No Attention Span Quotes & Sayings

This is the great luxury of not working: the moment you read a book that has nothing to do with work, you know you're really relaxed. And I have a sh*t attention span. I can't concentrate for more than five minutes. — Eddie Redmayne

Imagine what our culture would be like if Americans sold ideas, words, and books with the same creativity we use to sell designer jeans, shampoo, and rock stars. Why, we might end up with people whos attention span for the printed word is longer than the time it takes to read a T-shirt. — Jim Trelease

He said ... Everyone's attention span is so short. They'll be mad about something new today. — Jon Ronson

Children from like 8 and even up to the college age - Spider-Man appeals to a fairly broad demographic but, like I said, a mean age probably of 12 is a good mark - they process information so quickly and it's not because of attention deficit or short attention span. — Thomas Haden Church

You don't pay attention man/that's why your money is the size of your attention span. — J Dilla

Everyone's attention span is getting shorter. As a result, everything - films, music, art - gets watered down and dumber. Every now and again, you get something great, but not often. — Kelis

In this age of micro-blogging and two second sound bites, almost no one has the attention span, or time, to read more than a few sentences. — Tim Frick

If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span? — Kevin Spacey

The whole bloody world's got a commitment problem.
It's the three-minute culture. It's a global attention-span deficit. — Helen Fielding

It is no coincidence that ours is a time afflicted by a widespread sense of attentional crisis, at least in the West - one captured by the phrase 'homo distractus,' a species of ever shorter attention span known for compulsively checking his devices. — Tim Wu

I have no attention span. I get bored so fast. — Carrie Underwood

Mysteries are powerful, Cialdini says, because they create a need for closure. "You've heard of the famous Aha! experience, right?" he says. "Well, the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience." By creating a mystery, the writer-astronomer made dust interesting. He sustained attention, not just for the span of a punch line but for the span of a twenty-page article dense with information on scientific theories and experimentation. — Chip Heath

I've got the attention span of a child. — Ricky Gervais

The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all. — Gore Vidal

Pilots are so hard because you have to introduce all these characters, you have to hook an audience, and an audience has such a smaller attention span than maybe they used to have. — Max Greenfield

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multitasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed - some mechanism or myth that encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where "the long term" is measured at least in centuries. — Stewart Brand

I'm a product of the 1970s, so I have a short attention span. You know, I grew up on cartoons and half-hour shows. So the stories that I'm interested in grab my attention very quickly, and they have to keep my attention. — Robert Kurson

The average buyer in bookshop spends 8 seconds on the front cover and 15 seconds on the back cover before deciding whether to purchase the book or not. On average, he does not get past page 18. See? The odds are stacked against us writers! — Ashwin Sanghi

On every Bright Eyes record, there's some kind of sound collage that begins it. Some of them have dialogue, some don't. I like it because it can kind of slow down the attention span a bit. It's a way to draw you in to the rest of the record. — Conor Oberst

We live in a society that is based on 30-second sound bites. We have
technology that puts all of the information of humankind at our fingertips,
but we have the attention span of a three-year-old at a carnival
midway on the Fourth of July. We throw around a lot of words like
democracy, federal, republic, nationalist, socialist, liberal, and right-wing - but
do we really know what they mean? — Ziad K. Abdelnour

There is no such thing as an attention span. There is only the quality of what you are viewing. This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them. — Jerry Seinfeld

I was pretty anti-academic, and I wasn't much of a student. I had a really short attention span and did not get a lot out of high school academically. I think college was a little the same way. — Chris Crutcher

My laziness is really profound. I'm really interested in where it comes from - it almost feels chemical. And we've all got ADD now, short attention span and all that. — Hugh Grant

My attention span is very short. — Will.i.am

Doctor Nye," Clarabelle said.
The spider-like being turned to them. "Zombies," it said, mildly surprised. "And a blue-haired girl."
"My name is Clarabelle. I'm here looking for a job... I have no medical or scientific training to speak of, and no inclination to learn, and I pick up things fairly slowly because of my short attention span..."
"Clarabelle... Clarabelle... You worked as Kenspeckle Grouse's assistant, did you not?"
"One of them. He fired all the others."
"But not you?"
"He fired me on the second day, but I kept coming in. I had nowhere else to go."
"And then you killed him."
"Yes."
"A Remnant squirmed inside you, and you killed Kenspeckle Grouse."
"Yes."
It grinned. "You're hired. — Derek Landy

