Maura Thomas > Quotes

“We seem to have forgotten we purchase our technology for our convenience, not so anyone in the world has the convenience of interrupting us at any time!”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Remember, managing your attention by controlling your technology, your environment, your habits, and your thoughts will get easier the more you practice these behaviors”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“For example, if you’ve spent the last sixty minutes reading reports, using your break to read the news or your Facebook feed isn’t restorative.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Don’t forget resting. If you check your phone during the night, then your sleep suffers.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“In reality, employees with good attention management and workflow management skills can work productively anywhere, and those employees who lack those skills will underperform no matter where they work.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Here’s the bottom line: the job of the internet is to keep you on the internet. We’re stuck in a productivity paradox: we need these tools to do our jobs, but the job of these tools is to keep us using the tools, at the expense of doing our jobs…or anything else!”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management Extended Excerpt: Breaking the Time Management Myth for Unrivaled Productivity

“our own restless minds worrying about other things we need to be doing.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management Extended Excerpt: Breaking the Time Management Myth for Unrivaled Productivity

“do you think you’ll advance your career and get evaluated more favorably for answering all of your emails”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Spend time every week completely free from technology.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Do some physical activity every day, especially before times when you really need to focus.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“We’re hung up on the old-fashioned idea of managing time, but to live the lives we really want to live, what we actually need to master is managing our attention.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management Extended Excerpt: Breaking the Time Management Myth for Unrivaled Productivity

“To reduce the temptation of treats like bagels at the morning meeting, keep a stockpile of healthy snacks in your desk”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“But these behaviors don’t help. In fact, they actually undermine our ability to live a life of choice—rather than one of reaction and distraction—and to do what matters most to us—both personally and professionally. When you change what you’re doing in response to every incoming distraction, you never get the quiet, uninterrupted time you need to get in “flow”—that immersive, highly focused state where you both do your best work and feel most satisfied by your work. Furthermore, if part of your attention is always lured away by these distractions, your mind never gets the calm, restful time it needs to recharge. As a result, you get cranky, impatient, and scattered, and your judgment, learning, creativity, and problem-solving abilities suffer.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management Extended Excerpt: Breaking the Time Management Myth for Unrivaled Productivity

“You can’t purchase a product or service you’ve never heard of, so before a company can get your business, they must first get your attention.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management Extended Excerpt: Breaking the Time Management Myth for Unrivaled Productivity

“Give yourself some quick pockets of quiet time.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity. —Tom Peters”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management Extended Excerpt: Breaking the Time Management Myth for Unrivaled Productivity

“Even just two- to five-minute guided meditations can help. The more you meditate, the more you become aware”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“a series of consecutive tasks (one at a time!) for twenty-five to ninety minutes, and then take a break for five to seventeen minutes.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“You set aside email-free time for focused work, and you keep your phone out of sight at home so you’re not constantly tempted to check it.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“we can only be proactive when we’re not being reactive”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Psychologist and philosopher William James was onto the ideas behind attention management back in the nineteenth century: “[Attention] is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.”3 The key word there is “one.” You can’t give your attention simultaneously to all of the things that demand it. Attention management allows you to be more proactive than reactive. It means you decide where your attention goes instead of letting outside demands decide for you.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“When you change what you’re doing in response to every incoming distraction, you never get the quiet, uninterrupted time you need to get in “flow”—that immersive, highly focused state where you both do your best work and feel most satisfied by your work.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“At first, even ten minutes may seem like an eternity, but over time, it will become much more comfortable, and you can increase the stretch of time to fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes and more.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“When you’re under pressure yourself, you may second-guess your attention management habits.”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“In fact, the mere act of becoming more aware of your distractions will help you to get better at attention management”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day

“Do you ever feel like you serve your devices instead of the other way around? We seem to have forgotten we purchase our technology for our convenience,”
― Maura Thomas, Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity - Every Day