Modern WisdomHow To Control Your Attention And Become Indistractable | Nir Eyal | Modern Wisdom Podcast 104
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 21,898 words- 0:00 – 1:47
Why following through with intentions is the “skill of the century”
- CWChris Williamson
(wind blowing) I'm joined by Nir Eyal, all the way from the other side of the pond, and we're talking about how to be indistractable today. Nir, welcome to the show.
- NENir Eyal
Great to be here, Chris. Thanks so much.
- CWChris Williamson
We've had a lot of your contemporaries and peers on recently, Tiago Forte, James Clear, uh, Chris Sparks, Laura Vanderkam. So, we've been circling around this stuff for a little while. The listeners will be, uh, they'll have their appetites whet for this today. So, before we get into too much to do with the book, what do you think life would look like if we followed through with our intentions?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. So, that's exactly what I desire to- to know is to- to gain this superpower, if you will, uh, what I call the skill of the century, to follow through with our intentions. I mean, how- how amazing would your life be if everything you said you would do, you actually did, right? You said to- you said you'd go to the gym, you go to the gym. You said you were going to spend time with your friends, you- you make that time. You said you were going to work on that big project and get that thing done that you've been procrastinating, and you do it. That, to me, was a skill I wanted. I wanted that skill so badly. And I- I, uh, realized that the problem was not that I didn't know what to do. There isn't, for most people, a knowledge gap. We- we all basically know, right? If you- if you want to eat healthy, we- we know that chocolate cake is not as healthy as a- as a- as a healthful salad. If you want to, uh, you know, excel at your job, you got to do the work, especially the hard stuff that other people don't want to do. Uh, if you want to have great relationships, you have to be fully present with the people you love. We know what to do. The question is, why don't we do it? Why don't we do the things that we know we should? Uh, and so that's really the basis of this book, uh, called Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, is how to master this exact skill.
- 1:47 – 3:18
Defining “indistractable” as personal integrity (not just focus)
- CWChris Williamson
So, what does being indistractable mean? Apart from the fact-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah, so-
- CWChris Williamson
... that I've had to add it to my dictionary, so that I can write it down.
- NENir Eyal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It keeps on trying to make it indestructible, which also would be good, but isn't the purpose of-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, isn't the purpose of our discussion today.
- NENir Eyal
Well, that was actually the word that I- I wanted to do a pl- a little bit of a play on is that, uh, when you are indistractable, you are indestructible. It is kind of like a superpower. And the- the good thing about making up a word is that you get to define it any way you want. So, being indistractable means you are the kind of person who strives to do what they say they're going to do. You live with personal integrity. You know, so many of us, if, uh... We wouldn't dream of lying to our friends, to our loved ones, to our family members, uh, and yet we lie to ourselves all the time, right? We say we're going to do one thing, we don't follow through. And so, that's really what being indistractable is all about. It's about breaking that. It's about not lying to yourself. It's about being as honest with yourself as you are with other people by living with personal integrity.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a- a cool stat from LinkedIn that you may have seen, or you may not, that says, "Strategy or strategist appears in the top 10 of all LinkedIn bio descriptions, and executor or execution doesn't even appear in the top 1,000."
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And I think you're totally right. We have a tendency towards talking rather than walking. And we tend to... We- we tend to think about the things that we don't want to do. But obviously, it's- it's not always that we're... It's our fault, in that, like, we didn't want to do it enough, or that we're just lazy. There's a lot of things that get in the way, right?
- 3:18 – 4:16
Why blaming technology is the wrong diagnosis
- NENir Eyal
Right. That's right. And- and so that's why it's so important to understand that it's not a knowledge gap problem, it's an execution problem. Uh, and- and so what I wanted to do was to slough off this narrative that we have these days, that technology is doing it to us, that, uh, we need to go on some kind of digital detox, or a 30-day program, and that technology is the reason that we can't get anything done. It's ridiculous. You think that, uh, if Facebook shut down tomorrow, if Zuckerberg said, "You know what? I have enough money. I'm shutting it all down. I've had enough." You think people are going to start reading Chaucer and Shakespeare in their spare time? Of course not. We're going to go back to what people have always done, gossip, and look at the news, and, you know, all kinds of- of things that we do to procrastinate and- and- and get distracted. And so that i- is the... This fundamental truth, you know, I realized we blame these things, we blame the technology, we blame the news, we blame social media, we blame something. And those all... Those things play a role, certainly, but those are all proximal causes. They're not the root cause of the problem.
- 4:16 – 7:54
The root cause: distraction as escape from discomfort (internal triggers)
- CWChris Williamson
What is the root cause?
