Strategies for becoming less distractible and improving focus | Nir Eyal
I went to Alibaba and I bought myself one of these flip phones from China you know like we used to have in the 1990s with no apps no internet connection and then I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I you know had I could just sit down and write and do the important stuff and even when I stopped using all the technology even when I got rid of all the apps I would sit down at my desk and I'd say oh you know what um there's that book that I've been meaning to do some research in or let me just clean off my desk real quick or you know what I should take out the trash and I kept getting distracted because the problem is not our technology the problem is our inability to deal with discomfort so what I have adopted for myself and what I advise anyone who finds themselves in this situation is to always identify what is that internal trigger what is that itch that you are looking to escape when you get distracted because that is the source of 90% of our distractions it's not the pings dings and Rings it's the feelings but to me that's incredibly empowering because once you realize wait a minute just a feeling it's all it is it's just an emotion then you can have tools ready to go you can have arrows in your quiver ready to take out as soon as you feel that discomfort today my guest is near AAL near is the author of two best-selling books hooked how to build habit forming products and indistractable how to control your attention and choose your life near spends his time teaching and Consulting at the intersection of psychology technology and business his books have sold over 1 million copies in over 30 languages in our conversation we get very tactical about how to become less distractable and how to get better at focusing on doing the work that you know you need to do near shares at least a dozen tools and tricks that you can put into place today to help you stay focused and avoid getting distracted after this conversation I've already implemented some of these tactics and they're actually working if you find these helpful or you want to go deeper definitely check out n's book IND distractable with that here is near a after a short word from our sponsors this episode is brought to you by vanta helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth thousands of fast growing companies like Gusto Comm K and modern treasury trust vanta to help build scale manage and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks not months by offering the most in demand security and privacy Frameworks such as sock 2 ISO 2701 gdpr Hippa and many more vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth build efficient compliance processes mitigate risks to their businesses and build trust with external stakeholders over 5,000 fast growing companies use vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with sock 2 and these other Frameworks for a limited time Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off vanta go to v.com Lenny that's v.com Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts get started today you fell in love with building products for a reason but sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagined instead of dreaming up Big Ideas talking to customers and crafting a strategy you're drowning in spreadsheets and road map updates and you're spending your days basically putting out fires a better way is possible introducing jira product Discovery the new prioritization and Road mapping tool built for product teams by atlassian with Juro product Discovery you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently finally replacing those endless spreadsheets create and share custom product road maps with any stakeholder in seconds and it's all built on jira where your engineering team is already working so true collaboration is finally possible great products are built by great teams not just Engineers sales support leadership even Greg from Finance anyone that you want can contribute ideas feedback and insights in J product disc Discovery for free no catch and it's only $10 a month for you say goodbye to your spreadsheets and The NeverEnding alignment efforts the old way of doing product management is over ReDiscover what's possible with Jiro product Discovery try it for free at atlassian dcom Lenny that's atlassian [Music] docomo much Lenny great to be here I feel like we have a chance to record the most valuable hour in podcast history because it could give people more time to do the things they want to do and this is based on a book that you wrote called indistractable which is all about helping people become less distracted become better at focus and my opinion it might be the most essential skill in the workplace today and so what I'm hoping to do today in our chat is just basically give people as many tactical skills and pieces of advice and tools to become less distractable and to get better at Focus how does that sound that sounds great I love that you're setting the expectations high I'll try and meet them well now we got to hit them okay so here's the question I'll just start really Broad and let's just see where this goes my question is just how does one become less distractable SL how do I become less distractable okay so there's a there's a deeper motivation here is I need help which is great that's my favorite thing to do is to actually you know get concrete with people about what their specific challenges are but let me let me back up here so uh this is what I spent five years writing a book about uh because why did it take me years to write a book because I was so distracted so I wrote this book for me more than anyone else you know that that's the only reason I write books is not because of what I know but because of what I want to know and I discovered there were so many myths and tropes and just Flatout harmful things that I was doing to hurt my own productivity and uh and when I really went down to First principles and looked at the research uh I found that there was so many things that I was I was doing wrong but since I've I've changed my ways and adopted what what what the research literature says about distraction it's improved my life in inconceivable ways I mean I I'm in the best shape of my life at 45 years old I have a better relationship with my family than ever I'm more productive at work than ever before not because I didn't know what to do that