#104 Nir Eyal: Mastering Indistraction

Bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable, Nir Eyal was dubbed by The M. I. T. Technology Review as, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” In this episode, Shane and Nir discuss regaining control of our attention from technology, how to get more done in less time, controlling the things you have agency over and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What I discovered was that distraction, the leading cause of distraction, and research bears this out. The leading cause of distraction is not what we call external triggers. It's not the stuff outside of us, but rather, distraction begins from within, what we call the internal triggers. That is the leading cause of distraction. Boredom, uncertainty, fatigue, anxiety. If you don't understand this principle that I live by, that time management requires pain management, time management requires pain management, you'll always be distracted by something, right? If it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, it doesn't matter. Something is going to distract you unless you understand what feeling you are trying to escape. Procrastination, distraction, it's not a character flaw. It's not some kind of moral failing.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  It is the inability to deal with emotional discomfort.

• 1:02Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. This is Shane Parrish. This podcast and our website, fs.blog, help you sharpen your mind by mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. If you're hearing this, you're not currently a supporting member and are missing out. If you'd like access to ad-free versions of the show, early access to full episodes, transcripts, and so much more, you'll have to subscribe at fs.blog/podcast. There you'll find our private RSS feed and other subscriber-only content. Check out the show notes for a link. My guest today is Nir Eyal, founder of two companies and the author of Hooked and Indistractable. For most of his life, he worked in the video game and advertising space where he learned the tricks and tactics that are used to hook our attention. Then he did a deep dive

• 1:46Shane Parrish?

  into how we can take back control. This episode is all about what we can do to hack back. You'll walk away with a clear list of easy-to-implement ideas to help you get more done in less time. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Have you seen The Social Dilemma?

• 2:07Shane Parrish?

  No.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I wish you would have seen The Social Dilemma. That would have been a really good conversation. Have you heard about it?

• 2:14Shane Parrish?

  No, what is it?

• 2:15Speaker 00

  It's this Netflix film that everybody's talking about that, uh, basically, technology's melting your brain, technology is addictive, technology is hijacking your brain. It's this, sorry, it's a horror film, gallivanting as a documentary. It's, it's ridiculous, but people slop it up.

• 2:33Shane Parrish?

  So what's the premise that like, technology's just destroying us?

• 2:36Speaker 00

  That technology is basically the source of, no, social media specifically, is the source of all of our ills these days. It's classic moral panic stuff, but people just love it.

• 2:48Shane Parrish?

  What's your take on that?

• 2:50Speaker 00

  My take on it is that it's, uh, it's equivalent of if Steven Spielberg called Jaws a documentary.

• 2:56Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  It's, uh, you, you really have to see it. It's so, it's sloppy to the point of negligence. It's so silly. Let me tell you what happened. So they interviewed me for three hours for this documentary. So I sat down with the director for three hours. We did this super long interview and they completely cut me out of the film and I don't really care. Okay, fine. It's not about ego here. They didn't even have one person represent the other side of the story, not even one person. And so it's this, um, it's this, basically this horror show, really. I mean, it's there, they have the docu, the dramatizations of the big bad algorithms that are, you know, uh, sending you notifications in order to bring you back to Facebook and keep you addicted. And it's not scientific in the

• 3:40Speaker 00

  least, riddled with errors, ridiculous, but it's almost a religion. Like people, it's almost like a friend, I was just talking to a friend of mine about this and, uh, he's, he's in, uh, in personal fitness and health and he talks about how like, it's actually very similar to the Netflix documentaries. You know, every other week there'll be a documentary about, oh, everybody should be keto. No, everybody should be vegetarian. No, everybody should be vegan. And there's no like, talking about the science in any of these camps. It's only about like, you know, my studies and my research and let's not look at anybody else's perspective. And that's exactly what has become, I think, of, of this debate around social media and, uh, tech addiction and all this nonsense, unfortunately.

• 4:20Shane Parrish?

  Do you think that it's changing to the point where like, what's happening online is coming to video now? Like, What drives clicks is sort of like one-sided. You get your side, they watch the whole thing. So if your metrics are sort of like watch time on videos and all of this, you want to reinforce what people already know. You don't want to challenge them. You don't want to get too nuanced. Like, do you think that that is just translating over?

• 4:47Speaker 00

  I mean, this is the ultimate irony and hypocrisy of this film, because the film is about how Facebook and social media is, in general, is perpetuating filter bubbles. And filter bubbles are bad because they only give people one perspective.

• 5:04Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  And so they made a movie that the only way they could figure out how to make a documentary was to create a filter bubble and only give people one side of the story.

• 5:14Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  And it's hella entertaining, you know, just like a horror film is hella entertaining. You don't watch a horror film and have the director stop the film and say, hey, folks, just want to remind you that the monster isn't real. No, you want to get into it. And so they just, they use every manipulative movie-making trick in the book that just makes the whole thing just a big hypocritical shit show, unfortunately. The real tragedy is it could have been awesome. It could have been something. Because I actually agree that we should use less social media, or at least use it more responsibly. But instead, they took this path of scaring the hell out of people. And I don't think that's effective.

• 5:51Shane Parrish?

  What's the core of that? Is it that it's feeding the worst part of ourselves? Or that it's showing us things that we don't have, and therefore, we're wanting them. And we're always, we're never happy or content because we're always seeing people with things that we don't have. Like, it used to be you'd be sort of like in a small town, and you wouldn't see the world. You would just see your street. So if somebody got a new car, you'd have somebody right there. But now, you see like everybody in the world. You have access to all these celebrities and the lifestyle they're living. And it sort of makes you feel less about yourself. And at the same time, the worst parts of yourself can get reinforced in that filter bubble where you're just spiraling. And it's sort of like feeding on itself, which is like, oh, you clicked on this, we're going to show you more content like this.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, and I'm not defending social media. I'm not saying people should use more social media, quite the opposite. What I'm saying is that we need some nuance. We need to understand more than just tech is addictive, tech is bad, don't use tech, because that's not realistic for people. You know, for many people, our livelihoods depend on this technology. You can't just say, I'm gonna stop checking email, I'm gonna stop using my cell phone, I'm gonna stop checking social media. For many people, these things are wonderful. You know, they talk about in the movie about how teen suicide has risen, and there's all kinds of problems with those kinds of statistics that we can go into in a minute. What they haven't talked about is, for example, that LGBTQ suicide has dropped largely because one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons is that people from disparate

• 7:20Speaker 00

  groups, if you lived in that small town and nobody was like you because, you know, you were LGBTQ, now you can connect to people in a way you couldn't connect before.

• 7:29Shane Parrish?

  You can find a community of people.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly, which of course has goods and bads, right? Sophocles said, the Greek philosopher, "Nothing great enters the life of mortals without a curse." Every new technology has goods and bads, any technology of this scale. The question is, how do we keep the good aspects without succumbing to the bad aspects? And the answer is quite simple. It's what we've always done in history. We adapt and we adopt. We adapt our behaviors and we adopt new technology to fix the last generation of crappy technology. This is what we have always done. We did this with the motor car, we did this with television, we did this with radio, we always do this. But when we turn from, I think, what is a healthy attribute of skepticism, right? I think skepticism is a very healthy attribute,

• 8:16Speaker 00

  to now the conversation has become cynical, right? We're no longer skeptics, we're cynics. Like, these tech companies can do nothing right. And I think that that's a missed opportunity, right? We want more people to go into tech, not necessarily to support big tech, screw big tech, but to create the new tech that fixes the old tech's problems.

• 8:37Shane Parrish?

  Arguably, though, didn't you create a lot of this with your book, Hooked? Like, you're researching to how to make things addictive and how to make them...

• 8:46Speaker 00

  What?

• 8:48Shane Parrish?

  Wait, okay, before we get there, how did you get interested in sort of... Things that are outside of our control and how they can, or not even outside of our control, but things that are outside of us and how they influence us. And then I want to go into that because arguably you get labeled as the guy who made tack addictive for a lot of people.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, by people who haven't read the book. The book, just to put this in perspective, Hooked, How to Build Habit-Forming Products, came out in 2014. Google was started years and years before that. Facebook was started years before that. The gaming companies were started decades before that. Hooked was about stealing the secrets of social media companies so that the rest of us could use it. In Hooked, the only case study in the entire book, in the entire book, there's only one case study. It's not Facebook, it's not Twitter, it's not any of the big tech companies. You know who it is? Do you happen to remember?

• 9:47Shane Parrish?

