Indistractable: Mastering the Skill of the Century

Like to start with a little video. Many people think that we are entering a distraction crisis and that our devices are to blame. But I think that there's a lot more at stake than our broken noses and bruised egos. You see, a few years ago, I wrote this book about how products can change our behaviors. And I wrote the book for two reasons. The first reason was that I wanted to help product makers build the kind of products and services that get people hooked to these healthy habits. The second reason I wrote the book was that I found that my own behavior was changing in ways that I didn't always like. I remember one day I was sitting with my daughter and we were looking through this book of activities. And one of the activities in the book was to answer this. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? Now, I wish I could tell you in the moment what my daughter said, but I couldn't because at that moment, I was too busy scrolling away on my phone. You see, if you asked me today what superpower I would want, I would tell you that I would want the superpower to become indistractable. Becoming indistractable will be the skill of this century. If we think about in the workplace, where everything that can be automated away will be automated away, the kind of jobs that will remain are the ones that require the human ingenuity and creativity that only comes from focused work in our relationships. Psychologists tell us that loneliness is as detrimental to our health as smoking and obesity. And how can we maintain those relationships? And if we're busy on our devices? And then finally, when we think about our children, what kind of example are we setting when all our kids see of us is the top of our heads while we're scrolling away on our devices? So today, what I want to share with you is what I've learned over the past five years of research. Learning about how we can manage distraction. How can we become indistractable? And I want to start with a story from a friend of mine. This is Dr. Zoe Chance. She's a Harvard educated psychologist, and she studies how products change our behavior. And in the course of her studies, she found that one product went from becoming a healthy habit to an unhealthy compulsion, maybe even an addiction. Now, this product was not some addictive video game. It wasn't some social media application. It was pedometer. You see, what started out as a device that helped her get a little bit more exercise throughout her day became an addiction when she received a notification at midnight that told her that if she would climb down the stairs to her basement and back up, she would receive extra points. And so she did that. And then when she got up to the top of her stairs, the app pinged out again and said, if you do 40 more stairs, we'll give you triple points. And so she did it again, and she went down and up and down and up the stairs to her basement until she realized that at 2 in the morning, she had walked over 2,000 steps. And to put that in perspective, that's more than climbing to the top of the Empire State Building. She woke up the next morning and she had a terrible neck ache, and she couldn't even move her neck from side to side. So what was this weird force? What was this phenomenon that got Dr. Chance to do something that she really didn't want to do? She had come under the spell of Akrasia. Akrasia is this tendency that we have to do things against our better judgment. Now, this is not a new word. This word was first coined by the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle over 2,500 years ago. And we should take some comfort in knowing that this is not a new problem. Humans have been struggling with distraction forever. But if we're going to manage distraction, we have to understand the psychology driving our behaviors. So here's one way to look at it. You've got your actions, which can take one of two paths. Now, traction in your life are things that you want to do that move you forward in your life. Distraction is the opposite. Things that move you away from what you really want to do. Now, many people will say something like, you know, I wanted to get some focus, work done, but then I heard the phone rang and I got distracted. But what they're doing is conflating the external trigger, in this case the ring of the telephone, with what they did in response to that trigger. Because remember, both traction and distraction end in the same word, action. Reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. It's a factor of our actions. Now, we know these external triggers are in our day to day lives. We hear these pings, these dings, these rings every day. But what turns out to be a more prevalent source of distraction are these internal triggers. Internal triggers are these uncomfortable sensations that we seek to escape. You see, the way the brain gets us to act is, is making us feel something that we don't want to feel. It does this through this process called homeostasis. So, for example, if you're cold, you put on a jacket. If you're hot, you take it off. If you're hungry, you feel those hunger pangs, you eat. And when you're uncomfortably full, you stop eating. Now, those are all physiological sensations. But the same rule applies for our psychological states, our uncomfortable emotions. So, for example, when you're feeling lonely, you might check Facebook. If you're uncertain, you Google. And when you're bored, you check Reddit or stock prices or the news or YouTube. All of these products cater to these uncomfortable