Nir Eyal Shares How to Focus On Your Work and Ignore Distractions

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What we find is that high performers, they use these internal triggers, the uncomfortable states to drive them towards traction. Like rocket fuel. They use the boredom, the insecurity, the fear, the stress, the anxiety. They use it like rocket fuel. Whereas low performers. When they feel that discomfort, the boredom, the anxiety, the stress, they escape it. They escape it with email. They escape it with checking the news for the hundredth time. They escape it with a drink. They escape it with a television. They escape it with distraction. Distraction is a desire to escape discomfort. Which is why we have to admit that time management is pain management. It's all about our ability to manage discomfort. So step number one is mastering those internal triggers or they will become your masters.

What you pay attention to grows. So if you want to grow your business, Wall Street Journal best selling author Nir Eyl is here to help you become Indistract. This is the Launch youh Business podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. Today's episode is brought to you by chatterboss, a company that provides entrepreneurs with top notch executive assistance so you can make more money, save time and avoid burnout. Get started today and save $50 off your first month by heading to chatterboss.com launch. That's chatterboss.com launch. How many times per day do you get distracted while working? It could be an email, text, even giving into the pressure of checking social media. So for the sake of easy math, let's say it's eight. Eight times. Now multiply that number by 25. That's how many minutes it takes for you to refocus after an interruption. The math gets a little bit harder here, but the answer is 200. 200 minutes. That's over three hours. Now combine that with meetings, running errands, and, you know, rightfully taking breaks and there isn't much time left for deep, focused work that is so crucial to the success of your business. So that's why today we're joined by Nir Eyal near writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology and business. He previously taught as a lecturer in marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business as well as the Hassell Platner Institute of Design at Stanford. I was first introduced to his work when his book how to Build Habit Forming Products was recommended to me by Mike LeDoux. And Mike's the COO here at Entrepreneur Media. So shout out to Mike for that recommendation. And in his book he shares what he calls the hook model. It's a four step process that when you embed it into your products, you can subtly encourage customer behavior. So if you have a product based business, I definitely suggest checking it out. But today we're talking about his latest book, how to control your attention and choose your life. And look, if you're taking notes, his first book is about how to get people hooked and his second is about how to get yourself unhooked. But after talking to near, it's clear that these books aren't at odds. He wants you to get people hooked on good products and help to get you unhooked from bad products and unproductive behaviors. Nir, first of all, thanks so much for being here. I know you're in Singapore and it's pretty late there already.

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

So I was looking at your website and I have to read this verbatim. It says you write, consult and teach about the intersection of psychology, technology and business. So how does, how does one arrive at that intersection? Because it sounds amazing.

So for me it was really revelation around what would really matter in the future. So I had sold a tech company. My second tech company was acquired and this was in 2012. And I had a hunch that habits would become increasingly important. The reason I had that hunch was that I could see that the physical interface, the screen interface was shrinking. So. So as we went from desktop to laptop to mobile devices to wearable devices, right? The screens kept getting smaller and smaller. Now we see the screens disappearing altogether. With devices like Amazon, Alexa, the screen interface got smaller and smaller and then finally disappeared. And what happened as computing became more ubiquitous, the physical real estate, to trigger people with what we call external triggers, right? The things in our environment that tell us what to do, right? The Coca Cola commercial or the, you know, the blazing billboards in our environment that told us what to do, that would increasingly shrink and eventually disappear, which meant that habits would become increasingly important. So what you see today on the phone interface is that if you don't exist on people's home screen, you might as well not even exist unless you can build a habit. And so I knew that was coming. I could see, you know, the iPhone was only 4 years old at the time. And I could see that this was going to take, you know, that this was going to take over the world, that our devices would become increasingly important. But I didn't find any book on how to build habits in terms of product design. I found lots of books on personal habits, but I didn't find any books on how to build habit forming. Products. So I talked to many of my former clients. I used to be in the gaming and advertising industry. So I talked to my friends at Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and WhatsApp and Slack and Snapchat. I was in the Valley at that time. And I also talked with researchers at Stanford where I taught previously. And I started putting together this model that I thought was simple enough to be useful for product designers to build habit forming products. But originally I designed it for myself because I thought I was going to start another company. It turned out that my next company was being an author. It became my next business because I started blogging about this stuff and then I started teaching about it at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business and later at the Hassel Platter Institute of Design. And that became my career. But I didn't know it at the time. I just really enjoyed writing about it and researching about it for myself. Kind of what's carried my career since I only write books that I myself need. And so if it's already been written before, well then you know, the world doesn't need a book on the same subject. I want to write stuff that, where I can't find that someone has previously answered the question that I need answered desperately.

