How to Stay Focused and Beat Distraction - Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal 0:00 There's something about the human condition that makes us distractible, that makes us constantly look for other things. And that probably served us on the plains of the Serengeti 200,000 years ago when, you know, you were constantly looking out for danger, you're looking out for opportunity. But, y- you know, today, that- that's not necessarily a skill that we want to run rampant. We need to learn how to control it. If you can remove external triggers from your environment, so for example, if people are trying to stop a substance abuse, sure, abstinence might be able to work for you. But how do you remove the triggers for technology? There's nothing wrong with external triggers. If an external trigger tells you, "Hey, it's time for that meeting. It's time to go exercise. It's time for that thing you said you were gonna do-"

Ali Abdaal 0:36 Yeah

Nir Eyal 0:36 ... "that's in your calendar," wonderful. It's serving you. But if it's an external trigger that, uh, you get this notification while I was with my daughter, now it's not serving me. I was serving the notification. [keyboard clacking]

Ali Abdaal 0:45 Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about LifeNotes. Now, LifeNotes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description. [keyboard clacking] Nir Eyal, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?

Nir Eyal 1:15 I'm doing great. It's so great to be with you.

Ali Abdaal 1:17 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:17 We've been talking about this for a while now.

Ali Abdaal 1:18 We have.

Nir Eyal 1:19 And, uh-

Ali Abdaal 1:19 Thank you so much for coming to London-

Nir Eyal 1:20 Oh, my pleasure

Ali Abdaal 1:21 ... and for experiencing the vibe-

Nir Eyal 1:22 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:22 ... on this lovely summer's day. All right, so what does it mean to be indistractable?

Nir Eyal 1:26 Being indistractable means that you are as honest with yourself as you are with others. Meaning one of the worst things you can be called in life is a liar, right? That is a horrible put down about your character. And so we never wanna be a liar. That's a, that's, that would be a horrible thing for, for someone to call us, and yet we lie to ourselves every day. We say we're gonna exercise, but we don't. We say we're gonna eat right, but we skip. We say we're gonna be fully present with our loved ones, but we're not really. We say we're gonna work on that big project. We're not gonna, we're not going to procrastinate, but somehow we delay and we delay. So we constantly lie to ourselves, and what that means is that we look back on our lives and we are full of regret. We said, "We should have done that thing. We should have started the business. We should have written the book. We should have started the podcast. We should have started YouTubing," whatever the case might be, but we didn't do it. We got distracted. So being indistractable is about doing what you say you're going to do.

Ali Abdaal 2:16 So what prompted you to write the book Indistractable?

Nir Eyal 2:19 Okay, so for me, um, there was one inciting incident for me that really kind of started me down this path where I had to reassess my relationship with distraction. I was with my daughter one afternoon and, um, we just had some daddy-daughter time planned, and we had this book of activities that dads and daughters could do together. You know, make a paper airplane throwing contest.

Ali Abdaal 2:40 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 2:40 Do a Sudoku puzzle. But one of the activities in this book was to ask each other this question. The question was, "If you could have any superpower,

Nir Eyal 2:48 what superpower would you want?" And I remember that question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter said because in that moment, for whatever reason, I just thought it was a good time. "Let me just check this one thing, honey." And by the time I looked up from my phone, she got the cue that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was, and she left the room to go play with some toy outside, and I knew I blew it. And so that's when I realized that I had to reassess my relationship with distraction because if I'm honest with you, it wasn't just with my daughter. It would happen when I would say I was going to do one thing. I was gonna exercise, I was gonna work on a big project, and yet one thing or another came up and I didn't do what I said I was going to do. And so that's when I decided that if I could have any superpower, it would be the power to become indistractable. Simply to follow through on the things I know I want to do, right? And I don't need convincing. I know I need to do this, and yet somehow I didn't do it. And so that's why I think becoming indistractable is the skill of the century. That there's no facet of your mental health, your physical wellbeing, uh, your, your career, all of these things require us to be able to harness our attention. This is truly how we choose our life.

Ali Abdaal 3:51 Nice. So why do so many of us struggle with distraction? What's going on there?

Nir Eyal 3:55 I think it's a product of, uh, two things. One, it's human nature. We know that Plato, the Greek philosopher, talked about this struggle with akrasia, the tendency to do things against our better interest. He talked about this 2,500 years ago. So there's something about the human condition that makes us distractible, that makes us constantly look for, for other things. And that probably served us on the plains of the Serengeti 200,000 years ago when, you know, you were constantly looking out for danger, you're looking out for opportunity. But, y- you know, today, that- that's not necessarily a skill that we want to run rampant. We need to learn how to control it. So that's reason number one. Reason number two is that we have this, this abundance of so many good things in our life, right? We live in an age where the first time in human history there are more people dying of diseases of excess than of, uh, of, of, uh, scarcity. So it used to be that human beings would die of starvation when there was a famine. Well, today, more people die of diabetes and obesity than they do of famine. So we have this excess. We have abundance. The same goes with information. We don't ever have to be bored anymore because there's instant entertainment at all times of day or night right here in our pockets found with our phones, and that's a good thing. A lot of people like to deride this stuff. They say, "Oh, it's technology. It's the modern world. It's all these bad things." Well, number one, tech- uh, th- these distractions have always been with us, right? Plato talked about it 2,500 years ago. And two, getting rid of these things are not gonna solve the problem because distraction is part of the human condition. And furthermore, the fact that these devices are so engaging that they're, uh, so fun to use, that's not a problem. That's progress, right? What, what are we gonna say? "Hey, Apple, your phones are too user-friendly. Uh, stop making them. I don't... I wanna use them too much." "Hey, hey, Netflix, s- your shows are too entertaining. Please stop making such good shows." No, that's ridiculous. We want these good things in our life. So the price of all that progress, the price of living in an age with so much abundance, is that we have to learn a new skill set. We have to learn how to live with these technologies, how to get the best of them, so they don't get the best of us.

Ali Abdaal 5:54 Um, you, in the book, you talk about the idea of internal triggers. Uh, what are internal triggers and how do they cause us to get distracted?

Nir Eyal 6:00 Yeah. So many people when it comes to distraction, they blame the things outside of us. We blame the pings,

Nir Eyal 6:06 the dings, the rings, all of the things in our outside environment that can lead us towards distraction. Now, they... Those things can be a trigger for distraction. Those are called external triggers, but we know from time studies that those external triggers only account for about 10% of our distractions. So 10% of the time that you check your phone is it because of a ping, ding, or ring. But that's what we tend to blame. What we don't remember or what we don't think about is that 90% of our distractions, 90%, begin from within. These are called internal triggers. What are internal triggers? Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. These are these uncomfortable sensations that we look to escape many times with distraction. So whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, you are always going to get distracted from one thing or another-

Ali Abdaal 7:00 Mm

Nir Eyal 7:00 ... unless you understand the root cause of the problem. So if we just keep blaming the external triggers when they account for such a small share of the reason for our distractions, we don't get to the real cause of the problem.

Ali Abdaal 7:10 Solid. That surprises me. I would've thought that, like, the reason I get distracted by my phone is the fact that I get all these notifications. But we're saying it, it's not actually... Because, yeah, b- because then I think when I'm on the couch or when I'm on the toilet, it's not a notification I'm responding to. It's [laughs] something-

Nir Eyal 7:24 A feeling

Ali Abdaal 7:25 ... else. Yeah.

Nir Eyal 7:25 That's right. It's a feeling. And so that's, uh, to me, you know, w- th- this whole question of distraction and, and why don't we do what we say we're gonna do, right, this ancient question that Plato asked as well, I think it's a fascinating question. If we know what to do, why don't we just do it, right? We all know what to do. And today, you know, you could say, okay, well, maybe in generations past, our grandparents, uh, had a shortage of information. If you wanted to know how to do something, you had to go to the library or ask some expert. Today, it's all here, right? Google it. It'll tell you what to do. And who doesn't basically know what to do? We know if you wanna get in shape, you have to eat right and exercise. If you wanna have better relationships with your family, you have to be fully present with them. If you wanna, uh, do well at your job, you have to do the things that other people aren't willing to do, right? We, we know this stuff. You have to do the hard work. We know, but we don't do it. And so to me, that's a really interesting question. So in order to understand why do we get distracted, I think we have to actually go a layer deeper and ask why do we do anything and everything. What's the nature of human motivation? Most people will tell you that motivation's about carrots and sticks. We've all heard this, right? Turns out neurologically, that's not true, that neurologically, the way the brain gets us to act is not through carrots and sticks per se, but rather everything is about the desire to escape discomfort. The way the reward system in the brain works is that the carrot is the stick, right? Think about that. The carrot is the stick, meaning that even when we want to feel good, pleasure, desire, craving, hunger, lusting for something, the desire for pleasure is itself psychologically destabilizing.

Nir Eyal 8:55 So everything we do, everything you do is about the desire to escape discomfort. So that means if everything you do is about the desire to escape discomfort, that must therefore mean that time management is pain management, money management is pain management, weight management is pain management. And so that's why these internal triggers are so important. If you don't master these internal triggers, they will become your master.

Ali Abdaal 9:20 Nice. Um, how do we master these internal triggers? [laughs]

Nir Eyal 9:23 Yeah. So this is the most important part. I think a lot of people gloss over. Uh, they look for the tips, the tricks, the life hacks, right? Show me the app. Show me the secret solution. Give me the nootropic that's gonna fix this problem. But at the end of the day, if 90% of our distractions begin from within, we have to figure out these strategies to master internal triggers. So there's a dozen different tactics in my book, Indistractable, on how to do this, and you have to experiment. You have to see what works for you. I'll tell you what works for me. So a couple techniques that work really well that I, I use literally every single day, uh, come from acceptance and commitment therapy. I didn't make them up. They've been around for decades. One of them is called the 10-minute rule. The 10-minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction, whatever that distraction might be, whether you're on a diet and you're trying to resist that chocolate cake, whether you're trying to quit smoking, whether you're trying to not check your phone every five minutes when you're trying to be with your family or do a work project. You can give in to that distraction, but not right now. In 10 minutes. And if 10 minutes is too long, make it the five-minute rule. It doesn't really matter. What you wanna do is a couple things. Number one, this shows you that you have agency, that you can actually do what you say you're going to. And you can resist anything for just five minutes. So by showing to yourself, "Hey, you know what? I, I'm not controlled by these distractions. I can wait a few minutes. I will do that thing, uh, but a little bit later, in 10 minutes." The other thing that I think is super important that a lot of people forget is that they think that the right path to stop a behavior is abstinence, and for some behaviors, that can be the case, right? If you can remove external triggers from your environment, so for example, if people are trying to, uh, stop a substance abuse. If you can remove those triggers from your environment, sure, abstinence might be able to work for you. But how do you remove the triggers for technology, right? It's, it's all, it's all over the place, right? We, we need our devices in order to stay connected to work, to family, to loved ones. That is part of the modern experience. Food, same way. You can't just stop eating food. You need food to survive. So in those cases, strict abstinence, telling yourself no, can backfire. It's called psychological reactance. Psychological reactance says that when you are told what to do, when your agency is threatened, the natural human response is to rebel. So when your mom told you, "Oh, it's raining outside, put on a coat," and you said, "Don't tell me what to do," or your boss tries to micromanage you, that feeling of being controlled, that's reactance. Now, the crazy thing is that the human brain will elicit reactance even when we are telling ourselves what to do. So when you tell yourself, "Don't check TikTok, don't watch YouTube," you are literally making yourself want it more. So instead, to disarm psychological reactants, a much better approach is to say, "Hey, I can do whatever I want. I'm a grown human being. I can, I can make my own choices. I choose to delay this by 10 minutes.

Nir Eyal 12:11 I will do that thing in 10 minutes." Now, what's the next step? When you do that, you wanna explore that internal trigger with curiosity rather than contempt. A lot of people, they beat themselves up. So when people, uh, think about distraction, we find that they fall into two buckets, two categories. We have what we call the blamers, and then we have what's called the shamers. The blamers, they blame things outside themselves. They blame technology. They blame the news. They blame the modern world. They blame all this stuff outside of them. Those are the blamers, and that's futile because you're not gonna change that stuff, right? People have always been distracted by things happening outside them, so that's not, that's not an effective strategy. The other category is what we call the shamers. They take it on the inside. That's what I used to do. "Oh, there must be something wrong with me. Uh, if I was a real writer, I wouldn't have this urge to constantly get distracted. Maybe I'm, my brain is broken somehow." I would shame myself into thinking there was something broken about me. And of course, shame is a very uncomfortable internal trigger, so what do we do in response to shame? We're more likely to look for distraction to escape the shame-

Ali Abdaal 13:12 Mm-hmm

Nir Eyal 13:12 ... that we're feeling. So we don't wanna be a blamer. We don't wanna be a shamer. We wanna be what's called a claimer. A claimer claims responsibility, not for how they feel. So this is, this was a big one for me. Turns out we don't control our urges. We don't control our urges.

Ali Abdaal 13:27 Mm.

