can sort out all the intricacies of the human soul is God. In short the state of perfect recollection is that most characteristic expression of the work of the Holy Ghost; the creation of order out of chaos. — Martin Thornton

As the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, I want to say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame.But if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday, when you get where you are going, you will look around and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world. Thank you for this moment. — Taylor Swift

I fucking hate Thursdays. Most of the time, people focus their hate on Mondays. I wasn't a fan of those either. Mondays are the hall monitors of the week. They tell you to stop enjoying your time off and get back to work. But at least you know where you stand with a Monday. Thursday is a fence sitter on the other hand. It's almost the weekend but not quite there. — Princess Jones

Wrestling with work-life balance is a luxury when working to support a family is a necessity rather than a choice. I think that focus is only partially a result of these tough economic times. I think it also reflects a bit of "having it all fatigue": women are worn out from feeling the pressure to excel at work, and be the perfect mom at home. — Willow Bay

I'm sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain't me. — Anthony Bourdain

For one thing, I think that there are questions which philosophers raise which, although science bears on them, are not typically the central focus of those who work in the sciences. At the same time, I don't have a view of philosophy which marks it out as different in kind from scientific work — Hilary Kornblith

Writers tend to work early in the morning, or late at night, when brains are naturally able to focus deeply on one thought. In the middle of the day, distractions are unavoidable. I wonder if anything worthwhile has ever been written in the afternoon. — Scott Adams

The whole awards thing is great. Why? Because the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, they put a focus on the industry, and that focus translates into people buying tickets to see movies or download films, legitimately download them. And it keeps us all at work. So I'm a big fan of award shows. — Liam Neeson

In order to answer the question "Where am I going?" one needs to work for self-improvement, to possess decisiveness, to have a will to win and dedication to achieve the goal at all cost — Sunday Adelaja

I know that I won't succeed at everything, every day. Some days have to be solely about my daughter. Some days I really try to be a good wife. Other days, I can take a few hours for myself and just do nothing but really focus on work. — Drew Barrymore

My particular focus at the moment is on the development of genetic algorithms and neural networks that work together to create computer architectural systems. — Frederick Lenz

At your worst point, the quickest way to move through it is to be a contribution as opposed to focusing on your problems. If you focus on your problems and keep giving them attention, they're going to grow. If you ignore them and do something else - I don't mean act like they're not here - but do something meaningful, it helps you work through it. — Iyanla Vanzant

I focus best and am most productive when I'm working in a friend's empty apartment. It's hard for me to work at home. Too easy to procrastinate online, too easy to be distracted by the state of perpetual domestic chaos that rules my home. — Elissa Schappell

You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don't let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives. Don't worry about things you can't change. You can't change the traffic in the morning. You can't fix everybody at work. You can't make all your family members serve God. But you shouldn't let that keep you from being happy. Bloom anyway and focus on the things that you can change. You can change your own attitude. You can choose to be happy right where you are. — Joel Osteen

At least three time per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active? Charney captured the essence of this with less-abstract wording: Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? He eliminated all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat. — Tim Ferriss

highly effective people invest little energy on their existing problem situations. Instead, they focus attention and energy on their desired outcomes or on what they want instead of these problems . . . A key to high performance across all these research contexts has been the ability to develop, articulate and stay focused on a compelling outcome. To note the difference between problems and possibilities, Penna and Phillips invite the following exercise. Think of a moderately serious problem at work or in your home. Pose and answer these questions: Why do you have this problem? What caused it? Who is to blame for it? What obstacles are there to solving it? Now take the same situation and answer these questions: What do you want instead of the problem? (Be sure to go beyond merely eliminating the problem.) What would it be like if the problem were solved? What would you see, hear and feel? Imagine the problem is solved. What has been gained? — Gil Rendle

Mr Freeman: "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag." He sticks his finger down his throat. "The next time you work on your trees, don't think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or pain- whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat, or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling.
When people don't express themselves, they die on piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside- walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know. — Laurie Halse Anderson

