Nir Eyal on How to Win Back Your Time and Attention | EP 586

In this episode of Passion Struck, John welcomes Nir Eyal, a behavioral designer and author known for his insights into human behavior and technology's impact on our lives. Eyal shares his journey into understanding distraction, rooted in his childhood experiences with obesity and emotional eating. He emphasizes that the real challenge today is not the abundance of information but the ability to focus our attention and turn that information into wisdom. Eyal discusses the concept of becoming "indistractable," highlighting that most distractions stem from internal triggers—emotional states like boredom, loneliness, and anxiety—rather than external ones. He argues that understanding these internal triggers is crucial for managing our attention and breaking free from distractions. Full Shownotes here: https://passionstruck.com/nir-eyal-how-to-win-back-your-time-and-attention/What You’ll Learn in This Episode: Mastering Internal Triggers: Recognizing the emotional discomfort that leads to distraction is essential for regaining control over our time and attention. The Importance of Curiosity-Driven Learning: Eyal advocates for teaching children to be autodidacts, emphasizing the need for skills that will remain relevant in an ever-changing world. Turning Values into Time: Eyal explains that to align our lives with our values, we must intentionally allocate time for activities that reflect who we want to become, rather than allowing distractions to dictate our schedules. Creating Healthy Relationships with Technology: Eyal suggests that parents can help their children manage technology use by modeling indistractable behavior themselves and providing opportunities for free play and social interaction. Reimagining Boredom and Negativity Bias: Eyal encourages listeners to embrace boredom as a catalyst for personal growth and to be aware of the negativity bias that can lead to compulsive media consumption. For more information on Nir Eyal: https://www.nirandfar.com/Sponsors: Factor Meals: http://factormeals.com/factormeals50off and use code “FACTOR MEALS 50 OFF” Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.” Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.” Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.” Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSIONNext on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, John sits down with Anne Marie Anderson, an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, sports journalist, and leadership expert. Anne Marie has spent years breaking barriers in sports media, navigating high-stakes environments, and coaching top athletes and executives on leadership, resilience, and communication. In our conversation, we'll dive into the mental frameworks of high performers, the art of storytelling, and how to build confidence in any field. For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help...

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

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  When I applied to college, the most important thing when you looked at a university was how many books were in their library? Who cares? It's completely pointless. Nobody cares how many books you have in the library because everybody has Google on their phone. And now we have ChatGPT, we have all these great products on our devices that allow us to have all the facts and figures we could possibly want at our fingertips. So, information is no longer scarce. We're drowning in information. What's scarce today is the ability to focus your attention long enough on that information to turn it into wisdom.

• 0:36John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:19John R. Miles?

  Hey, Passion Struck fam, welcome to episode 586. Whether you're a longtime listener or joining us for the first time, I am so grateful you're here. You've joined a global movement dedicated to igniting passion, living with intention, and creating a life filled with purpose and impact. Before we dive in, let's take a moment to reflect on our recent episodes. Last Tuesday, I sat down with Dr. Laurie Santos, one of the world's leading experts on happiness and wellbeing. She revealed the biggest misconceptions we have about joy, why our minds often mislead us, and how we can cultivate a more fulfilling life through small intentional changes. If you haven't listened yet, It's a must hear conversation that will completely shift how you think about happiness.

• 2:00John R. Miles?

  Then on Thursday, we explored breathwork, vulnerability, and redefining masculinity with Bryant Wood. Bryant shared his powerful journey from external validation to deep inner healing, and how breathwork can be a transformative tool for emotional resilience and self-discovery. If you've ever felt disconnected or struggled with embracing your true self, this episode is for you. Now let me ask you this, have you ever felt like your attention is constantly being pulled in a hundred different directions, leaving you feeling scattered and unfocused? What if the key to reclaiming your focus isn't about eliminating distractions, but learning how to manage them? And how can we take back control of our time and attention in an increasingly noisy world?

• 2:44John R. Miles?

  That's exactly what we're exploring today with Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Indistractible and Hooked. Nir is one of the world's leading experts in behavior design, habit formation, and the psychology of focus. His work bridges the intersection of technology, psychology, and business, helping us understand not only how distractions work, but how we can master them. But this conversation isn't just about avoiding distractions, it's about how to harness your attention to focus on what truly matters. Whether it's your work, relationships, or personal growth, Nir will break down how to master internal triggers that lead to distraction. We go into the difference between traction and distraction, and why understanding it is crucial. We explore how to hack back external triggers that pull us off course.