Nir Eyal 13:27 People try and control their urges. You cannot control your urges. Think about the urge to sneeze. When you feel the urge to sneeze, it's too late. You already felt the urge. All you can do is to decide what you will do in response to that urge, right? So hence, we can claim responsibility. Responsibility comes from how you will respond to that urge. So what do you do when you feel the urge to sneeze? Do you sneeze all over everyone and get them sick? No. You, you take out a handkerchief, and you cover your face, right? That's the responsible thing to do. And the same goes for our urges around getting distracted, right? It's not about claiming and blame. It's not about ch- uh, shaming and blaming. It's about claiming responsibility for having a plan for what we will do when we feel that discomfort. So the 10-minute rule allows us to say, "Okay, I will give into that distraction in 10 minutes." Now, what do you do for those 10 minutes? What I do is I do, I use this technique called surfing the urge. Surfing the urge acknowledges that these emotions are like waves. They crest, and then they subside. But that's not how it feels in the moment. In the moment, when you feel bored or anxious or uncertain or lonely, you feel like you're always going to experience that emotion, but that's not true, right? That if you acknowledge that in a short, a, a, a f- very short period of time, that emotion will crest and subside. You can ride it like a surfer on, on a surfboard until it's gone. And so what I do-

Ali Abdaal 14:45 Mm

Nir Eyal 14:45 ... uh, you know, I, I write every single day, uh, and writing never gets easier. [laughs] Like, there's no such thing as a writing habit, by the way. You know, people try and make everything into a habit these days, and by definition, that, that, you can't, right? A habit is defined as a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. How exactly do you write with little or no conscious thought, right? I, I

Nir Eyal 15:04 don't know how to do that, right? [laughs] How do you, how do you... An exercise habit, that's a misnomer because habit requires little or no conscious thought. If you're trying to break your PR, that requires effort. That requires thought. Uh, so, so you can't just, you know, habit it away. You have to put effort towards these things. These are the things that people tend to get distracted from. So while I'm writing, oftentimes when I'm about to say, "Oh, let me just check email real quick," or, "Let me just Google something," right, what I'm doing is I'm trying to create an excuse for me to, to get away from that internal trigger of, of, "Is this writing gonna be any good?" And, uh, uh, "Is it... It's kind of boring, and I'm not sure where it's gonna go, and is anybody gonna read this?" All this doubt and uncertainty. What do I do? What I do is I, I take a pause. I set a timer for 10 minutes. I put my phone down, and I say, "Okay." I close my eyes, and I just surf that urge. And so for me, a, a useful technique, another one that I talk about in the book, is to have a personal mantra. And so you can create your own mantra. I'll, I'll share with you my mantra. So in those 10 minutes, I have a choice to make. I can either get back to the task at hand, and whenever I'm ready to get back at the task at hand, get right back to the writing, or I can surf that urge by just taking a few seconds to repeat my mantra. My mantra sounds like this. I close my eyes, [sighs] and I say, "This is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better." That's just my, my personal mantra. You can create your own.

Ali Abdaal 16:21 Mm.

Nir Eyal 16:21 To me, that reminds my, it, it reminds me that it's supposed to be difficult, right? If it was easy, everyone would do it. That's part of the struggle. That's part of a craft is, is, is pushing through that discomfort.

Ali Abdaal 16:33 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 16:33 And what I find nine times out of 10 is that before those 10 minutes are up, I'm right back at that task at hand. And what, what happens over time is that the 10-minute rule becomes the 12-minute rule, becomes the 15-minute rule, becomes the 20-minute rule, and now you're proving to yourself that you actually do have control, you do have agency over these distractions.

Ali Abdaal 16:53 Man, you're so good at this. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 16:54 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 16:54 Like, fucking sick. I'm like, damn, I wish I was this, like, prepared when I was doing podcasts about my book. I'm like-

Nir Eyal 16:59 Really? You're the man at-

Ali Abdaal 16:59 ... such conviction, such confidence

Nir Eyal 17:01 You look-

Ali Abdaal 17:01 I'm like so good

Nir Eyal 17:01 ... I don't know what you're talking about. I've always admired how, how you can get in front of a camera and, and do what you do.

Ali Abdaal 17:06 Oh, it's so good. Yeah.

Nir Eyal 17:06 Wait, so you don't, you don't do it like this?

Ali Abdaal 17:08 No. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 17:09 How do you do it?

Ali Abdaal 17:09 I feel like I'm all over the place. You, you... It feels like you've got the talking points down. You've nailed it. The, the blamer, the shamer, the this. You've got your, your football and Facebook thing. It's like you're, the, the, the, the rings, the dings, the pings, the thing.

Nir Eyal 17:19 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 17:19 And it's like, it's just so well done.

Nir Eyal 17:21 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 17:21 I guess 'cause you've done so many of these that you've gotten in the reps or-

Nir Eyal 17:24 But when you, when you... Your YouTube videos sound this, sound just as good, if not better. What-

Ali Abdaal 17:29 Yeah. Maybe. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 17:30 Do you edit them to... Like, what, what-

Ali Abdaal 17:31 We do a lot of editing in the YouTube videos.

Nir Eyal 17:33 Huh.

Ali Abdaal 17:33 I'm not very, uh, sponta- I, uh, well, I don't know. Maybe I-

Nir Eyal 17:37 It sounds like you're just spouting off genius, like I-

Ali Abdaal 17:40 Yeah. Okay. Nice. I'm glad to hear it-

Nir Eyal 17:41 All right

Ali Abdaal 17:41 ... 'cause it sounded, it sounded like you were spouting off genius right now. Anyway. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 17:43 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 17:44 Um, is willpower a resource that runs out?

Nir Eyal 17:46 Okay. So there is this popular notion That

Nir Eyal 17:51 willpower is a limited resource. And this came out of some research, uh, done r- uh, several years ago now, uh, around this concept called ego depletion. Ego depletion says that we run out of willpower just like we would run out of battery charge on our phone or gas in our gas tank, that it's a depletable resource. And this got a lot of, of, of press because it's kind of a concept people want to believe, right? We want to think, like I used to, I'd get home from work and I'd say, "Oh, what a rough day. Uh, give me that pint of ice cream. I'm gonna sit in front of the TV and just chill out," right?

Ali Abdaal 18:21 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 18:21 "I've, I'm out of willpower. I'm spent," I used to say. "I'm spent." And so it's kind of a comforting thought. Turns out, uh, it was a little too good to be true. So as happens in the social sciences, when something sounds a little bit fishy, what do we do? We rerun the study. We try and replicate the study. And it turns out that this idea of ego depletion, that we run out of willpower like gas in a gas tank, turns out not to be true, except in one group of people. There's actually one group of people who really do run out of willpower. They really do spend it up. And those people, and only those people, and this work was done by Carol Dweck, I'm sure you, you know her work, uh, her wonderful book, uh, called Mindset. And she found that the only group of people who run out of willpower are people who believe that willpower is a depletable resource. And so I talk about this in the book, uh, in Indistractable, as a way that we have to reimagine our temperament, that if you believe you are spent, you are. As Henry Ford said, "Whether you believe you can or you cannot, you're right." And so when you hear people saying things like, "We're all addicted to technology, and there's nothing we can do. It's hacking our brains," if you believe that stuff, of course that's the case. And of course, that is exactly what the tech companies want. The tech companies want you to believe you're addicted. The word addiction comes from the Latin addictio, which means slave. So when you say to yourself, "I am a slave. I am addicted. I have no more willpower. I'm spent," you're making it true. And so we have to be very, very careful about these labels and make sure that we only adopt the labels that serve us rather than the ones that hurt us.

Ali Abdaal 19:58 Interesting. So, um, I very much vibe with this. Um, a pushback to this might be, okay, like one of my team members, for example, comes to mind. She always says to me that like, "Oh, you know, Ali, I don't have time to work on my YouTube channel because after a day of work, I have no energy, and I just have to watch Netflix to recharge."

Nir Eyal 20:16 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 20:17 And I've always found that a bit fishy. I'm like, "Do you really?" Like, I mean, the work that we do, it's, it's not like we're coal miners or something.

Nir Eyal 20:22 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 20:22 It's not, it's not that physically demanding. And she's like, "No, but I'm, I'm j- I'm just like mentally dr-

Nir Eyal 20:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 20:26 ... I'm mentally drained of energy."

Nir Eyal 20:27 And she says she has to watch-

Ali Abdaal 20:29 Netflix for three hours or whatever it is

Nir Eyal 20:31 ... Netflix. Okay

Ali Abdaal 20:31 ... to recharge.

Nir Eyal 20:31 She has... Okay. The, I-

Ali Abdaal 20:32 Yeah

Nir Eyal 20:32 ... I love it when people say... I hear this all the time.

Ali Abdaal 20:34 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 20:34 They say, "You don't understand. I can't," or, "I have to," or, "I must," or, "There's no way," right? I hear it all the time. I've heard, uh... The book was published, uh, in 2019. I've heard literally every excuse you could possibly come up with. And whenever I hear one of these definitive statements of, "I can't," or, "I must," or, "I have to," I always say, "Okay, well, let, let, let's test that a bit. Let, let's test this." What would happen if when you got home, instead of watching Netflix, which you say you have to watch because you're spent, I told you that if you don't do whatever it is you said you're going to do, go to the gym, uh, play with my kid, read a book, uh, work on a project, if you don't do that, you're gonna have to pay me $10,000. Are you gonna do that thing? "Of course I am. I'm gonna go to the gym. Of course I'm gonna work on the video. Of course I'm gonna do that thing. Of course. T- I'm not gonna pay $10,000." Okay. Well, what does that tell us? That tells us we've established you can. Now we're just negotiating the price. And so when you do that, this is, this is step four of becoming indistractable, making a pact, and this is something that, that I actually did with a friend of mine, uh, with, with Mark Manson, actually, when we were writing, uh, we, we were both working on our books. And, uh, I had... I, it took me five years to write Indistractable. It took me five years to write Indistractable because I kept getting distracted, right? [laughs] It wasn't until I figured out these techniques, starting from first principles, and adopted them into my own life that I could actually change my life. And today, I'm in the best shape of my life, I have better relationship with my family than ever before, I'm more productive than ever before because I've adopted these techniques. But it took me a long time to dig through all the garbage out there that doesn't work. So once I finally figured out how to become indistractable, now it was time to actually write the book, and I, I had to practice what I preach. I looked at this technique called making a commitment pact, and I told Mark, I said, "Look, if I don't finish my manuscript by January 1st, I will owe you $20,000," and we shook on it. You think I paid him the $20,000? Of course not. I finished my damn book. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 22:29 Nice.

Nir Eyal 22:30 And think about it, right? We pay coaches and trainers and fitness and diets, and we pay all this money, which w- which is gone, we'll never get that money back, in order for other people to hold us accountable. Well, we can do this to ourselves-

Ali Abdaal 22:41 Mm

Nir Eyal 22:41 ... right, by making this commitment pact, a, what, what I call a price pact. It's one of, of several d- different kinds of pacts we can make. Turns out we can have our cake and eat it too, except if you're on a diet. You can have the goal. You can get to that accomplishment. You can finish that book. You can do whatever it is you said you're going to do, and you get to keep your money. So as the fourth step, by the way, I do have to give a disclaimer, that technique of setting this pact, you have to do it last. Many people have heard of, of a similar technique, but if you don't do it in the right order, it will absolutely backfire. If you don't first do step number one, master internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back external triggers, then prevent distraction with pacts as, as a fourth and final step. If you don't do it in the right order, it will backfire. But having that type of commitment pact, right, when someone says, "I can't," "I won't," or, "It's impossible," always shows you that actually you can. There's just a matter of a price to be negotiated.

Ali Abdaal 23:30 Hmm. Why, why does it backfire? How does it backfire if you do it first?

Nir Eyal 23:34 Because the, the most common cause of distraction are these internal triggers.

Ali Abdaal 23:41 Mm.

Nir Eyal 23:41 So if you don't first deal with the internal triggers, for example, um, so I used to be clinically obese. And, uh, exercise has always been a struggle for me. I, I still to this day, I'm in the best shape of my life at 46 years old, but I, uh, I've, I've always disliked it. So one of the things I did after I did the research for the book is I, I utilized this technique of making a price pact. And I, um, uh, still to this day, I have a calendar i- in, in my dresser, uh, next to my dresser, that on this calendar is taped a fresh, crisp $100 bill.

Ali Abdaal 24:12 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 24:12 And above that, that, that calendar is a little shelf, and on that shelf there's a BIC lighter. And every day I have a choice to make. It's called the burn or burn technique. I can either burn some calories by doing some pushups, going for a walk around the block, going for a swim, doing some kind of exercise every day to burn calories, or I have to burn the $100 bill.

Ali Abdaal 24:34 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 24:35 The burn or burn technique. Now, I've been doing this for five years now. I've never had to burn the $100 bill, because I just do the damn exercise, [laughs] right?

Ali Abdaal 24:43 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 24:43 Because my personal integrity is worth more than the $100 bill. Now, if I haven't, if I hadn't done the first three steps, if I didn't know how to deal with those internal triggers of, "Oh, I don't really feel like working out right now," if I didn't plan the time, if I didn't remove the external triggers that don't serve me, then this technique wouldn't work. So you have to do it last.

Ali Abdaal 25:01 Nice. So d- it sounds like you don't buy the idea that, uh, mental energy is, like, a thing. I, I get to the... I get home from the day of work, I've been, like, productive all day at work, and now I feel mentally drained, dot, dot, dot.

Nir Eyal 25:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:15 I mean, I can prove it to you right now. If, if you had something interesting-

Nir Eyal 25:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 25:18 ... all of a sudden you have energy.