- NENir Eyal
Well, the root cause is the root cause of all human behavior. And so maybe that's a great place to start, you know, if we're going to answer this question of why do we do things against our better interest? Which, by the way, that question was posed 2,500 years ago by Socrates and Aristotle. They asked, you know, they- they called it akrasia, this tendency that we have to do things against our better interest. I mean, 2,500 years ago, people were saying how distracting the world is these days. And so the fact that it's not a new problem, uh, should give us some comfort to know that this is part of the human condition. And so, turns out that in- in my five years of research, there's a lot of really simple, practical things that we can do to make sure that we can get the best out of these tools, when it comes to modern technology, uh, without letting them get the best of us. And so the root cause is the root cause of- of why we do everything. So, not only why do we get distracted, but why do we do anything in- in- in our life? And it turns out that the cause of motivation, uh, to do everything and anything is not what most people think it is. Most people will tell you, when you ask them, you know, "What's the seat of motivation? Why do we do what we do?" Most people will give you some version of carrots and sticks. We call this Freud's pleasure principle, that everything we do is inspired by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. It turns out, though, that neurologically speaking, that is not true. That it's not about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. It turns out everything we do, we do for one reason, and that is the avoidance of discomfort. That all human motivation is driven by a desire to escape pain. Even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations, a state of flow, a good feeling, connection, friendship. All of these good feelings, the pursuit of those things is, in fact, driven by psychological discomfort. Wanting, craving, desire. There's a reason we say love hurts, because neurologically speaking, that's exactly what's going on. So, this is really important to understand, because what that means, if all human behavior is driven by a desire to escape discomfort, that means that time management is pain management.It doesn't matter what, you know, hacks, life hacks you read out there, what productivity gurus tell you. Fundamentally, if you cannot master your, what's called an internal trigger, these uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape, if you don't take care of that stuff, if you don't have tools in your arsenal to deal with these uncomfortable emotional states, you're always going to get distracted. Right? If it's not your phone, it'll be the television, it'll be sports, it'll be the news, it'll be radio. Something is going to distract you in your life, unless you address this fundamental reason why we get distracted in the first place, which is that we use distraction as an emotional pacification device. And so, we have to either fix the source of the problem or learn tactics to cope with that psychological discomfort.
- CWChris Williamson
Interestingly, I did a, a podcast with a guy called Alex Hutchinson, start of the year, wrote a book called Endure. And in that, he said that his definition of endurance was the ability to continue against a growing desire to stop. And that cumulative effect of us wanting to get away from some discomfort, I think also rings true with my experience of distraction, right? You spend enough time focused, but then, bip, something happens. It's like this growing, like, uh, snowball effect, where after a little bit of time, you, you really realize, "Oh, hang on. I've, I've totally lost what I was talking about here." Um.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, how did you map moving from understanding that we need to get away from discomfort, and that's, uh, an innate biological imperative, I suppose. How did you map the way that all of the different triggers in our life work?
- 7:54 – 10:10
Traction vs. distraction: intention is the difference
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. So, so if we think about how internal triggers drive us, uh, to these different behaviors, let's, let's for, let's ... The next step should be to define what we mean by distraction. And the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand the opposite of distraction. The opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. So, traction and distraction both come from the same Latin root, trahere, which means to pull. And you'll notice both words end in the same five letters, A-C-T-I-O-N, which spells action. So, traction is any action that pulls you towards what you want to do, things that you do with intent. The opposite of traction is distraction, any action that pulls you away from what you want to do. So, this is really important for a couple reasons. One, it frees us from, I think, this ridiculous hierarchy that people have, that some behaviors, some pastimes, some actions are somehow morally superior or inferior to other actions. That, you know, me playing Candy Crush or checking, uh, fa- social media is somehow morally inferior than watching a football game on TV. It's not. They're both pastimes. There's nothing wrong with them, if you do them with intent. And if you don't do them with intent, if you're doing them for emotional pacification to escape your present reality, then they're distractions. So, with ... That's one thing, is to free us from this hierarchy. And a lot of tech critics will say, "Oh, social media does this to your brain, and this is bad, and this is evil." Rubbish. That's- that's silly. Anything you are doing with intent, something that's consistent with your values, is perfectly fine. The same rules apply. The- the's the reason, the second reason this is so important, is that distraction tricks us. That how many times have you sat down at your desk ... This used to happen to me all the time, and I'd say, "Okay, I've got that big project I need to work on. I really need to focus. This is something I've been procrastinating. I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna crank out that big project, right after I check this email."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
Right? Right after I just check this one thing on YouTube or on Facebook, or the gr- or the Slack channel, or something that feels worky, it feels productive. "I'm checking email. Isn't email something I kind of have to do anyway, right? That's a l- a, a, a work-type task." Well, that's what I call pseudo-work, because if that's not what you plan to do with your time, it is just as much of a distraction as playing a video game. B- and, and you know what happens, the cost of this is that we don't get time, ever, to do that hard task. We keep procrastinating day after day after day, because we don't realize that without defining your time,
- 10:10 – 14:11
The four-step Indistractable framework (overview)
- NENir Eyal
everything is a distraction, right? So, one of the, the key lessons of the book is that if you don't plan your day, someone else will, and that you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. So, we've got traction to one side, we've got distraction to the other, we've got internal triggers prompting us to either traction or distraction. The only other thing that prompts our behavior is what's called an external trigger. So, internal triggers are these, uh, uncomfortable emotional states that prompt our actions. The other thing that prompts our actions are these external triggers, the pings, dings, rings, all of these things in our environment that prompt us towards either traction or distraction. And now many people think of these things as, you know, your phone, your computer, some kind of technology. Turns out in my research that some of the most common forms of distraction have nothing to do with technology. It's meetings, it's open floor plan offices, it's, you know, your colleagues stopping by for a little gossip and chitchat. Those things can be just as much of a pernicious distraction, so how do you deal with those things? So, now that we have these four key steps, we can map them out. Step one is to master the internal triggers. Step two is to make time for traction. Step number three is to hack back the external triggers, and the fourth step is to prevent distractions with pacts.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the things that I was struck by when I was reading the book, was I'd always lent so much weight towards external triggers. I wonder if that's representative for most people, but internal triggers, I just, I didn't think. I was like, maybe that's the, uh, I guess, the self-supporting bias a little bit, where I'm like, "No, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. The problem's the phone. The problem's the computer." Like-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... maybe, maybe that's it. I'm not sure. What do you think?
- NENir Eyal
Absolutely. I think that's the, that's kind of the, the, the, the kindergarten stuff, right? (laughs) Like, you know, it turns out that two-thirds of Americans with a smartphone never change their notification settings. I mean, give me a-
- CWChris Williamson
That statistic blew me away.