• 3:29John R. Miles?

  And lastly, we go into practical, science-backed strategies to build laser focus and reclaim your time. If you've ever felt like your days are slipping away in a blur of notifications, emails, and endless to-do lists, this episode will give you the tools to take back control, design a more intentional life, And become truly indistractable. For those who want to dive even deeper, check out our episode starter packs at passionstruck.com/starterpacks or Spotify. With over 580 episodes, we've curated playlists on focus, productivity, emotional intelligence, and mindset to help you find the insights that resonate most with you. And don't forget to subscribe my Live Intentionally newsletter for exclusive insights, challenges, tools, and actionable strategies to help you stay

• 4:13John R. Miles?

  aligned with your goals and live with greater intention. Now, let's dive into an eye-opening conversation on reclaiming focus, mastering distraction, and building better habits with the one and only Nir Eyal. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:39John R. Miles?

  I am so honored today to have Nir Eyal on Passion Struck. Welcome Nir.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Great to be with you, John.

• 4:46John R. Miles?

  Nir, you have spent your career around understanding human behavior, especially how technology shapes our actions, which is something I spent a lot of my career doing as well. What sparked your interest in studying distraction? And how has that journey shaped your view on how so many people are living their lives today?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  How far back do you want to go? I think if I really try and figure out the genesis of my fascination with human behavior and specifically distraction and technology, it probably would go back to my childhoods. For as long as I could remember as a kid, I was obese and not just overweight. I was actually clinically obese. Like I remember my mom taking me to the doctor and the doctor saying, okay, see this chart over here? The green zone is normal weight. This is overweight. The yellow zone, here's, you're in this red zone here. So I was clinically obese from an early age. And I remember at that time that food...

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Seemed to control me. I don't know if I had an addiction. I try not to use that word. I think it's overplayed, this addiction. But I certainly felt like there was an element, a loss of control when it came to food in my life. And I would use it for what I now recognize as an emotional escape. Right? When I was feeling lonely, I ate. When I was feeling bored, I ate. When I was ashamed about how much I had just eaten, I would eat. And that, after a long time trying to figure out why I had these behavioral patterns, my first inclination was to blame the food companies, right? That they're making us fat, that it's a terrible food in our ecosystem. And I think that is true to some extent.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  And it definitely helped me psychologically to vilify the food makers and blame McDonald's and blame processed food companies. But to be honest, I played a pretty big role in that as well. And it wasn't until I figured out why I was emotionally eating and that leading to obesity, that I could get my health and my weight and my life under control. And that was like, that was a very, that was a turning point in my life. And so that kind of was the genesis. And then I remember also, I used to be really fascinated by Consumer Reports. It used to be a magazine. Now it's just a website. But when I was growing up, we had this magazine called Consumer Reports. And they would tell you the inside outs of how products manipulated you and what was a good product and what was a shady product.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  And I like, there was something in that fascination of like, wow, you can design products to get people to do things. And that was really interesting. And yeah, it was just an early fascination and I carried that forward until what I do today, which is I'm a behavioral designer. So I help companies on the business side. I help companies produce products and services that create healthy habits. That's my requirement. There's lots of companies I won't work with. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, pornography, lots of companies I won't work with. But there's lots of companies that use my services for good. So I help companies like Fitbod uses the hook model that I developed to build an exercise habit through their app. Duolingo, a company that uses my methodology to help people learn new languages. Even products like Sunnyside actually help people.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Drink less. So they use my methodology. It's a company I invested in. It uses my methodology to help people break bad habits as well. And so I've looked at both sides of the coin as a behavioral designer, working for companies to help them build healthy habits. But then also with my second book, Indistractable, is about how we can break bad habits ourselves from a consumer perspective. And those bad habits can include any kind of distraction, whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, any of these distractions that pull us away from what we really want to do with our time and attention.

• 8:22John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you for sharing that initial story. I'm not sure if you've read the most recent book by Jed Brewer, but a lot of what you were describing are is what he talks about in the book and how we eat based on emotions and those emotions lead to habits. And so most of our eating dilemmas that we face is because of the habits that we form around eating, not because of the food itself.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it's the same thing, by the way, with our technology. Something I talk about is the first and most important step to becoming indistractable is doing what I call mastering internal triggers that we know we do when we do time studies of why people check their devices. They will tell you they think that they're checking their device because of some external trigger, right? A ping, ding, a ring. They think that's the cause. But it turns out that's only 10%. When we look at how many times people check times a day that people check their phones, only 10% of the time that they look at their screen, is it because of an external trigger? The other 90% of the time that we check our devices, it's because of what's called an internal trigger. Internal triggers are these uncomfortable emotional states, boredom, insecurity, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty,

• 9:30Speaker 01

  anxiety, these uncomfortable sensations that we seek to escape. And so what I discovered is that all distractions, no matter the format, are not a moral failing. It's not a character flaw. The vast majority of people don't have anything wrong with their brains. It's simply that we haven't learned this skill of dealing with emotional discomfort in a healthy way that leads us towards traction, rather than trying to escape it with distraction.

