Dr Rangan ChatterjeeHow To Beat Distraction, Live Intentionally & Have No Regrets | Nir Eyal
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,798 words- 0:00 – 2:05
Introduction
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You have previously said that avoiding distraction is the key to not living with regrets. Now, many people, Nir, as they get older, start to feel a lot of regrets-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... about the things they have done or the things they haven't done. If avoiding distraction is the key to a regret-free life, how do we avoid distraction?
- NENir Eyal
And why should we avoid regret? What's so terrible about regret? That's kind of been my goal with my writing, is the deeper I go into thinking through these topics, that's what I'm working towards, is how can I look at the future with systems in place so that when I look back at my past, I don't say, "Ugh, shoulda, coulda, woulda." That's what I'm really trying to avoid. I don't want on my deathbed to say, "I should've spent more time with friends. I should've invested more in my kids. I should've started that business. I should've done this or that." I wanna look back and say, "I lived my life the way I wanted to on my terms." That's really my goal. And so if, if that's your goal, it doesn't have to be everybody's goal, but that's my goal is to, to live a great life, then the way we make sure that we do that, the way... What makes us more likely to live without regret, is that we plan each day the way we want to spend it. And I think that so few people have experienced the bliss-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... the joy of w- even one single day spent the way they wanted to live their life. It's the best. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. It, it's really interesting. First of all, who would not want to live intentionally, which I guess is what you're proposing for us.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And if I think about your three books, Hooked sort of teaching us about how, how, how do we get addicted to things, how do companies get us hooked on things. Indistractable, which I wanna talk about today, how do we control and focus our attention on what really matters.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I guess even your third book, BEYOND BELIEF, which we spoke about a few months ago, this idea that it's limiting beliefs that hold us back from living the life that we want. There, there is kind of this unifying theory that
- 2:05 – 4:25
How to Live an Intentional Life
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think sits above all of them, which is how do you live an intentional life?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Yeah. And it's not necessarily the most freedom. I don't know about you, but the days where I have the most freedom, where I don't have any plans, and you think, "Oh, that's, that's luxury. That's when I will have made it. When I retire, I'll be, be able to do what I want all day," I don't find those days to be very satisfying. You know?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Those are the days when I waste scrolling too much or, you know, I'll, I'll get to that later or I putz around. I do all kinds of things that I didn't really want to do. So it's not as... It's not just saying, "I want freedom." That's not exactly right. It's living according to your values.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
So what are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become. Values are attributes of the person you want to become. And so the s- the secret here is to turn your values into time, that if you wanna know what someone's values really are, if you ask them, they'll lie to you. Not because they're malicious, but because they don't know themselves. They'll say things like, "Oh, you know, uh, it's very important to me to be a good father or to be a good friend or, uh, to take care of my health. Oh, nothing comes... Nothing's more, more important than health. Or, uh, to be learned, you know, to, to-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... to read books, to, to have more wisdom." But there's really two places to look if you wanna know someone's values. You look at how they spend their money and how they spend their time. The problem is that [laughs] I think we have our relationship with those two things a little bit backwards. You know, we spend so much mind share on saving money, right? We clip coupons. We split checks. We look for sales and deals. We spend so much effort to save a buck. But when it comes to our time, we just give it away, right? Who- what- whatever stupid cat video, whatever silly thing in the news that's got nothing to do with us, whatever gossip around the water cooler, yeah, take it, take it, take it. Take my time. But it should be exactly backwards. We should be stingy with our time and generous with our money. Why? Because you can't make more time.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
You can always make more money. You can always make more money, right? You cannot make more time. I don't care if you're Elon Musk or Bill Gates, you can't make more time. It is a finite resource. Once it's gone, it's gone. That's it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
And so we need to be stingy with our time because we cannot make more of it. And so by thinking very carefully about how we are going to spend our time, now that's requires a bit of thinking. But I think it's a really, it's really important to understand what distraction is, you know? Back to that quote around how that's the
- 4:25 – 10:57
What Is Distraction? How to Manage It
- NENir Eyal
secret to not living with regret, is to avoid distraction. Well, what is distraction? Dis- the best way to understand what distraction is is to understand what distraction is not. What's the opposite of distraction?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Most people tell you that the opposite of distraction is focus, and they wanna be focused. Not true. That if you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Makes perfect sense when you look at both words side by side. Traction, distraction. They're opposites.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
They both come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull, and they both end in action-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. We like to blame our phones, our kids, you know, the beeps, the boops, the buzzes, all the things outside of us, but these are actions that we take. Not things that happen to us.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Actions we take. So by definition, traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Things that move you closer to your values, help you become the kind of person you wanna become. Those are acts of traction.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
The opposite, distraction, is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your goals-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become. Now, the important thing here is that the dividing line between traction and distraction is not the behavior itself. It's not, oh, social media bad and reading books good. It's, uh, that's silly, right? Anything you wanna do with your time and attention is fine as long as you do it on your schedule and according to your values, not someone else's. I love this Dorothy Parker quote. She said, "The time you plan to waste is not wasted time." So give us a break here. You wanna go on YouTube, you wanna listen to a podcast, you wanna play video games? Awesome. Do it. There's nothing wrong with any of that. Stop vilifying that stuff. Rather, as long as you have planned for it in advance, it's traction. Conversely, and this is, this is what used to get me, is that I would go into the office and I'd say, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna... I'm not gonna get distracted. I've got that big project I need to work on. Nothing's gonna get in my way. I'm gonna focus. Let me just, you know, ju- do that thing on my to-do list. Let, let's get, get to work. I'm, I'm just gonna do that. But first let me check some email." [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Right? "Let me scroll that Slack channel. Let me just see what's happening on, uh, in the news." You know, I have to do that stuff. That's part of my job. I have to check email. That's why I get paid. That's part of my job responsibility, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
But if it's not what you plan to do in advance, it's just as much of a distraction. In fact, I would argue it's even worse than what we think of as distraction. Because, you know, if you're, uh, playing video games at work, right? If you're playing Candy Crush or something on the job, you know you're not supposed to be doing that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
But when you check email, 'cause that's a productive thing to do, meanwhile, you've got this big project you said you were gonna work on, that's even a worse distraction.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. It's the same thing, but one of them we think is okay and one, oh, you know, we, we know that that's, you know, inverse commas bad.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's kind of interesting that quote, "The time you plan to waste is not wasted time," it's peaceful. It makes me think of something I've just been sitting with for a couple of years now, this idea that there's no such thing as wasted time. Rangan, you spend time, and if you reflect and you realize that that wasn't the best use of your time, you can change that. But I guess where people would say that they've wasted time probably comes down to the fact that they weren't intentional.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So that perception is-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... that that was a waste because it wasn't what I planned to do. And I guess, you know, the other thought that comes to mind is so many people these days struggle to switch off at weekends, right? People often these days feel guilty for doing nothing.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I wonder if I look at it through your framework, I wonder if that's because they have this belief that they should always be doing something, and therefore, if they're just sitting in the sun, you know, we've had a beautiful few weeks of weather in the UK, right? If you're just sitting, sitting in the garden, like I did last weekend, literally doing nothing but baking in the sun, having a cup of tea, playing with my kids, or just sitting there going, "How wonderful is this," right?