Nir Eyal 25:19 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 25:20 How could that be? If the brain is drained of... You know, the, the theory was that, that Baumeister, the guy who did the research around ego depletion, was that it's a depletable resource because your glucose is somehow depleted, right? And he's had these studies, which we can't replicate, that if you give people lemonade, somehow they were boosted. Well, yeah, it turns out that i- if you think about it, if the brain is drained of, of energy, well, then why are interesting and fun things suddenly possible to do? Right? So it turns out, I think it's a, it's what we call a nocebo effect. Like, the opposite of a placebo-

Nir Eyal 25:49 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 25:49 ... is a nocebo effect. That when you think something is, is going to happen, right, when you have an expectation-

Nir Eyal 25:54 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 25:54 ... that you're spent, when you have an expectation that you're tired, when you have an expectation that you can't, it's true. [instrumental music] This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly sponsored by YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget. Now, for many people, money is a cause of guilt and anxiety. You're never entirely sure where all your money goes, and you're left feeling guilty about purchases, big or small. Money is often associated with restriction, fear, and uncertainty, but your money is an extension of you in many ways, and it's obviously not ideal to feel so bad about it. Now, YNAB is an app that's helping millions of people change their mindset around money. It's built on four simple habits which could transform the way you think about money. These habits are, firstly, give every dollar a job. Two, embrace your true expenses. Three, roll with the punches, and four, age your money. Now, these habits are actually really simple. Giving every dollar a job basically just means that you plan out the different things you wanna spend your money on after you've been paid. Then all you have to do is stick to the plan knowing that you already have enough to cover everything. Your true expenses refers to those big non-monthly outgoings, like trying to buy a car or a holiday deposit. You wanna break these down, and you wanna save in advance so that hopefully you're not hit by a big charge that you were not expecting. And one of the things that I really love about YNAB is their idea of rolling with the punches, 'cause sometimes life does throw things at you, like a piece of tech breaks and you need to have it fixed, or you get your stuff stolen from the back of your car, like happened to me, or a pipe bursts and you have to call a plumber. YNAB helps you set money aside in advance to help cushion you from life's unexpected expenses. They also recognize that we can feel really guilty for spending money, so if you do spend more than you planned, that's totally okay. Just move your money to wherever it's needed. It's yours at the end of the day. And you can even age your money, spend less than you earn, and have a nice stack of saved money waiting for your bills as they come in, not the other way around. In an ideal world, money really shouldn't be scary or stressful for us, and we actually have way more control over our money than we often think. So if you're interested, you can try out YNAB today, and you can see if this approach to budgeting can make a difference in the way that you think about money. So thank you again, YNAB, for sponsoring this episode of Deep Dive. That's really good. I found myself... So yesterday, um, I had, like, a, I had, like, a big session at the gym with a personal trainer.

Nir Eyal 27:52 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 27:52 I got home, and I was meant to be going on this, um, this, like, nice restaurant with a few friends for dinner, and there was, like, an hour to wait between kind of coming back home from the gym and the dinner. And the story I told myself was, "Oh, man, I'm so tired. Oh, I just wanna blob out."

Nir Eyal 28:08 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 28:08 And then I ended up just, like, scrolling Instagram or something for, like, an hour until the dinner. And then the dinner rolled around and I was, like, perky and fresh. There was no sign of the tiredness. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 28:16 Right.

Ali Abdaal 28:16 And I was kind of thinking, "Hmm, that's a, that's a bit suspicious." It's like there's no law of physics really that said... Like, I wasn't running out of glucose and ATP-

Nir Eyal 28:24 Right

Ali Abdaal 28:25 ... and stuff-

Nir Eyal 28:25 Right

Ali Abdaal 28:25 ... like, realistically. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 28:26 Right. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:27 I, I had just told myself the story that, "Oh, I, oh, I'm, I'm mentally fatigued right now, therefore I'm just gonna blob out and watch random memes on Instagram."

Nir Eyal 28:35 Right.

Ali Abdaal 28:35 So, yeah.

Nir Eyal 28:35 And of course, the more you, you do that in the past-

Ali Abdaal 28:38 Mm-hmm

Nir Eyal 28:38 ... the more you abide by that expectation-

Ali Abdaal 28:41 Yeah

Nir Eyal 28:41 ... the more likely you are to expect it to occur.

Ali Abdaal 28:43 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 28:43 So the more you come home and say, "Oh, I can't, I can't, I can't," well, now it becomes a pattern.

Ali Abdaal 28:48 Right.

Nir Eyal 28:48 Right now you're... It's becomes a self-fulfilling process- prophecy.

Ali Abdaal 28:52 What is a distraction notebook?

Nir Eyal 28:54 Uh, so a distraction notebook is a way for, for you to keep track of what took you off track, right? So when you, uh... So, so one of the things we have to do in order to become indistractable is to be able to identify those internal triggers. Again, that's 90% of our distractions. So most people have no sense of why they got distracted. They all of a sudden find the cigarettes in their hand. They all of a sudden find the phone in, you know, they're scrolling on TikTok or whatever without realizing what was the preceding internal trigger. So a distraction notebook is a way for you to start bringing awareness to what is that preceding emotion that you are trying to escape, because every distraction, every distraction only has three potential causes, right? If you're doing something that is not what you said you were going to do, it's only because of three reasons. Either it's an internal trigger, some kind of feeling, an external trigger, some kind of external prompt in an outside environment, or a planning problem. That's it. There's only three potential reasons. So when you have a distraction journal, when you start keeping track of, "Okay, I said I was gonna do this, but I did something else," you can start identifying why. Now, why is this so important? There's a wonderful quote by Paulo Coelho who said, "A mistake repeated more than once is a decision." Such a good quote.

Ali Abdaal 30:02 Ooh.

Nir Eyal 30:02 "A mistake repeated more than once is a decision."

Ali Abdaal 30:05 I see.

Nir Eyal 30:05 So good, right? So the problem is that for distractible people, they keep getting distracted by the same things again and again and again. How many times are we gonna complain about YouTube and TikTok and Facebook before we do something? Okay, we got it. You distracted me once. I'm not gonna let it happen

Nir Eyal 30:21 again. So an indistractable person looks at why they got distracted the first time, and they make sure they take steps today to prevent getting distracted again tomorrow.

Ali Abdaal 30:30 Now, one of the things that I found really helpful, um, and that we, and, and that we recommend for our students in Productivity Lab is at the end of every focused hour, every focused hour of, of work-

Nir Eyal 30:39 Mm

Ali Abdaal 30:39 ... you just do a little, like, 30-second reflection to reflect on how focused was I really during that time.

Nir Eyal 30:44 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 30:44 And were there any distractions that came up? And then if you have that written down, like for me, uh, the o- the, the other day I noticed that, like, in the middle of the work session, I got up and went to the bathroom, but while I was there, I, uh, opened up my phone and just habitually went on Instagram. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 30:58 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 30:58 And then I ended up there for, like, 15 minutes longer than I really should've been. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 31:01 Yeah. And-

Ali Abdaal 31:01 I was like, "Oh, that's interesting. [laughs] It's interesting that I did that," and I just set Opal, my app blocking thing, to be like, "Okay, let me just block Instagram during working hours," and now that problem is gone.

Nir Eyal 31:10 Right.

Ali Abdaal 31:10 So now when I'm on the toilet, it's like the only thing I have the option of opening is the Kindle app, and that is just a l- a lot less dopamine-inducing than [laughs] -

Nir Eyal 31:16 Sure

Ali Abdaal 31:16 ... Instagram, for example. So I was like, "Okay, cool. I may as well get off the toilet-

Nir Eyal 31:19 Right

Ali Abdaal 31:20 ... and get back to work."

Nir Eyal 31:20 And if it gets you once, okay.

Ali Abdaal 31:22 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 31:22 Distraction can get anybody once, but you took action about that. You noted what happened, and you did something about it.

Ali Abdaal 31:27 Mm.

Nir Eyal 31:27 So you can't complain about it. If you know the cause, you know the solution. You c- you can't just keep complaining. You've gotta do something about it, and that's exactly what you did.

Ali Abdaal 31:34 Yeah. The, the, the other thing I found when, when, when doing the strategy was I'd be like, "Oh, you know, there's the, th- there's a thing on my desk," like a piece of paper I've just taken a note on.

Nir Eyal 31:42 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 31:42 And then, oh, I, I, I don't have a bin next to me, so-

Nir Eyal 31:45 Mm

Ali Abdaal 31:45 ... hmm, let me just get up and go downstairs to the kitchen. And I realized, you know what? Let me just spend £3 on Amazon and just buy a bin-

Nir Eyal 31:50 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:50 ... and just have it next to my desk. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 31:51 Yes, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 31:51 It just, like, solves that problem. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 31:52 So that's exactly the purpose of this distraction journal is that-

Ali Abdaal 31:55 Yeah

Nir Eyal 31:55 ... when you write down, "Oh, I wanted to take down the trash downstairs," and then you look back and say like, "Okay, that wasn't necessary. What can I do to prevent it from happening tomorrow?" So if you wanna boil down my work over the past decade now on distraction, it's, it's this: The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. That's the summary of my work. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought, that procrastination, distraction, it's not a character flaw. There's nothing wrong with you. It's not a moral failing. For the vast majority of people, they don't have ADHD. It's way over-diagnosed. Very, very few people actually have clinical level ADHD, I, I believe. But we, we believe that there's, there's something, th- you know, there's something wrong with us, but rather what, what it means is simply that if we can take steps today to prevent distraction tomorrow, so the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought, that if you leave it to the last moment, if you wait till the cigarette's in your hand, you're gonna smoke it.

Ali Abdaal 32:45 Mm.

Nir Eyal 32:46 If the chocolate cake is on the fork on the way to your mouth, you're gonna eat it. If you leave your cellphone on your nightstand every m- every night, it's gonna be the first thing you reach for in the morning before you say hello to your loved one. It's too late, right? If you leave it to the last minute, they're gonna get you.

Ali Abdaal 32:59 Mm.

Nir Eyal 32:59 But if you take steps, if you prevent it from happening by taking steps today, there's no distraction we can't overcome tomorrow.

Ali Abdaal 33:06 One thing that my, uh, my fitness coach swears by is that whenever you're going to a restaurant, look up the menu online and decide before you get there-

Nir Eyal 33:12 In advance

Ali Abdaal 33:13 ... what you're gonna eat.

Nir Eyal 33:14 Love it.

Ali Abdaal 33:14 And-

Nir Eyal 33:15 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 33:16 ... I still don't do that, but, [laughs] but I really should.

Nir Eyal 33:18 Yeah. Or, or like, for example, one rule that I have, uh, so for a while I, I stopped drinking altogether, and then I, I brought it back 'cause it was... I, I missed it, frankly. Uh, and so now I have a rule because we, we all know how unhealthy alcohol is for you, but now I have a rule. I say I only drink alcohol when I don't pay for it.

Ali Abdaal 33:33 Oh.

Nir Eyal 33:33 So if I'm going to a function-

Ali Abdaal 33:35 Yes

Nir Eyal 33:35 ... if it's a corporate event, okay, fine. I'll, you know, if it's, if I'm, uh, I don't know, flying somewhere and they offer it, okay, great.

Ali Abdaal 33:40 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 33:40 But the, I have these rules, these heuristics that take out the decision-making so that I make sure I do what I say I'm going to do.

Ali Abdaal 33:46 Well, one of my favorite rules that I've had since I started university was I never watch TV on my own. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 33:52 Nice.

Ali Abdaal 33:53 It a- it has to be a social activity, otherwise I'm not gonna do it.

Nir Eyal 33:55 Oh, that's a great rule.

Ali Abdaal 33:56 And that has saved years of my life-

Nir Eyal 33:58 Absolutely

Ali Abdaal 33:58 ... [laughs] for in the last 10 years or those probably-

Nir Eyal 33:59 And probably I would argue probably made the TV watching you do do even more enjoyable-

Ali Abdaal 34:04 Yeah, it was more fun

Nir Eyal 34:04 ... because you're doing it with somebody.

Ali Abdaal 34:05 It's like doing a Game of Thrones night, inviting people over, ordering pizza. It's like, yeah, that's the one TV show that I watch in the, in, in a five-year period, you know, that kind of thing.

Nir Eyal 34:12 Isn't it amazing how we are so, uh, generous with our time? Like, we give it to all these forms of media.

Ali Abdaal 34:19 Mm.

Nir Eyal 34:20 Right? We just throw it away. Whoever wants it takes it, uh, right? Whatever stupid thing's happening in the news, some war that has nothing to do with us thousands of miles away, so, you know, whatever drama or whatever's happening, gossip at work, and yet when it comes to our time, we give it away. But our money we're so cheap with, right?

Ali Abdaal 34:35 Mm.

Nir Eyal 34:35 How much time do people spend, how much effort do people spend protecting their money? We put it in vaults, and we, uh, clip coupons, and we split checks to save every penny, but that's a renewable resource, right? You can always make more money. You can always make more money. You can't make more time, and yet somehow we're, we're very cheap with our time. Uh, sorry, we're, we're very generous with our time and cheap with our money, and I think it should be the exact opposite. We should be generous with our money and cheap with our time.

Ali Abdaal 34:59 Love that. Um, do you ever get accused of, like, toxic productivity [laughs] with all of these, like, rules and stuff? [laughs]

Nir Eyal 35:05 What, what does that mean?