emotional states. So the fact is, if we are going to manage distraction, we have got to start from the distractions that start from within. You see, there's a lot more I didn't tell you about Dr. Chance's story. You see, what she told me was that during this time when she became obsessed with her pedometer, she was going through a really rough patch in her life. Her marriage was falling apart and she was under a lot of stress trying to find a full time speaking position. And what she told me was that she was using this pedometer and as an escape from an uncomfortable reality, much in the same way many of us use our devices as an escape. So the fact is, we have to understand the discomfort that we are trying to escape. In my case, if I'm honest with you, when I was with my daughter, there was only so much toddler time that I could take, and I also was getting bored. I needed something else to do, but I probably could have handled it in a better way. So the solution is to fix the problems that we can fix, to go to the source causing us this discomfort or learn to cope. Look, if the pain that you're struggling with is something as difficult as a divorce or an uncomfortable work environment, these kind of things take time to work themselves out. But if that's the source of your discomfort, then your Facebook and your iPhone or your pedometer is not the real source of the problem. We can always find these tactics to learn to cope with the discomfort so we can move our actions towards traction as opposed to distraction. How do we do that? We must recognize that most distraction starts from within. And the first step is to simply note the sensation. Psychologists tell us that it's incredibly empowering to simply note what it is that we are feeling in that moment. Now, what most people do is that they stuff down that feeling. They tell themselves not to feel whatever it is they're experiencing, but we want to do the opposite. In fact, we want to be curious about that sensation, to talk to ourselves like a third party might, and then we want to surf the urge, kind of like a surfer On a surfboard, give yourself a little bit of time to feel that sensation, to explore it until it passes. So a technique that I use all the time is called the 10 minute rule, where I'll allow myself to give in to any temptation, but in 10 minutes of getting curious about what it is I'm feeling and why. So the first step to managing distraction has to be managing these internal triggers. The next step is to make time for traction. Now, how do we do this? You see, there's this fundamental question we have to answer at this point. What is the difference between traction and distraction? I mean, in the moment, how do we know the difference? If you would have asked Dr. Chance, hey, do you really want to be climbing up and down these stairs at 2 in the morning? In the moment, she would say, yeah, get out of my way. But of course, later on, she regretted what she did. You see, distraction tends to trick us. It tends to make us think that what we're doing is what we really want to do. But then later, we regret what we did. So the only way to know the difference between traction and distraction is to plan ahead. Here's the cold truth, folks, that you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. Many times when I work with folks and they tell me, you know, look, I've got to get my distraction under control. And the world's just so distracting today. I mean, between the news and Facebook and the work and kids, I can't get anything done. And I ask them a simple question. I say, can I see your calendar? What did you plan to do today? And they sheepishly give me their phone and I open the calendar app and it's blank. There's nothing there. We cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. The fact is, in this day and age, if you don't plan your day, somebody else will be happy to plan it for you. Whether it's your boss, your kids, your spouse, Facebook, the news. Something is going to eat up that time. So what's the solution? The solution is to use an implementation intention. Implementations have been studied in thousands of research experiments. It's a fancy way of saying, planning out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. Taken to an extreme, it might look like this. Planning out every minute of your day. Now, I know. Catch your breath. The first time I saw this idea, I thought it was absolutely nuts. But the idea here is to not necessarily beat yourself up. If you don't do Everything according to the schedule. The idea here is to have a template, an ideal week for what your days would look like, so that you can tell the difference between traction, everything that's on the calendar and distraction, everything that's not on that calendar. So we've got to make time for traction. And the first step is to plan the time, not the output. You know, for years I used to make to do lists thinking that that was the best way to make sure that I got everything done. But study after study shows that we are terrible at planning for output. We've got all these exogenous factors like when we get something from a colleague or how long it takes us to do something. We are terrible at planning how long something takes us to finish. However, the one thing that is absolutely in our control always is how we spend our time. So plan the time, not the output. Then we've got to get rid of low value work. A study in the Harvard Business review found that 41% of knowledge workers time is spent on low value tasks. Work that you didn't have to do. 41%. The beauty of the age