Wahrnehmen und Erinnern:

"Vielfach wird etwas nur darum nicht behalten, weil es schlecht oder ganz ungenügend wahrgenommen wurde. Man sagt oft, man habe etwas 'vergessen', wo man es überhaupt nicht beachtet hat."

Richard Müller-Freienfels

[See also: Remembering Names]

The Reader:

"Who is this elusive creature, the reader? The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds—a person assailed by many forces competing for attention. At one time those forces were relatively few: newspapers, magazines, radio, spouse, children, pets. Today they also include a "home entertainment center" (television, VCR, tapes, CDs), e-mail, the Internet, the cellular phone, the fax machine, a fitness program, a pool, a lawn, and that most potent of competitors, sleep."

William Zinsser

"I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought would interest me - some scientific quest, perhaps. What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field."

William Zinsser

Lesestoff:

Eine eigenwillige Wahl der Lektüre treffen wir schließlich, wenn wir uns dasjenige zur Lektüre wählen, was uns tatsächlich anspricht.

Bei manchen Büchern ist man sehr dankbar, dass sie geschrieben worden sind.

On Writing:

"[N]obody will write well unless he gets into his ear and into his metabolism a sense of how the language works and what it can be made to do."

William Zinsser

Der Genius:

An sich ist der Gedanke ja nett, dass sich im Menschen ein Genius findet, der ihm des öfteren zuraunt, dass diese oder jene Information besonders interessant, diese oder jene Musik besonders schön, dieses oder jenes Objekt besonders beachtenswert, diese oder jene Handlung besonders sinnvoll, dieser oder jener Mensch besonders liebenswert, diese oder jene Handlung besonders abscheulich sei.

Werterkenntnis bzw. eine Bewusstheit persönlicher Werte erlangen wir, wenn wir in uns hineinlauschen, um herauszufinden, was wir als besonders gut, schön, interessant oder liebenswert empfinden.

What-If:

>Far more than a "just say no" skill, self-control also gives us the gift of "what-if," an inner life that offers us the chance to mentally test out the future without suffering "real world consequences for one's mistakes," notes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) researcher Russell Barkley. In other words, self-control is the essence of looking-literally and cognitively-before you leap.<

Distracted, Maggie Jackson

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>The renowned ADHD researcher Russell Barkley argues that the capacity for executive function and self-control may have evolved in humans from two crucial social needs-exchanging goods and services with those outside the family group and learning through imitation. Such achievements essentially involve forms of waiting and remembering, in other words, the "mental spreadsheet" skills governed by the executive attention network and lacking to varying degrees in people with attention deficit disorders. In periods of alternating plenty and famine, it would behoove lucky hunters or farmers to share extra supplies in exchange for later shares in another's bounty. Similarly, our ability to sustain the memory of a skill, such as toolmaking, over time and distance and then replicate the behavior for one's own purposes, is a crucial and uniquely human capacity. Those with ADHD, however, suffer from forgetfulness and impulsivity, traits that impair their ability to shape the course of their lives. "The child with ADHD will be more under the control of external events than of mental representations about time and the future, under the influence of others rather than acting to control the self, pursuing immediate gratification over deferred gratification and under the influence of the temporal now more than of the probable social futures that lie ahead," asserts Barkley, concluding that ADHD is a disorder of "attention to the future and what one needs to do to prepare for its arrival." It is, he says, a "disorder of time."<