Ali Abdaal 35:06 Oh, oh, oh, it's a, it's like a... I think it's like a Gen Z thing. Um-

Nir Eyal 35:10 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 35:10 [laughs] One thing, you know, I've, I've o- often mentioned this, like, you know, I have this rule that I don't watch TV on my own, and people will say, "Well, that's toxic productivity."

Nir Eyal 35:18 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 35:18 "You're, like, being toxic in the way that you're telling people that they shouldn't be able to chill out, and they shouldn't be able to relax, and in fact, and they should be working all the time."

Nir Eyal 35:25 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:26 And I think it's a bit of a dumb kind of criticism 'cause like, no, that's not what I'm saying.

Nir Eyal 35:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:28 What I'm saying is that productivity is when you're using your time intentionally. If you intend to watch the TV, watch the damn TV.

Nir Eyal 35:33 Right.

Ali Abdaal 35:34 If you intend to scroll TikTok, scroll TikTok, but just do what you intended to do.

Nir Eyal 35:37 That's right.

Ali Abdaal 35:37 That whole thing.

Nir Eyal 35:38 And, and by the way, you're sharing what works for you.

Ali Abdaal 35:40 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 35:40 It may not work for somebody else. They don't have to adopt this technique, but I think my goal is to help people do whatever they say they wanna do, right?

Ali Abdaal 35:46 Mm.

Nir Eyal 35:46 So if you want to play video games all day, do it, right? You have that right. Who am I to judge how you spend your time? But do it with intent. It's about forethought. If that's what you said you were going to do, do it, and do it without guilt, right? So one of the things I tell people to do is I want you to schedule time for social media. If you find you're using too much social media, that becomes a distraction, right? You're checking TikTok when you, or Instagram when you didn't intend to, it's because it's not in your calendar. Put it in your schedule. I have time in my schedule to go on social media, so I'm not using it whenever I'm looking to escape boredom or insecurity or fear, uncertainty, or loneliness. I'm not using it as an escape for an internal trigger. I'm doing it because it's a planned activity, and there's nothing wrong with that. I should enjoy it. So it's, it's not about me telling people what to do, it's about me helping people do the things that they themselves want to do, but aren't doing.

Ali Abdaal 36:34 Love that. Yeah, I've got, ah, solo evenings playing PlayStation scheduled into the calendar for Wednesday evenings.

Nir Eyal 36:39 Beautiful.

Ali Abdaal 36:39 So good.

Nir Eyal 36:40 And what's great about that, I think very few people have actually experienced what true leisure feels like. Because even when they're supposed to be having fun, right? This is why I hate to-do lists. I'm a h- I hate to-do lists. Because even when you are spending time with your kids or, you know, having a nice dinner or playing a video game, you're thinking about

Nir Eyal 36:58 all the things you still have and left undone. As opposed to a person who time boxes, who says, "This is my time to do what I said I was gonna do," whether that's playing a video game or meditating or being with my kids or whatever. That's exactly what I said I'm gonna do, and everything else becomes a distraction.

Ali Abdaal 37:12 Mm. Nice. Okay, I feel like that segues us nicely into method number two. So traction time boxing. What is that?

Nir Eyal 37:18 Sure. Okay, so let's talk about, uh, let's start a little bit-

Ali Abdaal 37:21 Yeah, sure

Nir Eyal 37:21 ... at the beginning with what is distraction, right? So this is important to understand, what does that word even mean? Um, and, and, and, and I, I'm ... I mean, I, I think this, it relates to productivity, but I, I don't know if it's exactly productivity because I'm trying to help people get the things out of their way, right? So much of, of behavior change is about what you should do, and I think maybe we should focus more on the things that get in our way from doing the things-

Ali Abdaal 37:41 Mm

Nir Eyal 37:41 ... we know we should do. So let's start with what is distraction? So the best way to understand what distraction is is to understand what distraction is not, what's the opposite of distraction. So most people, if you say, "What's the opposite of distraction?" They'll tell you it's focus. But that's not true. The opposite of distraction is not focus. If you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction, right? Makes sense when you look at them next to each other, traction and distraction, they're opposites. They both come from the, from the same Latin root, trahere, which means to pull, and they both end in the same six-letter word, A-C-T-I-O-N. That spells action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us, it is an action that we ourselves take. So traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were gonna do, things that move you closer to your values, help you become the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you said you were gonna do, away from your values, away from become, becoming the kind of person you want to become. So this is, this is super important. Uh, it's not just semantics because the difference between traction and distraction is one word, and that one word is intent. So as Dorothy Parker said, "The time you plan to waste is not wasted time." So there's nothing wrong with scheduling time for video games. That is traction, if that's what you said you were going to do in advance. Conversely, and more dangerously, is when people don't even realize they're distracted. So my workday routine used to look like this. I would say, "Okay, I'm not gonna procrastinate. I've got that big project I have to finish. Nothing's gonna get in my way. Here I go. I'm gonna get started. But first let me check some email," right? "Let me just scroll that Slack channel real quick. Let me just do this, uh, easy task on my to-do list," right? Uh, that, those are productive things. I'm, I'm doing work-related tasks. I'm being productive, right? But if it's not what you said you were going to do in advance, it's just as much of a distraction as, you know, playing Candy Crush or something. So it is all about what you said you were going to do in advance. That's traction and distraction. So how do you put this into practice? You cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.

Ali Abdaal 39:43 Mm.

Nir Eyal 39:44 So if you have big open white space in your calendar, what the hell did you get distracted from? You can't tell me. Everything's a distraction unless you plan your time. So unlike a to-do list-

Ali Abdaal 39:54 Mm-hmm

Nir Eyal 39:54 ... which is just a register of things you want to have done, when you time box, and I didn't make up this technique. It's been around for a long time. It's called setting an implementation intention. It's the most widely studied technique that far too f- too few people use. It's basically saying, "Here's what I'm gonna do and when I'm gonna do it." Now, the difference is that the metric of success, what I added in my book, uh, which is, is unlike a to-do list, which is about checking cute little boxes, it's about finishing things. That's a terrible metric. Because you don't control the output, right? You don't control the output. How, how long is something gonna take you? When you're doing a YouTube video, sometimes it takes you a few hours, sometimes it can take you dozens of hours probably.

Ali Abdaal 40:32 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 40:32 You don't always know. What you do know is the input. What's your input? It's time and attention.

Ali Abdaal 40:37 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 40:38 And so when you budget those things, your time and attention, the new metric isn't did I finish, the new metric is did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction, whether that's being with my family, whether that's playing video games, whether that's working on a big project. Did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction? Because that is the only way to have a feedback loop. So the reason that it takes people on average three times longer to finish a task than they predict is because they have no way of knowing how long things take.

Ali Abdaal 41:09 Mm.

Nir Eyal 41:10 So when you have a time box calendar and you say, "Okay, I'm gonna work on this task for one hour, 30 minutes, 50 minutes, doesn't matter, and I'm gonna do nothing but," now you have a feedback loop. Now you can say, "Okay, well I need to make this slide presentation and it's gonna be 30 slides long, and I did about three slides. That means I need a total of 10 time boxes to finish the entire presentation." You can start being a better estimator of how long things take, as opposed to someone who uses a to-do list and say, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna finish that task today. Here I go. I'm gonna get started for five minutes." They work on it and they say, "Oh, you know what? Uh, let me get a cup of coffee real quick," and, "Oh, Janice is at the water cooler," and, "Oh, you know what? I need to do this other thing," and, "Wait, what was I working on again?" So this is why time boxing eats to-do lists for breakfast. It's a much, much better technique because it allows you to understand for the first time what is traction, anything that's actually in your calendar, and everything else is a distraction.

Ali Abdaal 41:58 Yeah. Man, I completely agree. Um, I discovered time boxing I think sometime into my first year of med school.

Nir Eyal 42:04 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 42:04 And immediately I realized, oh- This has just, has, has unlocked so much more time for me-

Nir Eyal 42:10 Right

Ali Abdaal 42:10 ... because now I can time box when I'm supposed to be working on that essay based on the deadlines, I can time box all of my social events, I can time box lunch breaks, I can time box breakfast.

Nir Eyal 42:18 Right.

Ali Abdaal 42:18 I was rowing for that first year, so I could time box waking up at 4:00 fricking AM and going for a rowing session in the freezing cold. But it he- it, it helped me figure out what I wanted to do with my time, but also where the free time was.

Nir Eyal 42:29 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 42:29 So I could be like, "Oh, I've got three hours tomorrow evening free. I wonder what I wanna do with that time. Oh, there's this long list of clubs I've been thinking of joining. Let me go try TaeKwonDo for, like, an evening or something like that."

Nir Eyal 42:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:38 I became immediately way more intentional when I started running my life by my calendar.

Nir Eyal 42:42 Then this is what people forget, they think, oh, time boxing has to be just about the boring stuff, just about the productiv-

Ali Abdaal 42:47 Mm

Nir Eyal 42:47 ... you know, the, the, the work and the, you know, the I have to be an automaton. You can schedule fun, right? You, I want you to schedule fun, right? If you like playing video games, you wanna hang out with your friends, well, whatever it is you like to do, put that time in your schedule. In fact, uh, w- in the book, I talk about these three life domains of you. You have to schedule time to take care of yourself. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people, can't make the world a better place. You've got to schedule time for, for rest, for exercise, whatever it is that's important to take care of yourself, including video games, including Netflix, including all the stuff that you w- want to do for yourself to become the person you want to become. But the second domain is your relationships. That part of the reason we have a loneliness epidemic in the industrialized world is that we no longer have those pre-scheduled interactions with our friends, with our community, right? B- as, as society became more secular, many people don't go to church or the Kiwanis Club or those lo- those interactions, and this is why more and more people are lonely today. And loneliness isn't just sad, it's, it's unhealthy. We know that it's as dangerous statistically as smoking and obesity. So we've got to schedule this time, whether it's our significant others, our family, our friends, that time has to be in our schedule to, to connect with other people. So that's the relationship domain. And then finally, the last life domain is the work domain. So most people go throughout their day doing what's called reactive work, reacting to notifications, reacting to emails, reacting to taps on the shoulder from their boss. That's reactive work. It's part of everyone's job, and we have to have that time. The problem is that people get habituated to this reactive work. Why? Because you don't have to think.

Ali Abdaal 44:19 Mm.

Nir Eyal 44:19 You don't have to ask yourself, "What should I be doing? I'll do whatever my email inbox tells me to do. I'll do whatever, you know, the, whatever the, the local crisis is. That's what I'll do."

Ali Abdaal 44:28 Mm.

Nir Eyal 44:28 Right? "I'll do whatever's easy. That's what I'll do."

Ali Abdaal 44:30 Mm.

Nir Eyal 44:30 As opposed to when you do what's called reflective work, as opposed to reactive work. Reflective work is the kind of work that can only be done without distraction. So planning, strategizing, thinking, for God's sakes, can only be done without distraction.

Ali Abdaal 44:43 Mm.

Nir Eyal 44:43 So if you're not planning that time in your day, if you're not keeping some time in your calendar for reflect- reflective work, I promise you, you're gonna run real fast in the wrong direction.

Ali Abdaal 44:53 Mm. Nice. Yeah, one, uh, one way I think about this is where I kinda think of tasks as falling, uh, into two categories.

Nir Eyal 45:02 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 45:02 Either it is a focus task or it is a admin task.

Nir Eyal 45:05 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 45:05 And I like, I have to categorize it in one of the two. A focus task is like, the goal for me is to just sit down, focus on just one thing, and just do it-

Nir Eyal 45:12 Mm

Ali Abdaal 45:12 ... ideally for as long as I can without being distracted, as long as it takes to get the thing done. An admin task is, uh, where I, where the goal is to just finish it as soon as possible-

Nir Eyal 45:20 Mm

Ali Abdaal 45:20 ... because it's this random thing that, that has to be done.

Nir Eyal 45:21 Can minus.

Ali Abdaal 45:22 And so I will schedule w- when, when I have enough admin tasks that pile up, I'll schedule a half an hour block that I call an admin party in my calendar-

Nir Eyal 45:29 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 45:29 ... to just sort of play a game with myself where the goal is to put, put on some music, maybe go to the local coffee shop and just bang out th- like all of these different admin tasks.

Nir Eyal 45:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 45:36 And the way I think of it is that admin tasks, it's sort of like if you're, if you're a boat. The random reactive shit you have to do is like water piling onto the boat, and your admin is sort of like bailing it out. It's not actually helping you move forward.

Nir Eyal 45:49 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 45:50 The focus tasks are helping you row the boat forward-

Nir Eyal 45:51 It's just going in a-

Ali Abdaal 45:52 ... in a direction that you want. But, like, you gotta make some time to get rid of the admin 'cause otherwise it's gonna cause you to sink-

Nir Eyal 45:57 Right

Ali Abdaal 45:57 ... because you haven't paid your taxes or haven't-

Nir Eyal 45:58 Right

Ali Abdaal 45:58 ... paid your bills or what- or whatever.