we live in today is that we can use these technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual assistants to offload many of those low value tasks. So a program I use every day, an app called X AI. Every time I want to book a meeting with someone, you know, this ping pong game that we keep playing back and forth over email that wastes so much time, I give it to an artificial intelligence that does all that planning for me and saves me from having to do this low value work. And then finally, we've got to slay this messaging monster. You know, about 25% of the emails that you receive from your colleagues every day are messages you didn't need to receive. And about 25% of the emails you send are messages you didn't have to send. So we've got to make more time in our day by slaying the messages messaging monster, by reducing the amount of messages messages that we send. Now, part of the reason that messaging takes such a heavy toll on our schedules is that these messages are oftentimes coupled with an external trigger, right? These pings, dings and rings that come along with these messages. Well, in some industries, distraction is literally a matter of life and death. If I were to ask you, what are the three leading causes of death in the United States, what would you think they'd be? I'll give you the first two. Number one is heart disease, number two is cancer. What's number three? Think about it for a minute. What do you think it is? Accidents? Alzheimer's? Stroke? Not even close. If it were a disease, the third leading cause of death in the United States would be prescription mistakes. Doctors and nurses giving patients in hospitals the wrong medication or the wrong dosage of medication. 400,000 people are harmed in the United States every year because of prescription mistakes. Recently, a brave group of nurses wanted to figure out why this was happening. And they did a research study and found the reason that so many prescription errors occur is because during the dispensing of these drugs, the nurses are often distracted. A colleague will come up to them and need their attention, and that's when they make these prescription mistakes. So they came up with a solution. And the solution? Reduced prescription mistakes. Get this by 88%. And the solution cost just pennies to implement. You want to see what they did? They used vests, plastic vests that simply tell their colleagues when they are not to be disturbed. What can we learn from this? How can we use this amazing innovation to reduce distraction by 88%? These prescription errors by 88%. Well, for those of you who work in an open office plan that's full of distraction, what about something like this? A little sign made out of paper that says, please do not disturb unless it's really important. Now, I know some of you wear headphones and think that's good enough. It's not because people can't tell the difference between when you're just listening to music and when you don't want to be disturbed. So I'm actually going to give you a link at the end of the presentation where you can download a little piece of paper, print it out for yourself, and start putting it on your laptop or your monitor today. Now, what else can we do? Many of the things that we can do are actually built into our current technology. One of my favorite features of the new iOS is this do not disturb while driving feature, right? That anytime I turn this on with one click of a button, whenever someone calls me or texts me, they're given an automatic reply that says, I'm sorry, I can't talk right now. I'm driving. If it's urgent, text me the word urgent and then your message will get through. Of course, they don't need to know whether I'm driving or not. The principle holds just the same. We can also clear all this digital clutter, all these external triggers on our desktops, right? We don't have to live this way on our mobile devices as well. All these external triggers that are Potentially distracting us. We can clear those away. We've got to start hacking back these external triggers. And the way we do this is by asking ourselves a simple question. Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it? If the external trigger helps you do something you want to do, an alarm going off that helps you wake up or attend a meeting or work out, that's great. But if it's distracting you, if it's getting you to do something you don't want to do, it's time to adjust those notification settings. Get this, only two thirds. I'm sorry? Two thirds of smartphone owners never adjust their notification settings. Two thirds of people never change their notification settings. How can we begin to complain about distracting technology when we haven't taken the 10 minutes to change our notification settings and turn off the ones that don't serve us? And then, finally, we need to start leaving these distracting devices outside of our meetings. Whether it's a personal engagement or one with work colleagues, we need to start leaving these devices outside. Now, there's one more technique I'd like to share with you, and this is a technique of last resort. This is what we do when all else fails. After we've managed the internal triggers, after we've made time for traction, after we've removed the external triggers that don't serve us, the last step is to deal with these distractions head on. And to illustrate the point, I want to take you back 2,500 years to the story of Ulysses in the Odyssey. Now, Ulysses is this hero. He has to sail his ship past the island of Sirens. The Sirens are these mythical creatures that sing this