By Nir Eyal

Rating: 3.5/5

Overview

You sit down at your desk to work on an important project, but a notification on your phone interrupts your morning. Later, as you’re about to get back to work, a colleague taps you on the shoulder to chat. At home, screens get in the way of quality time with your family. Another day goes by, and once again, your most important personal and professional goals are put on hold.

What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused? What if you had the power to become “indistractable?”

In Indistractable, Nir Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more.

Eyal lays bare the secret of finally doing what you say you will do with a four-step, research-backed model. Indistractable reveals the key to getting the best out of technology, without letting it get the best of us.

Inside, Eyal overturns conventional wisdom and reveals:

   • Why distraction at work is a symptom of a dysfunctional company culture—and how to fix it
   • What really drives human behavior and why “time management is pain management”
   • Why your relationships (and your sex life) depend on you becoming indistractable
   • How to raise indistractable children in an increasingly distracting world

Empowering and optimistic, Indistractable provides practical, novel techniques to control your time and attention—helping you live the life you really want.

The Main takeaway(s):
Every distracted person needs to master Four key strategies for becoming Indistractable

1.)

Mastering internal triggers

Internal triggers prompt you to action with cues within you.

• Handling discomfort
• Learn to make the boring fun
• Shape your own identity

2.) Hacking back external triggers

External triggers prompt you to action with cues in your environment.

• Reduce external triggers that create distraction
• Use external triggers to generate traction

3.) Making time for traction

Traction leads you closer to your goals. It is any action that moves you toward what you really want.

• Timeboxing – schedule time to work on your values
• Reflect and Revise weekly
• Never bail on appointments you make for yourself

4.) Preventing distraction with pacts

• Effort pacts
• Price pacts
• Identity Pacts

Highlight and Quotes.

“An individual’s level of self-compassion had a greater effect on whether they would develop anxiety and depression than all the usual things that tend to screw up people’s lives, like traumatic life events, a family history of mental illness, low social status, or a lack of social support.”

“Anything that stops discomfort is potentially addictive, but that doesn’t make it irresistible. If you know the drivers of your behavior, you can take steps to manage them.”

“As is the case with all human behavior, distraction is just another way our brains attempt to deal with pain. If we accept this fact, it makes sense that the only way to handle distraction is by learning to handle discomfort.”

“At the heart of the therapy is learning to notice and accept one’s cravings and to handle them healthfully. Instead of suppressing urges, ACT prescribes a method for stepping back, noticing, observing, and finally letting the desire disappear naturally.”

“Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. Indistractable people are as honest with themselves as they are with others. If you care about your work, your family, and your physical and mental well-being, you must learn how to become indistractable”

“Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. Indistractable people are as honest with themselves as they are with others. If you care about your work, your family, and your physical and mental well-being, you must learn how to become indistractable”

“Dissatisfaction and discomfort dominate our brain’s default state, but we can use them to motivate us instead of defeat us.”

“Distraction, it turns out, isn’t about the distraction itself; rather, it’s about how we respond to it.”

“Empowering children with the autonomy to control their own time is a tremendous gift. Even if they fail from time to time, failure is part of the learning process.”

“Eons of evolution gave you and me a brain in a near-constant state of discontentment. We’re wired this way for a simple reason. As a study published in the Review of General Psychology notes, “If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances.”

“Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting.”

“Fun is looking for the variability in something other people don’t notice. It’s breaking through the boredom and monotony to discover its hidden beauty.”

“He believes that willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows in response to what’s happening to us and how we feel.”

“Hedonic adaptation, the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction, no matter what happens to us in life, is Mother Nature’s bait and switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don’t, or at least they don’t for long.”

“If you were to walk around Slack’s company headquarters in San Francisco, you’d notice a peculiar slogan on the hallway walls. White letters on a bright pink background blare, “Work hard and go home.”

“Just as the human body requires three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) to run properly, Ryan and Deci proposed the human psyche needs three things to flourish: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When the body is starved, it elicits hunger pangs; when the psyche is undernourished, it produces anxiety, restlessness, and other symptoms that something is missing.”

“learning certain techniques as part of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can disarm the discomfort that so often leads to harmful distractions”

“LOOK FOR THE DISCOMFORT THAT PRECEDES THE DISTRACTION, FOCUSING IN ON THE INTERNAL TRIGGER”

ie the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.

“Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality.”

“Next, book fifteen minutes on your schedule every week to reflect and refine your calendar by asking two questions: Question 1 (Reflect): “When in my schedule did I do what I said I would do and when did I get distracted?” Answering this question requires you to look back at the past week.”

“Only by understanding our pain can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges.”

“Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.”

“ten-minute rule.” If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes.”

“The better we are at noticing the behavior, the better we’ll be at managing it over time.”

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

“The primary objective of most meetings should be to gain consensus around a decision, not to create an echo chamber for the meeting organizer’s own thoughts. One of the easiest ways to prevent superfluous meetings is to require two things of anyone who calls one. First, meeting organizers must circulate an agenda of what problem will be discussed. No agenda, no meeting. Second, they must give their best shot at a solution in the form of a brief, written digest. The digest need not be more than a page or two discussing the problem, their reasoning, and their recommendation.”

“Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work out in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around.”

“Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work out in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around.”

“We implemented a ten-minute rule and promised that if we really wanted to use a device in the evening, we would wait ten minutes before doing so. The rule allowed us time to “surf the urge” and insert a pause to interrupt the otherwise mindless habit.”

“WRITE DOWN THE TRIGGER”

Practical help for day to day life: Hack Back Email and Chat

Email:

• Reduce the number of messages received.
• Schedule office hours, delay when messages are sent, and reduce time-wasting messages from reaching your inbox.
• Spend less time on each message.
• Label emails by when each message needs a response. Reply to emails during a scheduled time on your calendar.

Chat:

• Use it like a sauna (in and out quickly)
• Schedule it on your timeboxed calendar
• Be picky with who is in the group chat (the fewer people the better)
• Use it selectively (opt for in person when mood, tone, and nonverbal signals add critical context)

Meetings:

• Require two things of anyone who calls one.
• First, meeting organizers must circulate an agenda of what problem will be discussed. No agenda, no meeting.
• Second, they must give their best shot at a solution in the form of a brief, written digest.

Hack Back Your Smartphone:

• Remove apps you don’t need
• Replace apps with desktop equivalents or other objects (watch, alarm clock, etc)
• Rearrange apps to show tools and hide slot machines
• Reclaim notifications – be very selective regarding which apps can push notifications
• Reward walks or exercise with online articles (text to speech)

• Hack Back Your Desktop
• Remove clutter from view
• Use Instapaper or Pocket. Never read an article in the browser.
• Use FB news feed eradicator, DF Tube, Open twitter notifications directly instead of starting with the main feed

Timeboxing

Does your calendar reflect your values? To be the person you want to be, you have to make time to live your values.

• Schedule time to work on your values

The goal is to eliminate all white space on your calendar so you’re left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day.