- NENir Eyal
Isn't that crazy? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, my God.
- NENir Eyal
Can we really complain? I mean, seriously. Even if the problem is, uh, is in to some extent caused by these external triggers, absolutely, that, that does cause distraction. It does lead you to things, do things you didn't want to do.... come on, take 10 minutes and change those goddamn notification settings. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I know.
- NENir Eyal
And I devote one chapter ... There's, there's, uh, 38 chapters in the book. I devote one chapter to just that, you know, how to hack back your phone. Uh, because look, the phone is designed to hack your behavior. Uh, th- these products are designed to be engaging. I mean, is that a newsflash to everybody? We, we all know these companies make money based on selling our attention. So we can hack back. Uh, and so one of the things we should do is to hack back, clearly, these external triggers, so hacking back our, our feeds, hacking back our devices, hacking back, uh, email. All of these things, we can hack back the external triggers, and that is important to do. It's also relatively easy to do. I will say, out of the four steps, the hardest is the internal triggers. The, the ... Managing and, and mastering those internal triggers is this icky, sticky truth that a lot of us don't like to face, that we are using these devices as emotional pacifiers.
- CWChris Williamson
I couldn't agree more.
- NENir Eyal
That we, we, we check these devices. And it's not just tech, right? (laughs) It's the bottle. Uh, it's work for some people, right? It's all kinds of things. It can even be exercise. I mean, I, I, if I told you, "Hey, I'm going to start a habit of running," you would say, "Oh, that's great. Wonderful for you." And then if I said, "Actually, you know what?" I need to get a little vulnerable here. "I, I like to run because my marriage is falling apart. I can't stand my wife. My kids are driving me crazy. And running is the only place I can escape." Well, then you might say, "Ooh, I don't know if that's such a good idea. It sounds like you maybe want to take care of that stuff at home."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
But then if I told you, "Actually, you know, I used to drink. And that was terrible, but now I don't drink so much anymore. Now I, now I run instead." Well, you say, "Oh, well, that's great again."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
So it's not, it's not about the behavior.
- CWChris Williamson
Everything's relative, hey?
- NENir Eyal
Exactly. It's not about the behavior. It's about doing it with intent. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a, a beer now and again and getting a little buzzed or tipsy. There's nothing wrong with using social media. There's nothing wrong with any of these technologies and tools, and don't let anybody tell you different. As long as it's consistent with your values and you're doing it with intent, go for it. But it's about learning how to use them properly, as opposed to using them as emotional pacifiers.
- 14:11 – 16:35
Mastering internal triggers with curiosity (not self-contempt)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I think the common criticism, obviously, of smartphones and technology is that the line between intentional use and slippery slope is incredibly quick. And before you know it, you've stumbled down a hole. Um, so why don't we start ... Before ... I, I want to get onto external triggers, because I've got a couple of absolute belters that I'm excited to show you. But first, let's talk about these sort of nebulous, ephemeral, difficult-to-define internal triggers. What are the roadblocks people are coming up against here?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's obviously uncomfortable situations, but what else?
- NENir Eyal
Right. So it's, it's figuring out the sensation that, uh, that precedes the behavior. So that's the first step to, to mastering these internal triggers, uh, is reimagining the trigger itself. And so this comes out of acceptance and commitment therapy. By the way, everything in this book ... I, I, I don't know about you, but I hate it when I read one of these books that are all about personal anecdotes, you know, like, "I took a shower every morning and at 40 degrees, and it was great," and, or whatever. That's not supported by science. So everything (laughs) in the book is supported by peer review journals, and, and one of the, uh, the research, uh, some of the research that I cite has to do with acceptance and commitment therapy, which is all about reimagining these uncomfortable emotional states and then using them towards traction, as opposed to distraction. Uh, so, so one of the most powerful things you can do is to simply become aware of that sensation, and instead of what most people do, what I used to do, is to, uh, is, is to experience it with contempt. Right? Many of us are ... The self-talk that we have in our heads is so destructive. We, we talk to ourselves in a way we would never imagine talking to our friends, right? Telling ourselves we're lazy, uh, we have a short attention span, "I have an addictive personality." I used to tell myself all this mythology. And instead, what I do now is that, as opposed to contempt, I, I talk to myself with curiosity. "Okay. The- I'm feeling bored right now. This is difficult. Uh, this writing," you know, whatever it is that I'm working on, "This is hard right now." And simply noting that sensation, writing it down, and then using various strategies to cope with that dis- discomfort can take us very, very far. That's, that's a very, very important step.
- CWChris Williamson
Many people that are listening will know the sensation we're talking about, right? You go to the bathroom, you realize you're going to be in a cubicle on your own, your phone comes out. Your ha- it's a reflex action. Hand goes into the pocket-
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... phone comes out. You're stood at the bus stop, you're waiting at the water cooler at work, whatever it might be. That boredom, or any other particular emotion, leads towards a response.
