Nir Eyal Talks About Becoming Indistractable and Managing Distractions

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Welcome to a productive conversation. I'm Mike Vardy, your host and today's episode is one I've been looking forward to bringing back to you for quite a while. This is a Flashback Friday episode and joining me on this one is Nir Eyal. He is the best selling author of Indistractable how to control your attention and choose your life. Now, this conversation originally took place back in October of 2019. That's when this episode was first released. And I don't think a lot has changed in how people feel around the subject of distraction. So if you've ever felt like your day gets derailed by distraction or that you're always busy but not making progress on what truly matters, then this episode is one that you're going to want to listen to. Nir and I dive into the mechanics of distraction, the importance of understanding internal triggers, and then how you can turn intention into action. Here's a spoiler alert. It involves attention. We also talk about why the opposite of distraction isn't focus and what it actually is and, and how creating systems and not relying on willpower is the key to staying on track. His insights are incredibly practical. And whether you're trying to reclaim your personal time or stay focused at work, Nir's advice will help get you there. So if you are ready to take back command of your attention and improve your relationship with time, then let's jump into this conversation. A Flashback Friday conversation with Nir Eyal. Enjoy. I'd like to welcome Nir Eyal to the Productivities podcast. Nir, thanks for joining me today.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

So first off, right out of the gate, congratulations on the success of the book. It, without question, to me, is the productivity book of the year right now.

Oh, thank you.

As somebody who's read like a lot of this stuff, when I went through Indistractable, which is the book which we're going to be talking about today, among other things, how to control your attention and choose your life.

There was just. It was one of those, it was one of those books that as someone who studied productivity for a decade, I went through it. And one of the things that you've done, which a lot of which is challenging, I think in this kind of space of productivity and time management, is to make a book so compelling that it's difficult to put down, but yet not.

Oh, thank you.

But not overwhelming at the same time. Do you know what I mean? There are a lot of books that, that are out there right now that Are that. That are so that are systemized and you feel like if you don't do all of them, then you are not doing it right. And yeah, it defeats the purpose of the book. You do this. This book does not do that. In fact, it goes above and beyond. So first, but right out of the gate, my buddy Casey, who we were chatting about this yesterday, one of the things he noticed, and it didn't even dawn on me is he said both Hooked, which is the book that you, you know, wrote before this and Indestructible are yellow in cover. They're.

Choice. I think it's a good place to start. And then we'll dig into some of the other. Because yellow is pretty. It's a pretty pronounced and profound color to choose.

Yeah, yeah. No. So the idea with, with when I chose the color yellow for Hooked was that psychologically we know that yellow is the most attention getting color. So caution signs are always in yellow on highways and street signs. Yellow is the color that you're most likely to look at first and foremost. More than red, more than neon orange yellow. So that's one reason it gets attention. And then why did I make Indistractable also Yellow? Because I wanted the books to rhyme. I wanted there to be kind of a continuation on a theme with my second book. Because Hooked is about how to build habit forming products. And the idea here is that we can use that for good. Right? We can use these techniques to help people live better lives through technology that people actually want to use as opposed to feeling like they have to use. And then the second book, Indistractable is really about how do we control our attention and choose our life. How do we make sure that for some of the technology that's designed maybe in such a way that we find ourselves over using these. Some of the technologies, different technologies. Right. The technologies that I help with Hooked are products like helping people exercise more and save money and be more productive at work. Those are my clients. Not the gaming companies and social media companies, but Indistractable. The idea here is that who better to navigate through all this confusion out there around how potentially habit forming and some people say addictive some of these products are. So I wanted to tell folks from an insider's perspective what these things can and can't do. It's one thing if a, if a, you know, some pundit or professor tells you how bad these technologies are. It's another thing for somebody who's actually, you know, been in the belly of the beast and knows what these things can and can't do to tell you, okay, here's what you should worry about and here's what you probably shouldn't worry about and is more hype.

I want to dig into the idea of traction versus distraction because you talk about that in the book and it's one of those things. I remember listening to you and there's going be a lot of show notes here, people, so pay attention. There's gonna be a lot of links, a lot of shownotes. And one of the things that during my research for our interviews, I was listening to you talk to Jonathan Field. Jonathan Fields on the Good Life project. And one of the things that, and this is while I was reading the book, but I hadn't quite gotten into the. I hadn't heard you say it yet, but the idea that the opposite of distraction is traction, it just resonated. What, what led you to that distinction? Because I think a lot of people don't look at, they look at distraction and focus as kind of being that or being focused versus so the idea of traction, which is, you know, for lack of. I mean, I guess I'll let you explain it, but that was one of those things that I kind of go, oh, okay, now you've got me. No pun intended or pun totally intended.