  I don't remember off the top of my head.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  The Bible. The Bible. The Bible app, not the actual King James, the Bible app, which today, actually, hundreds of millions of people use. If it was a big tech company, it would be one of the biggest. It would be worth billions and billions of dollars. Why did I pick the Bible app as the case study? I knew people would think that somehow this book was used to manipulate your minds. And look, I know better than anyone how these companies get you hooked. I wrote the book Hooked. I know all their tricks. And I will tell you, they're good. They're not that good. They're not causing addiction. The name of the book is How to Build Habit-Forming Products, and I intentionally did not call it How to Build Addictive Products for a very specific reason. An addiction is a pathology.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Today, we love to say everything's an addiction. My wife ordered shoes from the store DSW, and the box came with, it was written on the side, "Danger: Addictive Contents Inside." We medicalize everything, and I think to our own detriment, because these things aren't addictions for the vast majority of people. Let's think with a little bit of logic here. The definition of addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms the user. You would never want to build an addictive product. That's sadistic. You would never want to do that. And you know, just because a product is potentially addictive doesn't mean it addicts everyone, right? We all have a glass of wine with dinner, a beer with lunch. We're not all alcoholics. Single-digit percentages of people are alcoholics.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Single-digit percentages of people are addicted to social media because people get addicted to all sorts of things. Any analgesic is potentially addictive. So I think the right way to approach this is to have legislation. I'm for legislation. But let's legislate that we are going to make these companies identify and help people who are pathologically addicted. Those people can't help themselves. They are not of sound body and mind. The other group that needs protection is children, right? There's lots of things in society that I wouldn't let my 12-year-old daughter do. I wouldn't let her go to a casino and just play blackjack. I wouldn't let her go into a bar and order a gin and tonic. She's 12 years old, she's not ready for it. And why do we think that an iPad is somehow an i-nanny? Who had that idea? That's stupid.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  There's no form of media that I would let my daughter consume without any form of supervision. Even books. You know, we think books are, oh, this beautiful technology. No, books, not only were they just as feared as social media today. If you look back at what people said about the written word, let alone comic books and all these other mundane things that we think are, you know, that couldn't possibly be harmful. People said the same thing back then about those technologies they do today about social media. But I wouldn't even let my 12-year-old daughter walk into a library and just read any book. There are lots of books that a 12-year-old little girl should not be reading. She's not ready for it. So any form of media needs moderation for people who are not of sound body and mind.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Pathologically addicted people, which are identifiable cohort, and children. But for the rest of us, we need to stop calling things addictions when they're not addictions for the vast majority of us. They are distractions. But when we call them a distraction... Ah, that's no fun, right? Because now I can't blame, you know, when there's an addiction.

• 12:58Shane Parrish?

  Right, no, it's my fault.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  There's a pusher, there's a dealer. Exactly, well, it's not your fault. That's, I think that's a, that's a loaded term. I wouldn't say it's your fault. You didn't invent Facebook, you didn't invent Twitter or Slack or any of these tech companies. You didn't invent that stuff. It's not your fault. But lots of things in life are not your fault, but they are still your responsibility. And so the price of progress, the price of having all these amazing magical tools is, you know what? Guys, we need a little bit of personal responsibility. And I think that's my big criticism of these Chicken Little tech critics. Nobody ever talks about, wait a minute, we can do something, right? We can turn off notifications, we can hack back the technology. And it seems like such common sense, and it's never discussed because people are so desperate to blame big tech and hope that big government fixes the problem.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  They're not gonna fix the problem for us. And even if they could, why the heck would we wait and not do something about it ourselves?

• 13:50Shane Parrish?

  Do you think it's as much blaming other people as it is just really absolving ourself? Because if it, if it's not somebody else's fault, then it's really within our control or our responsibility. And it's so much easier just to put it on somebody else and their convenient arguments.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And, and this is, I think this is a pervasive trend. When, when, in order to gain control without assuming responsibility, this is what we love to do. I mean, and it's, and there's many aspects of society that we do this. But it just fascinates me how, you know, I wrote this book, Indistractable. It took me five years to write it. My gut instinct, by the way, when I first embarked on this journey to write this book, I, I really wrote it for me. And I thought, you know, I wrote Hooked, and then I found myself overusing technology. I found myself, you know, there, there's, there was one seminal moment that really made me reconsider my relationship with distraction. It was when I was with my daughter one afternoon.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  And we had this just daddy-daughter time planned, just this afternoon to play together. And I remember we had this activity book that daddies and daughters could, could, you know, play different games. So there was Sudoku, make an air paper airplane, and there was to get to know each other, ask each other this question, like a conversation prompt. And the question was, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember the question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter said. Because in that moment, for some reason, I decided to look at my phone and have to check something. And my daughter got the message that I was sending that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was. And when I finally looked up for

• 15:34Speaker 00

  my device, she was gone. She left the room to play with some toy outside, and I'd blown it. And Shane, if I'm really honest with you, it didn't just happen once. It would happen on multiple occasions, not just with my daughter. It would happen when I said, you know, I would go exercise, and I didn't. I was gonna eat right, but I wouldn't. I would get to my desk and say, okay, I'm gonna write, I'm gonna work on that hard project I'd been delaying. And yet, 20, 30, 40 minutes, I'm checking the news, or scrolling Twitter, or doing whatever else. That's not the thing I said I was going to do. And so that's when I decided, look, I really have to reassess this problem. And my first instinct was to do exactly what most people do. Well, it's the technology distracting me. You see, I was looking at my phone instead of being with my daughter. It must be the phone's

• 16:19Speaker 00

  fault. And I actually, I read every book I could find on this. I did the digital minimalism. I did all that stuff. I got rid of it. I did the digital detox. And it's amazing, you know, I got myself a flip phone from Alibaba. I had it imported from China, because they don't really make it in the States.

• 16:36Shane Parrish?

  1990s style.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. This flip phone with no apps, no internet connection. I even found on eBay a word processor that a library was selling from the 1990s, no internet connection, just an ethernet cable. That's how you like downloaded whatever you typed into the word processor. And I sat down at my desk, and I said, great, no internet, no apps, no Facebook, no Twitter, no email. Now I'm gonna write. And I would sit down at my desk, and I'd say, you know, before I start writing, there's that book, that there's that chapter in the book, I think this might be helpful with my writing. And, boy, my desk is cluttered. Let me, let me just clean up my desk real quick. And you know, the trash, the trash needs to be taken out. And I still got distracted.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Because what I discovered was that distraction, the leading cause of distraction, and research bears this out, the leading cause of distraction is not what we call external triggers, it's not the stuff outside of us, but rather, distraction begins from within, what we call the internal triggers. That is the leading cause of distraction: boredom, uncertainty, fatigue, anxiety. If you don't understand this principle that I live by, that time management requires pain management, time management requires pain management, you'll always be distracted by something, right? If it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, it doesn't matter, something is going to distract you unless you understand what feeling you are trying to escape. Procrastination,

• 18:00Speaker 00

  distraction, it's not a character flaw, it's not some kind of moral failing, it is the inability to deal with emotional discomfort.

• 18:07Shane Parrish?

  Go deeper on that, like, why are we unable to deal with emotional comfort? Where does that come from?

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, so fundamentally, um...

• 18:15Shane Parrish?

  Is there gender differences, too?

• 18:17Speaker 00

  I haven't seen gender differences, but I think the reason why we, uh, why distraction and procrastination is always an emotion regulation problem is because the root cause of all human behavior is not what most people expect. That most people subscribe to this, this pop psychology notion that has, you know, Freud actually proposed that, he called it the pleasure principle, that everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, right? Jeremy Bentham said something very similar, we all know it as carrots and sticks, right? This is how you motivate. Turns out, neurologically speaking, this is not true, that, uh, human motivation is not about carrots and sticks, it's not about pain and pleasure, but rather, it's just about one thing. All human behavior

• 19:02Speaker 00

  is spurred by the desire to escape discomfort. Everything we do, we do for just one reason: the desire to escape discomfort, even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations. If you think about it... Craving, desire, wanting, lusting. These sensations are themselves psychologically destabilizing. They feel bad. In fact, the brain spurs us to action by creating this discomfort that gets us to act. So this is called the homeostatic response. We know this to be true physiologically. It's pretty much common sense, right? If you think about how, if you go outside, you know, you live in Ottawa. If it's cold, your brain says, "That doesn't feel good. It's too cold. You should put on a coat." If you come back inside with that heavy coat, your body says, "Oh, this is uncomfortable. It's too hot.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Take it off." If you're hungry, you feel hunger pangs, so you eat. And if you're stuffed, you ate too much. Oh, the body, the brain says, "This doesn't feel good. You should stop eating." So those are physiological responses to discomfort. The same holds true to our psychological responses. So for example, when you feel lonely, check Facebook. When you're uncertain, before you scan your brain to see if you know the answer, Google it. When you are bored, oh my goodness, tons of solutions for boredom, right? Sports scores and stock prices and the news, right? Let's think about somebody else's problem halfway across the world, so we don't have to think about what's going on in our own lives, right? So lots and lots of solutions, commercial solutions, are offered for these emotional discomfort that we seek to escape.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  So that's why the first step to becoming indistractable is not to blame the technology, it's not to shame yourself, it's to claim responsibility for these uncomfortable sensations by mastering the internal triggers. And this is, this is worth talking about for just a minute, that most people out there, when it comes to distraction, they tend to fall into these two buckets of what I call blamers and shamers, right? The blamers, they say, "It's Facebook. It's the iPhone. It's my boss. It's my kid. That's why I, I'm not doing what I said I was going to do. I don't accomplish my goals. I don't, you know, I missed this deadline, or I did this and I didn't do what I said I'm going to do. It's because of this stuff outside of me." They blame, or this is what I hear all the time these days. It's the modern world, right?