No one but another painter could know the delicacy required to balance the complexities, to keep reality at bay in order to remain in the innermost center of his work. — Susan Vreeland

Just as compassion is the wish that all sentient beings be free of suffering, loving-kindness is the wish that all may enjoy happiness. As with compassion, when cultivating loving-kindness it is important to start by taking a specific individual as a focus of our meditation, and we then extend the scope of our concern further and further, to eventually encompass and embrace all sentient beings. Again, we begin by taking a neutral person, a person who inspires no strong feelings in us, as our object of meditation. We then extend this meditation to individual friends and family members and, ultimately, our particular enemies.
We must use a real individual as the focus of our meditation, and then enhance our compassion and loving-kindness toward that person so that we can really experience compassion and loving-kindness toward others. We work on one person at a time. — Dalai Lama XIV

An effective breakout block is at least three-hours long and spent on things other than work. It is time scheduled away from your business during normal business hours that you will use to refresh and reinvigorate your mind, so that when you return to work, you can engage with more focus and energy. — Brian P. Moran

In terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. — Lindsay Lohan

School is the worst choice, it teach us that we can focus on a lot of stuff at first view it's like preparing to work hard as a villager use to do or somebody else with such type hard work. From other it's selfish and from last it's full of obstacles... — Deyth Banger

Dreams can come true, but there is a secret. They're realized through the magic of persistence, determination, commitment, passion, practice, focus and hard work. They happen a step at a time, manifested over years, not weeks. — Elbert Hubbard

Right now, with millions of Americans still out of work, and struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the great depression, with 40 million Americans dealing with student loans, with millions of people working full-time at minimum wage and still living in poverty, with the big banks getting bigger and the workers getting poorer, and seniors struggling to make ends meet, Republicans in Washington have decided the most important thing for them to focus on is how to deny women access to birth control. — Elizabeth Warren

I've been to acting school and I think that at the end of the day, when you just focus on the work and you're comfortable with who you are, that at some point someone's going to recognize your talent and give you an opportunity. — Viola Davis

Praying to God involves both us and God. God wants us to participate in what he is doing, and for sure one of the main ways we participate in what he is doing is by prayer. We can also participate in what he is doing by feeding the hungry and helping the poor and caring for the sick and giving of our resources to those who have little. God wants us to partner with him. So there is a paradox at work, and a mystery. On the one hand, the Bible says that apart from God we can do nothing. And yet, on the other hand, God invites us to do some things with him. This is at the heart of the mystery of prayer. God wants us to use our faith and to pray. But we can focus so much on the importance of our faith and our prayers that we forget about God and think it is our faith and our prayers that perform the miracle, rather than the God to whom we pray and in whom we have faith as we pray. — Eric Metaxas

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree, he writes. But if we look at the whole tree of life, Darwin says, we can find innumerable gradations from extremely simple eyes consisting of hardly more than a nerveless cluster of pigment cells, which are rudimentary light sensors, to the marvels of the human eye, which are more impressive pieces of work than the human telescope. — Jonathan Weiner

Sometimes I train in the middle of the night, all on my own. Can't sleep, don't want to sleep, get up, go to the gym, work. This is early for me, being here at half ten in the morning, this is really early, and I'm only here because I screwed up yesterday and kept you hanging around. Other times I'll call up my wrestling coach, or my jiu jitsu coach, or my deep-tissue guy, and want to really focus on one part of what I do. I train in all these different disciplines. — Conor McGregor

All walks should help the leader learn what is really happening and at the same time focus on helping people to maintain their dignity. This can only happen if the leaders create a safe place to have a conversation, and they show respect to the people they encounter along the way. Why would anyone openly discuss problems in their work area if he or she will be embarrassed once workplace issues are revealed, or if the walker looks as if he or she is trying to catch someone doing something wrong? — Michael Bremer