Nir Eyal 45:59 So thi- this, actually what you've done is a fantastic demonstration of, uh, what Ian Bogost calls making things fun. Now, what's interesting about... He, he talks about play anything. He has a wonderful book called Play Anything. And what's so interesting about th- ab- about his technique is that he talks about how the conventional advice of, of how do you do the things you don't wanna do. Ju- just to back up, everything we're talking about now is about the things you don't wanna do, right? People talk about flow as a solution to our productivity problems. Just get into flow. Well, how do I get into flow doing my taxes?

Ali Abdaal 46:28 Mm.

Nir Eyal 46:28 That's no fun, right? Like you'll never get into flow with taxes. Flow is about, you know, Csikszentmihalyi when he wrote Flow, it's about athletes playing basketball and painters painting. It's fun things.

Ali Abdaal 46:37 Right.

Nir Eyal 46:37 Those are things you want to do. The, the part that people have trouble with are, are the things that are not fun to do. So, so how do you, how do you get those things done? So, uh, Ian Bogost talks about how you can add fun to a task, and that fun doesn't have to be enjoyable. It's kinda counterintuitive. You don't have to enjoy play. Why? Because play can be a tool to focus our attention long enou- uh, enough to help us complete the task. So how do you do that? How do you make something into play? You do two things. You add constraints, which is exactly what you did. You said, "Okay, I got a bunch of things. I wanna see how many I can do-

Ali Abdaal 47:10 Mm

Nir Eyal 47:10 ... in this hour at this coffee shop without distraction," right? "How many can I bang out?" That's a constraint, right? The time constraint. And the other is to add, add variability, to look for the, uh, the, the, the, the uncertainty in that situation and kinda peel back the onion and find what's interesting about it. So when I write, the only thing that drives me is that curiosity, right? What might I find? What's the answer to this problem? So if you can find what's interesting about that task, you can learn to play it. And again, it doesn't have to be enjoyable. It just has to hold your attention long enough to get

Nir Eyal 47:39 the task done.

Ali Abdaal 47:40 Nice. You talk about building a schedule around your values.

Nir Eyal 47:43 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 47:43 What do you mean by that?

Nir Eyal 47:45 So value, what are values? I define values as attributes of the person you want to become. So the way you do that is that you turn your values into time. If you wanna know what someone's values are, you don't look at what they say. You don't... What you do is you look at two things. You look at their calendar, and you look at their pocketbook, right? You look at how they spend their money and how they spend their time. That's someone's values. So what you wanna do is to turn your values into time by asking yourself, "How would the person I want to become spend their time?" And that's where those three life domains come in handy, right?

Ali Abdaal 48:18 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 48:18 How would the person you want to become spend their time taking care of themselves, taking care of their relationships, and taking care of their work? And so what that's going to invariably do is it's going to force you to make trade-offs.

Ali Abdaal 48:28 Mm.

Nir Eyal 48:29 Because unlike a to-do list that has no constraints, right? You can always add more to a to-do list. By the way, I'm not against taking things out of your brain and putting it on a piece of paper.

Ali Abdaal 48:36 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 48:37 That's a great idea, but most people end there. So they've got a million things on their, on their to-do list, and they never accomplished half of them. And then they get home from work every day and they say, "Oh, man-

Ali Abdaal 48:46 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 48:46 ... I, I was, I was so busy today. I did so much. But look at all these things I still haven't done." And so what does that do to your psyche if-

Ali Abdaal 48:52 Mm

Nir Eyal 48:52 ... day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you have this list of things that you said you were gonna do and you didn't do? Loser. So you start this script in your head of, "Oh, I must not be good at time management," or, "It's because I'm a Sagittarius-

Ali Abdaal 49:05 Mm

Nir Eyal 49:05 ... or maybe I have some kind of disorder." It's not that you're broken, it's that this stupid time management technique doesn't work. So what we have to do instead is to turn our values into time by asking ourselves, "With the limited time we have, how would the person I want to become spend their time?" So you're always going to have more things that you wanna do in that day than you have time for, and that forces you to make the trade-offs, to say, "Well, how bad do I wanna watch sports on TV versus being with my kids? How much do I wanna spend an extra hour of work versus going to the gym?" You have to make those trade-offs, but that's the only way to live a life without regret. Because if you don't do that, if you don't decide how you're gonna, you're going to spend your time, somebody's gonna decide for you, your boss, your kids, the media, distract- Some distraction is gonna take you off track unless you decide in advance what trade-offs you're going to make based on your values.

Ali Abdaal 49:53 Nice. What apps do you use to help build this schedule or, like, the to-do list? Do you have, like, a special stack, or what's, what's your take on the apps?

Nir Eyal 50:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 50:02 Actually-

Nir Eyal 50:02 Very, very special stack.

Ali Abdaal 50:03 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 50:03 It's, uh, Google Calendar. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 50:05 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 50:05 Any calendar for... Look, the best... And I get this question a lot, like, "What's the secret app? What's the secret solution?" The best solution is the one you use, right? This is what I call talking protein.

Ali Abdaal 50:16 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 50:16 So you ever go to the gym and you see those two guys, typically guys, and they're in the corner, uh, they're not in particularly good shape, and instead of exercise, they're talking about, "Bro, should we use the whey protein isolator or should we use the soy protein?" Or, you know, they're arguing about details, right? The, the... What really matters is to do the exercise. Work out [laughs] if you wanna get into shape. The protein, what kind of protein you use, that's details. So what kind of tool you use is not as, as important, right? Uh, uh, tactics are what we do. Strategy is why we do it.

Ali Abdaal 50:44 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 50:44 So it's much more important that you understand traction, distraction, internal trigger, external triggers, The Indistractable Model, that picture. If you can engrave that in your brain to understand, "Hey, if I'm not doing what I say I'm going to do, why?" Right? Which one of these four steps is missing? D- is there an internal trigger? Uh, is it a planning problem? Is it that hacking back external triggers, or is it, uh, having a pact in place? Using those four tactics, anyone b- can become indistractable.

Ali Abdaal 51:10 Nice. Um, to what extent do you recommend, uh, I should have 24/7 time boxed? [laughs]

Nir Eyal 51:18 Uh, yeah. I think that's a great idea. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 51:19 Yeah. I mean, that's what I do.

Nir Eyal 51:20 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 51:20 I'm just wondering, it's like, hey-

Nir Eyal 51:21 I think it's a great idea.

Ali Abdaal 51:22 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 51:22 I mean, I, I think it helps you enjoy every moment more.

Ali Abdaal 51:25 Yeah. It's like I've got my wake-up time time boxed-

Nir Eyal 51:27 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 51:27 ... my sleep time. It's like walk in, walk in the park first thing in the morning-

Nir Eyal 51:30 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 51:30 ... do the podcast, the whole, e- everything.

Nir Eyal 51:31 Me too.

Ali Abdaal 51:32 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 51:32 And, and by the way, it's, it's... You can absolutely change it.

Ali Abdaal 51:35 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 51:36 You just can't change it in the day. I think people sometimes resist making a time box calendar 'cause they say, "Oh, it's too rigid, and what if I can't follow it?" That's fine, because they, they have this mentality that we have to be like drill sergeants, but that's not the right mindset. The right mindset is not being a drill sergeant. It's being a scientist. What's the job of a scientist? A scientist makes a hypothesis, runs an experiment, and then looks at the results, and then runs new experiments based on those results. So what I, what I've done, I change my calendar constantly. I just don't change it in the day. So I can change tomorrow's schedule. That's fine. If I say, "Oh, I'm gonna meet my friend Ali," or, "I'm gonna do this task or that task," that's fine. There's no problem with that. But once that calendar is set, once I know what I, I plan to do, that's it. Now I have to leave it alone. So the, the, the tools I use, I use Google Calendar. Um, uh, that's, you know... But you can use a spreadsheet, you can use a piece of paper. Whatever works for you to make a time box calendar. Uh, there's a schedule planner on my site that I, that... People ask this so much that I've, I've created one that they can download. Um, I'll tell you some other tools that I really like, um, for what, what's called multi-channel multitasking, because there, there's a myth that we can't multitask, and that's not true. We absolutely can multitask if we do it correctly. That, uh, you know, it's kind of productivity advice. Don't try and multitask. If you do it correctly, you absolutely can. How do you multitask? You do what I call multi-channel multitasking. So it is true that you can't multitask on the same input channel. You can't do two math problems at the same time.

Ali Abdaal 53:01 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 53:01 You can't watch two, uh, television shows at the same time. You can't listen to two podcasts at the same time. It's impossible. Your brain will have to switch attention between the two. But what you can do is you can mix the channels. So for example, uh, when I'm in the gym, the reward for going to the gym is that I get to listen to podcasts, or in my case, I use an app called Pocket that reads articles to me. They have this wonderful text-to-speech service. I'm not affiliated with them. Wonderful way to, to, to, you know, kill two birds with one stone. I'm not reading articles online. I have a very strict rule. I never, ever read articles on my desktop. I only read them through this Pocket app, and it reads it to me so that I can do something else healthy, like taking a walk or exercise.

Ali Abdaal 53:41 Hmm. Yeah. So it's like doing a walking meeting.

Nir Eyal 53:43 Yeah. Absolutely.

Ali Abdaal 53:44 I'm on a phone call with Angus, my general manager, while walking around the park-

Nir Eyal 53:46 That's right

Ali Abdaal 53:47 ... and it's like multi-channel

Ali Abdaal 53:48 multitasking. Um, but if I was trying to have two meetings at once, that's [laughs] obviously-

Nir Eyal 53:51 That's right. That's right

Ali Abdaal 53:52 ... a, a bit tricky. Um, what is schedule synchronization?

Nir Eyal 53:56 Okay. So this is a fantastic technique. It's one of my favorite techniques. A schedule sync solves this problem that I hear all the time, which is, "Okay, I'm indistractable. I read the book. I'm doing the techniques. I'm indistractable, but my boss is not. What do I do now?" Right? "My boss is constantly pinging and dinging me, asking me for all kinds of stuff. What do I do then? How do I, how do I let them know I need my time to do my work?" So- This, this process of, of schedule syncing helps you with that, and it helps you avoid the worst piece of personal productivity advice that we hear all the time. It drives me crazy. The worst piece of personal productivity advice is, "If you want to be more productive, you have to learn how to say no." How many times have we heard that? That is the worst piece of productivity advice. You're gonna tell your boss, the guy who pays your bills, you're gonna tell that person no? You're gonna get fired. That's terrible advice. You don't tell them no. Instead, what you tell them is, "Let's look at the schedule," right? Let's... You don't, not in this way. Let me tell you how you do it. You sit down with them and you say, "Look, can I have 15 minutes with you Monday morning, whatever time, 15 minutes. I want to show you something." And what you do is you take, you print out your Timebox calendar. Part of the beauty of a Timebox calendar is that now you have a physical manifestation of how you spend your time. You print that out, you show them your Timebox calendar. You say, "Okay, boss, here's how I'm gonna spend my working hours. Here's this meeting you asked me to attend. Here's when I'm gonna spend time doing email. Here's time when I'm gonna work on that big project you asked me to do." And then you say, "Okay, boss, here's this other list of things you asked me to do, okay? Here's all the things you asked me to do that I'm having trouble fitting into my schedule." And now you're asking your boss to do their most important job. Your boss's most important job is to help you prioritize. That is the most important job of a manager, right? So you're not saying no, you're saying, "Please help me prioritize. What on this list is more important than what I currently scheduled?" And your boss will kiss the ground you walk on.

Ali Abdaal 55:51 [laughs] 100%.

Nir Eyal 55:52 Right?

Ali Abdaal 55:52 Yeah. I'm just like, "Oh."

Nir Eyal 55:53 Because every boss-

Ali Abdaal 55:54 What a breath of fresh air

Nir Eyal 55:55 ... right?

Ali Abdaal 55:55 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 55:55 We're all wondering, what are you doing all day?

Ali Abdaal 55:57 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 55:57 How are you spending your time?

Ali Abdaal 55:58 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 55:58 And we don't wanna ask you what your schedule is because we don't want you to think like we're, we're micromanaging you.

Ali Abdaal 56:03 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 56:03 So if you proactively do this, if you manage up, if you manage your manager by doing this schedule sync, every time they're gonna say, "You know what? That meeting, that's actually not that important. But this task over here, that's super important. Can we swap that out?" So by having that transparency, by doing this weekly schedule sync, it's, it's incredible. It solves so many problems.

Ali Abdaal 56:21 Nice.

Nir Eyal 56:22 By the way, it also works really well in the home. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 56:26 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 56:26 So, uh, my wife and I have been married now for 23 years, and we used to have these terrible fights, uh, a few years ago before I wrote Indistractable, around how I wasn't pulling my weight. And by the way, this is something statistically is very common. This is gonna be no surprise to any married woman, but it turns out that women, even in 2024, take on a disproportionate share of household responsibilities, okay? Even in marriages where both people work outside the home, that's still the case, and that was certainly the case in my household. I didn't realize it, but my wife would tell me, "Hey, you know, Nir, stuff's gotta get done, right? You got, you gotta feed our daughter, we gotta take out the trash, we gotta, we gotta do all this stuff. Like, you need to help out more." To which I would say, "Honey, if you need me to do something, just ask. What's the problem? If you need it, you know, don't get all upset, right? Don't get emotional. Just tell me what you need."

Ali Abdaal 57:14 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 57:15 And I didn't realize that what I was asking her to do was yet another job. Now she had to be my camp counselor, right? Telling me to clean up.