- 10:57 – 12:20
Addiction vs Distraction
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
addictive if not everyone is getting addicted to them. There's, there's some... There has to be another factor, right?
- NENir Eyal
Totally. So addiction has a very special definition. An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms the user.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Okay? Has to, there has to be harm. There has to be a consistent dependency, okay? There's lots of things that we use that some people would meet that definition of-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- NENir Eyal
... overuse and abuse that most of us don't, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So, so for some people it's addictive.
- NENir Eyal
That's right. We, we have a glass of wine. We're not all alcoholics. We have sex. We're not all sex addicts.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
So clearly it's not as simple as just saying it's the product. The product is the proximal cause. It's not the root cause. Where we do have people who suffer from addiction is because addiction is a confluence of three things. You need the person, the problem- And the product. It's these three things at the same time.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
So if you have just the product, okay, let's take alcohol. Some people can have a glass of wine, they don't get addicted. They have a glass or two, and that's that. But if you combine the product, let's say alcohol, with the person who has a predilection towards addiction, maybe they're, they're, they're, uh, uh, th- that's how they deal with their problems, and now they're faced in an environment where that becomes the outlet to deal with these uncomfortable sensations, now it can become an addiction. And so I think even if you're not addicted, this reveals something super important to all of us. You know, we talked about traction and distraction. What
- 12:20 – 17:17
What Causes Distraction?
- NENir Eyal
prompts us towards distraction?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
We've got two kinds of triggers. We have external triggers. These are the usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings, all these things in our outside environment. Those are external triggers. That's what we tend to blame, right? We tend to blame the things outside of us. Studies have found, however, when we do these time tracking studies and we see how many times people use their phone and why they use their phone, only 10% of the time that you check your phone, 10%, is it because of a ping, ding or ring. 10%, an external trigger.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Okay? So it's part of the problem. It's only 10% of the problem. What's the 90%? Did you know that 90% of the time that you check your phone, and if you actually monitor your behavior, you'll see this is true, 90% of the time it's not because of a ping, ding or ring, it's not because of an external trigger, it's because of an internal trigger.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
It's because of boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. It's about this uncomfortable emotional state. So distraction is about es- an escape from di- from discomfort al- always. It's an emotion deregulation, dysregulation problem. So when it comes to addiction, that's when it's really the extreme version. So most of us are not addicted. Turns out about, uh, uh, three to 5% of the population is addicted to, to one thing or another. But the vast majority of us are not addicted, we're just distracted. So there's a big, big difference between the two.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
So, so the, the, the, w- but when we kind of use this language to say, "Well, there's nothing we can do, uh, we're all addicted, uh, these products are built to be addictive," and this reinforces the narrative [laughs] that the tech companies want. Because when you believe there's nothing to be done, guess what? You do nothing.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
You give up.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's disempowering.
- NENir Eyal
Right. Whereas, you know, there's some very simple steps. There's four steps now. So we talked about traction, distraction, internal triggers, external triggers. Now we just work around those four points. So these are the four steps that anyone can use, even neurodivergent people. I've been diagnosed with ADHD. It's very, it's, it's pretty simple. It's not easy, but it's simple, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
To everything-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- NENir Eyal
... everything worth having in life is on the other side of, of hard. So I'm not gonna say it's super easy, you know, snap your fingers and it happens. It's gonna take a little work.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Just like having a good relationship take work, takes work, having a great podcast takes work, uh, uh, raising a great family, starting a business, it's gonna take a little work, but anyone can do it. Step number one, master internal triggers.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
If 90% of our distractions, whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, if 90% of the time that we get distracted and do something that we later regret is because we're trying to escape discomfort, we have to learn the source of the problem.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
So step number one, master internal triggers or they become your master. Step number two, make time for traction. We talked earlier about how you have to turn your values into time. I can't tell you how many people have told me before, "You know, uh, uh, the world's so distracting these days, and social media this, and I can't concentrate that, and do you see what's happening in the news?" And I say, "Wow, that's, that's really sounds terrible. You know, show me what you got distracted from. What did you plan to do that you got distracted from? Show me your calendar."
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
They say, "Oh, my, my calendar? Oh, well, yeah, here it is." And, and I look at their calendar and they've got, what, maybe a dentist appointment, right? A couple meetings. The rest of their calendar's blank. Here's the thing, you can't say you got distracted if you don't know what you got distracted from.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
If your calendar is big, open white space, everything is a distraction. So you have to start doing what's called time boxing, which we can talk about. The third step is to hack back the external triggers, even though they only account for about 10% of our distractions. Very, very simple things that we can do. Make your phone indistractable. I only devoted one page in my book to how to make your phone indistractable.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
It's pretty darn simple. It takes a few minutes. Uh, that's the simple stuff. The more complicated stuff are the stupid meetings that are nothing but distractions. The emails that pile up.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- 17:17 – 28:30
How to Manage External Triggers
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay? So I love this idea that 90% of our triggers are internal.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I agree with that, and I guess this would very much fit alongside a lot of kind of religious or philosophical or spiritual teachings about, you know, sitting with yourself, experiencing uncomfortable emotions, not jumping to distract yourself from them, sit with them, allow them to be. You know, meditation for some people can be a wonderful way of learning about themselves-
- NENir Eyal
Hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... and learning what are they feeling and experiencing. 'Cause of course, if people are constantly Outside in the cells on devices, maybe unintentionally
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... they're not paying attention, right, to what's going on. Let, let's look at this through the lens of sugar, for example-
- NENir Eyal
Mm, mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... right? Something that I have helped many patients with over the last couple of decades. For me, there are sort of two ways to look at it. One is what would be the desired and ultimate long-term goal, and what's gonna be practical-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... right, in the short term?
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So in the short term, there are certain things that we can do, like don't bring things into your house that you don't want to eat.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so that's almost like step three, isn't it? That is basically-
- NENir Eyal
Hack back
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... hacking back the external triggers.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? So you're saying, you know, I would often say, "Don't use up your willpower in the house," okay?