Maybe he'd never come across anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man. — Aiden Shaw

The way to Christ is first through humility, second through humility, and third through humility. If humility does not precede and accompany and follow every good work we do, if it is not before us to focus on, it it is not beside us to lean upon, if it is not behind us to fence us in, pride will wrench from our hand any good deed we do at the very moment we do it. — Saint Augustine

Taking the inventory of your current work at all levels will automatically produce greater focus, alignment, and sense of priorities. — David Allen

Here's what vampires shouldn't be: pallid detectives that drink Bloody Marys and work only at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes. What should they be? Killers, honey. Stone killers that can't get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red, white and blue, accent on the red. Those vamps got hijacked by a lot of soft-focus romance. — Stephen King

Museum Work and Museum Problems" course, the first academic program specifically designed to cultivate and train men and women to become museum directors and curators. In addition to the connoisseurship of art, the "Museum Course" taught the financial and administrative aspects of running a museum, with a focus on eliciting donations. The students met regularly with major art collectors, bankers, and America's social elite, often at elegant dinners where they were required to wear formal dress and observe the social protocol of high culture. By 1941, Sachs's students had begun to fill the leadership positions of American museums, a field they would come to dominate in the postwar years. — Robert M. Edsel

Other people do better going on to grad school and others yet are naturally inclined and do just fine without any formal training at all. Everyone is different. The only things I think are imperative are focus, determination and hard work. — Toks Olagundoye

Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. — Aiden Shaw

To make HP a great company once again, we need more than competitive costs and operational efficiency. We're in the process of assessing and refining our growth strategy, and the same concepts that were behind our operational changes will be at work here: simplicity, focus, alignment, and execution. — Bill Vaughan

You can do better than that." He loops his arms around my waist and pulls me to him.
"Where are your gloves?"
"Better than that too." He drops a kiss on my collarbone. "Good to see you, Cass. I dreamed about you, Cass ... Feel free to improvise."
"Aren't you supposed to be wearing those work gloves? When you're working? Because otherwise your poor hands won't ... "
Gah. I sound like Mom, or the school nurse.
I'm no good at this.
Luckily, Cass is good enough for both of us. "I missed you, Gwen. It's good to see you, Gwen. I dreamed about you, Gwen. Yeah, haven't gotten around to the gloves. More important things to focus on. Want me to tell you what they are? — Huntley Fitzpatrick

You aren't always going to make stuff that everybody does. The sooner that you just realize that and accept that, the better. At best, hopefully, you will like it, every time, and that might not even happen. It's the nature of your work. It's just what comes with it. So, it makes it easier to deal with anybody criticizing you or anything thinking you're wonderful when you realize that you just need to focus in this one area, which is your creative fulfillment and enjoyment. — Sharlto Copley

Increase Your Productivity We live in a demanding and distracting world. Being productive can sometimes feel like an impossible feat. Here are three ways to get more done without burning out: Keep one to-do list. Include everything you want or need to do in one place. Writing it down helps get it off your mind and leaves you free to focus on the task at hand. Do the most important thing first. Before you leave work in the evening, decide what one thing you need to accomplish the next day. Do it first thing in the morning, when you're likely to have the most energy and fewest distractions. Schedule time for non-urgent things. It's easy to get caught up in the pressing issues of the day. Block off time in your calendar to do things that would otherwise get squeezed out, like writing, thinking creatively, or building relationships. — Anonymous

As much as we wish God would transfer his focus to more external and circumstantial matters, such as restored health, mortgage payments, and career transitions, God is primarily interested in pulling off an inside job. God is certainly at work all around us, but his primary transforming work is aimed at our minds and hearts. — Ramon L. Presson

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. — Charles Duhigg

I feel like I'm a stay-at-home mom, which I was for the five years before this. She's absolutely been my focus. That's the choice I made. Desperate Housewives is perfect for me. I get to go back to work and still be able to take my daughter to school and pick her up. — Teri Hatcher

