Why Universities Should Be More Like Monasteries
Molly Worthen at the New York Times
Focus
The Death of Literature?
If no one can focus long enough to read it, no one is going to pay for it. If no one pays for it, no one can write it. That, I believe, is the steady theme of this lovely literary essay that doesn't merely lament the state of
The Picture Book: Foe of the Left Hemisphere?
A Medieval Christmas
Dollar-for-word, this book is a terrible deal. It's 28 pages long and, except for a short appendix, every word is merely a paste job from the 2003 Revised Standard Edition (Catholic Edition) of the Bible.
And the book costs $44!
These publishers oughtta be locked
Medieval Monasticism’s Timeless Lessons on Concentration
The modern world is steeped in distraction. Technological advancements in the age of information have provided an abundance of distractor stimuli and in parallel distorted the divisions between the offline and virtual world. The smartphone has facilitated cyberspace’s expansion into all realms we inhabit, diminishing boundaries and rendering us
Flow
A few writers and thinkers seem to have caught onto the same thing. I believe I could find a host of other thinkers, such as William James and Victor Frankl, who would agree with them:
"When one is busy and absorbed in one's work, the very absorption
Preliminary Notes Re: Focus
I will be exploring the difference between the left hemisphere's method of focus and the right hemisphere's. For now, I only note that a cottage industry has risen around focus, concentration, meditation, and the desire to rid ourselves of distractions. It's a good thing,
Flannery O'Connor on Her Writing Habits
I'm a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and