Hooked. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I think it's an important distinction because you know, what you plan to do with your time is your business. And I don't, I didn't want to be one of these, you know, up on high gurus that say, let me tell you what you should do with your time because what you're doing with your time is a waste. You should do what I do with my time. I think that's ridiculous, right? That if you want to watch football on tv, watch football. If you want to play video games, play video games. If you want to work in the office till 11pm that's your business. I'm not going to tell you not to. What I want to help people do is to do whatever they themselves say is important for them to do in their life. And so the reason, you know that we have to understand, in order to understand what is distraction, we have to understand the opposite of distraction. The opposite of distraction, as you said, is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. And in fact, if you look at the entomology of both of these words, they both come from the same Latin root trihare, which means to pull. And they both end in the same six letter word, A, C, T, I, O, N. That spells Action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you want to do in life. Things that you do with intent. The opposite of traction is distraction. Any action that pulls you away from what you want to do, things that you are not doing with intent. And so this is super important for a few reasons. One, it frees us from this silly, you know, dichotomy that what I do with my time is, is. Is okay. But what you do with your time, no, no, no, that's, that's wasteful, right? Like, no, whatever it is you want to do with your time that's in accordance with your values, do it, enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with it as long as you do it with intent, as long as you do what you want, as opposed to what somebody else is trying to manipulate you to do by controlling your attention. And so the other thing that's really important about this is that we find that the most pernicious forms of distraction are the ones we don't even realize are happening to us. And this typically comes in the form of what I call pseudo work. Pseudo work is when you sit down and you say, I used to do this all the time. I'd sit down at my desk and I say, okay, today I'm going to do that big project. Today I'm going to do that thing I've been procrastinating on. I'm going to finish that presentation. I'm going to finish that report, whatever it is that I've been putting off.

Right after I check my email, right? And then 30, 45 minutes later, I'm still on email or that Slack channel or that thing that just happened that I need to, you know, just take care of real quick. And I don't do the thing I said I was going to do. So anything that takes you off track, anything that is not traction is by definition distraction. So we have to stop kidding ourselves that just because we're doing something that feels productive, that it is not distraction. It is still distraction. The reason this is so pernicious is because if you only focus on the stuff that is urgent, you never focus on the stuff that is also important but less urgent. I'm sure, you know, almost everybody's familiar with the Eisenhower matrix. You know, we. We have to not only focus on the stuff that's important and urgent, we also have to do the stuff that is important but less urgent. But if we don't make time for that stuff, and we always are reacting as opposed to making time for reflecting, we'll never get to that important stuff that needs to get done with long term thinking and long term effort.

I want to touch on something that Ryan Holiday said about your book in a recent newsletter. Of course, this is, you know, I'm breaking Ryan's cardinal rule of being timeless, but I'm going to say it anyway.

His blurb was, it was one of his recommended reads and his reading list and an essential book for anyone trying to think, work or live better. And one of the things that, when we go back to looking at books about productivity and time management and the idea that you said, you know, like, hey, if you're, you know, everyone only has 24 hours a day and how you choose to live, that is important. And I love the distinction that you're talking about there. One of the things that pulled me away from the life hacking kind of space was again, the source of the word, the etymology, the origin of the word hack, which is to cut without care.

And to me, I think that one of the things that your book addresses, and I'd love you to touch on this, is the idea of you're going to have to slow down to figure this stuff out. And which seems counterintuitive to being productive or to getting traction, is you're going to have to actually, you know, again, like Ryan says, think work or live better. I think there's an element of slowing down that needs to take place. Can you, can you touch on that a bit and how that relates to becoming indistractable?

Yeah, I think so. There's, there's four big tactics, or I should say strategies, not tactics. Sorry, Tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it.

Right.

And so I'm less, less into the tactics than the strategies. The strategy, I think is more important. The tactics people, one can find everywhere. There's all kinds of different life hacks and productivity tips out there, and I give several in the book as well. But the idea here is once you know the strategy, once you know why you do something, you can come up and tailor your own tactics that serve you best. And so the four strategies are, number one, we have to make sure that we master our internal triggers. And this is really the linchpin of this whole effort to become indistractable. Because while we love to blame what's called the proximal cause, we love to blame whatever's in our hands, whatever we're watching, whatever we're doing, we love to blame those things for causing distraction. Those are not the root cause of distraction. The root cause of distraction is always the same Thing, the root cause of distraction is a desire to escape discomfort. Why do I know that? Because all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort, even seeking pleasure. Right? We used to subscribe to this idea of Freud's notion of the pleasure principle, that behavior is spurred by a desire to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. We know that's not true, neurologically speaking, that in fact it's pain all the way down. That the way the wanting system in the brain works is by creating this psychological discomfort that prompts us to action. Craving, desire. There's a reason we say love hurts. That is our brain spurring us to action by creating a psychological imbalance. So when we are lonely, we check Facebook. When we're bored, we Google. When we're. Sorry. When we're uncertain, we Google. When we're bored, we check espn, we check stock prices, we check Reddit. All kinds of things cater to this uncomfortable emotional state. And so that means fundamentally that time management is pain management, that all the productivity tips and hacks won't help you unless fundamentally, we understand this fact that we are you. We are procrastinating. We are not doing what we say we're going to do. We get distracted because we want to escape an uncomfortable feeling. And if we don't learn tactics to cope with that feeling, if it's. If it's, you know, cell phones and slack channels and emails today, it's going to be something else tomorrow. We will always get distracted by something unless we fundamentally either fix the source of the discomfor, whether that's a troubled marriage, a shitty workplace culture, something going on in our life that we have trouble dealing with and we're looking for escape from, or if we can't fix the source of the problem. And look, there's lots of uncomfortable feelings that we have to experience as, you know, adult human beings. It's part of our lot in life. We feel stress, anxiety, uncertainty, fatigue. These are just things that everybody feels. The idea here is to train ourselves to no longer impulsively check a device or turn on the television or eat a chocolate cake or, you know, take that swig of booze. When we're looking to escape, we can retrain ourselves to use that discomfort in a healthier manner. And so that has to be the first step.