- 16:35 – 22:34
Make time for traction: timeboxing your values, work, and relationships
- NENir Eyal
Right. And, and so this is something I call a liminal moment, and we have to be particularly careful about them. Not that they're ... I, I don't know if it's necessarily the end of the world if you're, you know, commuting on a bus and you check your phone. I think that's totally fine. Again, as long as you're doing it with intent, and as long as you have some kind of stopping cues. So if I, if I'm, you know, commuting somewhere, I, and, and I've got nothing else to do and I want to use my time to check email, that's totally fine. Where I think we have to beware of these liminal moments is when, you know, checking for a little bit, uh, between meetings becomes another 30 minutes, 45 minutes at your desk, when you plan to do something else. And so this is where the second step, after we've mastered these internal triggers, this is where the second step of making time for traction is so important. Where people s- go overboard on, you know, checking email for a minute and then it becomes 45 is when they don't have a clear next task on their calendar. So it turns out that the vast majority of people don't keep any sort of calendar. And that's ridiculous. You cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. And so I built this free tool that, uh, is, is very pared down. I'll give you a link for the show notes, where you can build your own timebox calendar, and this will change your life. Not only do we want to build a timebox calendar for our, our work commitments, we also have to do that for our personal commitments and our relationships in our life, or else we can't live out our values. Right? I used to do this all the time. If you asked me, "What's important to you? What are your values?" I would say, "Oh, you know, my family, my friends. These things are most important to me. My health." But then if you looked at my calendar, you wouldn't see time for any of those things. And so that's why the second step is to make time for traction, and then I teach you how to synchronize your calendar with various stakeholders in your life. You know, I realize you have to synchronize with your boss, you have to synchronize with your family, with your friends, in order to, to make sure that you can make time for the things that you value.
- CWChris Williamson
... two of the guys that work for my company have just come on full time. They started, although they've been working for us for a while, they started today full time. And the first thing, this isn't, uh, doesn't just happen to be a plug, the first thing I got them to do was to read that blog post-
- NENir Eyal
Love it.
- CWChris Williamson
... that you put on, and get them to put a, a weekly schedule in. So I'm like, "Look. Y- I want you to tell me what you think your week is supposed to look like." And you're totally right. Especially any professionals or entrepreneurs who are listening, if you do not have a direct line manager that is dictating to you what you should and should not be doing throughout your days and throughout your week, what you end up having is this really, sort of fluffy, nebulous, difficult to define work to be done. And there's no defined criteria for success or failure, because you don't actually know what you should be doing at each time.
- NENir Eyal
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
If you go back and listen to the episode that I did with Laura Vanderkam, um, who wrote Off the Clock, exactly the same stuff. Parkinson's Law suggests that work will expand to fill the time given for it, and if you do not time box your tasks, that work is just gonna keep on steamrolling through all of your day.
- NENir Eyal
That's right. That's right. I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, and it, it's pernicious, man. It's dangerous. This time management should be taught at five years old.
- NENir Eyal
I, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it's, it's so important to time box your day. And the, the, you know, if you do it on your own, that's one thing. You can only get so much benefit out of this practice. I mean, it will change your life. In particular, I mean, this changed my domestic, uh, life, life, um, g- quite dramatically, in that now my wife and I could coordinate around these various domestic responsibilities, you know. Most women in heterosexual relationships, even when both people work outside the home, still take on more tasks. And so , you know, this would cause countless arguments between my wife and I. And she would say, you know, "Why aren't you doing this stuff?" And I'd say, "Well, just tell me, honey." Right? J- If I, if I miss something, just tell me what to do. What I didn't realize was that her telling me what to do was itself work. (laughs) So we do this at home. I mean, w- I have time in my calendar for all those domestic responsibilities as well, and it's, it's revolutionized my marriage. We're so much happier for it. But in the workplace as well, I can't tell you how, uh, it, it, uh, uh, uh, nothing short of life changing. I mean, the fact that, you know, most managers, with the best of intentions, we think as managers, "You know what? I'm just gonna tell people what needs to get done, and they'll figure out when they do it." Okay? And we think this is a good thing. We think we're being, you know, we're giving people autonomy and freedom. And to some extent, that is right. But if you don't sync up your schedule with your colleagues, and you just keep throwing output at them, meaning, you know, the stuff on the backlog, the stuff on the to-do list. These, these are forms of output. This is what I want you to do with your time. But I don't tell you when the input needs to happen. The input for, for knowledge workers is time. That's their only form of input. So what happens to most people is we just keep lobbing over task after task after task, and then it just keeps bloating on their calendar. They don't find time to do everything. And then afterwards, they say, "Oh, I'm sorry boss, I didn't get everything done." Or they take home stuff on nights and weekends, which leads to burnout and churn and all kinds of other bad things. So if you just sit down with your colleagues, uh, for, uh, uh, literally 15 minutes a week for most people, uh, and say, "Okay. Here's my, here's my calendar, here's all the output, here's my to-do list, and here's how I basically plan to do it." Now, as a boss, it's difficult to require people to do this, but you can invite them to say, "Look. I've noticed that I don't want to give you more than you can handle, more than you have time for. So can you just sit down and do this little time box calendar if it's helpful for you, so that we can schedule sync, so that I know how much you have capacity for?" Uh, and that, that is huge, because w- if you don't do that, here's what happens to most people. They spend all day responding and they have no time for reflecting. And it turns out that our best work requires reflection. If you think about what do we do as knowledge worker, what's our work output? We only make one thing. We make solutions to hard problems. That's our job. And to do that, you have to have time to think. And most people don't have that time to think in their day, so they do it on nights, they do it on weekends. And their entire workday is spent in meetings and on emails or Slack channels. And that's not where people do their best work. So you gotta have time for that reflective time, as well as schedule time for emails, for meetings, or whatever. But, but that schedule syncing is a really important process.
- 22:34 – 30:49
Hacking back external triggers: phones, email, meetings, and office interruptions
- CWChris Williamson
For sure. So, we've had a look at the internal triggers. We've started to have a bit of a mindfulness gap. We've realized when we are being, uh, distracted, when we are being bored, and we're, as opposed to treating ourselves with contempt, we're genuinely inquisitive. We want to know why is this happening, trying to step in between. Then, we've also started to look at time boxing. We've thought, "Right, I need to define some criteria for success and failure, taking it forward." Now we need to make time for traction, right? How do we do that?