magical song that anyone who hears from crashes their ship onto the shores of the Sirens island and dies. Now, Ulysses knows that this is going to happen, and so he takes precautions. Here's what he does. He tells his crew to bind him to the mast of his ship, and he tells them, no matter what I do and what I say, don't let me go. And you know what? It works. Ulysses crew sails the ship right past the Sirens, and he. He doesn't get distracted. He doesn't do the thing that he knows he will be tempted to do. So I'm guessing at this point, you kind of get the metaphor here. Right you are Ulysses. There's lots of distracting stuff out there on the Internet. And, of course, this could also be you there dead on the shores of the island. So how do we modernize this story? How can we put this to good use? Well, one thing we can do is to use new devices to help us form these Ulysses packs. For example, this is a product called the kitchen safe. That's a little plastic tub with a timer lock on top. And whatever you put into the kitchen safe will be off limits for the amount of time, whether it's a donut or a muffin or your cell phone will be off limits because of this pact you made with yourself. We can also use free technology to do the same exact thing. These are three apps I use every single day. Whenever I want to do some focused work, I use the forest app. I tell the app how much time I want to work for. It plants this little virtual tree, and if I pick up the phone and do anything with it, that little virtual tree dies. Stupid little virtual tree. Who cares, right? But it's enough of a pack to remind me, nope, that's not what you want to be doing right now. Get back to work. I use this app, self control on my desktop that blocks out potentially distracting website and my last favorite app, my current favorite app is this. This app called Time Guard. What it does, it blocks out apps and websites you don't want to go to except for a certain time of the day. So as you see here, my social media time, the time that I go on Facebook and Reddit and YouTube is between 6:30 and 8:30pm now during that time, what would otherwise be a distraction is now traction. That's exactly what I want to do, but only during that part of the day. The other parts of the day, it's blocked. I can't access it. Okay, I've taken this pact. Here's a company I like so much that I actually invested in this company. This is called focusmate.com. this is a product where you sign up to have a focus mate during a certain time of day. You log in, you see their face, they see yours, and for 50 minutes you just get work done. And seeing that other person also doing work is enough of a pact to. To keep you honest, you're entering a pact with this other person. It's incredibly effective. So the point here is that we can reduce distraction with these pacts and we can use these technologies to help block out distraction. Most of them are absolutely free. Now there's one downside. The downside with these packs and the reason they should be used as a last resort is that many people have a tough time after they fail, they have a tough time getting back on track. Now the solution to that is self compassion. Studies have found that people who are more self compassionate are much more likely to achieve their Long term goals and the way we become more self compassionate is to talk to ourselves the way we might talk to a good friend, maybe the way we might talk to Dr. Zoe Chance. Let me tell you what ended up happening to Dr. Schatz. So she did end up separating from her husband, but she says she's in a much better place today. She also found herself a full time teaching job at Yale where she still teaches today. So once she started addressing those internal triggers causing her all this discomfort, she became much more able to manage distraction. Then she started making time for physical activity. She made time for traction so that she exercised on her schedule, not on the pedometers. Finally, she got rid of that external trigger that wasn't serving her. She actually got rid of the pedometer altogether. And she never had to make a pact because these three techniques worked so well. So the point here is that there is no magic bullet to managing distraction. We want to use these four techniques in concert by dealing with the internal triggers, by making time for traction, by hacking back external triggers, and then if we have to, reducing distraction with these pacts. And as for me, in preparing for this talk, I sat down with my daughter and I asked her, I said, look, I'm really sorry I didn't hear what you said when I asked you this question of what superpower you would most like. And I said, I'd really like to know, what superpower would you like to. And she told me that the superpower that she would most want is to be kind. Honest to goodness, that's what she said. To be kind. It's not what I expected to hear, but when I process it for a little bit, I realized that kindness isn't really a superpower. I mean, we all have the ability to be kind. And the same goes for managing distraction. You see, the message I want to leave with you to today is that we can do this. Studies have found that the number one determinant of whether someone changes their behavior is their belief in their own power to do so. So by calling these companies making products that are addictive or that are hijacking our brain or that are irresistible, we make it so we are giving them more power and, and more credit than they deserve. We have the power, we all have the power to become indistractable. Thank you very much.