• 21:16Speaker 00

  As if you can do anything about any of that stuff. You, you can't change any of that stuff. There's no magical time machine to go back into in time before these, these technologies existed. So that's futile. The other extreme, and this is the camp I used to fall into, is what we call the shamer. The shamer doesn't blame things outside themselves, they shame themselves, right? They say, "Oh, there I go again, getting distracted. I have a short attention span. I have an addictive personality. I'm a more, I'm not a morning person," right? They label themselves with all of these self-defeating images of themselves, self-images, that, that make it even worse. Why? Because the more shame we feel, the more of these internal triggers.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Shame is a very uncomfortable internal trigger. The more we feel of that internal trigger, the more likely we are to seek escape with, guess what? More distraction. So, we don't want to be a blamer, we don't want to be a shamer. We want to be what we call a claimer. A claimer claims responsibility not for how they feel. This is a really important point. You cannot control your feelings. This is a myth, right? You can't control your urges any more than you can control the urge to sneeze. If you feel the urge to sneeze, it's too late. You already felt that urge. What you can control is how you respond to that feeling, how you respond to that urge. So, when you feel the urge to sneeze, do you sneeze all over everyone and get them sick?

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Or do you take out a tissue and cover your face so you don't, you know, you don't infect others? So, that's where the word responsibility comes from. It's how we respond to those internal triggers, to those uncomfortable emotional states, so that when we feel boredom, anxiety, fatigue, loneliness, whatever the case might be, do we escape that discomfort in an unhealthy way by getting out of our heads, turning on the TV, you know, reading the, reading the news, going on email or Facebook or whatever? Or do we deal with that discomfort in a healthy way that, that propels us forward?

• 23:14Shane Parrish?

  A couple of things you said there strike me as really interesting, and maybe you can pick up on one of these threads, which is like, one, we, we sort of have habitual responses to things, even though we control them. You know, when I'm looking at Facebook in line at the supermarket or something, that's a, you know, it develops a habit. And then the other thing that you said that really struck me was how, when we shame ourselves, our identity becomes within that shame. And then that becomes self-reinforcing, because if you tell yourself... You're always distracted. You're always the person that does this. I mean, that just becomes more and more of the case. That's what you see, what you expect, and you become powerless in a way. I'd love to hear you sort of like riff on those two things.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Right, and this is definitely something that the tech companies take advantage of, that the internal triggers are part of the hook model that I described in my book, that they attach themselves to that uncomfortable emotional state, the boredom, the uncertainty, the fear. They know that you are looking for a salve, you are looking for some kind of solution. And so whatever you habituate to, whatever you turn to with little or no conscious thought, will be what your brain will look for to solve that problem as quickly and efficiently as possible, which is something to be aware of. We have to be careful with that. Now, the way we short-circuit that is to understand what is that discomfort.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  And this is, of course, nothing new. Plato talked about this 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher, he called it akrasia, the tendency to do things against our better interests. And he asked this question. He pondered, why is it that even though we know what to do, why don't we just do it? This isn't a modern question. This is an ancient question. This wasn't a question that just came up with Facebook and the iPhone. People have always been distracted by one thing or another. And the answer is, it's always this inability to deal with discomfort in a healthy way. And I think part of the problem, particularly today, it's a relatively modern phenomenon, is that we have this aversion to discomfort in an unhealthy extent.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  What do I mean by that? Of course, you know, pain doesn't feel good. It's not meant to feel good. It's meant to spur you into action. But that doesn't mean that feeling bad is bad.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  That in fact, feeling bad can be very good. That if we think about, you know, how many books do they have happy in the title and preach contentment and, you know, tell you that if you follow this five-point plan, you're going to reach nirvana, as if, if you're not constantly happy, something's wrong with you. And that's totally ridiculous. That I would argue that from an evolutionary basis, you wouldn't want a species of Homo sapiens to be happy and contented all the time. If there was ever a group of Homo sapiens that was happy continuously, our ancestors would have killed and eaten them, right? That would not be a beneficial evolutionary trait. You

• 26:14Speaker 00

  want people to be perpetually perturbed. You want them to want more. That's what gets us to hunt, to invent, to create. That, that discomfort, that wanting more can be rocket fuel to propel us forward. And so that's why it's very important not to run away from that discomfort, but to harness it to lead you towards traction rather than distraction.

• 26:38Shane Parrish?

  How do we learn to deal with that discomfort? Like, how do you teach your daughter to deal with that rather than solving her problems? How do you teach adults to deal with discomfort instead of running away from it or thinking that it shouldn't happen at all? Because a lot of people seem to grow up, at least in the Western world, where they feel like, you know, it's somebody else's responsibility to make them happy or take care of problems for them.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Right. No, I think that this is, this is, I think, the, the age, the question of our age. And I think, you know, this is, this is a good place because I realize we jumped into the conversation without kind of defining some terminology. I think words are really, really important when it comes to this subject. So let me just back up just for a quick second and talk about what is distraction, really? I mean, we use this term, but what does it actually mean? And I think the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is not. So most people will say, The opposite of distraction is focus, right? I don't want to be distracted, I want to be focused. But that's not actually the opposite of distraction. The opposite of distraction, if you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction. That both words come from the same Latin root, "trahere", which means "to pull",

• 27:47Speaker 00

  and both words also end in the same six letters, "acti-uen", that spells "action". 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 help move you towards your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. So those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction is distraction. Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, anything that is not done with intent, anything that moves you away from your values and pulls you further away from becoming the person you want to become. So this isn't just semantics. This is really important because I would argue that any action can be traction or distraction. What do I mean by that? Let me give you an example.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  I would sit at my desk every morning before I embarked on this line of research. I would sit at my desk and I would say, "Okay, I'm gonna work on that big project, gonna finish that blog post, I'm gonna work on that proposal, I'm gonna get to work at that thing I've been delaying, no more procrastinating, I'm gonna do it, here I go, but first let me check some email", right? Because that's a worky task, right? That's something I have to do at the end of my day anyway, right? So let me just go do that right now. And what I didn't realize is that I was letting distraction trick me into prioritizing the easy and the urgent work as opposed to the important work. That this is the most pernicious form of distraction, the kind that we don't even realize is pulling us off course.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Because if I sit at my desk and I start playing Candy Crush, well, okay, obviously that's a distraction. But if I'm checking email, thinking I'm productive, but really I'm not working on that thing I know I should do that's more important, that is also a distraction because it's not what I plan to do with my time. Conversely, anything can be traction. So don't believe these chicken little tech critics that say "video games are melting your brain", and "Facebook is melting your brain", and "everything is melting your brain". Ridiculous. The science doesn't support that at all, right? That if you plan to spend your time playing a video game, or scrolling social media, or watching a YouTube video, great! There's nothing wrong with it. As long as it's done on your schedule, not the tech companies. So the time you plan to waste is not wasted time.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Any distraction can be turned into traction by simply making time for it in your day. So back to your question about how do I teach my daughter this? There's a whole section in the book about how to raise indistractable kids. And this is something I feel really passionate about because if you think the world is distracting now, just wait a few years, right? It's only gonna become more distracting with virtual reality, and augmented reality, and who knows what else reality. It's only gonna get worse. So we have to raise our kids to become indistractable. This is going to be the skill of the century. This is what is going to define the people who become manipulated and coerced into doing all kinds of things because somebody else wanted them to do, versus people who say, "No, I control my attention. I control my life because I am indistractable."

• 30:44Speaker 00

  So the first step is to master those internal triggers. So now that we know, okay, we've got traction, we've got distraction, we have internal triggers and external triggers, now we work through those four main points. And this is how we become indistractable. So it's using these four techniques in concert. The first being mastering the internal triggers. And there's lots of tactics that we can talk about there. The next part is making time for traction, right? This is where we actually ask ourselves, "Wait a minute. How do we want to spend our time?" Because, you know, I have very little sympathy when somebody says, "Oh, I got distracted because did you see what happened on social media? Did you see what happened in the news? My boss wanted this, my kids want that." And then you ask them, you say, "Okay, but what did you get distracted from?" Meaning, what was on your calendar?