• 9:55John R. Miles?

  I mean, that's something that you've written pretty extensively about is that all motivation is ultimately driven by that desire to escape discomfort. Why is it so important to identify what we're actually trying to avoid when we engage in these distracting behaviors?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's a point that I think was lost on me for a long time because I bought into this paradigm that I think we, most people believe in of that human motivation is all about carrots and sticks. And Jeremy Bentham said something like this, Sigmund Freud said something like this. So that we've had this, this idea of carrots and sticks in our vernacular for a long time. And it turns out that neurologically, this is not how the brain works. The brain is not motivated by carrots and sticks. It's not about pleasure and pain. It's all about one thing, and that one thing is the desire to escape discomfort. That even wanting to feel good, seeking that reward, is itself psychologically destabilizing.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  So if all human behavior, all human behavior is motivated by the desire to escape discomfort, that means quite simply that time management is pain management, that money management is pain management, that weight management at the end of the day is pain management. Once I realized that, I think that was incredibly empowering because now I wasn't confusing myself with blaming the things that weren't the real culprits, right? Of course, the phone in your hand plays a role, the, the, the food in your other hand plays a role, the cigarette in your, between your fingertips, that plays a role, it all plays a role, but that's not the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is the root cause of all human behavior, which is just

• 11:36Speaker 01

  a feeling, a powerful feeling, but yet a feeling nonetheless. And I think it's so important to answer your question because it's like looking at a lineup and trying to pick out whodunit from a, a, a line of potential suspects and you point to the wrong guy and you put that guy in jail and yet the murderer is on the loose. And I think that's exactly what we're doing with a lot of our, of the things that we blame. We blame these things outside of us and they certainly do play a role, but there's a whole heck of a lot that's going on inside of us that we can actually have a lot of control and agency over because look, the world is not going to become a less distracting place, quite the opposite. With virtual reality and augmented reality and everything that's happening in reality, the world is only going to become more distracting.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  So it behooves us. To acquire what I call the skill of the century because I think the world is really bifurcating into people who will allow their time and attention to be manipulated and controlled by others. And people who stand up and say, no, I am indistractable. This is who I am. This is part of my value system. I control my time and attention because I am indistractable.

• 12:42John R. Miles?

  I get a lot of questions from people who are just starting out their career, kids who are in high school, saying that as they go into the world, they're a little bit lost on what they should study, where they should dedicate their efforts because they feel like so many things are changing right in front of them and that the world that we live in today is going to drastically change. So

• 13:07Speaker 01

  And they're right.

• 13:08John R. Miles?

  If they are right. So if being indistractable is the key skill, what are some other skills that complement that they should be thinking about as they're looking at their future education and lives?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  It's a terrific question. I think it's a great question for young adults who are smart enough to ask that question. And I think it's a question that every parent should be asking right now because the future is, has never been more unpredictable. It's really hard to tell our kids what they should study to answer this question. And the answer can't be, oh, go study computer science or go study a particular field. Who knows what that field is going to be like in just a few years? I think what we can do is to look at which skills will never go out of style, which skills will always be essential. And I think that the most important thing we can teach our children, which is actually antithetical to how our school system works, funny enough, because our school system was designed in the to feed workers into factories during the industrial revolution,

• 14:08Speaker 01

  that what we really should be teaching kids today is how to become, what is one of my favorite words, how to become an autodidact to someone who teaches themselves. Why is that so important? I see it every day that our teachers, the people who are teaching our, our children in, in high school, middle school, elementary school, even in college, can't keep up. They just can't. It, the world is moving too fast. How is a teacher supposed to update their syllabus in real time as the world is changing so quickly with all these developments in AI? It's just moving too fast for these teachers to adapt to the skills that our kids are going to need, let alone all the regulatory changes and curriculum changes. It's just moving way too slowly.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  So what we have to do is to teach our kids how to teach themselves, because what they will find in the job market, no matter what industry they go into, is that pace of change is going to favor people who can very quickly assess the situation and assess what's going on with their industry. And as opposed to just sitting there and waiting for a bailout or waiting for someone to sweep in and save them when we know nobody's going to save them. We have to save ourselves. These are the kind of people who will be able to read the landscape and say, you know what? That's not the right path. I'm going to go switch to a different path or upgrade my skill set or, you know, take a course of action to chart my own path by teaching myself a new skill. And the good news is that that is now possible for the first time in human history, right? Like our grandparents