- NENir Eyal
Right. So making time for traction is the, the time boxing. Maybe, maybe you mean the step three, the hacking back-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Sorry.
- NENir Eyal
... external triggers. Yeah, no problem.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, hacking back, hacking back external triggers.
- NENir Eyal
Right. So this third step is hacking back external triggers. And so this starts with asking ourselves this fundamental question of, is the external trigger serving me, or am I serving it? It doesn't make sense to take on this attitude that, oh, all of this technology is bad and all the triggers are evil. No, that's not true. If an external trigger prompts you to do something you intended to do...... let's say your phone sends you a notification that says, "Okay, now it's time to go to the gym. Now it's time for that meeting. Now it's time for that phone call," great, it's moving you towards traction. If that's what you plan to do with your time on your time box schedule, wonderful. So we have to ask ourselves, is this external trigger serving me, or am I serving it? And, uh, not only think about in terms of, of, of, uh, the digital environment, uh, and of course I give you ways, how do you hack back your phone, hack back your computer, hack back email, ha- hack back group chat, but also the physical environment. You know, uh, w- uh, open floor plan offices are a tremendous source of distraction in- for the modern worker. So every copy of Indistractable comes with a card stock cutout-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
... that you pull out of the book.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) .
- NENir Eyal
You fold it into thirds, and you put it on your computer monitor, and it says on it, "I'm indistractable at the moment, please come back later," so that your colleagues know you're doing focused work right now, please leave me alone. And this is incredibly important, because again, you know, just, y- most of us work in these open floor plan offices where people can just interrupt us at any time, and that's, that degrades our work output. And so it's not only about, about hacking back these digital devices, it's also about hacking back our physical environments as well.
- CWChris Williamson
I've got, uh, a friend and a guest, regular guest of the show, George, who was working at a, a very trendy, uh, social media marketing agency in Manchester. They're incredibly successful. They're fantastic at what they do. Um, but George, similar to myself, he does his best deep work when he's very, very undistracted. Um, and he'd managed to find a office room, an unused office room upstairs, which had nothing in it except for a two meter by two meter Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle, which was half finished.
- NENir Eyal
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
And he was electing to go upstairs and take his laptop upstairs, and like lock himself in this Harry Potter jigsaw world, um, just so that he could avoid the open floor plan distraction.
- NENir Eyal
There you go. There you go.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) .
- NENir Eyal
So that's what, that's what this screen sign hopes to, hopes to solve.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) .
- NENir Eyal
And, you know, many people say, "Oh, I'll put on headphones and people will know I'm busy." No, they don't. They think you're watching YouTube videos or listening to a podcast. So make it explicit, right? And, and what's good about this is that, you know, distraction has this secondhand smoke effect, that when a company culture has a norm around constantly interrupting people, that's exactly what happens. People perpetuate that norm. "Well, that's what we do here." So by ha- making this statement and saying, "Look, uh, not all day, but for 45 minutes, an hour, whatever it is that you need in your day to do some focused work, just to think for a little bit, you need to be left alone. That's where you do your best work." And th- this is the kind of thing that can catch on like wildfire within an office setting, and it's, it's really important.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think Cal Newport would have to say about us squeezing out just 45 minutes of deep focused work per day? He'd be, he'd be walking into that, uh-
- NENir Eyal
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... that office with a shotgun, wouldn't he? Or a paintball gun, at least. He'd be saying ...
- NENir Eyal
Well it really, it r- it really depends on what kind of work you're doing. I, I, you know, I love Cal. He blurbed my book. Uh, I think he's, he's, uh, he's terrific. But I, I think we, we have to make sure that we are finding the right tool for the job for our particular circumstance. I mean, can I really tell someone who is a social media marketing manager to not be on Facebook? That's ridiculous. That's their job (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
It would be difficult.
- NENir Eyal
But what I would advise, but what I would advise is, is to, uh, do whatever is consistent with your values, whatever is consistent with the job that you are doing. Uh, I, I wouldn't even tell people to, to work fewer hours, you know, if what's consistent with your values, if you want to go be an investment banker or work at a startup, guess what? You're going to have to work a lot of hours, and you need to know that that's the case. Uh, you know, I like to say, "Don't be a forest ranger if you have allergies." You need, you need to find something that's consistent with your values and, and your temperament. Now, what I think though is, is unethical, and where I think people get into trouble, is when they think they're going to a particular type of job, one that requires 40 hours a week or whatever it is, and then they get there and they realize, "Hmm, it's 40 hours in the office, but then it's another 20 hours outside of work." And that's a lie.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
That's just, that's just, uh, you know, a bait and switch. Because the central trust pact between employer/employee is, I give you money, you give me your time to create this, this output of solving hard problems to, uh, providing novel solutions to hard problems. And so when that trust pact is broken, uh, people find all kinds of ways to cheat or they leave. And so that's where syncing up with your calen- or syncing your calendar and having a, uh, a workplace environment, this is another chapter in the book where I talk about why distraction at work is a symptom of cultural dysfunction.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Why it's actually not the technology doing it to us, it's this sick culture that many companies have, uh, and that's, and that's really the source of the problem.