that's what I find is is uh really emblematic of of people in in in today is is not that we don't know what to do it used to be maybe okay our grandparents they didn't know what to do because the information was scarce they had to go to the library and look things up well today with the internet we all basically know what to do and if you don't know what to do Google it right you can find the answer out there but we all basically know Common Sense stuff like if you want to get in shape you have to exercise and eat right okay you don't need a diet book to tell you that if you want to have better relationships with your family you have to be fully present with people if you want to do better at work you have to do the hard work that other people don't want to do we already know these things what we don't know is how to get out of our own way how to stop getting distracted and so that was certainly my problem and so what I wanted to do was really dive into the problem because the conventional Solutions didn't work for me right when I have a problem in my life I'll uh I'll think about it I'll write about it I'll talk to friends I'll talk to my wife about it if I still can't figure it out I'll read books about it and what the conventional wisdom out there written by you know a lot of college professors that are all tenured is stop using technology right stop checking email get off social media it's melting your brain but that's not very helpful right like maybe if you have tenure that's okay but I can't stop using technology my career will plummet I have to use these tools so I wanted much more practical advice and what I discovered was that the root cause of distraction is much more interesting and the solution is far more empowering than stop using technology technolog is evil it's melting your brain so where Where Do We Begin maybe the best place to start is by first before we dive into the tactics around how do we become IND distractible the first place to start is what is distraction right that that understanding that the term really really matters and the best way to understand what distraction is is is to understand what distraction is not what's the opposite of distraction so if you ask most people what's the opposite of distraction they'll tell you focus right I don't want to be distracted I want to be focused that's not exactly right then in fact the opposite of distraction is not focus the opposite of distraction is traction becomes pretty easy when you look at both words traction distraction they're opposites because both words come from the same Latin root trahar which means to pull and they both end in the same six letters a c t i o n that spells action reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us it is an action that we ourselves take so traction by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you say you were going to do things you do with intent things that move you closer to your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become those are acts of traction now the opposite of traction distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do further away from your goals further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become and what separates traction from distraction is one word and that one word is intent I love this Dorthy Parker quote she said the time you plan to waste is not waste of time so I think we need to stop medicalizing and moralizing you know what people do with their time why is it that you know uh someone going on Reddit or on social media or watching a YouTube video that's somehow morally inferior to watching a football game on TV it's not anything you want to do with your time and attention is fine and as long as it's done with intent as long as you're doing it on your schedule and not someone else's certainly not the tech company schedule so anything you do with intent is traction anything else is distraction so what I discovered for me was that uh I was getting tricked by Distraction in that the most pernicious form of distraction I discovered was the kind I didn't didn't even realize was distracting me so let let me know if this sounds familiar to you Lenny I would sit down at my desk I would look at my to-do list by the way we can talk about why to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity we can get back to that later but I would look I would sit down at my desk and I'd say okay I've got that big important project that's what I'm going to do this morning I'm not going to get distracted nothing's going to get in my way here I go I'm gonna get started but first let me check some email are you watching me because this happens to me every morning you gotta stop this is totally autobiographical this is what I used to do all the let me oh let me just scroll that slack Channel what what's everybody at the office doing oh let me just catch up on industry news that's important that's part of my job right I'm being productive right and what I didn't realize is that distraction was tricking me into prioritizing the Urgent and the easy stuff at the expense of the hard and important work I had to do to move my life and career forward so just because it's a work related task doesn't mean it's not a distraction in fact that's the worst kind of distraction far worse than playing Candy Crush or whatever because then you know you're putting around then at least it's obvious that you're distracted but if you're just checking work email you feel productive even though that's a distraction because it's not what you said you wanted to do with your time and attention so now we can we have this framework right we have traction we have distraction now there's one more thing that's super important then we'll have the entire picture so that we can stop stop thinking about the model and actually get to a brass TX of what do we actually do now that we have traction distraction the other thing we have to consider are triggers we have two kinds of triggers we have external triggers these are things in our outside environment The Usual Suspects the pings the dings the Rings all stuff in our outside environment which we tend to blame for distraction but studies find that's only 10% of the reason we get distracted 10% of the time it's because of something outside of us what's the other 90% turns out 90% of the time that we get distracted it's not because of what's happening outside of us but that most distraction begins from within