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But that's only one part of a four-part model, right?
- NENir Eyal
And it's step three.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And it's step three.
- NENir Eyal
Step one is more important.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Agreed. And so I also have this little exercise, uh, called the three Fs-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... that I would teach people. It goes beyond sugar, but I, I'd love to sort of explain it to you and then look at it through the lens of your model, 'cause I think-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... some of it will map.
- NENir Eyal
For sure.
- 28:30 – 28:54
Taking Control of Your Attention
- NENir Eyal
in 10 minutes, two minutes, whatever. And what you're gonna do is now prove to yourself that you have agency.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
That's the breakthrough, 'cause if you can do two minutes, that's gonna turn into five minutes, it's gonna turn into 10 minutes, it's gonna turn to 20 minutes. Wait, what did I not wanna do anymore? That's the miracle.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, you take on the belief that you can do something about it.
- NENir Eyal
How addictive is it actually? If I waited 10, 20, 30, 40, an hour, who cares?
- 28:54 – 34:15
AG1
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
The clocks are about to change. The mornings are darker. Everyone around you seems to be coming down with something, and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling, and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals, and for me, one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years, and one of the things I like about it the most is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc, and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. I also like the fact that AG1 is committed to continuous improvement and updating its formula as the scientific research evolves, and the fact that each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals and allergens. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, you can get a FREE AG1 Flavour Sampler and AGZ Sampler to try all the flavors, plus free Vitamin D3+K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first-time subscribers. Just click the QR code on screen or go to drinkag1.com/livemore. If you take this model to its end point, what you're really offering people is the opportunity for self-mastery, right? Uh, uh, and I, I really mean that.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because...
- NENir Eyal
[laughs] It's a big part of it, yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, I kind of feel, you know, step one, mastering internal triggers, I, I feel it's reasonable to say if you are able to master your internal triggers, you're gonna do pretty well in life.
- NENir Eyal
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Because so much of what we struggle with in our life is because we're not aware of these internal triggers. We don't know when they're happening. We don't know what to do about them.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? So I, I think about this three-part model, the, the three Fs that I shared with you, and I think... I, I have my own theory on why, why this has proven so powerful for people. I think one of the reasons is because it brings, uh, the hidden out into the light.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
They don't know why they're eating sugar and ice cream. It's like suddenly it's like, oh, there is a cause beyond hunger.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Secondly, it's what you said about psychological reactants. It's not me telling the patient, "This is why you're eating." I, I very early on in my career learnt that no patient does what you tell them to do in the long term. No human does, frankly.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Being a parent taught me that.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right?
- NENir Eyal
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
That it, it will only be long term when at some point it becomes the patient's plan-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... not my plan.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I learned that very early on. And so everything I do is about empowering that patient. So the 3F is a, it's an empowerment tool. 'Cause it's like, oh, once you start to, uh, be aware, that's what's driving your ice cream intake.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, you've learnt some of that. I didn't need to tell you. You've learnt it for yourself. And then I guess what I was saying before is about hacking back the external triggers.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If the ice cream ain't in your house, you're putting a bit of friction between you and actually putting it in your mouth, right? So-
- NENir Eyal
For sure, yeah
- 34:15 – 42:12
When Does Something Become Too Much?
- NENir Eyal
You've dranken too much. You've watched too much. You've scrolled too much. You've done something too much. Ugh. Cut back. 95% of us have that very well-working, um, uh, little circuit breaker-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... that goes off. Now, there's some people who do get biologically addicted. Have you ever heard of the Rat Park experiment?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Y- yeah, I have heard of... Is... I wonder if this is the one that Johann Hari told me about.
- NENir Eyal
Could be, yeah. I think it was in his book as well. But that, I think that's a great demonstration. Um, uh-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
When you have community around you.
- NENir Eyal
Right. They took the rats.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
They, when they get, you know, they, we, we... Back in the '80s, they used to tell us, "You know, when a rat, uh, takes cocaine, it wants nothing but cocaine until it dies, you know. Don't do drugs." And it turns out that that's not at all what happened in this study, that in this study, one option was a rat in a tiny cage where it couldn't move around and all it could do was take cocaine. It's all it could do. Cocaine-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... food, water. That's it. And so of course, all it wanted was cocaine. But when they took rats and they put them in what they called Rat Park, where they could play, you know, rats are a social species. When they had their, their, their group, they had, you know, their little families and they could have a little wheel to, to exercise on and they could have their little social communities-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... they didn't want cocaine anymore.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
They didn't need it, right? So when we overdo something, when we have a consistent, compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms us, it's because there's something else going on. It's because present reality is so painful that we need some kind of escape.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, and that, and it sort of totally maps with this growing loneliness epidemic, right?
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because if you have your tribe around you, your family around you, your community around you, actually they can help you manage a lot of the stress in life, right?
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you're then having less of the- boredom, the anxiety, the fatigue, the frustration that then leads to these behaviors that we're trying to avoid, right?
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's like what you're saying with the rat experiments.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
A lot, lot of people who talk about trauma will say that one of the biggest determinants as to whether an experience ends up being traumatic or not depends on the level of support you had at that time.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If you had support around you and a family, friends, people to talk to and process it-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... it's less likely to become long-term trauma.
- NENir Eyal
And the story that you tell.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- 42:12 – 54:12
Can You Enjoy Things in Moderation?
- NENir Eyal
more than any consideration- The train has left the station. Okay? We, we should be so... Can you imagine if our grandparents listened to us complaining about this stuff? You live in a world where you have too much food, too much entertainment. This is what you're complaining about? Like, our, our grandparents were starving, okay? [laughs] They were fighting wars. And, and, and, uh, this is the first generation in human history where there isn't large-scale famine somewhere on the earth. You know, for 200,000 years, there was famine always somewhere. This is the first generation where more people die of diseases of excess than of shortage. Never happened before in 200,000 years of human history. We should be celebrating this. But you know what? The price of progress, the price for the fact that your kids aren't starving and, and looking for, uh, you know, to, to, to feed the- feed themselves, and that we can have this much abundance, the price of all that progress is that we have to learn some new skills.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's like one of the other prices, I think, is that rates of anxiety and depression are much higher now from what we can tell.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? And so-
- NENir Eyal
The way we measure them. That's also a whole nother conversation. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Sure. That, exactly. But that, that, you know, there, there is a school of thought that says when you don't have real problems to deal with, so-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... you know-
- NENir Eyal
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... if we're looking at the past, you know, you had to get out, you had stuff to do. You, you couldn't just sit at home and Deliveroo this and Uber Eats that and, and, and literally stay in your pajamas all day and still work, earn money, have food, have drink. You couldn't do that, right?