Sure. Can we. I want to. I want to just touch sidebar this real quick. I know we've got three other that we want to look at, but the idea of willpower comes up in the book, and I'm a huge Green Lantern fan. Anyone who's followed me like I wear a Green Lantern ring and his source of power is willpower. That's where the ring gets all its power from. And I remember having a discussion, and I'll link to this in the, in the show notes, a discussion with Benjamin Hardy, who wrote the book Willpower Doesn't Work. And it was, I wouldn't say it was contentious, but I mean, you're going up against a guy who, like, loves the Green Lantern and is clearly sourced by the power of. So I can you. Because I think, like, having those triggers internally. I know we're going to get to the other type of trigger here in a minute. Willpower is one of those things that you say it, it does work. And it is, you know, important to keep that in mind because I think it is a source of power when you're trying to deal with, with the internal triggers that are going to pull you away or distract you. Right?

Not so much.

No, no. Okay.

I'm with, I'm with Ben on this. I don't like willpower at all. I, I don't like self control. I don't like self discipline. I don't think that stuff works. I mean, there's even, you know, there's a pretty raging debate for several decades now on whether.

We even have free will at all that, you know, so I, I'm not a big fan of willpower. I think that willpower fails. If the chocolate cake is on the fork on its way to your mouth, you've lost. I don't care how much willpower you have. If the cigarette is lit and in your hand and you're about to take a puff, it's too late. If you sleep next to your cell phone, the first thing you reach for in the morning is going to be your device. Because you've lost. They're going to get you. So don't rely on willpower. Those are all instances where you have to push yourself back in order to, to. To. To do something you, you want to do. And I think that's. That's silly because, you know, one, we don't know if free will even exists, and certainly it's just too tempting in the moment. But what we know for sure we have is not necessarily free will or willpower. What we know we have is free choice. Right. So how does that work? And there's a big, big difference. So free choice means. And this. If there's one mantra that I want people to remember, like, you know, write it down somewhere, tattoo it on your arm. I don't care. Remember this. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. So a gift that we have as a species have is that our brains can do something. It can do many things. But one of the things that our brains can do that no other species on the face of the Earth can do is that we can see the future in higher fidelity than any other animal on the face of the Earth. We can predict what's going to happen better than any other animal. And so what that means is if you are likely to get distracted, if you are tired of day after day saying you're going to do one thing and doing something else, you say you're going to go to the gym. You don't. You say you're going to eat healthy. You don't. You say you're going to do that big project at work. You procrastinate. You say you're going to be fully present with your kids. You're on your phone. The solution to this is not to beat yourself up. It's not to blame yourself. It's not to shame yourself or blame the technology for doing it to you. The solution is to make a system, is to have a plan in place so that when that future comes, you don't need any self discipline. You don't need any willpower or self control. It takes care of itself, and that's the right way to change your behavior.

All right, so let's go back to the next thing, which is, I think external triggers are something we want to talk about.

By the way, Green Lantern is still awesome, though.

Well, I was going to nicely segue into the fact that when I see these things around, I think what it does is it does allow me to kind of those external. Like if you look around my office and I've got videos of things that are in my office, there are lots of these trig, these external kind of avatars that remind me of that. They keep me kind of on the straight and narrow to a certain extent. So, yeah, that to me is. Is super helpful. So that if anything, the reminder of. Of that I think is. Is key to me. And let's. Can we dig into the second?

Actually, I want to touch on that because that actually touches on a concept. So it's the fourth step. We only did the first step at the. We're going to.

We're just going to skip.

Yeah, yeah, we'll skip around. That's okay. Because like you said in the very beginning of the interview, you don't have to do everything all at once. Becoming indistractable is a process. It's not something you do overnight. You can adopt anyone, you know, all, nothing. It doesn't matter. Anything that gets you incrementally closer to living with, living your values and living the kind of life that you live with personal integrity, that's what this is all about, is being as honest with yourself as you are with other people. Any incremental improvement is improvement. So you don't have to do everything all at once. But I want to touch on this concept that, that you. You kind of glossed over, but I think is super, super important. This idea of having an identity, right, that the superheroes, the. The models, the ideals, the Persona that helps us act in accordance with our values. So the fourth step is to prevent distraction with pacts. And there are three types of pacts. One of them is called an identity pact. And there's some fascinating research that comes out of the psychology of religion and how calling yourself a certain moniker, a certain ideal, can help you not need willpower in the moment. So, for example, if you are a vegan, you don't say to yourself every day, hmm, I wonder if I'm gonna have that ham sandwich. No, it's just something you don't do. Vegans don't need willpower to not eat that ham sandwich. Because if you've been a vegan for years, it's who you are. You are a vegan. It's not just that you don't eat meat, it's that you are a vegan. A devout Muslim doesn't say, hmm, I should wonder if I should have that gin and tonic. No, a devout Muslim does not drink alcohol. Done deal. No willpower needed. And so we can do this for ourselves. So by you having, you know, these reminders of an ideal, whether that's a superhero, whether that's a historical figure, whether it's somebody you'd really admire, or a moniker you make for yourself. So this is why I titled the book Indistractable. Indistractible sounds like indestructible. And so it's a moniker that we can use for ourselves. I have T shirts that say indestructible that I wear when I go to the gym, because I'm reminding myself, this is who I am. I am the kind of person who lives with personal integrity. I do what I say I'm going to do. And that can actually help you, help you stay, like you said, on the straight and narrow to make sure you don't do something that you later regret.

Let's talk about those other packs, because they're every one of those that you brought up. I was like, yep, spot on, Spot on. And like you said, the. The idea of it being an evolutionary process of becoming indistractable, I think is key as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. So you want to go into the other packs?