People ask me a lot about my drive. I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age. Look at the drive that people have to get sex - to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 A.M., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic — Kanye West

The RNC has made a concerted effort to work with their allies with a real focus on what we can do to equip candidates with the resources to win in 2014 and beyond. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't see someone from the RNC at our weekly coalition meeting. Keep up the good work. — Grover Norquist

I don't really listen to music when I work. I really have to focus on one thing at a time. I like a lot of quiet and peace when I'm working or when I'm thinking or when I'm reading. — Shahzia Sikander

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Work on your goals, one step at a time. Remain focused and do not stop. You will be amazed how much you can accomplish over the years. In most things in life, it is not the speed but the consistency that matters. — Roopleen

You can say the president's private life takes up so much of his time that he doesn't focus on his job, so therefore he's terrible. But in my imagination, the 23 hours of the day that we don't experience, he's very hard at work. He's quite an effective and successful president - in my narcissistic imagination. — Tony Goldwyn

There are many designers who have much greater talent as a designer than I do, but they may not have my drive, they may not work as hard, they may not have the focus, the desire ... You have to have a talent because, at the end of the day, if the pants you design don't make someone's butt look great, they're not going to buy them. — Tom Ford

You can't abuse your body and you need to work hard on your weaknesses. Everyone likes to focus on the things they are good at. But when you focus on the things you are weak at, it makes you a much better athlete. — Pat LaFontaine

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a paradox here! Kierkegaard's own indirect communication proposes that we start with the experience of those who don't believe and meet them on their own ground. His success in doing this is evidenced by the fact that, at least for some periods of the 20th century, aspects of his work became a major focus for radical thinkers of various kinds, including the non-religious and, interestingly, a significant number of Jewish thinkers (Buber, Rosenzweig, Taubes, and others). — George Pattison

yourself the following "prayer". Just for today, be at peace, Just for today, be happy, Be kind to people, Focus on your work, And be thankful. — Nathaniel

When they are in power, whether in statehouses, Congress, or the White House, Republicans are magnetically drawn to practice political overreach along with scorched-earth tactics, be it through vote suppression, the K Street Project to force lobbying firms to hire only Republicans, or outing a covert CIA agent in their own administration to settle political scores, as happened to Valerie Plame. When they are out of power they focus single-mindedly on seizing up the wheels of government to prove to the American people that government just doesn't work - at least, when the GOP is out of power. These take-no-prisoners tactics flow naturally from an embittered, Manichaean mind-set. This mentality has grave implications for the health of our constitutional system. — Anonymous

...rewilding is all about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic, and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism. We must all work together at this. It's about time we focus on the good side of human and animal nature. ... nature offers many lessons for kinder society. Blood shouldn't sell. — Marc Bekoff

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don't mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus? I've been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to write Die Empty. Through my work I've encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point "settled in" or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, — Todd Henry

God and Goddess, I greet you at the start of another day and ask that you send me the best day possible. Help me to feel my best so I might do my best for myself and for others. Send me the strength and energy to do the things I need to do, and the focus and creativity to do them well. Help me to let go of all those things that no longer work for my benefit so I might move in the direction of perfect health and perfect balance. Help the world move in a better direction, and watch over me and those I love. Please send me prosperity and healing, patience and wisdom, serenity and faith. ... So mote it be. — Deborah Blake

If you disconnect yourself from principles you believe must work for others, then you create a leadership brand that is not genuine and that will lead you to say one thing and practice another. This is the reason why knowledge and mastery issues covered at a personal level, must be revisited with a leadership focus. — Archibald Marwizi

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind ... Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy.
[ ... ]
I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode. — Terri Cheney

Finally, I applied to one of my roommates, more sagacious than the rest, for advice. Dave, I said. I'm broke and without prospects. I've blown my GI Bill on flying lessons. I can't hide out here in college much longer. What should I do?