- NENir Eyal
Right. You were too busy.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So you, you... Yeah. You, you would have to go out and get food. You know, even when we were kids, you would have to go to at le- the very least, you'd have to go to the supermarket, buy your food, and get it home.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You don't have to do that anymore, right?
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But there is a school of thought which says that when you don't have real things or real problems to occupy your time with, the brain will start to create problems that in some ways don't exist, right?
- NENir Eyal
That's right. Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So it's kind of, there, there has been, there has been incredible human progress, but of course, some of that has come at a cost.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But I love the way you're framing it, which is very much about empowerment, which is we need to learn new skills for the world that exists today.
- NENir Eyal
Bec- bec- and why? Because who's gonna do it for us?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Like, are we gonna say, "Hey, Netflix, can you please stop making good shows? Uh, Apple, you know, your devices are so user-friendly. Please stop that." Stupid. Who, who wants to go back to an age where we don't have those devices? We, we love them. That's what they're supposed to do. I, yes, I agree. It's difficult to stay on a diet. Believe me, I know. I understand. But I don't wanna go back to a day before, you know, those things were invented. I- when I go to Paris, I want some great croissants. I'm not gonna tell the baker, "Stop making your croissants so delicious. I like them too much." It's up to me. So it's not my fault. I didn't invent social media. I didn't invent the iPhone. I didn't invent croissants. But it's my responsibility.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
'Cause who else's responsibility is it gonna be?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Let's just go back to social media for kids for ju- for just a moment.
- 54:12 – 54:45
How to Manage Distracted Children
- NENir Eyal
We don't know how what we do today will impact our kid in the future.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Totally.
- NENir Eyal
We just need faith. We just have to believe that this is gonna work out the way it's gonna work out because that's how we were raised, and that's what we think is the best.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Parenting is hard work. Parenting is definitely hard work, and we have to make the best decisions we can with the tools we have, and our kids will probably still have, have complaints about us in, in 20 years when they grow up. So what we have to do, I think, is, i- is, is think rationally here for a second. The most important thing you said was that you could have the discussion
- 54:45 – 1:01:56
Bon Charge
- NENir Eyal
with your kids.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
The fact that that's where you started-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... changes everything. When you talk to the families who say, "There's just nothing you can do. All their friends have it. They're begging me for it. What am I supposed to do?" I bet you, at least in my experience, what I've seen, those are the families who can't sit down and have a calm, rational conversation. Or it's the families I've seen again and again, "I've been telling my kids they need to get off that TikTok, right? Uh, TikTok's terrible. All their friends are using it." Meanwhile, the mom's telling me this as she's checking email or Facebook or whatever. If you wanna raise indistractable kids, you have to be an indistractable parent.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
100%.
- NENir Eyal
You see, children come born with these invisible antennae.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
It's called the hypocrisy detection device. And our kids are constantly scanning for where we screw up, and they are looking for where we are being hypocrites. So you cannot tell your kid, "You're not ready for social media. Get off social media," m- meanwhile, you're checking it all day. You can't tell yourself, "You shouldn't drink," and meanwhile, you're downing gin and tonics every night.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
We have to set that example. Obviously, we do. It's not about their friends.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
We are who they look to. And if we say, you know, just like a family who has particular religious convictions, right? Is it so hard? I'm gonna wear a hijab because that's my faith, and I'm gonna go to school where nobody else does. Yeah, that happens, right? Or I'm gonna wear a cross and nobody else... If it's part of what's important to you, if it's part of your values, if it's part of your conviction, you'll find a way.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, it comes back to intentionality. One of the most underappreciated aspects of health and wellbeing is recovery. Many of us, I think, can be quite good at doing certain things that are good for us, like going for a run or working out in the gym, but I find many people these days have forgotten to prioritize rest and relaxation, which is really important for things like our immune system, reducing stress levels, and to help promote better sleep. Now, I've been using Bon Charge wellness products in my house for around six years, and they have a variety of options to help you prioritize your recovery whilst you are at home, depending, of course, on your needs and budget. Over the years, I personally have enjoyed using their infrared sauna blankets, which are often used after playing paddle to speed up my own recovery. Their PEMF blankets and their red light therapy devices, which I really like, and I'm really looking forward to trying out their brand-new red light blanket, which provides full-body red light therapy to help soothe tired muscles and support post-workout recovery. Bon Charge are giving my audience 20% off all of their products. All you have to do is click the QR code on screen, or go to boncharge.com and use code LIVEMORE to save your 20%. I certainly would say my wife and I have always been very intentional with how we raise our kids. I would probably say how we bring up our kids is the most important thing to us.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know? I, I don't think-
- NENir Eyal
Well, this is their... Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I don't think there's anything more important to us, so I, I, I do feel that we, right or wrong, we've always made intentional decisions that we hope are in their best interests.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I should say, some of this is faith, 'cause they're not adults yet.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I don't know what the implications of this are going to be.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But, you know, we've certainly done our best. [chuckles]
- NENir Eyal
Right. Now, some people are gonna say, I promise you, they will say, "Well, that's really nice for him. He's affluent. He has resources. He has time. He has a loving relationship. What about everybody else?" And even then, I would say, first of all, you know, nothing that's in this book, you know, it'd take you, what, like, an hour and a half to read Indistractable. Anybody can use it, and, you know, the, the tech- I just gave you the, the basics. It's, it's not that hard, right? Anybody can do this. It's not a socioeconomic thing. But even then, if you can say, "Yeah, but, you know, uh, I think it's very demeaning to say that, uh, somehow poor people can't go to their library and check out this book and, and read it," but some people will tell me nonsense like that, to which I respond, "Look, you know, this stuff does not exist in a vacuum." That when you think about the causes of teen mortality, right? What killed kids a generation ago, two generations ago? When you look at all the factors, except one, there's one exception, everything that killed kids is at record lows. Do you know that? Teen, uh, murder rates, record lows. Drunk driving, record lows. Even things like truancy, record lows. Pregnancy, absolute record lows. All the things that used to hurt kids, except for suicide, which has gone up from his- it used to be at a historic low. It's gone up. Now it's going back down. More recently, it, it looks like it's going back down, so it could just be reversion to the mean. All the things that used to hurt kids are at record lows. Who ever talks about that? We never hear that. Why? If we're gonna say, "Hey, technology caused all these problems," since about 2008, since the iPhone came out, what about all these crazy trends of things happening the right way? Why? So let me ask you, if you wanted to create a device to keep kids safe at home, o- off the streets, maybe one of these devices isn't such a bad idea. I think if you would've brought the technology we have today back to my generation when I was in high school, parents would've said, "Oh my goodness, we can keep kids from drunk driving, and we can... They can stay home and play games together? That's amazing. They can be safe indoors during this very risky period of their life?" So I'm not, I'm not saying tech doesn't have negative consequences-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But, but of course that, but that, I, I see your point, and, uh, and I think it's also important to acknowledge that yes, and that has also come at a consequence, right?