Yeah, let's just go. Let's go to the other packs and then we'll jump back to the other.

Yeah, let's just keep.

Let's just. Let's just. I mean, we've already kind of gone down that road a bit, so let's. Let's go. Let's keep going.

Sure, sure. But I do want to warn folks that creating a pact is the last step. So before I tell you about how to do that, you have to do the other stuff first, because if you don't, then this step is likely to backfire. Okay. So the other three steps, just to kind of go over them real quick, it's about mastering the internal triggers, right? Figuring out what's really the source of the discomfort or finding ways to cope with them in a healthier manner. Making time for traction, which is all about making a schedule and synchronizing that schedule with the various stakeholders in your life for the various domains in your life. Very, very important step, the third step is to hack back the external triggers. The last step is about preventing distraction with pacts. And this is where we can actually, ironically, use technology to block out technology. Right. So we can use these tools to help us keep distraction out. So there are three types of pacts. We talked about an identity pact, which is where we make some kind of moniker, some kind of identity that we can call ourselves along with. By the way, one of the best things you can do if you want to change your behavior is to change your identity, but also tell others about that identity. So, you know, there's that. There's that joke. How do you know someone's a vegetarian? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

Yeah.

And. And not to pick on vegetarians. I was a vegetarian for five years. And. And, you know, that's true. It was definitely true for me. But you can substitute, you know, CrossFit or keto or a marine or, you know, whatever, a devout Christian, whatever it is. You know, why do people do that? Why do people want to tell others about their identity? It's not just to bring others into the flock. You know, there's a reason that every religion, every major religion has some element of proselytizing. It's not just to find new members. It's more importantly to reinforce the identity of the person, convincing others.

So when you tell others that you are a certain type of person, you are reinforcing your identity and making it more likely that you will stick with your commitment to yourself. So one of the best things you can do is to tell people, I am indistractable, Right? Hey, I'm sorry I don't answer your emails 30 minutes after you sent me them. That's just not how I work.

Right.

Tethered to my technology. There's lots of other techniques in the book as well, but you know, having that moniker is super important. So there's a. That's a few things you can do there. Then the next type of pact is called an effort pact. An effort pact is when we put some kind of friction in between us and something we don't want to do. The distraction. So, for example, in my household, I've been married for just over 18 years and a few years ago, while I was writing this book, in the early stages, I'll be a little vulnerable here, it's embarrassing to say, but my wife and I were having no sex and we weren't having any sex because every night we would go to sleep and while we were, you know, be preparing for bed, I would be stroking my iPad and she would be caressing her. Her iPhone. And that was terrible. It was terrible for our marriage. We weren't getting enough sleep. And so we decided to use one of these effort pacts after we'd done the other three big strategies of mastering the internal triggers. Make time for traction, hacking back the external triggers. The last step, we made an effort pact. Here's how it worked. I went to the hardware store and I bought myself a $10 outlet timer. And the way this outlet timer works is you plug it into the wall, you set the time, and whatever is plugged into that outlet timer will turn off at a certain time of day or night. So every night at 10pm, my monitors and the router, the Internet router, shut off. Now could I go in and turn them back on? Of course I could, right? I could unplug, replug, turn it back on. Right. But I put some effort in between myself and something I didn't want to do, that distraction. Now actually you can get routers that are built in with this kind of functionality. At the time they didn't make them, but now there's the EERO router, there's a Netgear router. A lot of these routers now come with this ability to turn off certain devices at a certain time of day or night so that you're making a pact, you're making a commitment to yourself. 10 o', clock, no more Internet. So what we started to do, we started to prepare for that. Oh, the Internet's gonna shut down at 10 o'. Clock. I better finish up everything and shut down and be ready for bed so that I could get to bed, actually start having a conversation with my wife. And then hopefully that would lead to more. So that was an effort pack that we had.

One of the things that I did and it worked both ways, is I wanted to quit drinking soda pop. So we just didn't keep it in the house. And I live really close to a store, so if I was craving soda pop, I'd be like, okay, let's go get some. And I'd be like, oh, wait, I have to go all the way to the store to get it.

Yes. And awesome.

And the other thing I would do as a, as a. Almost a further countermeasure to that is we have a soda stream. And I would just prepare, and I do this as a night owl too. The night before, I do things like I prepare my nutribullet shake the night before. So that way instead of having something crappy or not having breakfast at all, it's already ready. So it's not. The effort is let lower for me to live up to what I want to be doing, just as much as trying to go get that soda and realizing, oh, well, there's no, you know, Coke or Pepsi here. But I do have a couple of bottles of SodaStream prepared that have just some lemon and lime, like, you know, fresh lemon and lime in it. I'll just have that instead. So that, that's one of the ways I kind of use that effort packed as well.

Love it. Love it. Yeah. This is, this is called what I call progressive extremism. So a lot of people, so a lot of people will go extreme all at once. And that tends to backfire. They say, okay, tomorrow I'm going to be keto, Tomorrow I'm whole 30. Right. They go like super extreme. And then you know what happens at the end of the whole 30? It's what.

It's why New Year's resolutions don't.

Yes, of course. So don't do that. Any diet that is temporary, whether it's, you know, a digital diet or a food diet, if it's temporary, it's bound to fail. You know when it will fail, it'll fail when that deadline Approaches, right? And you get into your. Your. Your suit for your wedding, right? Or like the day after, you know what you're going to do? You're going to eat like crazy. Well, and that's, by the way. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

No, no, no, no. I don't go.