Well, he said, at this crucial juncture you need to coldly appraise yourself. "I've only known you these few short years, but it strikes me you wouldn't be good for anything important; I'd have to say you're lazy, self-absorbed, glib and facetious, always ready to mock the suggestions of others, but never offering anything positive of your own. Intellectually shallow, no tap root anywhere, spiritually neutered, without feeling or compassion, unsteady of focus, lacking the fortitude for the long pull, with no fixed belief in anything."

I shook his hand and thanked him. The acuity of his analysis made my path clear. My only hope lay in daily journalism. — Phil Garlington

Being Chinese immigrants in the United States, it was important for my parents to maintain ties that went back a long time. They led by example. My dad didn't bring his work pressures home. We were always aware of them and would go as kids to his office and run around. But when he came home, he was able to leave things behind, at least from our perspective, and focus on us. — Chien Chung Pei

Your true passions will rise you up before the sun, to pick you up where you left off long after the moon went to bed. When we respond to the beckon of these kinds of intrinsic dreams they will make exciting the most tedious of work, they will lighten the heaviest of burdens, and will enable us to focus with laser precision on whatever array of tasks may be at hand for their progress. — Connie Kerbs

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious. — Muriel Spark

Work diligently. Work hard. Focus. Perform as if you are at the Olympics. One day, unexpectedly, it will start paying off. — Joan Marques

Always have a plan B and C, because if it doesn't work out there are other things you can focus on. It's important to have a balance to your life, regardless of what you're doing. I've been playing at this level for a long time, but I've got interests outside of rugby, like my family and my children. They keep me sane. — Filo Tiatia

I need something dramatic.I thought we would start with something theatrical, something that will make an impact on the city,something to focus their attention."
Nereus considered for a moment and then he smiled, revealing his hideous teeth. "I do have the Lotan."
Machiavelli and Billy looked at him blankly.
"The Lotan," Nereus said.
The two immortals shook their heads. "I have no idea what that is," Machiavelli admitted.
"Doesn't sound scary to me," Billy said.
"It's a seven-headed sea dragon."
Machiavelli nodded. "That might work."
"It'll certainly get their attention," Billy muttered. — Michael Scott

There are a lot of things and in order to be at the top and maintain your focus you have to have something that motivates you. For me, it was what I perceived as a lack of respect from the boxing world as well as the media, which made me want to work so hard and be great. — Marvin Hagler

I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this. — Ken Wilber

I can handle a lot of work. I've always been able to. I'm a very focused individual. I come to my studio at about 7:30 in the morning and exit almost 5:00 P.M. In that time, those eight or nine hours, it's kind of laser focus on whatever I'm working on. There aren't really any distractions or anything. — Jeff Lemire

Though he never articulated it, I know Tiger believed in the idea of the Package. It went along with the sense of destiny his father had passed to him - that he was put on this earth to do something extraordinary with his special qualities, to "let the legend grow."
But those qualities, foremost among them an extraordinary ability to focus and stay calm under pressure, also included selfishness, obsessiveness, stubbornness, coldness, ruthlessness, pettiness, and cheapness.
When they were all at work in the competitive arena, they helped him win. And winning gave him permission to remain a flawed and in some ways immature person. — Hank Haney

In baseball you have individual responsibility, and if you fail it, you get an error. But at the same time, your focus is on the common goal of the team to win. This is part of what resonates with people about baseball. This is how they would like society to work. — Jed S. Rakoff

As women politicians, we talk about the most difficult themes of state security, foreign relations and development models, then ask, 'How do you make it work with your husband?' The interesting thing is that these women - most of them - don't lose the perspective that the focus is not the position but the job at hand. — Michelle Bachelet

"Dukes of Hazzard" or something you could, you know, that your work is going to be made up of that - episodic television shows. Not that I got many of them, but that was where I, but actually oddly enough though, they were teaching camera terminology at the same time in this acting class so I actually was able to understand what rack focus and whip pan and all that stuff meant. — Quentin Tarantino

