"There are times—not just in emergencies—when consciously choosing not to pay attention to real information serves a useful purpose. An athlete can be successful competing, for example, only when she focuses her attention fully on the task at hand. Doing so may require temporarily shutting out genuine worries about her family, or a nagging pain in her knee, or even a lack of confidence in her skills. The same capacity to set aside potential distractions is necessary to be successful in our own work lives. Setting aside our anxieties and preoccupations is healthy when it represents a choice rather than a compulsion, a means of more fully engaging in the task at hand rather than an unconscious strategy to avoid discomfort. Selective inattention doesn’t necessarily mean denying or avoiding troubling issues. Instead, it may be a strategy for putting them on hold in order to deal with them at a more appropriate time."
Jim Loehr - The Power of Full Engagement
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