I was just gonna say so. So that's why I don't like a lot of what is espoused these days around. You know, do a digital detox or one of these things if it's defined by a finite period of time, you know, 30 days. Don't use your technology. It doesn't work. And it doesn't work for the same reason that these fad diets don't work. Much better to do what's called progressive extremism. So the way progressive extremism works is that you say, I am going to remove something that is not serving me for my life. So it's funny that you mentioned soda. That was one of the first things I did as well, that I wanted to stop drinking soda. Ultimately, that would be great. But I followed this progressive extremism technique. I didn't say, tomorrow, no more soda. I said, okay, what is something that I can do that is very, very easy? Doesn't. Does. It's not hard at all for me to do. No problem at all. But I can do it, and here's the kicker. For the rest of my life, okay? So for me, I said that I can have soda as long as it's diet. And for me, that was no big deal. Now for somebody else, if that's too hard, then do something less. Right? The next step after that, I said, okay, I can have diet soda, but only outside the house, right? Okay, I can do that for the rest of my life, no problem. But the idea, and it might be, I'm not saying do that. I'm saying do it in this way. So whatever it is for you, that's easy, that you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, yeah, no problem. Do that for a few months, maybe even a few years, until you're ready to do the next thing, but do that next thing for the rest of your life.

Yeah, it's, you know, one of the things that when I talk to Cal Newport about digital minimalism, and this is, I think, the problem that we get when we have these books that talk about, you know, like, you know, again, becoming a, you know, like, do the detox. The Whole 30 is a great example, which I've done. I've done the whole 30. And exactly like, you said day 31, I'm like, oh, good, I can go back to everything that I want to go back to now.

Right.

But the. The idea is that I think what happens is because we are. There's this idea that we're all pressed for time, that our attention. There's this war for our attention is that when a book like Digital Minimalism comes out, people say, oh, okay, well, I have to cut it all out. It becomes like it's an all or nothing. It's that extremism that's not progressive. It's just almost immediate. And then the message gets lost. Because Cal's talked about this with me before. I said, quit Facebook. No, it's gotta be a personal solution, subjective. Much like you talked about with this is the idea that it's gotta be. You've got to. It's got to be subjective for you, because what's in distract, how you are indistractable is going to be different than somebody else's ability to be indistractable.

Right, right, right. And what we have to make sure we ask ourselves is how do we use these things the way we want to as opposed to how the tech makers want to? So, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with using social media. It's wonderful. Right. I need it for my livelihood, let alone for my sanity. I want to connect with people who are all over the country, all over the world. Now, my friends don't all live in my neighborhood. I want to keep connecting with them. And there's nothing wrong with it, but I interact with these tools, with these people and with these tools on my schedule, not on somebody else's schedule. And that's something that Cal and I really agree on, is the need for a time boxed calendar.

Right.

And that's actually step two. I actually built a tool. I'll give you the link for the show notes to make it really, really easy. Because the fact is, you know, a lot of people complain about distraction, but when I asked them, you know, wow, that's really tough. What did you get distracted from? Exactly. Right. You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. So what did you get distracted from? And they show me their calendar, and it's blank. There's nothing on it. Right. Maybe a dentist appointment or something. So if you have big old swaths of white space on your calendar, you know what's going to happen? Your boss is going to want your time, your kids are going to want your time. The news. Right. Whatever happened On Twitter yesterday. Somehow your mind, your attention is going to be diverted into what somebody else wants you to do as opposed to what you really want to do. So you have no right to say you got distracted if you didn't plan your time. And so that's the second most important step. But then it doesn't stop there. We also have to synchronize our calendars with the stakeholders in our life. So something that I did that completely revolutionized my work life as well as my home life was syncing with my stakeholders. So with my wife, for example, we used to constantly fight about how I wasn't holding up my share of household responsibilities. And it turns out that this is, this is pretty, pretty par for the course. You know that most, most heterosexual dual income households, despite the fact that there's two incomes, that women still take on a disproportionate share of household admin duties. And I was, would always tell my wife like honey, just, you know, if I didn't do something, just tell me right, I'll do it. Just tell me. What I didn't realize is that asking her to tell me what to do was itself work.

Yes, agreed. We've both been married long enough to know that that's the case. Yes, definitely.

So the solution was actually really simple. It was a weekly schedule sync. So now that we have, we both have timebox calendars, we sit down together every Sunday night, it's on our calendar, and we do a quick schedule sync and we know where we're going to be, when and where the particular household responsibilities are going to happen. Because there's a lot of contingencies in the household. Right. If, if you do A, then you're, then you know, your partner has to wait for you to do A before you can do B. You have to coordinate that kind of stuff. So it sounds like it's a lot of work, but let me tell you, you will save so much time in terms of arguments and disagreements, not only at home certainly, but also with our boss. Right. With our colleagues. This is something that, that really, really can revolutionize your life, this process of schedule syncing.