• 15:31Speaker 01

  could complain and say, you know what? I'm, my grandfather was a tailor and he was always a tailor. He couldn't upgrade his skill set because he didn't have access to go learn a new skill, right? Only the very wealthy could go to university so that they could have access to these big luxurious libraries. Like when I applied to college, the most important thing when you looked at a university was how many books were in their library? Who cares? It's completely pointless. Nobody cares how many books you have in the library because everybody has Google on their phone. And now we have chat GPT. We have all these great products on our devices that allow us to have all the facts and figures we could possibly want at our fingertips. So information is no longer scarce. We're drowning in information.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  What's scarce today is the ability to focus your attention long enough on that information to turn it into wisdom. My, my daughter taught herself how to play guitar from YouTube. We never paid for even one guitar lesson. Because she learned the ability to focus long enough to learn this skill through the free information that's online. And you can pretty much learn almost anything these days. Most of it for free, right online. If and only if you can focus long enough to pull yourself away from TikTok and Instagram and WhatsApp and Slack and email and all the stuff that's happening in the news and to pay attention long enough to learn that new skill online. So if you have that skill, it truly is a superpower.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  And if you don't have the skill to focus and concentrate long enough to learn, you're toast.

• 17:04John R. Miles?

  I appreciate you so much for sharing that. My brother has five kids and he has homeschooled all of them. And I know you homeschool your daughter as well. And I know for Pat, one of the things that he and his wife Jenny have concentrated on is how do you encourage the kids to cultivate curiosity-driven learning as a core part of their mindset going forward? And I think that's what you're talking about here is that as we're approaching this world in the future, it's how do you balance that curiosity-driven learning without falling into the traps of distractions that kind of want to keep you from that learning curve?

• 17:49John R. Miles?

  Is that a good way to think about it?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I think it's a terrific question. And I think it prompts us to ask ourselves, I think this word curiosity, I think it is really neglected when it comes to our educational system because what we forget is that we only think about technology as we are experiencing it today. And of course, we see all the negative repercussions because they're very top of mind because we can see the difference. We can see the change from the way we grew up, right? So we think about all the bad stuff that a new technology brings. And when it comes to the old technology, we don't see it because it's the way it's always been. But remember institutionalized education is brand new, right? Humans have existed for 200,000 years at least, right? Homo sapiens.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  For the vast majority of that time, they're all education was passed down from through tribes, right? Like, children participated. There wasn't this bifurcation of adults go here and kids go there. We were all together as tribes. So that's how information was passed along. Kids saw what needed to get done, and then eventually they learned those skills. And then we moved into a time when the wealthy could educate their children through tutors, through one-on-one education, where you would have an individual tutor who could match the child's skill, ability, and curiosity to go as deep as they wanted to go into a topic. So when you think about the way that Newton and Mozart and even Einstein were educated,

• 19:19Speaker 01

  they didn't sit in a classroom with 30 other students when they were children and told, "Sit down and shut up and listen to me." No, they had private tutors. And so what we are moving towards is not a place where only the aristocracy had that type of education. I believe we're moving towards potentially a future where everybody has an AI coach that is infinitely patient, that can cater to that curiosity of whatever the child wants to study. And so we're in a way returning back to the technology that predated this Horus Man style of learning, where it's a bunch of kids in a room listening to some sage on the stage, blah blah, which is incredibly boring. I can't even stand it. And so we're moving back to, I think, what used to be a much more productive form of learning, where you can tell what the child wants to lean into with certain constraints, right?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  There's a sandbox that the child can play in, and that sandbox expands as they get older and prove that they're, they can handle the added responsibility. But I think that, I think, could usher a glorious age of personalized education and learning, because it allows kids to fully express that curiosity and teach them in a more project-based course, as opposed to, "Here's the information you need to learn. I don't care if you think this is interesting. I don't care if you'll ever use it again. You just need to regurgitate it for this test." That's such a stupid way to do things. And of course, that's what we all buy into. We're all blind. We all have these, we don't, we refuse to accept that this is a stupid way of learning, because that's what tortured us. So we have to do the same to our children.