• 31:27Speaker 00

  What did you want to do with your time that you didn't do? "Oh, I'm not really sure." Well, then, how did you know you got distracted if you didn't know what you got distracted from? So we have to plan our day. There's just no other option. And this is where I bust some myths around. For example, to do lists, right? To do lists, turns out, most people use, the way they use to do lists is completely destroying their productivity. And we can talk about why that's such a horrible technique in a minute. The third step is to get back to those external triggers, right? The pings, the dings, the rings, all of these things in our outside environment that can lead us towards traction or distraction. What we're going to do is to systematically ask ourselves, is that external trigger serving me? Or am I serving it? Is it leading me towards traction or distraction?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  And they're not all bad, right? If you get a phone call that was for a meeting you scheduled, or a notification on your phone that says, hey, now it's time to go work out or be with your kids or whatever. If that's what you plan to do, it's traction. But if you're with your daughter, as I was, and now I get a notification for some stupid app, well, then that's distraction. So we're going to ask ourselves for email, for meetings, for our desktop, for our phone. We're going to systematically go through all these different places where we might find external triggers and do what I call, hack back the external triggers. Because one of the things that I think really drives me crazy these days is that we blame the technology, but the technology is so much weaker. We are so much more powerful than the tech companies. For example, let me give you one quick example. I love YouTube.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  There's some amazing videos on YouTube. There's also a lot of crap on YouTube. So what I did, I got a free Chrome extension called YouTube DF. Okay, DF stands for Distraction Free. Totally free. And when I install this YouTube DF now, every time I watch a video, I only see the video. There's no autoplay, right? Disables that feature. It scrubs out all those videos on the sidebar there, all the ads, all that crap. Gone, right? I hacked back the technology. And so by doing that, now I'm in control. Now I'm using the technology the way I want to. And guess what? There's nothing that Zuckerberg or Dorsey or any of those guys can do now that I've hacked back the technology.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  So we're much more powerful than they are if we know what to do. And there's a lot, all these tools are free, essentially. And then the last step, just to finish up the last of the four, is to prevent distraction with PAX. Pacts are what we call a pre-commitment device. This is where we make a promise with ourselves, with other people, to make sure that as the last line of defense, when we might get distracted without conscious awareness, we put in some kind of firewall to make sure that as the last line of defense, we don't slip into distraction. We can talk more about all those tactics, but essentially, it's really about these four strategies that I think a lot of people, they look for the silver bullets, they look for the life hacks. There is no silver bullet. Really, it's about these four strategies. Master the internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back the external triggers, and prevent distraction with pacts.

• 34:25Shane Parrish?

  Let's dive into them in order. Let's start with mastering your internal triggers.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  How we master internal triggers is a few different ways that I talk about in the book. And none of these techniques, by the way, are just like, you know, techniques I made up. This is, you know, I spent five years researching this book, and there's over 30 pages of peer-reviewed studies and citations. So, you know, a lot of what I draw from is from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which has been around for decades. And so, there's a few different techniques. So, let me, just for the sake of time, I'll give you a few that I use every day to help me master these internal triggers. One of the first things we can do is to write down the preceding emotion. So, when you find yourself getting distracted, if you can just take out a pen and paper and just write down what was that sensation? Boredom, anxiety, fear, uncertainty? Just if you can just put pen to paper

• 35:14Speaker 00

  and recognize that sensation even after it happened, that's okay. Very substantial first step. The next step is to explore that sensation with curiosity rather than contempt. Okay, so we don't want to be a blamer. We don't want to be a shamer. We want to explore that sensation, okay? Don't shame yourself. Don't tell yourself, "Oh, there I go again, getting distracted. I'm, you know, I must have a short attention span. There must be something wrong with me." No, there's nothing wrong with you. You're learning a new skill of how to recognize those uncomfortable emotional states. The third step, and this is called surfing the urge, and this has been around for decades, a very, very effective technique, because what we realize is that emotions...

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Are like waves that they crest and subside. So if we can just hold out long enough for that emotional wave to crest and then and then subside, we can overcome that urge. And here's how we do it. One of the techniques that I use almost every day is called the 10 minute rule. And the 10 minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction. Okay, eating that piece of chocolate cake that you're trying to cut back on sugar, uh, smoking a cigarette, uh, picking up the cellphone when you really want to be working on that project that that that you need to focus on, whatever the case might be, you can give in to that distraction, but not right now. Okay, you're gonna do that in 10 minutes. Why is this such a powerful technique?

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Because we know that for frequently occurring external triggers, meaning if you can't, if you can't remove the external triggers from your environment, abstinence doesn't work. Okay, in fact, abstinence can backfire. Why does abstinence backfire? It's almost like when you pull on a rubber band, right? If you pull on a rubber band and you pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, eventually it gets so tight that when you let go of the rubber band, the rubber band doesn't go back to where it started. No, it's gonna ricochet across the room, right? And that's how these, when you abstain, when you tell yourself, no, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't, don't, don't, don't, okay, fine. When you give in, the brain begins to associate that the relief from the discomfort of telling

• 37:18Speaker 00

  yourself no only comes from telling yourself yes. And this is actually a theory as to why cigarettes are as addictive as they are. It's not that nicotine doesn't cause a sensation in the brain, absolutely, but it's the association of don't smoke, don't smoke, don't smoke, don't smoke, okay, fine. That's actually what we get addicted to. And it's the same exact thing. This is why digital detoxes don't work, right? Because we're not learning how to deal with that discomfort. So one of the ways to deal with the discomfort, as opposed to telling yourself no, you're gonna tell yourself not yet. And so when we say, okay, I'm gonna work on this for 10 minutes. So many times I'll take out my phone, I'll set the timer for 10 minutes. And now I have two choices to make. I can either get back to the task at hand, right? Do whatever it is I said I was going to do with my time in advance.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Or I can explore that sensation with curiosity rather than contempt. I can just, sometimes I just sit there, five, 10 minutes go by. Where all I'm doing is just sitting with my sensations. What is it that I'm experiencing right now? Just having a little conversation with myself, not beating myself up. And what you will find is by the time that alarm goes off, by just 10 minutes, right? It feels like forever in the moment. But if you just let 10 minutes go by, you will see that that emotional urge will crest and subside, just like a wave, nine times out of 10, you don't even have that urge anymore. And you're right back at work. And so you've successfully mastered that internal trigger. So that's, that's one technique out of many that we can use.

• 38:42Shane Parrish?

  And two is managing your time?

• 38:45Speaker 00

  So the second step is to make time for traction. That's the second big strategy. Making time for traction essentially acknowledges that you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. And so this is where we're actually, yeah, so this, this is, this is a really, really important insight. Most people out there don't keep any sort of a schedule. What they keep is a to do list. And to do lists are horrible.

• 39:10Shane Parrish?

  I feel so validated right now.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  Oh, you're not a big to do list guy either?

• 39:14Shane Parrish?

  No, I hate to do, I, I put every, almost everything in my calendar.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Yes, okay, thank goodness. So you're, you're already a convert. And, and this is, this has been around for decades, actually. This is one of the most well researched time management techniques out there. This is called making an implementation intention. Literally thousands of studies have shown that you are much more likely to do what you say you're going to do when you plan a time and place to do it. It's kind of common sense and it's incredible how few people say, oh, I use my to do list to get things done because that's what some guru told me, or I read some book that that's what I'm supposed to do. And they don't realize that to do lists are killing your productivity. And they kill your productivity for a few reasons. I know I'm killing a sacred cow right now, but this is really, really important. I'm not saying don't write down things, okay?