- CWChris Williamson
(inhales) Sticking with the external triggers just for a moment, because I know that there will be some, uh, some listeners who are champing at the bit to just do something right now.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- 30:49 – 34:35
Group chat overload: treat it like a sauna (scheduled, not constant)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so what, what was your solution? There will be lots of people listening who are, that maybe use them for work, that maybe use them for social, uh, enjoyment. How do you solve the curse that is group chats?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah, so it depends if it's, if it's social or for work. I think for, for work life, uh, the, the solution, this comes from Jason Fried. Jason Fre- Fried says to treat group chat like a sauna, right? You wouldn't want to live in a sauna all day. Being in a sauna is very nice and comfortable and warm, but you don't want to sit in a sauna all day long, you get pruny and wrinkly and that's not fun. So what you want to do is get in and get out. And so you want to schedule time when, okay, we're, if we're going to have a synchronous meeting, synchronous meetings need to be scheduled. I wouldn't sit on a conference call all day long at work. That's ridiculous. I can't think, I can't focus, 'cause I'm always listening what's going on, and the same thing happens with group chat. You do not want to leave that on all day long. That's just a, a simple quick fix. What you want to do is to say, "Okay, I will be checking in at this time of day," uh, and- and no more (laughs) so I can do my other work tasks. And the same thing goes for, uh, social channels as well, if you're using group chat for, uh, social reasons. You know, we can turn distraction into traction. The way you turn a distraction into traction is you make time for it. So on my calendar it says, "Social media time." I have time in my day to go through all that stuff. So I'm not doing it as, you know, a- a- a- an emo- emotional pacification device when I can't think of anything better to do. I know, okay, I can get all those messages, no problem. First of all, turn off those little, you know, notifications, so there's not, they're not constantly pinging and dinging you. But then at the end of the day, you have time in your schedule for exactly that. You'll get to it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
It's going to be whenever you say you're going to get to it, not based on somebody else's schedule, ba- but based on your schedule.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. The, uh, the analogy that Johnny, one of the co-hosts of the sho- show uses is he says that when you have your phone out, you allow somebody else to control what you're doing with your day. It's like-
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... would you have picked the phone up if that person hadn't messaged you? Well, no. Right, okay, so why have you picked the phone up? Well, because they've messaged me. It's like right-
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... that person is literally remote controlling your day.
- NENir Eyal
That's it. That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
So yes, hopefully we will have opened a few people's eyes to what you can do with group chats. Definitely, I like the idea of, of time boxing for group chats especially, because it's so easy to just get into this back and forth conversation, whereas really the good stuff in a group chat, like I- I'm not even lying, I must be in 20... I must receive 1,000 group chat messages a day. I've had more than a million WhatsApp received messages since-
- NENir Eyal
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... I've had this phone. So it's a lot. It's a serious amount. And I'm-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I promise you, across all of those, I have a good size sample, one good thing appears per group chat per day.
- NENir Eyal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like that's it. That's the top end.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And then after that, it drops off. So-
- NENir Eyal
And, and you know, what you want to do is to break that, that, that stimulus response loop. What's happening, and the way these products are designed, is to constantly put you through this hook, right? That's what my first book was about, how to build habit-forming products. The book was called Hooked. I know exactly how they're designed. So what you want to do is to break that stimulus response loop. And, and not stop altogether, but if, what you want to do is to stop this association with whenever I'm bored, whenever I can't think of anything else better to do, whenever I'm trying to avoid having to do the work I know I need to do, hmm, that's when I'll pick up WhatsApp. That's when I'll just see just for a second what's going on. That's what you have to break. And, and the best way to break it, you'll see, when you schedule time for it, it actually becomes more of a chore, which is good-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
... right? Which is good because then it's, "Oh God, I got to go through all my WhatsApp messages."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
Do I really have to do that? And that's very healthy because now you're using it in a cold state as opposed to an emotional hot state. You're not using it to escape, right? You're not using it for psychological relief because you don't w- feel like working on that big project. You're using it because, "Oh, you know, I really should do it." And you'll find you'll use it, not only will you use it less, you'll use it more thoughtfully as well.
- 34:35 – 36:14
Preventing distraction with pacts: forethought beats impulsiveness
- CWChris Williamson
100%. Doing things with purpose is a, a great way around it. So we're talking about preventing distraction next.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
How are we going to prevent distraction?
- NENir Eyal
Okay, so we talked about, uh, we've talked about mastering internal triggers, step one. Making time for traction, step two. Hacking back those external triggers, step three. And then finally, the last step is to prevent distraction with pacts. Now pacts, thi- this is the, the fourth and final step. You have to do this after you've done the other three steps. And many people jump to this step and then it, it usually backfires for a few reasons. So we want to make sure we do this last, but this idea, uh, is to take steps today so we prevent getting distracted in the future. Because one thing that our species does better than any other animal on the face of the earth is to see the future with higher fidelity. One thing that you, you, another motto of this book that I want folks to remember is that the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. Right? So as, as amazing as these algorithms are, as, as psychologically manipulative as all of these tech companies build their products to be, there is nothing that they can do as long as we take steps today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow. So the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. If the chocolate cake is on its way to your mouth, it's too late. You've lost. If the cell phone is next to you when you sleep, that's too late. You're going to lose, right? They're des- they design those products to be engaging. So you have to take steps-... now with forethought to prevent being impulsive and doing something you don't want to do later. So, how do you do this? Well, there are three types of pacts. We have, uh, price pacts, effort pacts, and identity pacts. Effort pacts are when you put some bit of work between you and something you
- 36:14 – 42:37
Real-world pact examples: router timer, ‘burn or burn’ $100, and identity language
- NENir Eyal
don't want to do. So, for example, in my household, uh, well, we can, we can get a little personal here, right? I can, I can tell you, I can be a little vulnerable with you, Chris?
- CWChris Williamson
Sure thing.