boredom loneliness fatigue uncertainty anxiety that is the cause of 90% of our distraction so whether it's too much news too much booze too much football too much Facebook you are always going to get distracted from one thing or another unless you understand the root cause of the problem so step number one to becoming indistractable is to master those internal triggers or they will become your master then step number two now we're working around those four points step number two make time for traction we can talk about that pck back the external triggers and step number four prevent distraction with paack so you asked a big question I gave you a big answer that's the overall framework that's the strategy tactics are what you do strategy is why you do it so I wanted to explain the the strategy before we got into the tactics amazing I love this word traction because it relates to kind of the other side of this podcast of growth product Market fit Building Products people want like getting traction with users so I really like that there's this additional way of thinking about traction which is basically not being distracted can you just repeat the four steps again for people to have this in mind step number one master internal triggers step number two make time for traction so this is where we're turning our values into time we can talk about how to do that step number three is hack back the external triggers this is where we get into the pings dings and Rings not just the obvious stuff like your phone your computer I take about a page and a half to talk about that that's kind of kindergarten stuff but what about all the non-obvious external triggers what about stupid meetings that didn't need to be called what about emails that didn't need to be sent and received what about our kids our kids are are wonderful I know you're you're a new dad they're fantastic to have kids but they can also be a source of distraction so how do we deal with all those external triggers and then finally prevent distraction with pacts and pacts are this firewall this last resort against distraction that we can use to to keep distraction at Bay and it's really about these four steps in concert in this order that anyone can use to become indistractable awesome does this spell something clever by the way no I I didn't have an acronym I just but I do have a pretty picture awesome so let's go through this and I'd love specifically example your shared I think many people R into this there's a hard thing I need to do do and I I'm just going to go check my email on Twitter instead feel like that's a very common distraction uh and so sharing getting into that at some point would be awesome but otherwise let's get into these four steps yeah well we we can absolutely do that so is that is that something you encounter it sounds like uh 100% every time I have my to-do list work on next week's post and then I'm like oh let me just go check Twitter maybe let tweet a yeah tweet something that'll be fun and then totally my email oh inbox zero let's get all the way to zero oh that's cool okay now the Days Are Over exactly EX by the way we are cut from the same cloth this is exactly the pattern I used to get into and uh and I knew I wasn't doing my best because I wasn't putting in the time to the things that were most important I was doing just what was easy and what was urgent and that's not good enough so the first step so if we use this model step number one is Master the internal triggers so for for you Lenny So when you say okay I know I've got to big do this big important thing uh but now I'm going to go check email I would guess that there's some kind of underlying emotion that you're trying to escape do you know if you can can you like let's put yourself in the shoes that you were in when you said I was going to do that big important thing but now I'm G to check email instead do you do you remember the last time that happened by the way every morning every morning this morning yeah this morning okay perfect perfect do you recall what you were feeling right before you went to Twitter or checked email or do the thing did the thing that you didn't want to do as opposed to the thing you said you were going to do I don't know if this is I don't know if this is an emotion or feeling but there's just this like I need to get serious and start using my brain and there's going to be this like deep work moment where I just get real deep and I it takes a lot of effort to push me into that you know not sometimes easier sometimes harder so maybe it's like a avoiding this like okay I'm gonna really have to think it's like I guess it's the fear of the brain starting to really have to work yeah that's hard work right so maybe it's a bit of laziness right maybe it's a bit of momentum it's there's this uncomfortable feeling of like I don't this cold start problem Oh I don't really want to do it right now so this is incredibly important and I appreciate your your cander here around what you feel because all of us experience it and we don't want to talk about it we want to think that it's oh I'll just grayscale my phone or or I'll just turn off notifications and that's going to solve the problem and it never does and let me tell you I tried all of it right I I went to Alibaba and I bought myself one of these flip phones from China you know like we used to have in the 1990s with no apps no internet connection and then I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I you know had I could just sit down and write and do the important stuff and even when I stopped using all the technology even when I got rid of all the apps I would sit down at my desk and I'd say oh you know what um there's that book that I've been meaning to do some research in or let me just clean off my desk real quick or you know what I should take out the trash and I kept getting distracted because the problem is not our technology the problem is our inability to deal with discomfort so what I what I have adopted for myself and what I'd advise anyone who finds themselves in this situation is to always identify what is that internal trigger what is that itch that you are looking to escape when you get distracted because that is the source of 90% of our distractions it's not the pings dings and Rings it's the feelings but to me that's incredibly empowering because once you realize wait a minute just a feeling it's all it is it's just an emotion then you can have
2024-01-06 16:45