Well, and, and I've got a post, but the one meeting I make time for every week, no matter what, and it's the meeting with my wife, we sit down and we actually map things out. Now one thing that, when I, when I read about the schedule that you know the idea of schedule making and, and I do have that link, so we'll put that in the show notes about the tool that you've got is as soon as I. Again, this is one of those things where I'm like, he's hitting all the right notes with me in this book is, you know, I'm. I'm a big believer in theming your days. That's one of the things. So theming your time. So. So for me, it's more about making sure that those. That white space. Because if you looked at my calendar, you look, oh, Mike, you only have two appointments. What are you doing today? But I know that today, as we're recording, this is my listening day. That's the theme of the day. So I know that, you know, when you and I were going to talk, you know, I said, here's the link to book. This is, again, leveraging technology. The only time you can book with me is Wednesday. Because that's my. That's my listening day. And it's actually even truncated further where now it's only, like, in the morning for me, which is basically from like, nine until noon, because I know that I'm at my best later in the day to do the creative work, such as, you know, producing the podcast, creating audio content for my, you know, my other audience, and stuff like that. So what's interesting is that, you know, you wouldn't know that. And this is, I think, the other. I want to talk about biases as well, because they show up, like, massively. But the idea that if I give you a scheduling link and you look at and you're like, oh, my God, he's giving me access to his calendar. Not really. I'm giving you access to what I've given, like, the boundaries that I've set for both myself and for you. And so when people look at my. When people talk to me about this and they say, you know, oh, well, Mike, you know, where do you. You know, you're not really a calendar person. You're more of a to do list person. I'm like, no, that's. I'm both. I'm. The calendar is like the directory for my day, and the to do list offers the details. So.

Yes, I think that's so important. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, we. We see so many people, you know, got. If. If you're the kind of person who keeps a to do list, bravo. Because you're ahead of the game. Most people don't even do that. But remember that the to do list is just your list of output. Right. It's not input. Right. So it would be ridiculous if I went to a baker and I said, hey, look, I need a hundred loaves of bread, but I'm not going to tell you how much flour or yeast or factory employees or any of that. Okay? Just, I'm not giving you any of that stuff. Just make me the bread. No way. I need to know the input in order to know the output. And so when we write things on a to do list, I mean, this is why when I used to keep a to do list before keeping a proper calendar is that half that to do list would just get recycled from today to the next day to the next day to the next day. Because, I mean, this is insanity. And the reason we do this is because we are not making time for those things on our calendar. Now, a lot of people say, well, what if I don't get done the thing I don't get done? Right? Well, then isn't this whole system broken? No, of course not. Let me, I'll give you a quick story. So for the long, you know, we've all heard about how important sleep is, right? Everybody knows sleep is super important, right? I don't need to share the science. Everyone's convinced. However, I was going to, you know, I finally started using a time box calendar and I had, I even have in my calendar, okay, time to prepare for bed and time to be in bed. And I thought, okay, great, I made time for it. I planned the input. But every night at 3am I would wake up and I would toss and turn and I would see, be, you know, very distraught that I wasn't getting the sleep I know I needed. And I would start stressing out about, oh my gosh, I've got a big presentation tomorrow and if I don't get good sleep, I'm going to be off my game. And you know, that's going to mess up my entire day. And it turns out that, you know what the number one cause of insomnia is? The number one cause of insomnia is ruminating about insomnia. And so when I learned that, I decided to start repeating to myself a little mantra. And that mantra goes like this, that the body gets what the body needs. The body gets what the body needs. So whenever I would wake up at 3am I would tell myself this. The body gets what the body needs. The body gets what the body needs. And you know where this story is going. By repeating that mantra, I would start to relax and I would fall back asleep. And so the lesson, the moral of this story is that if you control the input, that's all you need to worry about, right? Because the fact is, the reason most people don't get enough sleep is. Is because they are not giving themselves the input of the time to get the sleep. The people. The reason people can't finish that big project, the book they're working on, the side hustle, whatever it is that they're working on, is because they haven't made that time. If you don't give yourself that time, 100% guaranteed, you won't get the thing done. So your job is to give yourself the input, make the system in place. The output will come naturally from that. So you won't always be able, you know, don't put on your calendar, finish project, you know, do the chapter, you know, finish the slides, whatever it is. No, what you want to put on your calendar is work on this for 90 minutes, right? Okay. You cannot control the outputs. What you can control is the input. Because think about it, right? If you're in the workplace, you got to get the graphics from Bill and the numbers from Joanne and all of these exogenous factors that you may not be able to control. I can't control whether I would sleep every night. That's not up to my conscious brain. But what I can control is the input of preparing an environment, preparing the time to get the rest my body needs. My body will take care of the rest. And the same thing goes to writing a book, to creating a great presentation, to doing whatever it is you need to do. It starts with the input, not the output.

So you went from hooked to indistractable. And the path to me seems very clear. You know, the idea of, you know, the idea of habits to, you know, things that are pulling your attention, you know, that can pull your attention both in a good way and a bad way, depending on how. How it's being utilized. And then now, okay, now you have more agency over it, like how you can. I want to talk about. And this is. This piece was really important to me as a parent is the idea of. Of kids and children when it comes to. Because, you know, what's interesting is my wife has a lot. I mean, my wife has some really great insights in this because my daughter's a teenager now and she's spending a lot of time on Instagram, Snapchat, you know, all those tools, mainly to keep track, to keep tabs with her friends and communicate. And my initial reaction, which is, again, again, I think it's just this bias that shows up that says, oh, she's spending too much time on technology, which, you know, shows up my Wife said, well, when we were kids, we were just on the phone. Like, we just picked up the phone and the phone lines were tied up. That's all. This is just the new phone for her. This is just the new. I'm like, you know what? You're right. Like, it's just like the. I'm like, that's right. It's just the tool. I mean, it's kind of like. And I know Cal touched on the ide of Arnold Bennett's how to live on 24 hours a day in Deep work. The idea that, you know, that the behaviors really haven't changed. It's just the tools or the things that are, you know, kind of guiding. Our behaviors may have. May have changed, but the behavior is still the same. You know, whether you're, you know, reading a newspaper back in the, you know, a hundred years ago on the train on the way to work, or whether you're scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, it's still. I mean, human behavior has not changed all that much. One of the things that I want to touch on is this idea that kids are more distracted than ever and how we can, you know, and technology is bad because, you know, after that, my wife and I talked about that. I dug into it a bit more, and of course you talk about it as well. That's just simply not the case. Right.