Your first book answered a question that so many of my clients had, which was basically how can we create a competitive advantage? And using gamification was one of them. So every time you log in you make progress towards a goal and then receive some sort of reward and, and that encourage repeat usage. I mean you wrote the book on it, so you obviously get the point.

There are many other competitive advantages. You have to have some kind of competitive advantage. If you don't have a competitive advantage, your margins get ground down to zero. But it could be intellectual property, it could be brand, it could be economies of scale, it could be intellectual property, or it could be habit. And habit is one of the most defensible competitive advantages. When you think about Google, for example, Google owns what, 80, 90% of the search engine market. From the consumer's perspective, is it the best search engine in the world? No. In fact, studies find that in head to head comparisons when people don't know which search results are which, when they take out the branding and they compare Google to bing, the number two search engine, it's a 50, 50 preference split. But that's the thing, right? People don't know the difference and yet they don't even ask if the competition is better. Nobody asks, ooh, I wonder who makes the best search engine. You just Google it with little or no conscious thought, purely out of habit. So think about how powerful that is, that when a consumer forms a habit with your product, they don't even give your competitor a chance. This is what I call the monopoly of the mind.

That must drive Bing crazy.

Oh my God. It's terrible for them. So they have to give up essentially. They don't compete with Google head to head. You know where they compete with Google is on Microsoft made products. So on Xbox. Right. That's where they put Bing. They don't even try and compete with Google anymore because it's such a hard habit to break.

Yeah. When your company name is used as a verb, your competitors are in trouble. Let's take a quick moment here to talk about chatterboss. Chatterboss is a company that helps entrepreneurs make more money, save time and avoid burnout by providing top notch executive assistance. And I gotta tell you, I've been using the service for the past several months now and I have no idea how I got by without them before. My assistant Megan handles everything from prepping my newsletter, designing social media posts, sending out invoices, and even finding local activities for my four kids. But here's one of the most important things. She's not just an order taker, she's also a thought partner who presents new ideas and even challenges. Some of my bad ones. But here's what makes chatterboss as a company so unique. You have one assistant who can handle your entire remote team. This includes other specialists within the ChatterBoss network as well as independent experts that can be found elsewhere. But either way, you have one point of contact who knows you, your business and can anticipate your needs while you're focusing on other high impact activities. Get started today and save $50 off your first month by heading to chatterboss.com launch that's chatterboss. For everyone listening who has a product that requires repeat usage. I highly recommend checking out Hooked. It's just a fascinating and well put together book. But I want to change gears here and talk about how we can get, I guess, almost unhooked on all of life's distractions. And that leads us to your latest book, Indistractable. It's about how to control your attention, which is obviously super important. But my question is, early on in your business, if you find yourself being distracted, how can you tell if it's due to some trigger or if it's because you just don't like what you're doing?

Yeah. So the first place to start is to Understand what is distraction, really? It's one of these words we kind of use, but I think understanding the definition, understanding the origin of the word is very helpful. So the word distraction, the best way to understand what it is is to understand what it is not. What is the opposite of distraction? Most people will tell you the opposite of distraction is focus, right? You don't want to be distracted, you want to be focused. But that's not actually the antonym. The opposite of distraction is traction. Traction and distraction, 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, right? Reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us, it is an action we take. So traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Things that you do with intent, things that move you closer to your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. 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. So this is super important because any action can be traction or distraction based on one word. And that one word is intent. Okay? There's nothing wrong with checking Facebook or YouTube or playing video games or watching football. It's all fine. Don't let people tell you, oh, it's melting your brain. No, anything you want to do with your time is fine as long as you plan for it according to your schedule and your values. That's traction by definition. Conversely, what we find is that the most dangerous form of distraction, it's not the video games, it's not the television, it's not Facebook. The most dangerous form of distraction is the kind of distraction that tricks you into prioritizing the urgent and the easy tasks at the expense of the hard and important work you have to do to move your life and career forward. For example, sit down at your desk and you say, okay, I'm going to get to work. Nothing's going to get in my way. I'm super focused. Here I go. But let me check some email, right? Let me just check off these easy things to do on my to do list, right? I'm being productive. I'm doing a work related task. This is where we find most people get distracted with the stuff that feels important right now, but really isn't, isn't the thing that you said you were going to do with your time. So checking email, even though It's a work related task. If that's not what you said you were going to do with your time, is itself a distraction. And that's where most people get caught. Running real fast in the wrong direction and where distraction is most pernicious.