It's not my fault you have the attention span of a gnat, capable of only thumbing through the crap on Facebook, instead of reading something of worth that can change your life. No, I'm not talking about Oprah's or Ellen's book either. — Dara Reidyr

Why did the two most important things in her life have to require her attention at exactly the same time? — Rachel Spangler

I sometimes get in the car [and] jump all around hunting for a sample, and then I can get really annoying if anyone's in the car with me. But if I'm actually listening to music, I have a pretty solid attention span. — Girl Talk

Dogs have such a limited lifespan to teach us about friendship and loyalty...perhaps they know we have a short span of attention. — Dan Cohen

Being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child's attention span. — Richard Louv

I've heard people say that [I have a short attention span]. I don't feel I do, because when I'm interested in something I'll stay in focus as long as it is necessary ... If you get off on something I'm not very interested in, it's very easy for me to block it out. It's easy for me to block things out. — Dan Quayle

The resource of generational history is accorded little attention our society, which seems ever more obsessed with making "new" and "better" synonymous. From my family I became aware of the importance of passing along wisdom from one generation to the next. Yet despite the increasing proliferation of digital recording and other communication technologies, we're passing on less knowledge today than our parents did through the oral tradition alone. We're drowning in photographs and videos, capturing every mundane moment of our birthdays, holidays, and vacations. Yet these can be no more than pleasant distraction, only scratching the surface of our real relationships. — Ralph Nader

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing. — Meg Wolitzer

depression lowers attention span, tolerance for frustration, and memory. Behavior is affected by lowered motivation, loss of ability to experience pleasure, and fatigue. The body is affected by headaches, stomachaches, and muscle tension. Relationships are affected by a tendency to withdraw and become isolated with loneliness. — Archibald D. Hart

One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks. — Donald Knuth

The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span. — Karl Kraus

I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span. — Charlie Munger

A short attention span makes all of your perceptions and relationships shallow and unsatisfying. — Eckhart Tolle

I would sit up on top of the woodpile playing and singing at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I would take a tobacco stake and stick it in the cracks between the boards on the front porch. A tin can on top of the tobacco stake turned it into a microphone, and the porch became my stage. I used to perform for anybody or anything I could get to watch. The younger kids left in my care would become the unwilling audience for my latest show. A two-year-old's attention span is not very long. So there I would be in the middle of my act, thinking I was really something, and my audience would start crawling away. I was so desperate to perform that on more than one occasion I sang for the chickens and the pigs and ducks. They didn't applaud much, but with the aid of a little corn, they could be counted on to hang around for a while. — Dolly Parton

Are you saying I have a short attention span?" "Not at all. I'm saying there's a fire in you that drives everything you do, that makes you need to better the world and those you love. To stand up for those you can't. It's one of the wonderful things about you. — Richelle Mead

The plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry. — Robert Fripp

Five houses?" Lothaire had sneered, cutting Trehan off. "You all live under one roof now. Mine. Because I'm the king of the castle." Then his red eyes had grown vacant, and he'd begun muttering about "Lizvetta's lingerie."
Trehan had been ... underwhelmed by the Enemy of Old's attention span. — Kresley Cole

I don't have a good attention span and can't spend long in record stores or video shops or games emporiums without getting grumpy. — Beth Ditto

Films to the degree that they glorify mindlessness and short attention span they are bad, to the degree that they encourage empathy with people not like ourselves and encourage us to think about life, they are good. — Roger Ebert

Civilization's shortening attention span is mismatched with the pace of environmental problems. — Stewart Brand

I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away. — John Buchan

Romeo had the attention span of a slice of bread.
Which is none at all.
Every time I start to explain something, it's like not only his eyes glazed over, but his entire body. At one point, I wondered if it were possible for him to be asleep with his eyes open.
And God, he smelled good. — Cambria Hebert

I try to read, but my attention span is so bad, and ever since Netflix was invented, that's all I do in my spare time, which is really bad, but it's like a chore to read for me. — Eliot Paulina Sumner

I have an attention span that's as long as it has to be. — Donald Trump

I used to play video games all the time, but now I don't because I don't have an attention span. — King Tuff

The imaginary child implied by the toys on exhibit in Hong Kong was impossible to reconcile with my actual child. I didn't think I'd like to meet the imaginary child they implied. That child was mad with contradictions. He was a machine-gun-toting, Chopin-playing psychopath with a sugar high and a short attention span. — Donovan Hohn

I bought a guitar CD-ROM because we had a new computer, but I had no attention span for that. I spent about three hours on it desperate to be brilliant. Eventually, I got some proper lessons. — James Bay