Ali Abdaal 57:23 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 57:23 So now what we do, we never have these fights anymore. This has been such a game changer for our marriage. Now, every week, Sunday nights, 8:00 PM, it's in our calendar, we have a schedule sync. We sit down together. She brings out her Timebox calendar, I bring out my Timebox calendar, takes us maybe 10 minutes, and now we know, okay, who has to do what when. Okay, my daughter needs to be taken here then, and we need to make sure that dinner is made by this time. 10 minutes, now we're in sync.

Ali Abdaal 57:49 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 57:49 And now exactly, I, I can live out my values of being in a, in equitable marriage because we know where the responsibilities lie.

Ali Abdaal 57:56 Wow.

Nir Eyal 57:56 I know what I need to do, she knows what she needs to do.

Ali Abdaal 57:58 Nice. Um, what other productivity techniques have helped you in your marriage?

Nir Eyal 58:03 In my marriage. What else?

Ali Abdaal 58:04 I'm asking for a friend. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 58:06 [laughs] Um, so I, I talk... [laughs] Okay, this is kind of personal, but, uh, you asked.

Ali Abdaal 58:11 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 58:11 So let's talk about our sex life. Why not? Um, so we found a few years ago, again, been married for, married for 23 years now, and, uh, a few years ago we found that our sex life was really suffering, and the reason it was suffering was not for a lack of, of not loving each other or lack of intimacy. It was that every night we were going to bed later and later and we were just exhausted.

Ali Abdaal 58:33 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 58:33 And part of that was that every night I would go to bed and I was caressing my iPhone and she was fondling her iPad.

Ali Abdaal 58:39 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 58:40 And we weren't being intimate.

Ali Abdaal 58:41 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 58:42 And so it wasn't until I started writing Indistractable that I decided to take on this challenge, and one of the best things we did was that I went to the hardware store and I bought us this outlet timer, and this outlet timer-

Ali Abdaal 58:55 Yeah

Nir Eyal 58:55 ... will turn on or off anything you plug into it at a set time of day or night.

Ali Abdaal 58:59 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 59:00 So in my household, to this very day, every night at 10:00 PM our internet router shuts off.

Ali Abdaal 59:07 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 59:08 So, uh, we probably don't even need it anymore 'cause we've been doing it for so long. But what that means is that everybody knows no internet past 10:00 PM. My daughter knows that, my wife knows that, I certainly know that. So as opposed to, uh, checking email till the wee hours or scrolling social media or watching YouTube videos or whatever, hey, gotta wrap everything up because 10:00 PM the internet's gonna shut off. And so that, that, that's called a, an effort pact. Now, it's called an effort pact because it takes a bit of effort. It puts some friction in between you and the distraction. Now, could I still get on the internet? Of course I could. I could use my cell phone. I could unplug the internet and then, you know, take out this timer and replug it in. But that takes work. That takes effort. It, it proposes this minute of mindfulness when I say, "Wait a minute, do I really need to stay online here? Or is it time to go to bed and maybe be intimate with my wife?"

Ali Abdaal 59:54 Hmm. Love that. That's great. Um, one of the things that people often say in response to the whole, like, Timebox everything, is that, "But, but doesn't that take the joy out of life? Doesn't it remove any, uh, spontaneity?"

Nir Eyal 1:00:08 Yeah. Well, the beauty of it is, I've heard this one before, the beauty is that you can plan spontaneity.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:14 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:00:15 That's literally what I do. So, uh, every Saturday I have time with my daughter, and we have this big- swath of time, a three-hour chunk of time where it's literally called planned spontaneity. Why? I don't know what we're gonna do. Maybe we're gonna go surfing, maybe we're gonna go get some ice cream, maybe we're gonna take a walk. I

Nir Eyal 1:00:33 don't know what we're gonna do, but I know what I will not be doing. I will not be checking social media. I will not be responding to work emails because that time has been apportioned for someone I love very much, and I wanna be fully present.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:43 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:00:43 So you can still be spontaneous, right? You can still plan that time, but by booking that time, you're blocking out all the things that you don't wanna be doing.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:51 Nice. All right. Good stuff. Let's talk about external triggers.

Nir Eyal 1:00:55 Yeah. So external triggers, all these pings, dings, and rings, they only account for about 10% of our distractions, but there's all kinds of things we can do, uh, to prevent them. And this is where it g- it kinda gets nuts and boltsy. So of course, we can do stuff with our phone, right? I- there's maybe one page in my book about how to make your phone indistractable. It's not very hard, you know. You just need to use some of the settings that come pre-installed with everyone's phone, uh, to do that. That's kinda the kindergarten stuff, right? Because we all know that, that those are external triggers. Uh, so just simply following the rule, the best rule is asking yourself for all those notifications which are serving you and which are you serving.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:30 Ooh, so fun.

Nir Eyal 1:01:31 Yeah. If the notification is serving you, for example, if you get a notif- there's nothing wrong with external triggers. If an external trigger tells you, "Hey, it's time for that meeting. It's time to go exercise. It's time for that thing you said you were gonna do-"

Ali Abdaal 1:01:40 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:01:40 ... that's in your calendar, wonderful. It's serving you. But if it's an external trigger that, uh, you get this notification while I was with my daughter, uh, now it's not serving me. I was serving the notification.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:50 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:01:50 So having that rule is, is, is, is a great step. Turns out 2/3 of people with a smartphone, 2/3 of people with a smartphone never change their notification settings. Can we honestly say that this, that technology is addicting us, it's hijacking our brains when we haven't taken five minutes to change the notification settings? That's kindergarten stuff. The more, I think the, the, the, the stuff that people don't think about are the external triggers, uh, that, that w- we don't give enough attention. For example, uh, meetings. How many stupid meetings did we not need to attend that coulda just been an email, right? Why do we have to meet synchronously? Huge waste of time. How many of those emails that we get in our inbox are a complete waste of time? Those can be external triggers that we need, didn't need to s- receive or send. Turns out, uh, there was an article in the Harvard Business Review that found that 50% of the emails that the average white-collar worker receives, they didn't need to receive, and 50% of the emails they sent, they didn't need to send.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:41 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:02:41 So email can be a huge source of distraction. Our kids, we love our kids, right? Family members are great, but they can be a huge source of distraction. So we have to go through and hack back each and every one of those external triggers, and there's a, a way to conquer each one of them.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:54 Hmm. How, how do you hack back your

Ali Abdaal 1:02:56 kids? Like, how do you think about that? [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:02:57 Yeah. So how do you hack back the external trigger caused by, uh, your kids? So we love them to death. They're fantastic. We love our kids, but they can be a distraction when you're trying to focus on a task and your kid needs you. So what do you do? First thing is to make sure you schedule your time appropriately. I, I talked to a lot of people who somehow think they can do it all at the same time.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:14 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:03:15 Right? You can do it all. You just can't do it at the same time. So if your primary responsibility is to take care of the kids, take care of the kids, but if the primary responsibility is to work on something, work on something. So what do you do while you're working on something? Don't, don't try and do both. So when my daughter was only six years old, and my wife and I both work from home, when my daughter was, was six years old, we sat down with her and we said, uh, "Look, honey, uh, Mommy and Daddy need time in their day to do their work." And, uh, so we, we went to Amazon and we bought what we call in our household the concentration crown. The concentration crown, there's a picture of it in the book. It's this little wreath that, that my wife puts on her head, and it has this little LED. It lights up. You can't miss it. And what we told our daughter, we said, "Look, when Mommy is wearing the concentration crown, that means you can't interrupt her unless you're bleeding," right?

Ali Abdaal 1:04:04 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:04:04 If you're bleeding, it's okay to interrupt.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:05 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:04:05 But unless you're bleeding, go figure something out, and it will never be more than 30 minutes. We promised her the time block will never be more than 30 minutes. So what we're doing is interrupting the interruption, right? That frankly, if you're on your computer, your kid doesn't know what you're doing. Are you watching a YouTube video and you can be interrupted, or are you doing a work call and you can't be interrupted, right? So by interrupting that interruption, we're giving them that, that grace to, to give them a cue to not interrupt you, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:04:32 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:04:32 So if you ha- if you're lucky enough to have a, a, a door in your room that you, uh, in your house that you can close, so I got a little, uh, uh, thing that I, a little label that I put on the, the hook for the door so that she knows, okay, I'm, I'm indistractable at the moment. Uh, but my wife wears the indistractable crown, the, the concentration crown, and it's surprisingly effective not only with children, but also with husbands.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:54 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:04:54 Now, when I see her, you know, I used to interrupt her when she's doing work. It's really effective now. When she wears the concentration crown and she says, "Okay, I can't be bothered," we all know it's time to leave her alone.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:01 Yeah. Uh, it's, so it's, it's interesting you say that because another way of thinking about that might be that, like, hey, you know, the kid's only gonna be six-year-old, six years old once. There's nothing on my work that's more important than being distracted by the kid, and this is, in fact, a welcome distraction. I'd love for the kid to distract me. How do you... But I guess, yeah, how do you think about that-

Nir Eyal 1:05:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:18 ... versus balancing with I wanna grind on this work task?

Nir Eyal 1:05:21 Well, for that time when you're with them, absolutely.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:24 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:05:24 Be 100% available. If they want you, be 100% available. But, and, and that could be your entire day. If that, if your value system and if you have enough money in the bank to not have to work, good for you.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:35 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:05:35 You're in a very privileged place. Most of us gotta get some work done.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:38 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:05:38 Right? And so it's a reality that we need that time and space. And so as opposed to say, here's what happens. People don't drop everything and play with their kids. They yell at their kids, right? They say, "I, I'm working right now. Get out."

Ali Abdaal 1:05:51 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:05:51 That's, uh, that, that's really unfair because they don't know. They can't see. So you have to make some kind of very clear cue. By the way, this is also very effective in the workplace. So in every copy of my book, there is a s- uh, what, what's called a screen sign. It's this piece of cardstock. You pull it out of the book, you fold it into thirds, and you put it on your computer monitor. So everybody who walks by sees this big red sign that says, "I'm indistractable at the moment. Please come back later." So by having that explicit message that says, "Hey, I need to work without distraction for a bit," not all day. You can't, you know, go in some cave like a monk and, and not be bothered. Of course, some of your day is going to be spent doing that reflective, uh, reactive work as well. But for that time when you're, when you need to work without distraction, particularly if you're working in an open floor plan office, incredibly distracting, incredibly hard to get work done, you need some kind of external q- cue.

Nir Eyal 1:06:39 And frankly, putting on headphones, nobody knows what you're doing when you're wearing headphones. Are you listening to music? Can you be interrupted? Can you not? No. We need to make it so- socially acceptable, and it, and increasingly it has been since I published the book, having that screen sign that says, "I can't be distracted right now," is very effective.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:53 Nice. What is temptation bundling?

Nir Eyal 1:06:56 So temptation bundling is when we take, uh, a reward from one area of our life, and we use it to incentivize us to do something in another area of our life. So this was, uh, work done by Katy Milkman, and, uh, it's one I use when I do this multi-channel multitasking. So listening to a podcast episode while I'm exercising, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:07:15 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:07:15 Uh, in my case it's, uh, oftentimes it's articles that I... I have a hard rule. I never read an article on my computer. I only listen to an article-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:23 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:07:23 ... when I'm doing something healthy. So that would be temptation bundling.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:26 Nice. Yeah, I really like that. Um, back when I didn't have a personal trainer, I would listen to fiction audiobooks at the gym. I would find that for me, I would get so engrossed in the audiobook I would half-ass the workout.

Nir Eyal 1:07:35 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:35 Like, how do, how do, how do you not half-ass the workout if you're, like, engrossed in-

Nir Eyal 1:07:39 That's a great point.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:39 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:07:39 I find, uh, so short form articles-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:42 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:07:42 ... you can only get so engrossed, because they're max, what, five minutes?

Ali Abdaal 1:07:46 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:07:46 So, uh, even if I miss something-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:49 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:07:49 ... I don't miss that much 'cause it's only one article worth.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:51 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:07:51 So worst case, I'll just listen to the article again.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:53 Nice. Good idea. Um, let's talk about the three different types of pacts.

Nir Eyal 1:07:57 Pacts, okay. So we have price pacts, effort pacts, and identity pacts. So price pacts is when there's some kind of monetary disincentive for going off track. So if you're making a bet with someone and saying, "Okay, uh, I'm gonna finish my book, and if I don't finish my book I'm gonna pay you a certain amount of money." Uh, the burn or burn pact I made with myself, and I'm gonna burn that $100 bill unless I decide to, to do some form of exercise. That would be an e- uh, an example of a price pact. An effort pact is when there's some bit of effort, some friction in between you and the distraction. So some kind of effort, something that, that is, is, is, uh, makes you pause and reflect on whether that task-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:31 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:08:31 ... is something you really want to go off track, or whether you wanna

Nir Eyal 1:08:35 stay.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:35 Sure, like unplugging the PlayStation or something like that.

Nir Eyal 1:08:37 Well, if the-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:37 That would be-

Nir Eyal 1:08:38 ... the, the timer, for example.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:39 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:08:39 Right? Unplugging the, the, the outlet timer. And then an identity pact is actually the, the most powerful of the three. An identity pact is when you give yourself some kind of moniker.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:50 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:08:50 And this came out of some amazing work done by Knutson et al, and, uh, he found that the most effective, uh, way to increase voting, uh, you know, in an election was this very simple technique whereby he called participants in the study, and he changed one variable. He asked them, "Are you a voter or are you planning to vote?"

