Moment 2 - Nir Eyal On How To Stop Procrastinating

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this episode Nir Eyal, International Best-Selling Author, lecturer and inventor explains the psychological reasoning behind our procrastination. As entrepreneurs we all have a clear vision for what we want and who we want to be. But no matter how strong this vision is, procrastination and distraction somehow find a way to stand between us and getting stuff done. Nir breaks down the science behind distraction and offers advice in how we can become ‘Indistractable’. Full Episode - https://g2ul0.app.link/cvqxeLjPEfb Nir: https://www.instagram.com/neyal99/ https://twitter.com/nireyal Watch us on YouTube - www.youtube.com/StevenBartlettYT 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.

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  The fundamental question, which I know everybody wants to have the answer to, and you know, your book is incredibly positively reviewed, I checked everywhere, and the reviews are astounding, so I'm presuming you're the guy that has the answer. The question is, and this is the fundamental question, I guess you're addressing in the book, is why don't we do the things that we want to do? And look, my life is full of things that I really, really want to do, as is everybody's.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Everybody's.

• 0:31Steven Bartlett?

  Whether it's calling my mum, or like taking the trash out, or buying that thing on Amazon I know I need in the house that's causing me great inconvenience.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, or exercising, or eating right, or whatever it might be.

• 0:42Steven Bartlett?

  I just think, imagine the entrepreneur, the family member, the boyfriend I would be if I could just bloody do these things that I want to do.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 0:51Steven Bartlett?

  So, how do I do it?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it starts from understanding why we don't do these things. That fundamentally, the reason we procrastinate, the reason we get distracted, the reason we don't do what we say we're going to do, the reason we don't live with personal integrity, is because of an impulse control problem. That's really what it is. It's not that we're bad people, it's not that we're broken, it's not that we're messed up in some way, it's that we are looking for the easiest way to get psychological relief. And that is what our brains are designed to do. That, in fact, if you think about, what is the root of all human behaviour? Why do we do everything we do? There's this theory, and that many people are aware of, that everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  This is called Freud's pleasure principle. That is all about carrots and sticks, and we've all heard this before. That is not what is going on in the brain. That in fact, to get us to do everything that we do, everything that we do, the brain utilizes one thing, and that is discomfort. Everything we do is about the desire to escape an uncomfortable sensation. It's called the homeostatic response. If you think about this physiologically, right? If you go outside and it's cold, that's not comfortable, you put on a jacket. If you come back inside, now it's too hot, you take it off. If you feel hungry, you feel hunger pangs, that's not comfortable, so you eat.

• 2:12Steven Bartlett?

  What about sex?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Sex is a great one, actually, so this is a terrific point. You think, okay, well, you know, doesn't the species perpetuate itself by, through pleasure, through orgasm? But think about this for a minute. You know, in fact, the brain has two neural circuits. One is called the liking system and one is called the wanting system. Two separate systems. The liking system, the point of the liking system in the brain is to encode memories. Right, memories of what feels good. The point of the wanting system is to remind you of that with a painful prod. So let's take sex. The act of sex, the act of lovemaking or orgasm is fleeting, right? It's very, it doesn't take that long. Tell me about it. Right, tell you about it. But getting up to that, that takes a lot of work, right? The wooing and the, and the, and the pursuit.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  And if you think about what's involved, you know, there's a very good reason why we say love hurts. Because wanting, craving, lust, desire, those are psychologically destabilizing states. And that is what gets us to have sex. Is the discomfort of wanting someone, craving them, being obsessed with them. That stuff drives us crazy. I mean, literally, love does hurt neurologically speaking. Because remember, the brain doesn't get us to do things because they feel good. The brain gets us to do things because they felt good. It's the memory of that feeling that gets us, that prods us to go get it. But it does that through discomfort.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  So the reason this is so important is because if all human behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort, that means that time management is pain management. That fundamentally, if you don't do what you say you're going to do, if you procrastinate, if you delay, if you get distracted, it's because your brain has told you that the easiest way to find relief from psychological discomfort is with some kind of distraction. So we talked about it physiologically, how we do this biologically. But when our body feels uncomfortable, psychologically, it's the same exact thing. When we feel lonely, where do we go? We check Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, right? When we feel uncertain, we Google.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  When we feel bored, stock prices, sports scores, the news, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, the options are limitless. We do these things because we feel discomfort and we want to escape that feeling as quickly and easily as possible. So the idea here is, how do you train your brain? To no longer get relief from this uncomfortable state through distraction, but rather through acts of traction. That's what this is all about.

• 4:45Steven Bartlett?

  And you say acts of traction?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So to understand what distraction is, we have to understand what it is not. What is the opposite of distraction? So the opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. And in fact, both words come from the same Latin root, trahere, which means to pull. And they both end, you'll notice, in the same six letters, A C T I N. That spells action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you plan to do with intent, things that move you forward in life. The opposite of traction is distraction, anything that pulls you away from what you plan to do. So this is why this is super important. There's two reasons why this is very important. Number one, anything can be a distraction. And this gets entrepreneurs all the time. I used to sit down at my desk and I'd say, okay, now I'm going to work on that big project.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  I'm going to do that thing that I've been procrastinating on. I'm finally going to do that hard task. Here I go. Right after I check email.

• 5:37Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Right? Right after I do that other thing that I need to do right now, real quick. That thing that feels productive, it feels worky, right? It feels like that's something I had to do anyway, but that's what I call pseudo-work. Because if we give in to that distraction of email, which feels worky, right? It's, those are the more sinister distractions. It's really easy to say, oh, you're reading the newspaper when you're supposed to be reading, or you're supposed to be working, or you're, you know, watching YouTube when you're supposed to be working. That's obvious. The more pernicious distractions are the ones that are hidden, that we think are productive, but really are a distraction. Why are they so dangerous? Because when we do that, we are giving in to the urgent and paying the price of not doing what is important.

• 6:17Steven Bartlett?

  Why do we do that? When we've got that big project in front of us, which we know has a deadline of tomorrow, why do we do everything? You know, procrastination, well, at least that's how, you know, people think of it in society. Why do I choose to do everything other than the big projects?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Because you're looking to escape discomfort.

• 6:33Steven Bartlett?

  And the big project to me, neurologically and psychologically, is discomfort.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  And the bigger the project, the more things on your to-do list, we can talk about why I hate to-do lists in a minute. The more your to-do list, ironically, you would think, oh, the more I have to do, the more I should want to do it, right? But you know, it's the exact opposite. The more you have on the to-do list, the more you say, ah, screw it, I'm going to go out. Right? I'm going to go watch some videos, or I'm going to go hang out with my buddies. I want to escape because it feels horrible. And so you don't want to do it because it feels bad. And especially when there are other things in our, in our world that can relieve that discomfort, right? Go to the pub, hang out with some friends, watch a YouTube video, go on Facebook. Those things relieve that discomfort by distracting us.