• 20:45John R. Miles?

  So technology is all around us and there's no way that you can prevent your kids from having technology because let's face it, it's almost impossible to avoid these days. How do you go about teaching your daughter how to manage technology and what suggestions would you have for parents who might be listening today on how they help their kids manage their technology use in a way that promotes learning rather than distraction?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So the indistractable model can be used with children and adults. So the first and best thing you can do if you want to raise indistractable kids is to be an indistractable parent. That we know that children, even though you can't see it, your child is born with these invisible antennae. Did you know that every child is born with these invisible antennae that is called the hypocrisy detection device? That children are constantly scanning to see where you as the parent screw up. So just like you can't tell your child, don't smoke while you're smoking a cigarette. You can't tell your child, get off Fortnite while you're checking email. It doesn't work that way. You have to walk the walk yourself. And so the best thing you can do if you want to raise an indistractable kid is to be an

• 22:00Speaker 01

  indistractable parent yourself. And then we work through these four strategies that I describe in the book. Number one, master internal triggers. We have to understand why kids overuse technology. And this is what we blindly refuse to acknowledge is that we enter into these moral panics as we have always done throughout history. The kids are crazy. The kids are out of control. This is why they killed Socrates, right? Because he was corrupting the minds of youth. So this is nothing new. Whenever there's a new idea, new technology, a new way of doing things, well, it must be corrupting the minds of the youth. This is what we always say. As opposed to, wait a minute, what exactly is going on with the kids? What are they looking to escape? And so what I talk about in indistractable is called

• 22:43Speaker 01

  the needs displacement hypothesis. And this has been around for a long time, almost around the time I was born, this hypothesis that came out of the work of Desi and Ryan. I'm not sure you might have had them on your show, the founders of self determination theory. Who basically said that when you are not getting what you need in one area of your life, you look for in other areas. So the modern day application is that when you ask yourself, what are the psychological nutrients that we know every human being on the face of the earth needs according to self determination theory, the most widely accepted theory of human flourishing and motivation. We need competency, we need autonomy, and we need relatedness. Every human being needs these three things, especially children. But we are starving our children of these three psychological nutrients. They don't feel competent

• 23:27Speaker 01

  in school because we test them all day, every day to just barf out the same information that they were taught the day before, whether they care or not. Many kids fall through the cracks because of this no child left behind act that mandates testing, testing constantly. So they don't feel competent. Then we have autonomy. This is the most regulated generation in history. There's only two places in the world where you can tell a human beings where to go, what to think, what to do, how to dress, and who to be friends with. And that's school and prison. So it's no surprise that if you put kids in cages all day, they act like animals because they don't have autonomy. I dare any parent listening to

• 24:07Speaker 01

  me to try and survive a day in high school. You will hate it. You will absolutely hate it. It's miserable. And so why do we subject our kids to this torture? Because we don't know what else to do. So that's what we, that was what it done to us. That's what we'll do to our kids. So they're desperate for autonomy. They're desperate for freedom. And so what do they do when they're looking for freedom? They come home, they go online, and oh, finally, they can be free. They can play these games with their friends. And then finally, relatedness. What came at the cost of the extracurriculars and the swimming and test prep and the Chinese lessons and the ballet is that kids have less time than