Ali Abdaal 1:09:16 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:09:16 It's the only difference, noun versus verb form. And he found that people who were asked, "Are you a voter," were much more likely to vote. He actually went later and looked at the voter rolls to see how they voted or if they voted. He didn't know how they voted, but whether they voted or not. And by simply asking, "Are you a voter," they were much more likely to go ahead and head to the polls. So using that technique to our advantage by actually having a moniker, by having an identity. This is why the book is called Indistractable. Indistractable is meant to sound like indestructible. It's who you are. So when you have an i- this, this identity, it makes m- you much more likely to follow through. This comes from the psychology of religion, in fact, that when someone calls themselves a, a member of a particular faith, they're much more likely to, to act in accordance.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:01 That's really good. Um, this is gonna be a, a, a very first-world problem, but I've been thinking a lot about, like, what do I call myself on my Instagram bio?

Nir Eyal 1:10:08 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:09 Do I go, like, doctor turned YouTuber? Do I go doctor turned entrepreneur plus YouTuber?

Nir Eyal 1:10:13 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:13 Do I put writer in there somewhere?

Nir Eyal 1:10:14 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:15 And like two, like two days ago, I was thinking, "Huh, you know, I wanna make a start... I, I wanna make a start on my next book 'cause I feel like that would be kind of fun."

Nir Eyal 1:10:21 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:21 You know what? Let me just add writer into my Instagram bio-

Nir Eyal 1:10:25 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:10:25 ... and on my kind of website sort of thing. Be like, "Hey, I'm Ali. I'm a doctor turned YouTuber, entrepreneur, and writer."

Nir Eyal 1:10:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:30 It's like, ah, now I feel like I can really embody the identity of writer, and what does a writer do? Well, a writer writes. And now it's like I've almost given my sp- I've given myself permission that, like, oh, this is the thing I'm gonna do with some hours of the day.

Nir Eyal 1:10:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:43 And it's just, it's weird how adding that as an Instagram-

Nir Eyal 1:10:46 Instagram

Ali Abdaal 1:10:46 ... my Instagram bio thing [laughs] has actually made me feel a lot better about, like, oh, I can do my writing now.

Nir Eyal 1:10:50 Absolutely.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:51 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:10:51 And, and we, we see people using it, uh, in a way that serves them and many times in a way that hurts them. So when someone says, uh, that, "I'm a Sagittarius, and a Sagittarius has certain things that I'm bad at or I'm good at"-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:04 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:11:04 ... you act in accordance with that, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:11:06 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:11:06 Or if you s- think you have some kind of diagnosis and that's incurable, and, you know, the, the... There's all kinds of things that we label ourselves that many times are not pro- uh, are not actually helpful. So if you say, oh, you hear this all the time, "I'm bad at time management," or, "I have a short attention span," well, yeah, again, if you label yourself as that it'll be true, versus someone who says, "I'm indistractable. It's who I am," right?

Ali Abdaal 1:11:27 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:11:28 And, and is it that different from someone who says, "I'm a vegetarian"? Is it so different?

Ali Abdaal 1:11:32 No.

Nir Eyal 1:11:32 Not really, right? You go to lunch with someone who's a vegetarian. They order what they order. You order what you order. It's who they are. It's part of their identity. The fact that, you know, "I am a vegetarian" means that that person isn't contemplating, "Ooh, should I have a bacon sandwich for breakfast?" No. It's who they are, and so they act in accordance with that. And so it should be the same when it comes to being indistractable. "You know what? I'm, I'm sorry I don't respond to notifications every 30 seconds, 'cause I'm indistractable." Or, "You know what? If we're gonna have lunch together, let's be both present in body and mind. Let's put our phones away, I, because I'm indistractable."

Ali Abdaal 1:12:01 That's really cool. I remember a few, a few years ago, um, there was a friend of mine who, who, who asked something. We, we were talking about, like, learning languages or something.

Nir Eyal 1:12:09 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:09 And I just sort of threw out the phrase, "Oh, I'm not very good at languages."

Nir Eyal 1:12:12 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:13 And then I was like, "Hold the fuck up."

Nir Eyal 1:12:14 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:12:16 "Who says..." Who... Uh, like how did, how did that thought come into my head? And I was like, oh, it's because when I was in, like, year eight- I got, like, w- when the, the groups were set in terms of ability-

Nir Eyal 1:12:27 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:12:27 ... I was, like, in the middle group. And I was in the top group for everything else, but I was in the middle group for French. And I realized, like, I think 15 years later that that had come back to give me this narrative that I'm bad at languages. And I was like, "No, I'm, I'm not gonna accept that." [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:12:38 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:38 Of course I'm not. But, like, if I wanted to learn a language, I'd learn a freaking language.

Nir Eyal 1:12:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:41 Of course. [laughs] Um, um, yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:12:42 And, and, and it's true, you may not have been very good, but that doesn't mean you can't practice and get better.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:46 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:12:46 Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:12:47 Absolutely.

Nir Eyal 1:12:47 And so it's the same when it comes to our focus and attention.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:50 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:12:50 And unfortunately, I think a, a lot of people almost want the label.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:54 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:12:54 Right? We want to think

Nir Eyal 1:12:56 that we're somehow deficient in some way, because then we don't have to try anymore.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:59 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:12:59 I'm no good at languages, so then I, I don't have to learn, right? I can bow out of it. Uh, which is fine if that's, if that's your value system, but if there's something that you know you are capable of and you have this self-limiting belief that's keeping you from accomplishing that goal, that's sad.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:13 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:13:13 It's, it's, it's a disaster of your human potential.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:15 We have a bunch of students in our YouTuber Academy, uh, often beginners, often slightly older, i.e., in their 40s [laughs] but, but actually slightly older, who will say, "Oh, I'm very bad at tech."

Nir Eyal 1:13:25 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:26 And that is just a surefire sign that we need to work on some, like, emotional issues here, because, like, they're telling themselves they're bad at tech, and then they need the hand-holding from our team about, like, the cameras and the settings, and then they're ... But they have this narrative that they're bad at tech, and, like, you can't do anything on YouTube if you have the self-professed belief that you are bad at tech.

Nir Eyal 1:13:45 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:45 Um, and so that's a, a big part of what we're trying to work on when we're doing that accountability calls.

Nir Eyal 1:13:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:49 To be like, "No, Johnny," be like, "I don't think you're bad at tech. Like, you know, you managed to figure out how to do your job. You managed to figure out how to drive. You can figure out how to operate a camera. Here are some tutorials." You know, that kind of thing.

Nir Eyal 1:13:59 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and it's, it's, uh, again, it's through practice, just like any other skill. We somehow think that, uh, we're supposed to miraculously have these skills embedded. We're supposed to-

Ali Abdaal 1:14:08 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:14:08 ... know how to deal with these internal triggers. I never took a class on how to deal with my emotions, you know? And we never sat down and said, "Okay, well, how do you react to uncomfortable emotional sensations?" It's a learned skill. It's a learned behavior.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:19 Mm. What are your thoughts on ADHD overdiagnosis and stuff?

Nir Eyal 1:14:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:23 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:14:24 Uh, so this is pretty controversial, um, and not very popular, but I think it's way, way overdiagnosed.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:29 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:14:30 I mean, just the fact that, you know, I ... There's apps on here that I, that I could, um, download and basically get a diagnosis in less than 30 minutes-

Ali Abdaal 1:14:37 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:14:37 ... tells you something. And everybody gets a diagnosis. If you know what to say, you're, you're gonna get that diagnosis. And, uh, it's not that I don't think ADHD is real. ADHD is absolutely real. There are particularly children who do suffer from it. I think it's way overdiagnosed. How can it be the case that 1% of European children have ADHD and 10% of American children? Something's going on here.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:01 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:15:01 Um, and part of it is that, uh, it's very, it's a very convenient diagnosis, right? If little Johnny can't sit still, and, uh, he's six years old, I don't think little boys were meant to sit still for very long at six years old, and, and in our generation, we were just rambunctious, right? And we accepted it, and we grew out of it. Today, it's just very inconvenient for teachers and parents to, to find other means. And so what do you do? You medicate. And I think not only is that very dangerous from potential side effects, uh, it's also ... It, it, it, it casts a die of saying that to solve my problems, uh, a pill is a solution. And I think that that's potentially, uh, very dangerous. So it's not that I'm against meditation, uh, medication. It's not that I'm against ADHD. I think, though, we always need to try skills before pills, that pills should be what we do after we've tried the non-pharmaceutical interventions, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:15:52 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:15:52 Simple things like learning to deal with uncomfortable emotional states, planning our day, removing external triggers. This is not rocket science, right? We can all do this. And then if that stuff doesn't work, okay, now let's look at some perhaps pharmaceutical interventions.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:06 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:16:06 Particularly when I, I think it comes to adults, I mean, it, the, there's a lot of controversy around adult ADHD, that it turns out that, uh, uh, particularly when it comes to, uh, thinking that it's incurable-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:17 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:16:17 ... that it's a, a state you'll have for the rest of your life. Well, look, if I can fix the symptoms, haven't I cured the disease, right? If you're no longer ... You, you're a doctor, [laughs] right? Like, if you're not exhibiting any symptoms, uh, it's at least in remission, you could say, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:16:31 Sure.

Nir Eyal 1:16:32 And so wouldn't we wanna try that? Wouldn't we first wanna say like, "Look, let's use these, these techniques"? And I, I, uh, many ADHD coaches now use my book Indistractable in their coaching practice. The book wasn't written for people with ADHD, but it's been very helpful to those folks as well. And if they are able to reduce their medication, stop their medication altogether, and their symptoms, uh, are alleviated, well-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:54 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:16:54 ... it, it can be, I think, a curable disease.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:57 Yeah. This is something I really wanna look into, 'cause I, I've ... Ev- every single psychiatrist I've ever spoken to, and I've asked this question to, says, "Oh, yeah, way overblown in terms of overdiagnosis."

Nir Eyal 1:17:05 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:06 And I was like, "Ooh, that's interesting."

Nir Eyal 1:17:07 But the public hates hearing that. That's, that's what I-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:09 Yeah. They never wanna say it, like, on the record. [laughs] I'm like-

Nir Eyal 1:17:11 You, you get s- ... I, I'm sure if you po-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:12 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:17:12 ... if you post this, you will get ... I'm not sure it's even worth posting, because you're gonna get so much hate.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:17 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:17:17 Because it's not a diagnosis. It's an identity.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:22 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:17:23 It's an identity. People think that having ADHD is like being a particular race, uh, that it's, it's, you're, you're born with it, and that's what I am. And I, I don't h- for ... I don't know if that's true. I'm not gonna claim to know if that's true. But even if it is true, why would you believe that's an inhibiting factor? Why would you, why would you succumb to that?

Ali Abdaal 1:17:41 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:17:42 Because what happens is when you think, "Oh, uh, I f- I f- I, I can't focus. It's because of my ADHD," you're focusing on the ADHD rather than getting back on the task.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:50 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:17:51 So it's like, you know, this idea of a senior moment. You l- someone loses your, their keys, and they think, "Oh, my gosh, it's a senior moment." Well, it's because you're thinking about the senior moment that you're not finding your keys. [laughs] So you're taking up that cognitive bandwidth to actually pay attention to the thing you sh- you should think through. Uh, so it's

Nir Eyal 1:18:06 just not a helpful ... For most people, uh, I think it oftentimes hurts rather than helps. Not, not that we shouldn't try and, uh ... You know, if, if, if it is a problem, if it is something that, that is, i- is a challenge- The worst thing you can do is to say, "Oh, I probably have undiagnosed ADHD." At least go get a diagnosis to know one way or the other rather than, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:24 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:18:24 ... carrying around th- this belief that really may not even be true.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:27 Nice. Um, final thing I wanted to ask you about, it's a bit more of a sort of selfish question. Um, how do you make time for writing amidst the other things that you wanna do with your life?

Nir Eyal 1:18:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:38 This is something that I'm currently struggling with, with, like, business commitments and all this stuff, and it's like the videos and the podcast and the business stuff, and it's like carving out time for writing, which always feels like it is... It's, it's never urgent.

Nir Eyal 1:18:49 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:49 'Cause it's like I don't need to write another book, like, ever, but, like, I kind of want to.

Nir Eyal 1:18:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:53 It's, like, one of those projects that's, like, I don't know, important but, uh, uh, not urgent in the slightest.

Nir Eyal 1:19:00 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:00 Any, any tips?

Nir Eyal 1:19:01 So I think there's different seasons to writing a book.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:04 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:19:05 Um, and I think the best... So I have a friend in Hollywood, uh, who I went to college with who's been in Hollywood forever, and he, um, he, he never made his big break. He's never gotten any of, you know, super famous roles. Um, and I, I went... I, I asked him, you know, I, I told him, I was like, "You know, you've been doing this for, like, 20 years now. Like, at, at what point do you find a different profession?" And he says, "The only reason you become an actor is because you can't do anything else."

Ali Abdaal 1:19:31 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:19:31 And I think that applies to book writing. For most authors, it's not gonna be profitable, right [laughs] ? It's not a good idea if you think you're gonna make lots of money being an author. Uh, the same with a startup, right? If you think you're gonna get rich on your startup, you're just bad at math, right? You have to do these things because you want the thing to exist.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:50 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:19:50 You want to birth this.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:51 Yep.

