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Kes: Blind readers should note that I have just added this book to the Bookshare list of books to be validated.
In the fall of 2010, two Harvard psychologists announced the results of a study in which they used an iPhone app to measure people's happiness at that moment http://www.trackyourhappiness.org
and what they found indicates that when people's minds wander, they tend to dwell on unhappy thoughts (for more about this study, go to
"Wandering Mind Not a Happy Mind" http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/ ).
This is perhaps merely the latest evidence that people are happiest when they are either living in the moment or fully immersed in some activity. The connection between attention and happiness is one of the many subjects explored in a book which I read recently,
_Rapt: Atention and theFocused Life_ by Winifred Gallagher (Penguin, 2009).
Beginning with an epigram from writer-psychologist William James-- "My experience is what I agree to attend to"--this book offers a fascinating and wide-ranging introrduction to attention, including how it affects productivity, creativity, and even our health. It includes information from an incredible number of books and studies, and the information is typically both recent and robust. The only disappointing chapter was the one on ADD, as it seemed to provide little actual information but instead substituted it with some highly suspect gender-based theory (girls with ADD are given only a passing mention).
The writing style of this book makes it very accessible to the general reader, so if you are looking for an introduction to the subject of attention and how it influences our daily lives, this book is a good choice.
In the fall of 2010, two Harvard psychologists announced the results of a study in which they used an iPhone app to measure people's happiness at that moment http://www.trackyourhappiness.org
and what they found indicates that when people's minds wander, they tend to dwell on unhappy thoughts (for more about this study, go to
"Wandering Mind Not a Happy Mind" http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/ ).
This is perhaps merely the latest evidence that people are happiest when they are either living in the moment or fully immersed in some activity. The connection between attention and happiness is one of the many subjects explored in a book which I read recently,
_Rapt: Atention and theFocused Life_ by Winifred Gallagher (Penguin, 2009).
Beginning with an epigram from writer-psychologist William James-- "My experience is what I agree to attend to"--this book offers a fascinating and wide-ranging introrduction to attention, including how it affects productivity, creativity, and even our health. It includes information from an incredible number of books and studies, and the information is typically both recent and robust. The only disappointing chapter was the one on ADD, as it seemed to provide little actual information but instead substituted it with some highly suspect gender-based theory (girls with ADD are given only a passing mention).
The writing style of this book makes it very accessible to the general reader, so if you are looking for an introduction to the subject of attention and how it influences our daily lives, this book is a good choice.