- NENir Eyal
Of course.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Where kids are socializing less and, um, having less free play and less independence, right?
- NENir Eyal
So let's talk about this. So this is that 50-year s- study that I wanted to bring up earlier.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- 1:01:56 – 1:08:25
The 3 Psychological Needs We All Have
- NENir Eyal
is, it's, it's called the needs displacement hypothesis, that if you don't get what you need in the real world, you are looking for it in the online world, and here's how it works. The first one is competency. We know that per self-determination theory, every psychologist on the sa- face of the earth knows self-determination theory. It's the most well-validated, most well-studied theory of human flourishing and wellbeing, and what the, the research tells us is that when you don't have enough of these three things, psychologically, a lot of bad things happen. Hmm. You have more anxiety, depression, all kinds of disorders. So let's take competency. You know, one of the things that, that was on the rise around the same time of around 2008 when we got the Apple App Store was this rise in obsessive testing, at least in the United States. Now it's gone worldwide. Children are test to a ridiculous degree. Yeah. All year long, testing, testing, testing. So there's a subset of the population that is constantly told, "You are not competent." All the time. You know, they, they... I think it was in Philadelphia where they test first graders something like eight or nine times a year- Hmm ... with these standardized tests because that's how they now pay teachers. So with all that testing, if you're constantly reinforced you're not good enough, you're not competent, you're not mastering the subject, and you're hearing that in the real world, you're gonna look for it somewhere else. Well, where do you find it? Online. Hmm. Right? When you play, uh, uh, Roblox or, uh, Minecraft, you feel like a god. You feel competent. Yeah. You master the game. So your psychological nutrient number one is fulfilled. The second one, autonomy. You know, we talked earlier about psychological reactants and the importance of having that sense of autonomy. We hate being told what to do, and the work of Peter Gray, he's shown how this is the most over-regulated generation in history. Yeah. You know, there's only two places in society where you can tell people where to go, what to think, how to dress, who to be friends with, what to eat, and that's school and prison. [laughs] And if you put people in cages, they behave like animals, and that is exactly what we are doing with our children. Hmm. We are telling them what to do all day long. You know, the average American child today has twice as many restrictions as a, an enrolled service member- Wow ... someone who's in the Marines or the Army, twice as many rules, because we are constantly telling them what to do. And so if you are constantly told what to do, you have no autonomy, one of your three psychological nutrients, and if you don't have it in the real world, you look for it in the online world. And when you play one of these games online, you can do whatever you want. You feel like a god. Hmm. You feel autonomous. That's what they're looking for because they're not getting it offline. Finally, relatedness. Relatedness is this, this s- this, um, uh, psychological need that we all have to be understood by others and to understand others as well. We know that this generation is starved of free play. Free play is when children are allowed to play without the watchful eye of coaches and teachers and parents. Yeah. Just allowing them to be kids, 'cause today, at least in the United States, I'm not as familiar outside the United States, you know, when I was a kid, our neighborhood sang with the song of children playing. Yeah. And today, you don't see it anymore. You don't hear it. Why? Because if you have the means, well, now your kid is going to test prep and Chinese lessons and swimming and ballet. They're so overscheduled, they have no time for free play. And if you don't have the means, well, you tell your kid, "Go home and sit in front of your computer or your phone or the TV." Yeah. Why are kids kept indoors? Because of this myth of stranger danger. We had the media freaked us all out, thinking that our kids are gonna get abducted. Turns out this is the safest time to be a child ever [laughs] . And yet parents, at least in the United States, some parents have gotten arrested for letting their kids walk a mile to the local park. They were thought of as negligent parents because they let their kid on their own go play at the park. Yeah. So we have so overscheduled children that they have no time for free play. If, if you want to raise psychologically healthy children, the best thing you can do for them is to schedule time for them to free play without coaches and teachers and parents. Just let them play. Now, why is that so important? Because when you play with your peers, this is where you learn your place in the world. You know, if, if, if you are a jerk, uh, to your friends, they won't wanna play with you, right? Yeah. They'll tell you, "Hey, when you act like that, I don't, it's not fun. I don't wanna do that anymore." And so this is where we learn social interaction skills. And guess what? If we don't get it offline, we're gonna get it online. That's where the kids go. Yeah. And, and so one of the things I encourage parents to do is when they complain to me about, "Oh, my kid's always playing Minecraft or Roblox," or, uh, w- whatever, you know, the latest fear-mongering moral panic game i, is, have you ever played it? You know, it's amazing how few parents complain about what their kids are doing, and they have no idea what their kids are doing. You know, when kids are playing these games, it's not the game. It's who they're doing it with. It's just like when we were kids, we used to be on the phone for hours on end because we were separated from our friends, and so we wanted to communicate with them. That's what these kids are doing on these online games. They're, they're socializing. So without mastery, autonomy, and relatedness in the offline world, the kids are desperate for these psychological nutrients. And where are they getting them? Of course, those tech companies are very happy to give them what they want.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. I, I, I love the way you, you put that across and, and I guess it really fits with this idea that we're both passionate about, which, which is what is the root cause?
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Let's not necessarily deal with downstream symptoms, in my language and my worlds, but let's get to the root, right?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I guess one of the things you're saying is if we give, frankly adults as well [laughs] but let's say children, if we give them competency, autonomy, and relatedness, if they have those three core psychological needs met, even if they were being exposed to lots of technology, less of them-
- NENir Eyal
They do
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... would have the harmful effects from them because they wouldn't be seeking those things from the technologies.
- NENir Eyal
That's exactly right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right. And it... As you were talking, that reminded me of a case, uh, of a patient I had a few years ago, which I, I, I think I wrote about him in my fifth book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, I'm, I'm pretty sure I wrote about him, which is this sort of young adult, I think he was around 18, from recollection. And I always remember it really well because he came in to see me and, and he wouldn't look at me. He wouldn't make eye contact.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
He was so, so ashamed.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But Nir, essentially what he had to tell me was that he was addicted to
- 1:08:25 – 1:12:00
How Learning New Skills Prevents Distraction
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
online pornography.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? And he just couldn't stop looking, and he didn't know what to do, right? And as... You know, I'll shorten the story, but effectively, as I got to know him and understand what was going on with him, it was very clear that he had nothing else in his life.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Nothing. He, he, he didn't have friends. He didn't have, um, a, a hobby, for a variety of different reasons. And so I was trying to figure out, well, how can I help him? Because for me, the online pornography wasn't actually the problem.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It was a downstream symptom.