- NENir Eyal
So, I've been married for almost 20 years, and, uh, uh, a few years ago, my sex life was really suffering. Uh, because every night, my wife and I were going to bed and we were fondling our phones and our iPads and our devices as opposed to being intimate. And so, we, we decided we had to do something about this. And so, we went to the hardware store, and we bought a $5 outlet timer. And this outlet timer-
- CWChris Williamson
I wasn't sure what you were gonna... Sorry. Sorry, Neil.
- NENir Eyal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I really wasn't sure what you were gonna say you got from the outlet store there, mate. I was concerned.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. So, there's... Okay. It's nowhere near as, as, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- NENir Eyal
... exciting as you thought it would be.
- CWChris Williamson
Great. Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
It's, basically, this outlet timer turns on and off whatever you plug into it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yup.
- NENir Eyal
And so, what did we plug into it? Our computer monitors and our router. So, every night at 10:00 PM, (snaps fingers) the internet router shuts off. And so, that's a, a form of an effort pact. Now, I could go behind my desk and unplug and re-plug it in, but it's a bit of work to remind me, "Wait a minute, is this really what you want to do right now?" And so, that would be an example of an effort pact. A price pact is when we have some kind of cost to getting distracted. So, for example, uh, I used to be clinically obese. I no long- I no longer am, and part-
- CWChris Williamson
You look fant- you look fantastic, man.
- NENir Eyal
Thank you. I appreciate it.
- CWChris Williamson
For the people that are just listening, Neil, you, you look very trim, man. You've got the Indistractable T-shirt.
- NENir Eyal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You're looking jacked.
- NENir Eyal
I appreciate it.
- CWChris Williamson
Got a good, good bit of color in you.
- NENir Eyal
Thank you. Well, uh, let me tell you, I, I've always hated exercise. Until very recently, I, I just hated it. Uh, but then I knew, I knew it was good for you, right? It's something I wanted to do. It's one of my values, is to take care of my body. Um, and so I wanted to find a way to put that in my day. That's, that would be part of being consistent with my values. And so, what did I do? This is called the burn or burn technique. And for some people listening, it's going to sound absolutely crazy, but let me tell you how effective it is. The idea is that every morning I wake up, I go into my closet to get dressed, and the first thing I see is a calendar. And on today's date, every day, is taped a crisp $100 bill. And above this calendar on a shelf is a lighter. So, every day, I have a choice to make. I can either burn the $100 bill, or I can go burn some calories by going to the gym, going on a run, doing some kind of physical activity. Okay? Now, I've done this for the past three and a half years, and I have never had to burn the $100 bill, right? Because I put a cost-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- NENir Eyal
... it's a price pact I've made with myself that I have to burn that money or go burn some calories. So, when push comes to shove, I say, "Okay, fine, I'll take a quick walk. I'll g- I'll do 30 push-ups." I'll do something-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
... so that I don't have to burn that $100 bill. And there's other forms of price pacts I talk about in the book, several others you can, you can demonstrate. And then the last type of pre-commitment is called an identity pact. An identity pact says that we are much more likely to stay consistent with a- an identity, with a self-image. And so, this is why I'm wearing this shirt that says Indistractable on it, is because this is my moniker. This helps me remember my own identity. This research comes from, uh, studying religion. That we know when people identify with a certain type of faith, they don't have to struggle with doing or not doing certain things every day. Uh, an observant Muslim doesn't say to themselves, "Hmm, I wonder if I'll have a beer today."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
No, because a devout Muslim doesn't drink alcohol. It's just part of who they are. A vegetarian doesn't say to themselves, "Hmm, I wish, I wonder if I'll have that hamburger right now." No, it's just something they don't do. It's part of their identity. So, if it can become something you don't do versus something you can't do, and that language, just those simple two words, can have a profound impact on staying with our, uh, sticking with our goals. So, the new monach- moniker becomes, "I am indistractable." So, you see the reason I don't answer emails right away? I'm indistractable. You see the reason I use this screen sign that tells people I'm busy right now? I'm indistractable. These techniques, they're not so crazy, they're not so different, and we can explain them to people based on our identity, and that actually helps us stay consistent with what we want to do.
- CWChris Williamson
James Clear, in the episode I did with him earlier this year, uses a- the same study, I think, in Atomic Habits, and what he talks about is, um, how many times do you need to kick a football to become a footballer? It would be soccer, soccer player, I guess, for you guys, but, um, (clears throat) how many times do you need to kick the football to become a footballer? And he says, well, if, if you kick a football once, are you a footballer? Probably not. If you do it, like, 100 times, still probably not. If you play every weekend for a year, yeah, you probably are.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And chasing after that identity actually allows you to ensure that the actions you are doing now are in alignment with the goal or the end result that you want to be in the future.