Nir Eyal 1:19:52 So if you're gonna start a company, do it because you want a certain product to exist in the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:58 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:19:58 You want to use that product. If you're going to write a book, it's because you want the answer to this question that's burning. Don't write a book because of what you know. Write a book because of what you want to know.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:08 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:20:08 That's what... That's why I write. I mean, personally, that, that, that's my experience. I always write books because of what I want to know. I never have the answer in advance. It's a journey, and sometimes I don't write the book because I find, uh, the answer's not that interesting [laughs] .

Ali Abdaal 1:20:20 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:20:20 But if I do publish a book, it's because I have this, this burning desire. So in that early stage, only do it because you have to, right? Because it keeps n-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:29 Hmm

Nir Eyal 1:20:29 ... gnawing at you to get the answer to this question. Um, so with Indistractable, you know, I wrote... I, I, I read everybody else's book on the topic, and it still didn't solve my problem.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:37 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:20:37 Right? Saying, "Well, get rid of your technology. Stop using email," that's not really practical. It didn't work for me. So I, I needed to, to really start with, with, uh, uh, bare bones on what is distraction and, and dive into the psychology of the problem to really fix it for myself.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:50 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:20:51 Um, then at some point, after you have tons and tons of information, tons of research, at least, again, this is all autobiographical. Your mileage may vary. I, y- I had so much information, so many anecdotes, so much research, so many things, then the stage, uh, I think is the most fun, where you're starting to connect dots.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:08 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:21:09 Right? You see this constellation of stars. Now you're trying to figure out are there any patterns here. So that's why both my books, there's always a central picture.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:16 Yeah, it's really nice. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:21:17 Well, that, that to me is actually-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:18 That, that must have been very satisfying.

Nir Eyal 1:21:19 It's very satisfying.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:20 Like, "Oh, there we go."

Nir Eyal 1:21:20 It's also the hardest part.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:21 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:21:21 Like, I spend more time on that picture-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:24 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:21:24 ... [laughs] than the writing.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:25 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:21:25 'Cause that's actually the hard part 'cause that's when you have to figure out what goes in and what goes out.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:28 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:21:28 'Cause it's really easy to write a book full of anecdotes, right? You can fill out... You can in a week, uh, write a bunch of anecdotes around successful people and, you know, cockamamie, uh, case studies, and okay, you got a book. But to, to imprint an image in someone's mind says, "When I have this problem, here's the picture. Here, attraction-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:47 Hmm

Nir Eyal 1:21:47 ... distraction, internal, external."

Ali Abdaal 1:21:48 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:21:49 That's... To me, that's what's valuable when I read a book. Um, so that's what I wanted to give my readers. So that's, that's the second stage, and then the third stage is the cranking stage [laughs] where, okay, now you, you understand the outline. You understand the, the major, uh, uh, points of the book. You understand the, the big-picture message that you wanna get across. That's where I find, uh, monk mode is quite helpful. Uh, monk mode is not helpful in stage one or two. It's really helpful in stage three, where you go away for, you know, full days at a time sometimes, like, uh, uh, was it Toni Morrison... uh, uh, uh, who was the author who would, like, lock herself in a hotel?

Ali Abdaal 1:22:27 Maya Angelou.

Nir Eyal 1:22:28 Maya Angelou.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:28 Yeah [laughs] .

Nir Eyal 1:22:28 That's right. Maya Angelou would do that. That's that final stage, right? I think in the beginning stage, I think it's very hard, uh, to force yourself. Uh, I mean, you could do it for, you know, I... That, in those stages, I would do... In stage one, it's more time boxing-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:43 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:22:43 ... the research time, right? I need to read these studies. I need to, or, you know, finish that book and take notes on it. Um, uh, that's more where you can time box. But then when you, when you just gotta crank-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:53 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:22:53 ... to me, I, I like having the big chunks of time.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:56 Okay. So this is very reassuring 'cause I've been, I'm in stage one. Uh, and I'm still not sure what book two will be, but there's, like, two or three ideas that I'm sort of intrigued by.

Nir Eyal 1:23:05 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:05 And when I am procrastinating, I'll research them and occasionally just tinker away on a notes file. And over time, they're just sort of slowly getting fleshed out.

Nir Eyal 1:23:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:13 And I guess I've been thinking, "Oh, I don't have my time box for writing." But actually, at this stage, I don't really need it.

Nir Eyal 1:23:18 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:18 I'm just sort of exploring and assembling things together, and maybe something will come of it, but I'm in no rush. It's all good.

Nir Eyal 1:23:23 And in some ways, the writing, uh, I think writing prematurely can be really demoralizing.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:27 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:23:27 Because if you start writing before you understand the big picture-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:31 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:23:31 ... you're probably gonna trash that wr- I can't tell you how many words I've tossed out, probably 10 times as many words that have been tossed out versus what's been published. Because I thought it was gonna go one way, and then-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:39 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:23:39 ... it was a dead end, and then it didn't work out.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:41 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:23:41 Whereas if I had just collected tons of research, tried to make a picture out of it, tried to make something that, that i- is, is novel and is helpful, then write about it-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:50 Yep

Nir Eyal 1:23:50 ... that would be, I think, a little bit-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:51 Comes a little bit in order

Nir Eyal 1:23:51 ... there. Thanks so much.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:52 I wish I would've told myself that two books ago.

Nir Eyal 1:23:54 Dude.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:54 [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:23:55 Same. I wish I had, I wish I had told myself this four years ago. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:23:58 [laughs] Um, final thing is, so I've just turned 30, and you very-

Nir Eyal 1:24:02 Congrats.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:02 Thank you. And

Ali Abdaal 1:24:03 you very kindly gave me, uh, one piece of life advice, which is gonna feature in a video very soon. Uh, any other tips? Any, any other advice you would give a, a 30-year-old dude-

Nir Eyal 1:24:11 Oof

Ali Abdaal 1:24:11 ... who is kind of doing a similar-ish career that, as you are, and seem, we have, seem to have similar-ish values? [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:24:17 I mean, I, I feel like I need to take advice from you. I, I don't need to ask you that question. Um- I think something that's served me as an author, uh, and it's a, it's a real privilege to be an author, right? I think, I think it's such a great job-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:28 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:24:28 ... right? We get paid to learn.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:30 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:24:30 Um, so one thing that's always, uh, I've tried to follow is, is follow my curiosity.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:36 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:24:37 That whenever I don't do that, whenever I worry too much about, uh, is this book gonna sell and what are people gonna think and, uh, I don't know, like all the other stuff, like all the insecurities that come-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:48 Yep

Nir Eyal 1:24:48 ... from writing. Whereas if I just re- remind myself I, I want to know the answer.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:53 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:24:53 Follow the curiosity. And the second thing, I think a lot of people get imposter syndrome when they write thinking, "Well, who am I to say this thing?"

Ali Abdaal 1:25:01 Yep.

Nir Eyal 1:25:01 Um, and I, I, I, I, um, I took a class in college on jazz, and, uh, because this, this teacher, Dwight Andrews, was just a, a legendary teacher, and I'd never, like never paid attention to jazz before. What I really loved about jazz is that it's the mixing of these various genres, right? It's, it's, uh, European instruments with African syncopation, right? It's like all this, this mishmash, this purely American, uh, amalgamation. And I remember thinking l- much later on how, how, what a wonderful metaphor that is for overcoming imposter syndrome. That yes, the topic you're writing about may have been written about before, but nobody's written about it in your way-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:46 Mm

Nir Eyal 1:25:46 ... with your background, with your experience. You're making jazz.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:49 Mm.

Nir Eyal 1:25:49 Right? You're taking maybe some stuff that's already been out there, but invariably when it's mixed with your story and your perspective, it has to be novel. And so that helps me always when I'm like, "Well, who am I to say this?" It's like, well, it's, it's gonna be different. It's gonna be-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:04 Nice

Nir Eyal 1:26:04 ... it's not gonna be the same.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:05 That's cool. Thank you. And finally, uh, any fiction book recommendations? [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:26:09 Fiction recommendations? Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:11 Or, you know, books, TV shows, movies. I'm trying to s- I'm trying to more intentionally use some of my time for like-

Nir Eyal 1:26:16 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:26:16 ... downtime and I'm like, ooh, [laughs] like what recommendations can I get from friends for like interesting media to watch.

Nir Eyal 1:26:21 Well, non- nonfiction book that I always recommend-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:23 Hmm

Nir Eyal 1:26:23 ... that I think deserved more attention is, uh, Rory Sutherland's book, Alchemy.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:27 Oh, I started reading that.

Nir Eyal 1:26:28 Great book. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:29 I, I had him on the pod a few years ago.

Nir Eyal 1:26:30 Oh, yeah?

Ali Abdaal 1:26:30 So I sort of skimmed through it to, [laughs] to do the research.

Nir Eyal 1:26:32 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:32 But I should read it properly.

Nir Eyal 1:26:33 It's a great book.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:33 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:26:33 I really like that book.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:34 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:26:34 If you're interested in marketing and, uh, uh, yeah, he, uh, fantastic book.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:38 Mm-hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:26:39 I'm trying to think, what are some favorite fiction books? Um, oh, what was that book I just finished that Derek Thompson actually recommended in New York? I just finished it. Wellness.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:53 Oh.

Nir Eyal 1:26:53 It was a pretty good book.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:54 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:26:54 It was okay. I, I don't know if it was a great book.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:57 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:26:57 It's pretty good.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:58 Nice.

Nir Eyal 1:26:58 That was the last fiction book I read.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:59 Oh, perfect. Nice.

Nir Eyal 1:27:00 And-

Ali Abdaal 1:27:01 Great

Nir Eyal 1:27:01 ... yeah. Sorry, maybe that wasn't a great recommendation. I don't read that much fiction. I mostly read nonfiction.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:06 That's-

Nir Eyal 1:27:06 Breathe was really good. Did you read Breathe?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:08 Uh, by James Nestor?

Nir Eyal 1:27:09 I think so, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:10 Yes. Yeah, yeah, that was, that was-

Nir Eyal 1:27:11 I read it

Ali Abdaal 1:27:11 ... that was a little, that was scary. I've started taping my mouth since. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:27:13 Did you?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:13 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:27:13 Does it, does it work?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:14 Uh, yeah. I think, like my WHOOP sleep scores seem marginally higher when I do.

Nir Eyal 1:27:20 Really?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:20 Uh, I mean, I don't have an update, uh, 'cause it, when I tape my mouth, I'm also going to bed at a decent hour, putting the phone away-

Nir Eyal 1:27:26 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:27:27 ... taking the freaking magnesium supplement 'cause I'm like-

Nir Eyal 1:27:28 Ugh

Ali Abdaal 1:27:28 ... "I'm gonna take care of my sleep."

Nir Eyal 1:27:29 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:27:30 So, so I haven't isolated the variables particularly. [laughs]

Nir Eyal 1:27:32 Yeah. But you try and do it every night, to tape your mouth?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:34 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:27:34 Did you snore before?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:36 Uh, yes, but also I would breathe a lot through my mouth, and so I'd wake up-

Nir Eyal 1:27:39 Oh

Ali Abdaal 1:27:39 ... in the middle of the night with a very dry mouth.

Nir Eyal 1:27:40 Oh.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:40 And then I'd be, I'd wake up, then I'd be like, "Okay, well, I might as well use the bathroom now."

Nir Eyal 1:27:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:43 And it would just sort of interrupt the sleep.

Nir Eyal 1:27:45 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:46 So yeah, for me, it's been le- it's j- just been more about it's a thing that stops me from waking up at night with a dry mouth-

Nir Eyal 1:27:51 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:27:51 ... which is kinda nice.

Nir Eyal 1:27:52 That, um, there's a, there's a, actually insomnia was something that I, I helped, uh, that the research I did for Indistractable helped me overcome.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:01 Oh.

Nir Eyal 1:28:01 I used to have, like get up in the middle of the night and have a really tough time falling asleep, and it kinda brings up a point you brought up earlier of, uh, what do you do when you say you're gonna do something and then doesn't go, doesn't go the way you want? So if I say I'm gonna sleep, I time block sleep, but I'm not sleeping, what do I do? And, um, I started repeating this mantra that, uh, w- at night that the body gets what the body needs.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:23 Hmm.

Nir Eyal 1:28:23 The body gets what the body needs. That it, uh, I should, I should, with a postulate, if you let it. Uh, so 'cause I, uh, 'cause it turns out the number one cause of insomnia is worry about having insomnia.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:36 Yep.

Nir Eyal 1:28:36 And so this, you, I would enter this rumination loop of-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:39 Yeah

Nir Eyal 1:28:39 ... oh, you know, if I don't get to sleep soon, then, uh, tomorrow's gonna be wrecked and I gotta go, why am I not sleeping? I'm not sleeping. I would stay up for hours. As opposed to now whenever I can't sleep, I say to myself, "The body gets what the body needs if you let it." So as long as I went to bed on time and then repeated this mantra whenever I would wake up, turns out my body would relax, I'd chill out, and I'd fall back asleep. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:28:58 Fantastic. Nir, thank you so much. This was-

Nir Eyal 1:29:00 My pleasure.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:00 Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:29:00 Thank you.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:02 All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.