That's a great way to break things down. I mean, you have a to do list with 10 things on them, but if you only get through the first eight, which are the easiest, you're not really moving the needle as much as you could. And by design, I always tackle my most critical tasks first because you never know what's going to happen during the day.

Right.

I have four kids. Right. So it's nuts, but you can always choose how it starts. Okay, so we now have a better understanding of what traction is and what distraction is. But now what drives us in one direction or another?

Here again, we have external triggers. The pings, dings and rings, all the things in our outside environment which account for only 10% of our distractions. So the first place to start is with the internal triggers. And this gets to your question. The number one source of why we get distracted, why do we go off track? It's not a moral failing. There's probably nothing wrong with your brain. You don't have some diagnosis, you know, disease you need to get a diagnosis for. For the vast majority of people now, little asterisks, some people really do have ADHD. There's a 3% chance, you know, the 3% of population has it. That means 97% chance that's not you. So the vast majority of people don't have any diagnosis, they don't have a pathology, they just don't have the ability to deal with discomfort in a way that leads them towards traction rather than distraction. What do I mean by that? What we find is that high performers, they use these internal triggers, the uncomfortable states, to drive them towards traction. Like rocket fuel. They use the boredom, the insecurity, the fear, the stress, the anxiety, they use it like rocket fuel. Whereas low performers, when they feel that discomfort, the boredom, the anxiety, the stress, they escape it. They escape it with email, they escape it with checking the news for the hundredth time, they escape it with a drink, they escape it with the television, they escape it with distraction. Distraction is a desire to escape discomfort. Which is why we have to admit that time management is pain management. Time management is pain management. By the way, I would also add money management is pain management, weight management is pain management. It's all about our ability to manage discomfort. So step number one is mastering those internal triggers, or they will become your masters.

Now, when I hear you say you have to manage your discomfort, I come back to the importance of having a vision for your life. Because if you want to achieve that vision more than you want to avoid all the uncomfortable stuff you need to go through, you'll have all the motivation needed to keep moving forward.

But be careful. Be careful, because when we try and make goals and visions that are too far out, it tends to backfire because it's very hard to think about, how are you going to feel in a month? Right? I want to play video games now. I don't want to play video games I don't know about in a month. Who the hell cares in a month? I want to do what I want to do right now. I don't care about my vision for the future. I want to have fun now. That's the main struggle. That's what this is all about. And so what I want folks to do is not to deny themselves the joy of life. It's okay. You want to play video games, you want to hang out with your kids. We don't have to be constantly hustling and constantly working and doing all the not fun stuff. I want you to make time for the fun stuff, but you can do it on your schedule. So as Dorothy Parker said, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time. The way you have it all is you put it in your schedule. You want to play video games, want to scroll the news, want to watch movies on Netflix? Great. Put it in your schedule. You're taking a distraction. What you're going to do anyway, let's admit it, you're going to do it. And you're turning it into traction by putting it in your schedule. So this way you know it's coming, right? So as opposed to a vision, right? As opposed to saying, someday I'm going to make an impact, which most people, by the way, when they think about, you know, have a goal, right? What studies find is make a vision board. What studies find is when you have these goals that are so far in the future, you get stuck. You get stuck. Well, is the goal good enough? Right. How do I get started? Maybe it's. Maybe I need to do more. And then you never get started. You never do it. So instead of a vision of what needs to happen, start with a plan. Start with a plan. Just for tomorrow. Only tomorrow. That's all I want you to do. What would the person you want to become do with their time tomorrow? Well, how do you answer that? Question. You answer that question based on your values. Values are attributes of the person you want to become. So I split these values into three domains. You, your relationships, and your work. So how would the person I want to become spend time taking care of themselves? Right. Do you have enough time for sleep, for proper rest, or for proper nutrition? Exercise, reading, video games, doesn't matter. Whatever it is that's important for you to take care of yourself, put that time in your calendar first. Then your relationships. Do you have time for the people you love? Put it in your calendar, then your work. Now, work has two subcategories, reactive work and reflective work. Most people, all day long, when they're at work, they react, react to emails, react to phone calls, react to meeting, as opposed to, you have to have some time in your day for reflective work. Reflective work is the kind of work that can only be done without distraction. Creative work, planning, thinking, strategizing, has to be done without distraction. Most people have no time to think in their day. They're always reacting. These are what the low performers do. They love being told what to do all day long, which means they're running real fast in the wrong direction. As opposed to high performers, they make at least sometime in the day in the schedule and they keep it sacred to do this reflective work. So when you just plan your day one day at a time, but in advance, this is the second step to becoming indistractable. The first step is making sure that you, that you master these internal triggers, that you have a plan in place, that when you feel the discomfort, that you know what to do. The second step is to make time for traction by planning your day. It's not about self discipline. What my studies found is that the high performers, they don't have a lot of self control, they don't have a lot of self discipline. You know what? They have a plan for the day.

