Nir EyalSpeaker on Behavioral Science, NYT Bestselling Author, Former Stanford Lecturer

You can’t call something a distraction if you don’t know what it’s distracting you from #shorts

Name: You can’t call something a distraction if you don’t know what it’s distracting you from #shorts
Uploaded: 2024-08-22T01:00:16+00:00
Duration: 39 s
Channel: Nir Eyal
Description: Short spoken piece by Nir Eyal explaining that 'distraction' is mis-framed: etymologically its antonym is 'traction' (both from Latin root trajare). He…

22 Aug 2024 · 1 min

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Short spoken piece by Nir Eyal explaining that 'distraction' is mis-framed: etymologically its antonym is 'traction' (both from Latin root trajare). He argues distractions are actions you take and that traction describes actions that pull you toward what you intended to do; you must know what you were trying to do to label something a distraction.

Chapters

Ask yourself, what is the opposite? What's the antonym of distraction? Most people will tell you the opposite of distraction is focus, but that's not right. If you look at the etymology of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction. Both words come from the same Latin root trajare, 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. Distractions are actions that you take. So traction, by very definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.