One well-cultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth 100 shallow faculties. The first law of success in this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, is concentration - to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. William Matthews

• focus
• talent
• ability

The great man presides over all his states of consciousness with obstinate rigor. Leonardo da Vinci

• focus

Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• focus

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. Robert Louis Stevenson

• focus

No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. Harry Fosdick

• discipline
• focus

If you get yourself too engrossed in things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you do have control. John Wooden

• focus

The man who chases two rabbits catches neither. Confucius

• focus

When you work on your most important tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called "flow." Almost everyone has experienced this at some time. Really successful people are those who get themselves into this state far more often than average. Brian Tracy

• work
• focus

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it. Ralph Waldo Emerson

• focus
• duty
• fear
• work

Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you're really going to excel in it. Charlie Munger

• enthusiasm
• focus

What it comes down to is that success demands singleness of purpose. Some call it mental toughness; I think it is singleness of purpose and, once you have agreed upon the price that you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to forget that price. Vince Lombardi

• focus
• success

We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important. Steve Jobs

• focus

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician. I should like to be, also, something of a man. Theodore Parker

• focus
• occupation

All of us are apprenticed to the same teacher that the religious institutions originally worked with: reality. Reality-insight says…master the twenty-four hours. Do it well, without self-pity. It is as hard to get the children herded into the car pool and down the road to the bus as it is to chant sutras in the Buddha-hall on a cold morning. One move is not better than the other, each can be quite boring, and they both have the virtuous quality of repetition. Repetition and ritual and their good results come in many forms. Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, checking the dipstick—don't let yourself think these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape from so that we may do our "practice" which will put us on a "path"—it is our path. Gary Snyder

• mind
• attention
• focus

A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner. Seth Godin

• persistence
• focus

The world offers so many alternatives that you need a quick filter to eliminate some options and pay attention to others. Whatever your plan, focus is always important. Scott Adams

• focus

This is the source.

In a world of distraction, single-tasking is a superpower. Timothy Ferriss

• focus

It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times. When a difficult or worrying decision has to be reached, as soon as all the data are available, give the matter your best thought and make your decision; having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile. Bertrand Russell

• focus
• decisiveness