- NENir Eyal
It's a symptom. Exactly.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? And the way I helped him was we went through various options of stuff that he could do-
- NENir Eyal
Hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... in his neighborhood, right?
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And a lot of the options he wouldn't go for, but there was something about boxing that appealed to him.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I helped this guy join a local boxing club, and that changed his life. And what's really interesting is that I very much felt that once he had that, uh, connection, once he learned a new skill, he found other people around him who... I remember he said to me, you know, in a boxing gym, five press-ups means five press-ups, right?
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's not optional, right?
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If they say drop it for 10, you drop it for 10.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
He didn't have that-
- NENir Eyal
Hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... right, outside. And but I can look at what happened with him through the lens of those three needs that you just brought up, right? Competency and mastery.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. He was learning that new skill and, and developing that. There was autonomy there. There was relatedness. He had a tribe around him, the other people like him. Once he got those, uh, within months he, he didn't use online pornography anymore.
- NENir Eyal
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right?
- NENir Eyal
Yeah. Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And that, that was quite a few years ago now.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- 1:12:00 – 1:18:51
Kids and Social Media
- NENir Eyal
maybe a couple hours to learn it. And start applying it to your life. And be vulnerable with your kids about the challenge, right? So, so when I was writing Indistractable, uh, actually, my daughter was the inspiration to start writing the book in the first place 'cause I was ignoring her, checking my phone-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- NENir Eyal
... and I hated that example I was setting for her. So, you know, many parents feel like if they're vulnerable of something that they're struggling with with their kids, then their kid is going to not look up to them anymore, and it's ac- actually exactly the opposite. That when we wanted to do this together, that I told her, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with this. You know, these devices are designed to get us hooked. [laughs] I know better than anyone about why that's true. And so how can we use them responsibly? How can we get the best out of them without letting them get the best of us? So setting a good example, being vulnerable with your, your kid, that's setting the stage. Now we walk through these four steps. Step number one, mastering your internal triggers. Making sure- That they have time for free play, right? We tackle competency, autonomy, and relatedness. Again, you get all three when you get that opportunity to let kids schedule time for free play. So finding a few other families in your neighborhood, and just like you would schedule the, the swimming lessons or the test prep, schedule time for free play. You don't need that many families in your neighborhood to do this. Make it a priority. It's an investment in your child's psychological future. And here's what you find. I have never found that when a child has the opportunity, and I don't care how good the video game is or how good the social media is, if they've got friends doing something that they're interested in as well, you, you would, you'd be amazed how quickly they toss the phone-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- NENir Eyal
... and they want to play. We just don't give them the opportunity to do it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
So that's the first thing. Understand your kid's psychological nutrients, competency, autonomy, relatedness. Are they getting enough? Okay? The next step is making time for traction. This is gonna sound crazy, but one of the best things you can do to help your kid use technology responsibly is to schedule time for it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Schedule time for it. Why? Because in their brain, if there's something they enjoy doing, they're gonna think about it, as all of us do, right? If you like watching football, if you like reading the news, if you like watching YouTube videos, you're gonna think about, "Hey, when do I have time to do that?" So what happens with kids, they're scheduled all day long. They get home from, from school, and they're gonna start thinking about it. Immediately they might jump onto it. But if you sit down with them, this is what we did with my daughter when she was just six years old. She's 17 now. But when she was just six years old, we sat down with her, and we noticed that she was using her iPad a bit too much. And so we asked her, we said, um, "Hey, Jasmine, how much time do you want to spend on your device?" Because the cost of using your device this much is we didn't wanna freak her out and tell her it's melting her brain. That's silly. Like, what, it's melting my brain but not your brain? That doesn't make any sense. We have to be rational about it. And, you know, the jobs of the future require our kids to be conversant with technology, so we don't wanna freak them out. Rather, what we wanna say is the cost of using this technology too much is what else you could do with your time. So when you're on your iPad, you're not playing with your friends. You're, we're not going to the pool together. We're not hanging out. We're not cooking a meal. We're not doing things together. So how much time would you like to spend on your device? And I thought she was gonna say all day, right? But that's not what she said. You know what she said? She said two episodes. Right? In her mind, that's what she, you know, she, she... What she was doing on, on the iPad was watching Netflix shows, you know, for, that were age-appropriate. And when I looked into the research, did you know that three hours or less of age-appropriate screen time, of course it has to be age-appropriate, three hours or less, no deleterious or consequences. There has not been even one study that shows that three hours or less of age-appropriate content has any negative effects. The negative effects start at four, five, six hours. That's when you start having some problems.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
There will be some people who would disagree with you on that, though.