• 40:00Speaker 00

  If what you do is a brain dump of here's all the things I need to get done, that's fine. What I'm saying specifically is don't run your life with a to-do list. Don't wake up in the morning and look at your to-do list as the first place you look. You should be looking at your calendar. Your calendar is your best to-do list. And the reason to-do lists are so toxic is for a few reasons. Number one, when people look at a to-do list, first thing in the morning, as opposed to their calendar, do you think the first thing they do in the morning is the important thing? The hard thing? The thing they know they really need to get done? No, of course not. They do the easy stuff, right? They do the stuff that's not that important, the distracting stuff. It doesn't really matter if they did. That's what we tend to do. The second big problem with to-do lists is that they're not, there's no constraint to a to-do list.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  So what people do with to-do lists, they just add more and more and more and more, making them even less likely to finish what they say they're going to do. I've never met anybody who actually finishes everything they say they're going to do on their to-do list, unless they keep a calendar. They never finish everything. And this was me, by the way, five years ago. I mean, this is very autobiographical. And the third reason this is so toxic is that when you live like this, when day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you don't do what you said you're going to do, you still have unfinished tasks at the end of your day on your to-do list, you are reinforcing a self-image of someone who doesn't live with personal integrity, right? That you are reinforcing another day went by and I didn't do what I said I'm going to do.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  I lied to myself, yes, yet again, I didn't go to the gym, I didn't finish that project, I didn't make time for my kids, whatever the case might be, I didn't do what I said I was going to do. And that, over time, begins to become acceptable. And that's where we really lose the war. We begin to think of our self-image as someone who just can't follow through, and then the lost cause. As opposed to a time box calendar, with a time box calendar, what we're doing is we're going to decide in advance how we are going to spend our time. And the only metric of success Is not, did we check some box off, right? That's not the metric of success. The only metric of success is not finishing anything. The only metric of success is, did we do what we said we were going to do

• 42:14Speaker 00

  for as long as we said we would without distraction? Not, did I finish? Okay, this is a big mind shift for people. It's not about finishing the task. It's about working on the task for as long as you said you would without distraction. And it turns out that people who use that tactic actually finish more. They are actually more productive than the to-do list people. So that's why time boxing is such an absolutely fundamentally important technique that we must use. And it's really about what I call turning our values into time. Where the first step here is to ask yourself, what are your values, really? I mean, that's where we start. But this is very difficult for people because, you know, I don't know, what are my values?

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Instead, what I tell people to do is to look at values as attributes of the person you want to become. Okay, values are defined as attributes of the person you want to become. So what you're going to do is to ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend their time? And so here's where I give these three life domains. Of you, you are at the center of these three life domains. How would the person you want to become invest time in themselves? How much time would the person you want to become spend reading, or prayer, or heck, video games? Whatever it is that you want to do with your time to invest in yourself? How much time would that person spend on themselves? And put that time in your calendar. Then the relationships domain, right? How much time would the person I want to become spend on friendships? On important family relationships?

• 43:41Speaker 00

  On community groups? Whatever the case might be, put that time in your calendar. And then finally, the last domain is what we call the work domain. And this is where we have two kinds of work. We have reflective work and we have reactive work. Reactive work, you'll be very familiar with. This is the pings, the dings, the rings. This is responding to the emails, the Slack notifications, the phone calls. Part of everybody's job is reactive work. The problem is that if we're not careful, our entire day becomes reactive work. And so we have got to carve out time to think. And I know you're a huge advocate of this, Shane, that if you want a competitive advantage over other people in your industry, if you want a competitive advantage over people

• 44:23Speaker 00

  in your workplace, make time to think because nobody's doing it. Right? Like, nobody's making that time to plan, to strategize. They're just reacting all day long as opposed to the person who makes 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour and protects that time and keeps it sacred for time for reflective work. This is the kind of person who gets ahead. So that's what, that's what making time for traction and turning your values into time is all about.

• 44:46Shane Parrish?

  I like how you phrase that. I have a couple of things that might add, or maybe you can push back on. One of which is, I remember people tell you what their priorities are and then you ask them how they spend their time and they often don't align up, right? In part because they operate on this to-do list mentality. And the other thing I've noticed, and this is what got me out of the to-do list, to be honest with you, is when you have a to-do list, it's really easy for somebody to usurp your time. It's really easy for somebody to have a request for you and you just put it on your to-do list. You just scroll to the bottom of like this four or five pages or whatever your system is and you just add it and you're like, I'll get to that. But when you have to actually go in and physically book a time in your calendar and you start

• 45:31Shane Parrish?

  going out two weeks, three weeks, you're like, oh, maybe, maybe this isn't that important to me. Maybe this isn't something I should be saying yes to. It's really interesting. And then the other aspect that I thought was, this also applies at work, right? Where if you're running a team and you're sort of like, you're given priorities and you have a top three priorities, it's, you can do a calendar audit and see what percentage of your time and your team's time is actually spent on those priorities versus all the other stuff that gets in the way. And what we've found, or I've found, I guess, is One, put all the table steak stuff in the afternoon. So all the stuff that's not really adding value. So for me, a lot of times it's sort of like lawyers calls, calls with accountants,

• 46:16Shane Parrish?

  like all this stuff of running a business. I put it all in the afternoon because my most valuable time of the day is the morning. And the morning is for me to be productive on the things that matter to me. And I never have to find time because I know with very few exceptions from every day, I don't book anything until 12. There's the odd exception, but it's just, it's there. It's sacred time. It's untouched. And then I can work on the things that are the most important to me. And I find that that gives me velocity, like I actually start moving towards my destination versus when I didn't do that and I operated on this to do list, I was so busy. Like there was nobody who was busier than I was, but I wasn't actually getting anywhere. Like I didn't feel like I was getting any traction.

• 46:59Shane Parrish?

  I was just sort of running in circles.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Absolutely. It's such a great point. And even the words you use, you know, you said the way you spent your time, you know, we use that kind of language of how we spend time, how we pay attention. We use the same words with time and attention as we do for money. Right? We spend money. We, we pay with dollars and cents, just the same way we would spend time and we pay attention because these things have value. And, uh, you know, it's ridiculous to think that you would stand on the corner and give whoever wants it, you know, here's, here's a five, here's a 20, take my money. Go ahead, have as much as you want. You would be judicious about how you spend your money. And yet, when it comes to time, this one thing that no matter how rich you are, you still have the same 24 hours in a day, right? Jeff Bezos doesn't have more time in his day.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Bill Gates doesn't have more than 24 hours. We all have the same amount, no matter how rich you are. Somehow that we give away to everybody. And that's, that's so, uh, so counterproductive. And I think what you said about, uh, in the, in the company context is super important. One of the techniques I talk about in the book that has, you know, really changed my life, and I know it's changed the life of, of thousands of people who use this technique is called schedule syncing. And this is, this is pretty new. A lot of people, you know, a lot of people have heard of time boxing, but schedule syncing is not something that people have readily do. And this is a really, really powerful technique because one of the benefits of time boxing, of building this time box calendar, and by the way, you're not, you're not building it once,

• 48:29Speaker 00

  you're refining it, right? So it took you some refining to know, actually, you know what? For my reflective work, that needs to be in the morning. For someone else, it's not in the morning. But you only do that if you treat this like a scientist, not a drill sergeant, but a scientist where you're revising and saying, you know what? I'm going to move this to over here next week because it didn't work so well the past week, not during the day, but during the week ahead, you can revise that schedule to make it easier and easier to follow. And when you do that, when you have a time box schedule, now you have a physical artifact and that physical artifact can be shared. Just as you mentioned, you can see how people are spending their time. And this is something that I think everyone can do, even if they work at a company that has a very always-on culture, you know, half of the book is about stuff you can do yourself.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  The other half of Indistractable is about operating in various contexts. So there's a whole section in the book that I think is probably one of the most important sections of the book of how do you build an indistractable workplace? Right? What if you work in a place where people are always bothering you and never give you that time to concentrate because, you know, they insist that we all must be always on? There's a lot to that. We can talk about that in a minute. But one of the things that you can do is to manage your manager by doing a schedule sync. What does that look like? We have all heard this awful advice, one of, one of my pet peeves in the personal productivity community is this horrible advice that I'm sure we've all heard a million times, which says, if you want to be more productive, if you want to focus, if you want to not get distracted,

• 49:55Speaker 00

  you learn, need to learn how to say no, right? Haven't we all heard that? Learn how to say no to people. What kind of stupid advice is that? You're going to go to your boss, the person who pays your bills. You're going to tell that person, um, no, you're going to get fired. That's horrible advice. Exactly. So that's just the dumbest advice I've ever heard. Instead, don't be the person who says no. You want to make your boss the one who says no in terms of what projects you should work on and what you should not work out. How do you do that? You do a schedule sync. Here's how it looks. You take your calendar. Now that you have your physical artifact, you print out your calendar. If you keep it in your schedule, doesn't matter. You sit down with your boss for 15 minutes. Okay, Monday morning, 15 minutes.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Sit down with your boss and say, "Look, boss, here's how I'm gonna spend the week ahead." Okay, you see all these time boxes? Here's how much time I'm gonna work on this project, on that project, this meeting, that meeting. Now, you see this other piece of paper over here? Okay, here's where I wrote all the things that I didn't know where to allocate in the week ahead. Can you help me reprioritize if there is something on this list that needs to go in my calendar? Okay, now you've handed them the tool. They will worship the ground you walk on. Why? Most managers have no idea what their employees are doing, and they're dying to know how they're spending their time, but they're not gonna ask them because they don't wanna micromanage them. So if you proactively do this and say, "Look, boss, I'm spending every minute working on this stuff, and here's how I'm spending my time."