Well, there's a lot of misinformation out there, and the answer to any complicated question is always the same. It depends. This is a complex problem. There is no simple solution. And even though, I think, you know, in the media, the narrative is, oh, technology is melting your brain, it's hijacking your brain, it's addicting your brain. And that. That's just too simplistic. Lots of things are potentially addictive, but don't addict everyone. So do some people get addicted to technology? Absolutely, yes, they do. But not everyone. I mean, and we see this all the time, right? Think about something that's much more addictive than technology. Think about alcohol. Do some people become alcoholics? Of course. But most of most people, 95, 99% of the population, can have a beer with dinner, and they're not alcoholics. Not everyone who has sex is a sex addict. Not everyone who eats food is addicted to food. Clearly, you know, there's more to the story. So, you know, I think that's a very important narrative. And that's why I hate people using this term addicted, because, you know, it's bad for two reasons. One, I think it does not give proper Credence to those who actually do suffer from an addiction, those who suffer from the pathology of addiction. That is a, that is a, that is a pathology, and it deserves special respect for those few percentage of people of the population who do struggle with these things. And then two, by, by making this something that sounds like we are all, you know, having our minds controlled by these things, it leads to what's called learned helplessness, right? When people think, there's nothing I can do, the technology is hijacking my brain. The algorithms are doing this to me. I'm addicted. They stop trying. And we know that there, you know, there's been studies of alcoholics that show that the number one determinant of whether someone recovers after a rehab program is not their level of physical dependency. It's not their what's going on their body, it's what's going on their brain. That the number one determinant of whether someone will recover after rehab is their belief in their own power to change. So when we tell people, oh, my God, technology is addicting you and technology is hijacking your brain, we are literally making it true. So we have to stop that, right? Some people are addicted. They need special help, they need special assistance. And I've written about this for years now about how technology companies do have an obligation for people who are pathologically addicted. But, you know, if you're not pathologically addicted or if you're not a child, I do think children are a protected class of people. Then I think that it's really up to us now when it comes to children. I do think that as parents, you know, there's a, there's some common sense stuff we should do. For example, you know, the tech companies tell us that the age, the minimum age is 13 for using these social media products. We should listen to them, right? I don't know why someone, you know, needs social media before high school. I think kids shouldn't have social media until college. Frankly, I just don't see enough of a cost benefit. But at least do what the tech companies tell you to do. Don't give your kids social media before age 13, because that's what the tech companies themselves say. So that's, that's one quick point. And then I think when it comes to our kids, you know, there's a whole section in the book around.

How.

To raise indistractable kids. And it's hard to distill this into a few talking points, but I think it's really, really important to understand why kids Overuse technology that kids are looking for something when they overuse technology that they are not finding offline and so they get it online. And so you know, what we need to make sure that we understand here is that the conversation is more than just black and white. It's more than just good versus evil. It depends on who is using, how much they are using, what they are doing instead of using. Right? So one of the things that, that nobody tells you. Yes, we've seen suicide increase among teenagers from a historic low around 2012. That just happened to be a very, very low year. Actually suicide was just as high in the 1980s. We don't know why, well before Facebook and Instagram and all that. But it has risen since a historic low in 2012. But what we don't talk about is all the good stuff that's happened, right, that around since 2008. Violent crime record lows, drug use record lows, pregnancy record lows, teen incarceration record lows. I mean all of the truancy record lows, all of these things are at record lows. Why? Because if you think about what past generations used to do, I mean we, you know, what we used to do as teenagers, we used to break stuff, right? We would hang around 7 11, we would walk around the neighborhood wasting time because we were bored as hell. And we would break things and we would get into trouble. Well, kids don't do that anymore. And that's, that has some, some, some bad size as well. But for the most part it's really great.

Well, we would go to arcades. Like I would go to the arcade, which is basically an in real life version of going on to play Roblox or something like that now, right? We're just, we just happen to be physically there as opposed to virtually there, right?

So if you wanted to invent a device to keep kids off the streets, off the roads and safe indoors, you might create a video game. Yes, it's not such a bad thing. So I'm not saying that there aren't, There are clearly downsides. So one of the biggest downsides is the opportunity cost of what kids aren't getting and what kids aren't getting enough of is what's called free play. So time for kids to just socialize. That is at a record low. We've never seen it this low before. The amount of time that kids have to just be together because either parents are so scared of kids being abducted that they don't, you know, because of stranger danger, even though it's complete rubbish. This is the safest time in American history to be a kid these days. Or we over schedule our kids so that it's, you know, between Kumon and test prep and swimming lessons and ballet and Mandarin, they have no time to just play. And I think that is what is psychologically stunting our children is that play is where we learn our place in the world. And I think that's one of the best things we can give our kids, you know, because parents say, oh, I want my kid to get off their device. But are you giving them a way to socialize off the device and is.