Just get started. If you've ever looked for tips on launching a business, just get started seems to come up a lot. And while that's vaguely motivational, it does not provide any real direction. Because the next logical question for anyone would be, well, how do I get started? What specifically should I do? Well, if you're looking to quickly start a business without the confusion, risk and pressure of doing something entirely new, I've got a solution for you. It's called the Solopreneur's Fast Track. A step by step process on how to start a business using the skills you already have and actually enjoy using. So let's say your favorite part of A previous job was email marketing. You all learn how to start a business offering other companies advice on how they can improve their email marketing. Or maybe you are really good at integrating complicated tech tools. You can help other organizations do the same thing without the need to bring on a full time hire. So the main point here is that everything you need to start a business is already within you. You don't need a cool website or fancy tools. And by completing the course, you'll also discover a simpler approach for attracting clients without using complicated funnels or cheesy sales tactics. You can finish it over a weekend and start making money in as little as 30 days. You'll gain the clarity and confidence you need to start your business and receive a one page business plan so you can immediately apply what you've learned. Get started today and receive a 20% discount by heading to Terryrice. Catch. That's Terryrice Co Fast. We're back with Near Isle. He's a writer, consultant and educator. And he's just an expert when it comes to habit formation, whether it be products or people. But what really stood out to me so far is that the majority of distractions are caused internally, not externally. And that's good news because that means we have control over it. So let's hop back into the conversation. Nir When I hear you say what would the person you want to become do with their time tomorrow? It somewhat reminds me of the concept goal setting to the now, which I heard about in the book the One Thing by Gary Keller, I believe. And goal setting to the now is essentially a way of making sure you're always doing the most important thing in the current moment based on whatever long term plan you have. I won't call it a vision for now, and if you're not doing that one thing, you should stop and go do it. So for me, that's the trigger. That's the trigger I have when I'm about to do something that's not useful or even if I'm about to accept some random meeting request. So I love how you're putting this. I don't want to call it discipline, maybe, maybe habits is the right word for it, but just structuring your day in a way that's aligned with the person you want to be, but also being content and happy and fulfilled with the person you are right now. Otherwise you're, you're not gonna be happy and you might start blaming all these other distractions.

So the rule here is you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. So I work with so many people who say, oh, you know, I had this on my to do list. I wanted to do this, I want to do that. And my boss says this, and my kids want that. And did you see what happened in the news today? I can't seem to get anything done. Everything's so distracting. And I say, what's on your calendar? Let me see your schedule. What did you get distracted from? And for many people, low performers, nothing's on their calendar. They use this stupid, antiquated technique of a to do list. They use it incorrectly. There's nothing terrible out of Brown's to do list. What's wrong about to do lists is that people stop with a to do list. If you, you know, people who study productivity will tell you the to do list is the first step. The second step is to put those things on your schedule. Because if you don't put them on your schedule, it's just a wish. It has to be in your schedule. So why is that so important? Because if you don't know what is traction, you don't know what is distraction. If you don't have it scheduled in your day, what did you get distracted from? You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. And that could be anything, right? If you say, I want time to white space, that's fine. I want time to pray. I want time to meditate. I want whatever it is you want to do with your time. Don't listen to anybody who tells you you should spend your time this way or that way. You should spend your time the ever way you want to be consistent with your values. And that has to be done in advance. If you wait till the last minute, you will fail. Because what is the number one reason we don't achieve our goals? What's the number one reason we don't achieve our goals? We quit. Right. Common sense. Why do we quit? The number one reason we quit is because we don't feel like doing it. We don't feel like it. I don't feel like working out today. I don't feel like eating right. I don't feel like doing this work right now. I don't feel like being fully present with my family. I don't feel like it. They're just feelings. But most people have no idea what to do with these feelings. So what do they do? They escape. They drink them away. They watch them on TV away. They scroll them away because they can't deal with the feelings. That's what we have to start with, these are the internal triggers. It's the most important first step.