• 51:24Speaker 00

  You, through that schedule sync process, you're helping reprioritize what's important, what's not important. And every time you do this, you will find something that's not as important as you thought, that your boss says, "You know, actually, take that off your calendar. Can you do this thing instead? Or that meeting's not that important, or, you know, this one is." That schedule syncing process will absolutely change your work life.

• 51:44Shane Parrish?

  All right, let's go to number three, which is sort of the external managing, the external, how did you word that?

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Triggers.

• 51:51Shane Parrish?

  Triggers. How do we dive into this?

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, so hacking back the external triggers. So this is kind of the most very tactical part of the book. This is where we actually dive into, how do we hack back these technologies? And I use that word "hack back" very deliberately because, you know, the definition of "to hack" in computer programmer parlance means to gain unauthorized access, right? That's what it means to hack. So a computer hacker might hack into a bank account or something. And so I use that term because, you know, we all basically know that any company that monetizes through advertising is hacking our attention. Does anybody not know that? Does anybody not know that Fox News, and CNN, and Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, and Facebook, and Twitter, all these companies make money on ads? They sell your eyeballs, your attention, to the highest bidder. That shouldn't be news to anybody.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  The fact is, though, that we can hack back. We are not powerless. And so this is where we talk about, you know, the tools I talked about before, like YouTube DF, Facebook News Feed Eradicator, which is wonderful, right? As great as that news feed is... I don't think people need it, right? Like, I certainly don't need it. I love Facebook. I use it every day, but I'll go to specific people's pages to see what's up with them. I don't want to see that wall of garbage called the newsfeed, so I don't. I have a Chrome extension that every time I go to Facebook, I see a nice little inspirational quote in where that newsfeed used to be. And guess what? Zuckerberg can't do anything about it.

• 53:13Shane Parrish?

  Isn't that an arms race at the end of the day? Like, if you're doing that and then enough people do it, Facebook still needs to make money so that you can have the product. Like, walk me through how you see that playing out.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  I don't actually... First of all, it's been around for a while. It's been around for years, and they haven't done anything about it. And second, I think the blowback would be so severe if they tried to do something about it, that I can't see that on their radar. And more so, the evidence of this is that we actually see companies, tech companies, doing things to help us use their products less, right? Apple's Screen Time feature, Google Well-being feature. I mean, they have built... The two major phone OS manufacturers have built into their products ways for us to use their products less. Why would they do that? The reason they've done that is because they realize that products... That that is a way to make their products better.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  And the perfect analog here is what happened in the automobile industry. So, seatbelts appeared in cars 17 years before any legislation required it. You know why? Because safer cars sell better. That's why. And so, that's why these companies are happy to give you these tools to use this... To use their technology in a way that doesn't burn you out. We see this... The companies are doing this voluntarily. You know, Instagram, big bad Facebook owns Instagram. Well, now, they have... They've instituted what's called a stopping queue. So, they tell you at the bottom, when you read all your Instagram stories, that said, "Yep, you're caught up," right? That is not a good thing for them to do if all they care about was keeping you addicted to their product, because they told you you're caught up, right? That's not in their interest, so to speak.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  But they know if they don't do that, and you get burned out, then you're going to uninstall and say, "This doesn't serve me." Because fundamentally, people aren't stupid, right? We're pretty good consumers. If you go to the grocery store and you buy an apple and it's rotten in the core... You'll buy it once, but you're not going to keep going back to a crappy grocer who doesn't keep fresh produce. You'll go buy something else. And so this is what they're seeing, that because people like me and you are installing ad blockers and Chrome extensions to hack back the product, they, if anything, it will prompt them to change their products to help us moderate our use so that we don't get burned out with these complaints and hack back this way.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  So I'm all for hacking back these products and bring on the arms race because I think the consumer is much more powerful than they are.

• 55:39Shane Parrish?

  And the fourth phase of this was the one that I was, I liked the most, which was pre-commit.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so pacts and pre-commitments, there are three types of pacts. We have what we call an effort pact, a price pact, and an identity pact. So an effort pact is when we put some bit of friction in between us and something we don't want to do. So let me give you a good example. And just as a disclaimer here, don't jump to this technique. A big mistake that people make is they say, "Oh, I get it, I get it. I'll make a bet with somebody or I'll, I'll, I'll do this." And, and they go straight to that. This will backfire. This technique will not work unless you do it in order. First, you have to master the internal triggers, then make time for traction, then hack back the external triggers. The fourth and final step, the fail-safe, the firewall to distraction is this fourth step, but you have to do the other three steps first.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  So an effort pact is when there's some bit of friction. So for example, several years ago, my wife and I, you know, we've been married for almost 19 years. And a few years ago, our sex life was really suffering, that every night we were going to bed and I was fondling my phone and my wife was coddling her iPad. And we, we, we found that we weren't being intimate with each other and we were going to bed later and later and later. And so when I was doing this research, I, I came across this idea of an effort pact. And I went to the hardware store and I bought us a $10 outlet timer. Now, this outlet timer will turn on or off anything you plug into it at a predetermined time of day or night.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  What did I plug into it? I plugged in our internet router and all our monitors. So in my household, every night, 10:00 PM. The internet shuts off automatically. In fact, more recently, now we have, we upgraded. Now we have an internet router that turns on, it comes built in this feature. Many internet routers do, where it'll turn off only some devices, but it won't turn off your home security system or whatever else might be on wifi. And so that would be an example of an effort pact. Could I find a way to get back on the internet? Of course I could. I could unplug the router, replug it in. I could fiddle with the settings. Of course I could find a way to get back on if I really wanted to cheat. But the idea here is that I've added a bit of friction. I've added a bit of effort and mindfulness to an otherwise mindless behavior. So that's one example.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  There are many other examples in the book of different effort pacts you can make. The second type of pact is called a price pact.

• 58:06Shane Parrish?

  Wait, did that help your sex life first before we go?

• 58:09Speaker 00

  Yes, it did. And it did. And I get more sleep as well.

• 58:14Shane Parrish?

  The second pact.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. The second pact is called a price pact. And this is where we have some kind of monetary disincentive to getting distracted. And so actually, this was, this is a good example of, I saw this research when I came across a study that found that the most effective smoking cessation study in history was a study that simply paid people to quit smoking. And not only that, it was even more effective if the person had to put some skin in the game. So in this experiment, some people had to put in $150 that they would get back if they didn't smoke for six months. And those people were more likely to quit smoking than the people who just won money without putting some skin in the game. So when you have some kind of monetary disincentive to getting distracted,

• 59:02Speaker 00

  that's another form of a pact.

• 59:03Shane Parrish?

  I remember, I was, I was there when you and Mark Manson made this bet.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Yes, oh, that's right. That's right. You remember that. You were at that table.

• 59:10Shane Parrish?

  You want to explain this to us?

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so this happened after about four years of researching this, the studies in the book. And I just needed to write the damn thing, right? I just needed to sit down and do it. And so I had learned this research. I had studied about how powerful these, these price pacts can be. And so I told our mutual friend, I told Mark one day, as we were all having lunch together. I said, you know what? If I don't finish this book by, I think it was January 1st, right? By the end of the year, if I don't finish this book. I'm gonna give you $10,000. And my hand was shaking. You remember as I was like shaking his I was like scared. But hey, guess what? Do you think I paid him the $10,000? Of course I didn't pay him the $10,000 because I finished my damn book. And I kept my money.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  So it's it's a wonderful way to incentivize yourself to finish a task. Now, many people will not do this because they're scared they might have to do the work. Right? And that's why a lot of people, because this technique is incredibly effective. You know, you'll if you put enough stakes into, you know, enough skin in the game, you will do it. But many people say, well, I don't want to do it because then I would actually have to do the work. But of course, that's the point. Right? That is, that is why these packs are so powerful. The one caveat here is that price packs are not good for every type of behavior. For example, don't dare do this to change your behavior around nail biting or something. Because it has to be where you can remove the external triggers. So you it's, you know, don't don't make a bet with somebody that you'll stop biting your nails. Horrible idea. Don't do that.

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  There's only some types of behaviors that can be changed with these types of bets. Principally ones that you can escape the external triggers. You can remove the the external trigger. And where the behavior is fully in your control. So don't bet somebody that you're gonna make a million dollars by the end of next year. That's not 100% in your control. But for me, writing this damn book was 100% of my control.

• 1:01:03Shane Parrish?

  And you control your time. And what was the third type of pact?

