The Focused Life

Hi again. I'm taking a break from my break to bring you this news.
One of the most popular articles in the NY Times today is a science piece called "Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration," which is largely about a new book called Rapt. It's great to see that people are interested in concentration!

Here are a few excepts - notice how much they sound like Buddhism:

"The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the psychologist William James: 'My experience is what I agree to attend to.' You can lead a miserable life by obsessing on problems. You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask and answer every e-mail message instantly.
Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Ms. Gallagher calls the focused life.

...

'People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,' she said. 'Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.'
During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind James’s mantra as well as a line from Milton: 'The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.'"