I started putting my to do list on my calendar a while ago, and it's made a world of difference. And it's funny because there's times when I mentally committed to doing something, but when it was time to put it on my calendar, I just couldn't do it. But speaking of calendars, I know it's getting late there, but it sounds like you started to map out a step by step process for us to follow. Can you just bullet point that out for me?

Sure. Yeah. So, yeah. So there's four key strategies of becoming indestructible. Number one, we talked about master the internal triggers. Number two, make time for traction. Number three, hack back the external triggers. So this is where we actually do have to get into the nitty gritty of all the external triggers. You know, we think about the phones and your computers. That's kindergarten stuff. What about the meetings, right? What about all these stupid meetings that we have to go to that are nothing more than a distraction? What do you do about that? What do you do about your kids? Can be a huge distraction, right? Many of us have to work from home, right? What do we do about that? So we have to go back and hack back all these external triggers. The good news is we're not powerless. There's a lot we can do to hack back all those external triggers. And I show you exactly how. In my book, Indistractable, the fourth step is to prevent distraction with pacts. This is an ancient technique that we can use that if distraction rears its ugly head. And we've done these three things in advance. Master internal triggers. Made time for traction, hack back external triggers. We can, number four, prevent distraction with packs by erecting a firewall, this barrier against distraction, to make sure that if all else fails, we are safeguarded against doing something that we would later regret. So that's the four techniques in concert. Master internal triggers, make time for traction, Hack back the external triggers, and prevent distraction with packs. And if you use these four strategies, anybody can become indistractable.

Well, I could definitely use your help there because I have four kids running around.

I have a little one at home as well. And we, you know, thank goodness I had this. I did this research because, you know, I wrote this book for me, like I was the most distracted person you'd ever met. This book took me five years to write. You know why? Because for the first four, I kept getting distracted. It wasn't until I Figured out the techniques that really worked that I could actually finish this book. And I'll tell you, it changed my life in every way. I'm 44 years old. I'm in the best shape of my life. I have a six pack for the first time in my life. I'm not telling you this to brag because I used to be clinically obese. I'm telling you this because the reason I get what I now have is because I'm simply consistent in my actions. I'm as honest with myself as I am with other people. I do what I say I'm going to do in my physical health, for my mental health, for my relationships, for my work have all benefited because I am able to control my attention.

I love that. And I always say you have to learn it, live it, and then teach it.

And I learned through it was a trial by fire, let me tell you. I read so much research, so many boring studies, so much. There's so much junk out there. There's so much bad advice out there that people parrot again and again. We hear it like the to do list. Okay? To do lists don't work. People. We keep using them and they don't make. They don't work. We know they don't work, and yet we keep using this stupid technique. And we could. Next episode, we'll talk about why to do lists don't work, or at least why they're incomplete.

Let's do it. And I'm sure we'll pick up some other great insights as well. And I appreciate your time.

All right, sounds good. Thank you so much, Terry.

You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. That's probably my best takeaway from this chat because there were two parts to it. First, make a plan. And like Nir said, it doesn't have to be too far out. In fact, when you're first starting your business, it's challenging to plan too far ahead. So much can change. You never know how or when you'll have to pivot. But you do need to start each day with a plan. And that should be aligned with your values and what you truly care about. Then stick with the plan. Put it on your calendar, not your to do list. And I'm looking forward to bringing near back on so we can chat more about that. But in the meantime, you can learn more about him by going to his website, nearandfar.com, that's n I r and far dot com. And how about this? Let's give away some books. Share one of your key takeaways from this episode on Instagram and tag me at it Terryrice and then tag near at N I R E Y a l Again it's N I r e yal. We'll select a few winners and send you a book. And either way, don't forget to check out the show Notes. Near has tons of additional resources waiting for you. Thanks for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at. Terryrice Co podcast. Again, that's TerryRice Co podcast, and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend, and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram Terryrice, or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife, Dominique for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.