- NENir Eyal
That's not what the studies show.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
That three hours, as long as it's age-appropriate. Lots of inappropriate stuff that will cause harm. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
But let's say you've got the proper internet filters on your devices. Three hours or less, no. There's no studies that show there's any deleterious consequences. Okay? So I was fine with three hours or less. She only said two episodes. Two episodes is 45 minutes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
So I said, "Fine. Okay. You can watch your two episodes, but here's the thing. I don't wanna tell you when to stop. Okay? I don't wanna tell you. I'm not gonna be the police officer." Because remember, our job as parents, we're not raising kids. Our job as parents is to raise future adults.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
So if I'm the police officer, and I have to tell her, "Get off the device. Give me that device," not only is she gonna resent me and hate me, what happens when she goes off to college?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Right? She has... I'm stealing from her this skill of self-regulation. What am I doing?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
She has to learn that skill. So I said, "You can watch your two episodes, no problem. But let me ask you, Jasmine, how will you know it's time to stop?" She thought for a minute, and she said, "Well, you know that microwave that you and Mommy will time things on?" Because we used to have this microwave that was below the countertop.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
And sometimes when we needed a timer in the kitchen, we would-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... you know, use it as a timer. And she saw us doing that. Six years old. And she says, "Well, why don't I put in the time I have, and when it beeps, I'll stop." And that's what she did. We let her have that responsibility. She scheduled it in her calendar, so she didn't have to constantly obsess of when can I watch, when can I watch? She knew when she could watch. It was on her schedule. And she knew how much time she said was good for her.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
So back to autonomy. I gave her the keys to the kingdom, and she didn't disappoint.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I mean, I just gotta acknowledge that teaching your daughter this kind of skill from the age of six I think is wonderful because, of course, hopefully, uh, and, and again, I, I don't mean to share anything about your personal life or your family that you don't want to, but I imagine that having that awareness taught to her and, uh, just brought to her awareness at the age of six is going to yield dividends [laughs]
- 1:18:51 – 1:31:42
4 Steps to Raise ‘Indistractable’ Kids
- NENir Eyal
we hear about psychological symptoms increasing since the use of the cellphone, I am pretty convinced if you actually dig down and look at the data- It's not what they're doing on the device per se, although of course there's bad stuff out there, and it's gotten better and better in terms of the filtering, but it's not perfect. It's not what they're doing with their device, it's what they're doing instead. Meaning there is an unbelievable correlation between the amount of sleep that children are getting today-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... versus what they got 10, 20, 30 years ago, and these psychological symptoms. Sleep goes down, psychological symptoms go up. I think that's actually much more part of the equation, and we never talk about it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
How much sleep your kid, your, your kid is getting is incredibly important, not only f- of, of course for them. How much sleep you're getting is important. So we have to hack back the external triggers. So anything that beeps, buzzes, or boops should not be in the bedroom. Okay? I'm talking about, uh, a radio, uh, uh, uh, whether it's a c- a laptop, whether it's their iPhone. Nothing that could interrupt sleep should be in the bedroom. TV, definitely not. Nothing that could interrupt sleep.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Also, I think setting a good example as parents, right? There's no reason to have a TV in the bedroom. Have a TV in the living room. We don't want anything that has, emits light or noise of any kind to interrupt their sleep. And just like step two how we talk about turning our values into time, along with scheduling time for watching videos or going on or, you know, whatever it is-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... they like to do with their device, playing video games, there's also a discreet bedtime. I remember my mo- my, uh, I would tell my daughter, "It's time for your bedtime. You have to go to bed." And she said, "Daddy, when's your bedtime?" Once again, I was being a hypocrite. I didn't have a bedtime. She was absolutely right. Now I have a bedtime. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
So I can, I can walk the walk, not just talk the talk of yeah, you know what? Sleep is important for our psychological wellbeing. Remove those external triggers from anything that could possibly interrupt it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. It's really interesting. You know, c- I did a Channel 4 documentary on this called Swiped. Um, we did a 21-day experiment with year eights. So in this country, this is, they're about 12-year-olds. And it was, I think, the first of its kind experiments, uh, that was done with York University where for 21 days the kids came off all, like, computers, laptops, games, and smartphones for 21 days just to see what happens. Now-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... that's just the first part, right? That's not necessarily the solution. That's just to demonstrate a point, and there was many things that we discovered. But on average, every child slept for one hour extra.
- NENir Eyal
Which is huge. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Huge, because, you know, we can-
- NENir Eyal
So important
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... we can talk about sleep in terms of we all know when we haven't slept well, you know, our mood's a bit off.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
We don't have as much energy. Our concentration isn't there.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But a lot of people don't realize that there are really good studies showing that, um, your ability to resist temptation-
- NENir Eyal
Yep
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... goes down a-
- NENir Eyal
'Cause you feel groggy. You feel crappy all day.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, exactly. So when you start to put it all together in this-
- NENir Eyal
It creates the internal trigger. When you haven't gotten enough sleep and you feel groggy and you're also telling yourself, "I didn't get enough sleep," you have a new-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I, I-
- NENir Eyal
... internal trigger to escape from
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... yeah, I know I scroll more when I haven't slept well.
- 1:31:42 – 1:33:37
Why To-Do Lists Don't Work
- NENir Eyal
And if you do that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you start believing that you're no good at time management, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Here's all these things, all these things I said I would do and I didn't do.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Loser. And so we start blaming ourselves, thinking we must be bad somehow. We must have some kind of undiagnosed-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... condition. Maybe we're, you know, not cut out for this. We don't have enough self-discipline. There's nothing wrong with you. It's this stupid to-do list technique, right? Because if you are not translating, or transferring I should say, the things on your to-do list to your calendar, you've made a big mistake. Why is time boxing so much better than to-do lists? Because time boxing has a constraint. The constraint is the same 24 hours in a day. So here's how time boxing works. You look at your calendar for the week ahead, okay? This, this doesn't take that long, but it's important to do. You take a look at your calendar the week ahead, and then you look at what I call the three life domains. The three life domains, at the center is you. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people, you can't make the world a better place. So ask yourself, "How would the person I want to become spend their time this week taking care of themselves?" Okay?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
How would I spend my time taking care of myself according to my values, the person I wanna become? Well, the person I wanna become would spend some time reading. Is that one of my values, right?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
That I wanna be well-read. Okay. Put time to read every day. Would the person I wanna become take care of themselves, you know, grooming, hygiene? Yep, that's part of it, too. Would they go to the gym? Yep, put time for that, too. Okay? So I'm filling up my calendar with things in the you domain, everything I wanna do for myself, including I like to play video games. Great. Put it in your calendar. I wanna check social media. I wanna watch something on Netflix. Awesome. Put it in your calendar. The next life domain, relationships, okay? So many of our relationships in life were like ships in the night. My wife and I-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... used to do this all the time, right? Because we didn't plan that time together. My wife is incredibly important to me. We've been married now for 25 years.
- 1:33:37 – 1:42:03
How to Plan Your Time Effectively
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wow.
- NENir Eyal
She's my best friend.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Brilliant.
- NENir Eyal
And a few years ago, we, we kinda became strangers in our own house. We didn't really... We weren't connected anymore. Now that's not the case. We have put time in our schedule. We have a date night every Friday. We have a walk every Sunday morning. It's in our schedules. So w- no matter what, we've got that time planned for. I do this with my siblings. I do this with my best friends, right? Male relationships, we talk about the loneliness epidemic. You know why it's happening? 'Cause we're not planning the time.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Right? We used to have church or synagogue or mosque, these, these institutions where we would go to see our, our, our community members. Well, you know, with the decline, the secularization of society, many of us don't have that anymore. We don't have the bowling-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- NENir Eyal
... league or the Kiwanis Club. Put it in your schedule. So my, my best friends, they have a dedicated time when I'm going to talk to them in my schedule, okay? Those are your relationships. Finally, the last life domain is work, which is where most people if they schedule, that's what they schedule first.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
It actually should come last. And work can be subdivided into two kinds of work. We have what we call reactive work and reflective work. Reactive work is how most people spend most of their day. Reacting to emails, reacting to meetings, reacting to notifications, reacting all day long. Why? Because it's easy, right? I don't wanna have to think about what I do. Let me just see what my email inbox tells me to do.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
So that's fine. Email is part of many of our jobs. Reactive work has to get done. Totally fine. Plan time for it. How much time would the person you want to become professionally spend on reactive work? Emails, meetings, notifications. Have that time in your schedule, no problem. But if you don't plan time for the other kind of work, it's called reflective work.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- NENir Eyal
Planning, strategizing, thinking for God sakes. If you don't plan time for reflective work, I promise you, you're gonna run real fast in the wrong direction. If you want a leg up on everybody else in your industry, plan time to think, 'cause no one else is doing it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- NENir Eyal
Put it in your schedule. Now, here's what's gonna happen. After you do you, your relationships, and your work, you're gonna have a schedule that is too full. 100% of the time. When you do this, you're gonna have more than you wanna get done than can be accommodated in a 24-hour day. That's the point. Because now what you're gonna do is you're gonna start making trade-offs.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
One of the reasons to-do lists are terrible for personal productivity-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
No trade-offs
- NENir Eyal
... there's no trade-off.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Just more and more and more and more.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You don't prioritize.