It one that they want to do? I mean, one of the things, I've had a conversation with a friend of mine who's got his kid in like three different sports and in band and stuff like that, and he goes, you really need to get your kids into some team sports. I'm like, he doesn't want, he mean, no, he's, he. I don't want to force him into three or four different things. He's already doing some team stuff at school. I don't necessarily, I mean, if that's not something that he necessarily wants to do, I'm not going to force him down that road. That's that. I mean, but you can lean so far the other way and not get them involved in anything. So you've got to find, like you said that it's a lot of what you've talked about today and in the book is you've got to find like, what are your boundaries? Where does that look like to you? But at least think about it like, you know, at least, at least explore it.

Because I would say schedule it. I mean, you know, it's one of those activities. Unfortunately what's happened is if there's a bit of a network effect here that if more parents insist on their kids only doing things in organized settings, then you know, there's no kids around to play with anymore.

Right.

When I was a kid, we would come home from school and we would knock on our neighbors doors and somebody would be around to play. And the neighborhoods of this country used to sing with the sound of kids playing.

The bikes, the bikes laying out of the street. There's that old meme that you used to see on Facebook where it's like, this is how I used to know where my friends were. And you'd see, oh, there's Joey's bike. It's right. Oh, he must be there. Right?

Yeah. And unfortunately that doesn't happen like it used to, partially because kids are so hyper scheduled. So I think we have to work with the trend. Parents need to understand that if you want to support your kids psychological health, the best thing you can do for them is to schedule free play with their friends. Let them hang out. Not, you know, make sure the devices are put away. Right. But let them play, let them do something together. Because it's one thing when a parent tells a child, you know, to do something, it's a whole nother story when a peer says hey, if you act like a jerk, I'm not going to play with you.

Yep.

Right. You have to moderate your behavior. That is where we learn our place in the world and it is absolutely critical for psychological well being.

Before I wrap, before we go, I've you know when the reason that this book resonated with me so much and why I know that anyone who's listening and follow my work, you got to pick up this book because it totally speaks to the kind of stuff I talk about. I'm not a believer that productivity is about efficiency and effectiveness. On its face, I believe that productivity ultimately is about what intention. The marriage of intention and attention. And you talk about attention in this book. What do you, when you look at productivity and how it's. Especially when you see again we talked about the way it's online people talk about sleep and all that stuff and you know, the idea that you must get up first thing in the morning and have you know, all these different things that are kind of trying to vie for our attention to, to help us craft or manufacture what we should be doing with our life instead of necessarily making a choice about it. What do you, what do you look at productivity and what do you define maybe productivity as from, from your vantage point?

Yeah, I think it's really about intention. I, I don't think that you should do you, you shouldn't copy your neighbor. That typically leads to, to downfall. Right, Right. So if, if what your neighbor does is take a cold shower at 4am every morning and that works for them, great. Right? Yep. But, but don't. Don't copy the latest guru's personal tactics. I mean it was really important for me. Everything in indistractable not only works, not only have I tested this, it's based on really old research that's been around for a long time. Everything has been published in a peer reviewed journal. Right. So there's like 30 pages of citations in this book. It's not just some, some you know, thing I made up. It's an or. It's organizing these four basic strategies, but they're, you know, just hundreds of studies from making an implementation intention to pre commitment devices. I mean, the list goes on and on. This is research that's been around for a really long time. That's, that's well validated. And so the idea here is to help you do the things you yourself say you want to do. That's what it means to be productive. And you know, look, it doesn't just mean you have to be productive for work.

Right?

If the way you want to spend your time is meditating or prayer or drawing or taking a walk, great. I want to help you do that as well. If that's what you want to do with your time, remember that the time you plan to waste is not wasted time. The problem is not when we plan to waste time. The problem is when we waste time when we planned to do something else. That's when we're not productive.

Nir, this has been great. I'm really happy that we're able to connect and have you on the show. The book is called how to Control youl Attention and choose youe Life. Where can people pick up the book and keep up with your work?

Absolutely. Yeah. So the book is available wherever books are sold. And if you go to indistractable.com, there's an 80 page workbook that's complimentary. We couldn't fit it into the book so we made it into a separate thing. You can download that's free. There's also a video course that's free as well. And you can get all that@indistractable.com and.

Don'T forget, if you're listening to this podcast, then you're probably going to want to listen to your podcast, which is called near and Far. So be sure to check that out as well.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Big thanks to near for being on the podcast way back when. Yes, it's been a while, but Nir has not stopped his plight to share his expertise on managing distractions and managing focus. He's appeared on a variety of podcasts and platforms to discuss strategies from this very book that we discussed. And he is contributing significantly to both behavioral design and bioethics as well. So there's lots going on. Just check out the links in the show notes and that'll guide you to what Near's doing now. And of course, you can get those show notes@mikevarti.com podcast586. You can also check out the show notes wherever you are getting this podcast. Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, and while you're doing that, subscribe to the show. You won't miss a single Flashback Friday episode, you won't miss a single episode of our monthly series, PM Talks, and you won't miss a single episode of our podcast that arrives every single week. Next Wednesday we have Nathan J. Murphy joining us, and then later in the week, a Flashback Friday episode. So subscribe to the show. It's the easiest way to keep track of what we're doing here at A Productive Conversation, and it also supports the show. Another way to support the show is to check out the sponsors that you heard during today's conversation. Go to mikevaarti.com podcast sponsors. Click on any of the links that resonate with you from those sponsors and that way they know that we sent you. That's it for now. Again, don't forget to join us for our next episode featuring Nathan J. Murphy. Until then, I'm Mike Vardy, the host of A Productive Conversation, reminding you, stop doing productive and start being productive. See you later.

Sam.