- 42:37 – 47:42
Indistractable relationships: scheduling friends, reducing loneliness, and ‘social antibodies’
- CWChris Williamson
Man, I love it. So before we finish up, Nir, you mentioned, and I thought this was really interesting actually. The first, the first sort of half to, uh, three-quarters of the book was stuff that I kind of expected, but then you actually went on to talking about indistractable relationships, and I thought that, that, that, um, a very different angle to what I would, I would've usually read in this sort of a book. Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Can you briefly just explain to us about what an indistractable relationship looks like?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, so, it, you know, it has to do with, uh, domain of, of our, our friendships, our family. And so this is, I talked a little bit about this, how to be an indistractable lover, uh, with, with my wife, about how we used the model of these four steps in our relationship to make sure we had time for each other. Uh, and then when it comes to spending time with our friends. You know, we know that there is a crisis of loneliness, uh, in, in America at least. It's very much a, a, a huge problem, because as social institutions have degraded, and we know this is, this is a, a multiyear trend. This didn't start with social media. Robert Putnam talked about this in the '90s with his book, Bowling Alone, how as fewer people are part of church groups, of civic organizations, loneliness has become a huge problem. And so the way to fix this is to bring back, uh, the, some of the aspects that kept people seeing each other, uh, a- and that requires scheduling. It requires making time for the important people in your life on your calendar, and doing this in advance. So we started a group, uh, with my friends that we call The Kibbutz, and we do this every two weeks, same time, same place. Uh, kids can come, but they can't interrupt, and it's time for friends to interact. We need that. We need, not only for ourselves, we need to know that we are cared for, that other people care for us, and that we care for other people, but also, we need our kids to see what adult friendships look like. And so we have to make time for those relationships as well. And then a question I oftentimes hear is, "What happens if I'm indistractable, but then someone at the, the dinner table decides to take out their phone and start using it in the middle of a conversation?" And so the idea here, you know, I- I thought about this for a long time, and, and it turns out that, uh, there, there is precedent for this. We call this a social antibody. Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
A social antibody is when we, we learn, we adopt our behav- we adapt our behaviors, sorry, so that we prevent the harm of, of a particular social experience. And so here's the answer. Here's what you do. When someone is using their device at the dinner table when they shouldn't, you don't wanna say, "Hey, put your phone away." Right? If they're having a conversation-
- CWChris Williamson
You don't wanna be that guy.
- NENir Eyal
You don't wanna be that guy. Here's what you do. It's pretty simple. You wanna ask them this one question, and the question is, "Hey, is everything okay?" And what this question does is allow you to, if, if it really is an emergency, sometimes it might be an emergency, right? Maybe something, uh, is happening on their phone that really does require their attention. Well, they'll say, "Oh, you know what? I'm sorry. This thing is blowing up at work right now. I gotta go take care of it. Let me go excuse myself and take care of it." Or nine times out of 10, they'll just say, "Oh, I'm sorry," and they put it away, because not everybody has gotten the message. Most people have gotten the message that that's a rude thing to do at the dinner table to use your phone, uh, but for those who haven't gotten the message, this is a subtle way to, to spread this truth.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a very tactful delivery, that-
- NENir Eyal
Thank you. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of which-
- NENir Eyal
And it works.
- CWChris Williamson
... it is, it, weirdly enough, I, so I was talking to, last night I was talking to Chris Sparks recently, and he refers to himself as tool agnostic when it comes to life hacks-
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... which I really liked. Very principles-based, what is the, uh, environment that I need myself to be in in order to be productive? But there is absolutely a place for things like that, for very specific tools which can be used in those sorts of situations. And that's, you know, it's not an app. It's not anything else, but, "Is everything okay?"
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Is-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And there's no, there's, you know, there will be some equivalence, but there's got to be a finite number of ones that work like that, so.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. And we've been here before. Remember, you know, I, I grew up in the 1980s. I was born in the '70s, but I grew up in the '80s, and I remember in my home, uh, we had ashtrays all over the house. And, uh, my parents didn't smoke at the time. My dad quit smoking years before. My mom never smoked, and yet we had ashtrays in the house. And the reason we had ashtrays is because back then, in the mid-eighties, if you went to someone's home, they just expected to light up in your living room.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
Right? Well, that was when the US population, 60% of the US population smoked. Today, it's about 14%.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Well, you know, what changed? What precipitated, precipitated this change? If someone came to my home and decided to light up a cigarette in my living room, I'd kick them out.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- NENir Eyal
They wouldn't be my friend anymore. Well, was it a law that did that? No, there's no law that says you can't smoke in someone's living room. What changed were, were these social antibodies. These rules, these manners, these norms are things that we ourselves decided to change, that if someone smokes, they say, "Oh, let me just go outside for a minute on the balcony or, or in the living, or in the, uh, you know, outdoors to smoke," as opposed to doing it with this expectation that you can do it in your living room. And that happened not because of laws. It happened because of norms. And so that's what we can actually change in our society ourselves.
- CWChris Williamson
So bit by bit, we're going to make the dinner table an increasingly tech-free zone, if we can just keep on getting the right questions asked.
- 47:42 – 49:20
Closing: technology isn’t going away—learn to choose your life
- NENir Eyal
Yeah, I mean, this is, this, this for me is really, uh, a very personal mission. I, I really do believe that we all can become indistractable. I don't think we have any other choice. The technology's not going away. Uh, swearing off it for a 30-day digital detox or whatever doesn't work (laughs) for the same reason fad diets don't work. We need these tools for our livelihood, and we can get the best of them without letting them get the best of us.
- CWChris Williamson
That's awesome, man. Nir, I've absolutely loved today. Everybody who is listening, I highly recommend that you go and pick up a copy of Indistractable. For me, it is if, if Atomic Habits had a child with Digital Minimalism-
- NENir Eyal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... um, that's, that's probably not, not, not far wrong from, from what we've got here. Um, for the listeners who want to find you online or get some of the resources, where should they head?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah, so, uh, you can go to indistractable.com, and that's I-N, the word distract, A-B-L-E, indistractable.com, and there's an 80-page workbook there that's complimentary. There's all kinds of tools and resources that you can get there. And, uh, yeah, that's all at indistractable.com.
- CWChris Williamson
Fantastic. Link will be in the show notes below, along with the link to Indistractable available on Amazon. Obviously, if you follow that link through, it will be supporting the podcast at no extra cost to yourself. Nir, man, thank you so much for your time. It's been awesome today.
- NENir Eyal
Aw, my pleasure. Thank you so much.
- NANarrator
(instrumental music)
Episode duration: 49:21
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode 8h7Vz2Mz01M