Don't reinvent the wheel. Focus on winning one customer at a time. Be honest and sincere. Do what's right. There's nothing magical about this. That's been my guiding principle. To make it work, you have to live it every day. Make it your mindset. — Robert Spector

Too often we focus on the greater shcemes in life, like making money, or getting promoted at work, or starting a new relationship - and yea, of course, those things matter - but sometimes it's the tiny, gradual, stepping-stone victories that bring real joy and signify the positive changes in our life. — Kunal Nayyar

As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me. — Thomas A. Edison

Acedia is not a relic of the fourth century or a hang-up of some weird Christian monks, but a force we ignore at our peril. Whenever we focus on the foibles of celebrities to the detriment of learning more about the real world- the emergence of fundamentalist religious and nationalist movements, the economic factors endangering our reefs and rain forests, the social and ecological damage caused by factory farming - acedia is at work. Wherever we run to escape it, acedia is there, propelling us to 'the next best thing,' another paradise to revel in and wantonly destroy. It also sends us backward, prettying the past with the gloss of nostalgia. Acedia has come so far with us that it easily attached to our hectic and overburdened schedules. We appear to be anything but slothful, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more. — Kathleen Norris

There's a certain pressure you put on yourself to use the comics page to full advantage that can focus your mind to a pinpoint, and when the juices are flowing, that's incredibly exciting. When you've managed to fit a complex set of actions or a complicated emotional passage into a single page there's the sense of satisfaction that I suspect a sculptor gets from chipping away at a piece of stone and ending up with a fully-realized work of art. — James Vance

There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of abstract expressionism - as though the man and the work were the same - that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction. — Robert Rauschenberg

The worst period I ever went through at work," a friend confides, "was when the company was restructuring and people were being 'disappeared' daily, followed by lying memos that they were leaving 'for personal reasons.' No one could focus while that fear was in the air. No real work got done." Small wonder. The greater the anxiety we feel, the more impaired is the brain's cognitive efficiency. In this zone of mental misery, distracting thoughts hijack our attention and squeeze our cognitive resources. Because high anxiety shrinks the space available to our attention, it undermines our very capacity to take in new information, let alone generate fresh ideas. Near-panic is the enemy of learning and creativity. — Daniel Goleman

By giving yourself less time, you'll work faster, concentrate more intensely, and perform at peak efficiency. — Mani S. Sivasubramanian

I find that getting something on the screen as soon as possible really helps focus the problem for me. It helps me decide what to work on next. Because if you're just looking at that big to-do list it's like, eh, I don't know which one I should do - does it matter which one I do? But if there's something you can actually look at, even if it's just the debug output of your mailbox parser, it's like, OK, there! — Jamie Zawinski

And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done. — Eugen Herrigel

Work outside of school hours was a necessity at an early age, and with such time as I had I turned toward interests of my own devising, making things, experimenting, and planning for the future. I had read of Thomas Alva Edison and other successful inventors, and the idea of making an invention appealed to me as one of the few available means to accomplish a change in one's economic status, while at the same time bringing to focus my interest in technical things and making it possible to make a contribution to society as well. — Chester Carlson

We're not concerned with the temporal and transient. Our success isn't measured in hours, or even centuries. Our focus is fixed on eternity. The gospel is hard to believe, and the people who bring it to the world are nobodies. The plan is still the same for all who are God's clay pots. To summarize, here is Paul's humble, five-point strategy: We will not lose heart. We will not alter the message. We will not manipulate the results, because we understand that a profound spiritual reality is at work in those who do not believe. We will not expect popularity, and therefore, we will not be disappointed. And we will not be concerned with visible and earthly success but devote our efforts toward that which is unseen and eternal. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

I am no longer interested in seeing and knowing everything all at once in my work. Technically I select the area of focus and if it's possible I try to make an amalgamation of every shape and color in the picture so that it acquires a circular movement: from representation to abstraction, from life to death, and vice-versa. — Olivo Barbieri