- NENir Eyal
Right. And here's, here's the secret. You can do it all. You can do it all, just not all at once.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- NENir Eyal
You can do it all, just not all at once. So when you see, hey, I wanna do all this stuff, but I don't have the time, now you're forced to make some trade-offs. Okay, if I wanna spend some more time in the office, that might mean less time with my kids or less time in the gym or less time to read or less time whatever. I'm gonna have to make those trade-offs. And whatever you choose is fine. It's not up to me or anyone else. If you wanna play video games all day, do it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Right? [laughs] That's your life. But when you have that time box calendar, now the goal, and this is a big one, is not to finish anything. Do you hear me? I said the goal is not to finish anything. This blows people's minds. We have been so inculcated to think that the way you manage your time is to check off cute little boxes-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm
- NENir Eyal
That that's what we expect. That's how we measure our personal self-worth, is how many cute boxes I check off. I used to, I'm embarrassed to tell you this. I used to do a task, remember it wasn't on my to-do list, go back and write it down so I can have the joy of checking it off.
- 1:42:03 – 1:50:18
Why New Skills and Hobbies Matter
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
growing sport in the world-
- NENir Eyal
Hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... right at the moment.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
There's, and, and there's a few themes within Padel that I think relate to this conversation. We, we spoke about loneliness before, right, and, and why if we don't get these kind of, uh, core needs, right? You were saying this through the lens of children-
- NENir Eyal
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... but I think it kind of applies to adults as well.
- NENir Eyal
It does. Totally does.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
We, we need competency, autonomy, relatedness, that community.
- NENir Eyal
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Padel gives us that for sure. Sociality is built into Padel.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay? You, you can technically play singles, but nobody does.
- NENir Eyal
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Or very few people. It's a game of doubles.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But, and this is where it relates to time boxing, it's not quite time boxing, but one of the things you do to book a game is you go on the app.
- NENir Eyal
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
There are a few apps, Playtomic, Padelmates, what- whatever app your club uses, right? And you go on it, and you, and this is one of the beautiful things about it, you don't need to know anyone else who plays.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You can just join a match.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? Once four are full, the match is there, right? It's done. And within 24 hours you can't cancel.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay? So if you don't show up, you're letting someone else down. You've got three other-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... people who are turning up.
- NENir Eyal
Pre-commitment.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Pre... Yeah. But when I'm working from home, and if there's a bit of flexibility in my schedule for the day, uh, I will sometimes take a look in the morning, are there any games around? Now, obviously, I don't get to choose what time it is if I'm looking to join a game. But sometimes I'll see a game and I'll be like, "Yeah, you know what? I reckon I can do that 60-minute game at lunch."
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- 1:50:18 – 1:53:20
Final Thoughts from Nir
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
of no regrets-
- NENir Eyal
Less regrets. You're always gonna have some kind of regrets. Less regrets
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... what would your final words for them be?
- NENir Eyal
A word for them. Okay. So the most important thing I can leave you with is, is this: the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. So all of... Everything we've talked about, distraction is an impulse control problem. It's not a moral failing. It's not a character flaw. There's nothing broken abro- about you. It's just that you haven't learned to deal with these impulse issues, that you've got these emotions that right now have been attached to satisfying them with some kind of distraction. But this is malleable. We can change this. Remind yourself, the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought, that when we think ahead, that's the key. So if you wait until the chocolate cake is on the fork to your mouth, it's too late. You're gonna lose. If you wait till the cigarette's in your hand, you're gonna smoke it. If you sleep next to your cellphone every night, [laughs] it's gonna be the first thing you reach for before you say hello to your loved one. So if you leave it to the last minute, you're gonna fail. They're gonna get you every time. But if you plan ahead, the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. If you take steps today, there is no distraction you can't overcome tomorrow.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Absolutely love it. Guys, the book we have been talking about today, all the themes within it, is Indistractable. If you heard my chat with Nir just a few months ago, which again, if you haven't, I'd highly, highly recommend you listen to, we were discussing his very latest book, BEYOND BELIEF. And whilst on the surface they may seem like different books, they're, they're actually not, are they? They, they are. There's, there's different content in them, but there is something that-
- NENir Eyal
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... sews them together, right?
- NENir Eyal
For sure. Actually, the reason I wrote BEYOND BELIEF, uh, was because there's still things unresolved that I needed to go deeper on about what was... I would actually... It's funny, I would recommend reading my books in reverse order. [laughs] Start with BEYOND BELIEF.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
That I think is the most important book y- to read before you do any other self-help is understand the, the, that no, no good advice works without the, the latticework of the right beliefs.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I, I c-
- NENir Eyal
That's the first place.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- NENir Eyal
Then let's go into the tactics in Indistractable.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I completely agree. Like, that's where my whole thinking has gone over the last few years. It, it, it all comes down to beliefs.
- NENir Eyal
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Like, so much of our life is downstream from those beliefs, and as you beautifully say in your book and you beautifully told me a few months ago, you get to choose your beliefs.
- NENir Eyal
That's right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right?
- NENir Eyal
Beliefs are tools, not truths.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. You can intentionally choose your beliefs so that they help you rather than enslave you.
- NENir Eyal
That's right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Nir, thank you so much for flying in, uh, to the show again. Appreciate you coming to the studio, and appreciate everything you do.
- NENir Eyal
Of course. Thank you for having me.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one that I picked out especially.
- NENir Eyal
We live in an age of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts. We're rewiring our brains. Technology's a tool for us to use, but if technology's using us, then, then we become the tool, right?
Episode duration: 1:53:20
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