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  The third type of pact is called an identity pact. And this is actually the most powerful of the three pacts. An identity pact uses this psychology of having some kind of moniker, some kind of identity that we use to describe ourselves. This research actually comes from the psychology of religion, where we know that people who have some kind of of of of identity, some kind of noun they use to describe yourselves, are much more likely to do what they say they're going to do. So for example, if someone says, I'm a devout Muslim or an observant Christian, or even I'm a vegetarian. A vegetarian doesn't wake up in the morning and say, hmm, I think I'll have a bacon sandwich for breakfast. No, vegetarians don't eat meat. That is who they are. It is their identity.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  And so this is why I titled the book Indistractable. Because this is our moniker, right? Indistractable sounds like indestructible. This is the, this is our superpower, right? This is the superpower I would most want per my conversation with my daughter. Having that power to do what I say I'm going to do, uh, to live with personal integrity. That's my identity and we can all call ourselves indistractable. Even if you just listened to this podcast episode, if you are the kind of person who strives to do what they say they're going to do. It doesn't mean you never get distracted. By the way, I, I made up this word indistractable. It's a made up term and so I can define it any way I want. Uh, and so it doesn't mean you never get distracted. That's impossible.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  It means that unlike a distractible person, you know why you got distracted and you can do something about it. Uh, there's this wonderful quote from Poila Koila who said, "A mistake repeated more than once is a decision." So if you keep getting distracted by the same stupid thing, day after day after day, you are deciding to be distractible. Whereas an indistractable person says, "Look, there's only three reasons. Either it's an internal trigger, an external trigger, or a planning problem. Every distraction is only one of those three reasons. What can I do today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow?" And so having that moniker is, is very powerful. And in fact, I'm, I'm inspired by the fact that we've been here before, that I remember as a kid. Uh, I grew up in the early eighties.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  I guess we're about the same age, so you probably remember this too. I remember that in my household and all my friends' houses, everybody had an ashtray in their living room. Yeah. Right? Everybody did. That my, my parents didn't smoke, but that's just what people did back then in the early eighties. Everybody had ashtrays. Why? Because back then you were just expected to be able to smoke wherever you wanted, including in people's private homes. Now today, that would be ridiculous. Can you imagine if someone came to your house and just lit up a cigarette in your living room? That would be crazy. Nobody would imagine doing something like that. What changed? Was it that, did we pass any laws that said you can't smoke in someone's private residence? Of course not, there's never been such a law.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  What changed was that our social norms, this is what Paul Graham calls social antibodies. That societies tend to inoculate themselves from unhealthy behaviors. So how did this happen? One day my mom threw away the ashtrays and when one of her friends came over and took out a pack of cigarettes and was about to light a cigarette. She said, oh, I'm sorry. We are non smokers. If you would like to smoke, if you'd be so kind as to go outside. And this was a big deal. Like, this woman got really offended that my mom asked her to smoke outside. Exactly. It was like a big deal back then. Exactly. You could lose friends. Today, of course, this is commonplace, right? We've changed society this way because people said, I'm a non smoker. People brave enough like my mom to say, I'm a non smoker. So this is,

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  this is the new norm. This is the new manners. And that's exactly what we have to do with our distractions, like these technological distractions, is to say, hey, I'm indistractable. Yeah, do I do some things that are a little bit weird? Sure. I keep a time box calendar. I hack back these external triggers. I don't respond to every email and every text notification within 15 seconds of getting it. Because this is who I am. I'm indistractable. Is it so weird from someone who has an unusual diet that's not, you know, mainstream, or maybe as a minority religious group that wears a religious garb? It's no different. So this is why we can call ourselves indistractable, to help us become the kind of people we want to become.

• 1:05:16Shane Parrish?

  I like that. Now, now let's get back to the original question, which is like, how do you teach your daughter, who's 12, how to become indistractable? And then, how would you go about teaching an adult to become indistractable?

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So for both adults and kids, it's just these four steps, right? So tactics are less important than the strategies. So tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it. The strategies are more important. So if you can visualize in your head, these two arrows going to the right and to the left of traction and distraction, and then the two arrows pointing to the center of internal triggers and external triggers, now you have the visual, the model in your head. If you, if you take away nothing else, remember these four points of traction, distraction, external triggers, internal triggers. Now, that these are the, this is the strategy. Everything else is tactics. And so, the, the way we teach this, for example, to a child, and there's a whole section in the book on how to raise indistractable

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  kids, first, we understand those internal triggers. And there's a really interesting body of literature around what children are actually escaping when they overuse technology. There's so much misinformation and fear mongering out there around kids and technology. We can talk about all this misinformation if you like. But basically, what we have to understand is that If a child is using a technology, it's never just about screen time. Screen time is a horrible metric because screen time has, does not consider what the child is doing. Who are they doing it with? Are they doing it with an adult? Are they being monitored? How long they are doing it?

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  And what would they be doing instead of being on that device? You know, one of the things that I think we fail to consider when we look at these statistics around teen suicide and this and that. You know, one of the things we almost never talk about, you never hear anybody saying is that this stuff doesn't live in a vacuum. That we have to ask ourselves, what would kids be doing instead of being on their devices? You know, a few months ago, I watched this classic film. It was recommended as the 100 best films you should watch with your kid. And one of the movies was American Graffiti. Have you ever seen this movie?

• 1:07:29Shane Parrish?

  No, I don't even think so. We've been on this 80s kick lately, but no, I've never seen that one.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  Okay, so this, you should, you should see it. You should definitely see it. It's like 1970 something. Richard Dreyfuss is in it, like a bunch of celebrities. It's actually the, the movie that inspired Happy Days.

• 1:07:45Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:07:45Speaker 00

  The television series. First they made American Graffiti. Then that became a spin off of Happy Days. And it's all about like the good old days back in the 1950s when, you know, kids were kids and it's horrible. Like it is kids drag racing and drunk driving and having reckless sexual behavior, all this stuff that kids used to do that I like, I was watching with this with my daughter about like, oh, the good old days. It's horrible.

• 1:08:13Shane Parrish?

  No, we just have, we all have the same like human impulsiveness and the sort of like the same, we just have better tools now or different tools, not even better tools, right? Like different things available.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  In many ways, better tools. Cause if you think about it, if you look at the statistics, everything that kills kids.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  Everything that harms kids, not just kills kids, it harms kids, is down to record lows. Homicide, record lows. Truancy, record lows. Drug use, record lows. Pregnancy, record lows. Incarceration, record lows. All these things are at record lows. Even suicide has gone up over the past few years, but it's not at a record high. If you look at the 1970s and 80s and 90s, actually, suicide was higher back then. So what they do is, when they show you suicide has gone up, this is what they did in the Social Dilemma movie, they only showed it to you from the graph starting around 2004. But if you take the X-axis back, you'll see suicide isn't at an all-time high. Quite the opposite. It used to be much higher in the past. So if we wanted to build

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  a device to keep kids off the streets, off the roads, and safe at home, maybe this gadget is not such a bad idea. It seems to be having some upside.

• 1:09:22Shane Parrish?

  I mean, this is, it's a contentious thing with parents, because I talk about this all the time with like, the kids' friends' parents, and they're like, "Well, how much screen time do you give them?" And I'm like, "Well, that's a wrong question, because there's different types of screen time, right? There's, you're playing a video game, uh, screen time. There's like, you're making music, or learning to code, or doing something educational, which is very different type of screen time. And I think of them completely distinct. And so it's not all the same type of screen time.

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  So true. I mean, if, is, uh, talking with grandma and grandpa for an hour on Zoom, is that bad?

• 1:09:56Shane Parrish?

  Oh my god, if I could get my kids to talk with my grandparents for an hour, that would be amazing.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I think it's, it's, the point here is, it's nuanced. It requires more than just technology bad, uh, books good, right? Like, it's just way too simplistic.

• 1:10:12Shane Parrish?

  Totally. But I think we've fallen into this sort of like, trap. What I never wanted was, I didn't want computers to be a babysitter. I didn't want screen time to be, "Okay, well, uh, you go for an hour while I do this thing," um, with very few exceptions. And it's so easy to get into that habit.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Totally, totally. And I thi- I think that you you hit the nail on the head that studies find that one of the defining traits of of families that raise well-adjusted children is having meals together.

• 1:10:42Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  Uh, without technology. I mean, it drives me crazy when I go out to a restaurant and I see parents with with, you know, just giving their kids the iPads, like the iPad of some kind of iNanny. Uh, please have moments in your child's life with you where you have no phone zones. And one of those no phone zones should be the family dining table. A simple thing you could do. Another no phone zone is, uh, the kid's bedroom. I cannot figure out why a child needs to sleep with their cellphone. Why would a child need to have a television in their room? Uh, anything that interrupts sleep, I think, is unnecessary. Now, they can have it during the day, but the the science is is is provides really good evidence that sleep is absolutely essential for a brain, uh, for a a growing teenage

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  brain, a child's brain. And I think the reason we see some of these mental health, uh, uh, outcomes that that, you know, these these, um, the deleterious outcomes is not the technology itself. It's what the technology is displacing, namely, sleep.

• 1:11:41Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  Right? That that is the big culprit. And I think anything that boops or beeps or buzzes in a child's room doesn't have a place, including older technology like televisions. Uh, why does a kid need a television in their bedroom? It beats me.

• 1:11:52Shane Parrish?

  I I I'm with you. I mean, we have no tech in in any of the bedrooms, no TVs, no computers. All the computers are in sort of like public areas in the house to encourage good browsing and all of that other stuff. But you mentioned, uh, sleep. Uh, you used to suffer from insomnia. Talk to me about that.

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  I did. Yeah, yeah, I did, actually, uh, for for quite a while. And actually, this this hearkens back to part in the book of where I talk about internal triggers a- as well as as making time for traction. You know, one of the, one of the dilemmas, I think, of planning time and why some people resist making a time box calendar is that they say, well, you know, I need spontaneity. I need time to just do what I feel like doing, uh, because what if I get inspired to work? If I sit down and say I'm gonna, I'm gonna write, or if I sit, if I go to bed and say I'm going to sleep, what if it doesn't come? Right? What if I I don't, I don't feel like it? And, um, this is a problem that I had for a while because I would go to bed, I'd have a bedtime, right? That was a new practice, by the way. That was something that I adopted. I learned from my daughter because she said,

• 1:12:54Speaker 00

  you know, Daddy, you tell me I have a bedtime. Why don't you have a bedtime? She was right. I was being a hypocrite. So I have a bedtime now. And now, when I, when I go to bed, for a while, I had this problem of I would go to bed. And every night, I would wake up around 3 a.m. And I would, would not be able to fall back asleep. And so I thought, you know, maybe this whole time boxing thing is stupid. Maybe I, maybe you can't plan out what you're going to do. And, and so the idea here, the reason, the revelation I had here was to, to, to use uh, what I call reimagine your temperament, having a new conversation with yourself. So today, I have a mantra, right? That says, every time I'm up at 3 a.m., I have a mantra that goes, the body gets what the body needs.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  Right? The body gets what the body needs. And the reason I came across this was because I, I, I read that one of the leading causes of insomnia is rumination, right? Chewing on the fact that you can't go to sleep for hour after hour and stressing out about, well, if I don't get to sleep, then I won't be able to do that presentation. And my whole day is going to be shot. And, you know, that rumination can keep you up. That is actually part of what causes uh, insomnia for many people. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people, it's a leading cause of insomnia is that rumination. So by having this interruptive mantra that I repeat to myself, say, look, you know what? It's okay that I don't fall asleep, right? Because the body gets what the body needs. So if I don't sleep well tonight, I'll sleep well tomorrow night, right? And just repeating that mantra, the body gets what the body needs, the body gets what the body needs.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  I began to relax. I stopped ruminating. I stopped this rumination cycle. And you know what came next? I started falling asleep.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  And so uh, that, that was a very, very powerful technique and, and reinforced the, this notion of, you know, you can't always control the outcome. I mean, I know you do a ton of writing. You can't always sit down and write and say, oh, my goodness, you know, this is going to be the next New York Times bestseller. Here comes the muse. Look at all this creative, wonderful prose. You can't control that. That's not necessarily in your control. All you can control is having your butt in the chair to do the work when you said you would. All you can control, if you need enough sleep, is to get to bed on time so that you can get proper rest for your body. What your body does with that is not always in your control, but control the things you do have uh, agency over.

• 1:15:10Shane Parrish?

  Uh, one of my memories of our many conversations before is how you and your wife handled disagreements. And I think that would be worth sharing with people where you, do you remember what, how you guys handled them? Or how you said, because you assign scores to like how much you care about it.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:25Shane Parrish?

  You want to explain that?

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, it's funny that you mentioned it because now it's become so habitual. I forget that not everybody does it, but we, uh, we've been there.

• 1:15:34Shane Parrish?

  This is brilliant.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, you like it?

• 1:15:36Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, uh, it took me a while to realize that other people don't do this, but this is, this is like one of our secrets to a happy marriage. We've been married now in a, uh, Saturday will be 19 years. And, and the trick is to, uh, provide a weight to how important something is to you. So most of us, we kind of have two rules. I should caveat this. So one thing we have is a code word that you use when you want to do a nice thing for somebody. This is going to sound really weird, but basically like if you want the chance to do something nice to somebody and you don't want them to argue with you. So like, let me just take out the trash. We have a secret word that we use that when you hear that secret word, that means like, I'm doing this. I'm doing this nice thing for you. Don't argue with me.

• 1:16:22Speaker 00

  And it like builds your bank account of nice things you've done, right? So like you're almost, you get into the habit of not avoiding doing the work. You get into the habit of finding ways to, to do a little something to make your partner happy. That's one thing. And the second thing, what if, what if you disagree? That's when, when you want to do something nice, but what if, you know, you really, something's really important to you, you know? Uh, we, we've gone through a lot of turbulence in our, in our marriage. We're from different racial backgrounds, different religious backgrounds. We have a lot of differences between us and this system of scoring how important something is comes in handy. Because when we have a disagreement, uh, small or large, it can be like, hey, which place do you want to go for lunch?

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  Or, you know, how, how strongly do you think that our daughter should be homeschooled versus not? We use a score, one to 10. And just taking that pulse check of, you know, you can argue about something, but then when you actually ask the other person, well, how important is this to you? On a scale of one to 10. Ah, it's a two, or it's an eight. Oh, well, that tells you something right away. And particularly for me, I would get into the habit of arguing about something for the sake of the discussion and without actually revealing to her how important I really thought it was. Or, you know, sometimes if you let the emotions get the best of you, you'll argue almost for the for the sake of of the momentum you've built in the discussion as opposed to like,

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  okay, but really, how important is it? Ah, it's a three. Okay, well, I'm a six. Can we just go with this? Okay, sure, fine, whatever. And so you can't always do this. And by the way, you can cheat. So if your partner takes advantage of this, right, too much, it doesn't work, right? Because your partner could always say, or you could say, I'm a 10 all the time, and I always need to get my way. Well, of course, that's not going to work. There still has to be give and take. But it's an instant way to kind of get to the when you're done talking about a decision. Hey, I feel like Thai food. No, I feel like pizza. Well, how much do you want Thai food? I'm kind of a six. Oh, pizza, I'm a two. Okay, let's go for Thai.

• 1:18:21Shane Parrish?

  Right. What do you do when you're tied?

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  We're almost never tied.

• 1:18:25Shane Parrish?

  Do you get granular? Are you like 6.7?

• 1:18:30Speaker 00

  No, we, I don't know, flip a coin or something.

• 1:18:32Shane Parrish?

  I love that. And I've mentioned that often to friends of mine who struggle with sort of like this constant fighting. I'm like, have you ever tried to gauge how much you actually care about things? And they're like, no. And then they try it. And they're like, this is like, so revolutionary.

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. That's great. Thanks for telling me that. I didn't know. I didn't know it spread.

• 1:18:51Shane Parrish?

  This has been a great conversation. I want to sort of end. We've been I've been experimenting with this question at the end, which is like, when you're 90, what do you want people to say about you?

• 1:19:01Speaker 00

  That is a really, really good question. When I'm 90, what do I want people to say about me? I hope I don't care what other people say about me when I'm 90. And that's really hard for me to do. I think I do care. And

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Every time I have succeeded in life, it's been when I don't care what other people think about me. When I do care, I don't, I don't do my best work, right? I, I don't enjoy what I do. Like I'll spin myself up about, oh, will anybody like what I'm writing? And will they buy this book? And is this, you know, does anybody even care? And then I hate writing. I don't like what I do for a living. And when I, you know, I started two, two companies and same story. Like when I cared too much, I couldn't make proper decisions. And, and so I hope when I'm 90, that I've learned how to not care so much about what other people say about me.

• 1:19:58Shane Parrish?

  That's a brilliant answer. Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Oh, my pleasure. This was great, Shane. So good to see you again.

• 1:20:04Shane Parrish?

  Good to see you too, man.

• 1:20:10Shane Parrish?

  Hey, one more thing before we say goodbye. The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Farnham Street. I want to make this the best podcast you listen to, and I'd love to get your feedback. If you have comments, ideas for future shows or topics, or just feedback in general, you can email me at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter at Shane A. Parrish. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog/podcast. If you found this episode valuable, share it online with the hashtag The Knowledge Project or leave a review. Until the next episode.