• 24:48Speaker 01

  ever to play. And if you look at the work of Peter Gray, genius work that he's done around how little time children have for free play today. And this is making our children sick. It is making them psychologically vulnerable because play is where we learn our place in the world. It's one thing if a parent or a coach tells you what to do. It's a whole nother thing when a friend says, hey, if you act like that, I don't want to play because you're acting like a jerk. That's how we learn our place in the world. And we need that to develop psychological resilience. So we need that time for free play. Well, kids don't have any time for free play anymore because they're so hyper scheduled. Or if you don't have money, what do you do? You put your kid behind locked door every day.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And they're supposed to just sit there and read Shakespeare in their spare time? No, of course not. They want to hang out with their friends. But when we don't let kids do that because the media has scared us to death about stranger danger, which is totally ridiculous. It's the safest time in American history to be a child. What other choice do children have? They want to play with their friends online. So I encourage parents, go play Fortnite. Go see what these games are like. They're not just video games. They're places for kids to hang out with their friends. That's what they're doing there. So if we don't give children competency, autonomy and relatedness in the real world, they're going to go online. And these tech companies are happy to give them the opportunity to do it. But that's not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is not the technology. The cause of the problem is why kids are so starved for these psychological nutrients in the first place.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  And so you asked, how do I help my daughter form a healthy relationship with technology? The first thing you do is I help her form healthy relationships without the technology. So she has plenty of opportunity throughout her day to be with other children without me watching and without coaches and teachers watching either. Time to just hang out. And you know what? As much as she loves her phone at 16 years old, whenever she has the opportunity to play with a real human being in the real world, she forgets about her phone in a second. Right? It's only when we starve kids of these opportunities to play, that's when they get so enamored with their phones. So that's the big deal. So number one, understand their internal triggers. The rest is kind of details.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  For example, make time for traction. So planning out their day, one of the best things you can do if you want your kid to use their device less is plan time for them to use their device. Right? Because if you put time in your day to say, hey, now's the time when we're all gonna go on social media. Great, right? How much time is good for you? Thirty minutes, an hour, forty-five minutes? How much time is good for you to go on social media? When it's in your calendar, just like it is for mine as an adult, I don't have to feel guilty about it. If it's age appropriate, right? Assuming your kid is of the age, the minimum age is thirteen. Do not let your kid on a product that the manufacturer tells you not to let your kid on below a certain age. So at least thirteen, I think it should be closer to sixteen. But assuming they're of age, there's nothing wrong, as long as you have a conversation about how to use it properly, et cetera, et cetera.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Scheduling that time, now they don't have to constantly think about, oh, when can I play? When can I play? When can I play? No, when you can play, it's right there on the calendar, and for how much time you said you were gonna use it. The third step, hack back the external triggers. I think we need to remove anything that interrupts sleep in the bedroom. Huge mistake. I think part of the reason kids are struggling psychologically these days, it's not the devices. It's what the devices are displacing, namely sleep. So any technology that could interrupt sleep, whether it's your iPhone, whether it's the computer, whether it's a fish tank, whether it's a television, I don't think has any place in a child's bedroom. If it can interrupt sleep, it needs to be taken away because it's an external trigger that can interrupt very critical part of their mental development, which is time for adequate rest.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  And then finally, preventing distraction with PAX, which is where we can use technology ironically to block out other technology. So whether it's an app like Forest, where you use this app, I use it all the time. You dial in how much time you want to do focused work for. You hit a little button, and if you pick up your phone and do anything with it, your phone tells you, no, that's not what you said you were gonna do. You said you were going to stay focused. So my daughter can use it when she does her homework. I use it. It's a great product. I think it costs like five dollars for this app. There's countless tools, many of them come pre-installed in your phone for free, that help us make these packs to prevent us from getting distracted. So to answer your question, the way we raise indistractable kids is the same way we would become indistractable ourselves.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Master internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back external triggers, and prevent distraction with PAX. These four steps can make anyone indistractable.

• 29:23John R. Miles?

  Yeah, and I love how you tied self determination theory into that. And I haven't had Edward DC on, but I have had Richard Ryan on the show. And it's amazing how much the two of them have been cited. I think they are the two most cited living scientists who are alive today.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  They are. And that work, it explains so much. I don't understand why it's not. I feel like everybody should learn about self determination theory. Some, and whenever you study it intensely, it explains so much about how we behave.

• 29:55John R. Miles?

  In the book, you describe four psychological factors, and I wanted to go through a couple of these. And one of them that you talk about is boredom. And boredom is definitely a trigger for distraction. But I think there's a way that we need to get more comfortable with boredom because it's something that we absolutely need for personal growth and self examination, yet we're doing less and less of it. So how does someone get comfortable with boredom? As a means to personal growth?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  I think it would start with not requiring getting comfortable with it in the first place. I think the pendulum has swung, I think, when it comes to this type of stuff, a little bit too far into the direction of habits. So the idea, we have so many books on habits these days. I wrote a book on habit. My first book was about habits. And habits are great. Habits are useful. And the philosophy behind habits is that you can take a hard behavior and suddenly make it easy. Put on autopilot, right? I hate exercising, but if I build an exercise habit, it'll be easy. I hate writing, but I've always wanted to write a book. And so if I create a writing habit, it'll be easy. I can't stand meditation, but if I create a meditation habit, it'll be easy. I know boredom is good for me, but I hate being bored. How do I make it easy?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  And I think that's actually the wrong philosophy because Not every behavior can become a habit. Only very few behaviors can become habits. What is the definition of a habit? The very definition of a habit. An impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. An impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. So if a behavior requires a lot of conscious thought, it ain't gonna be a habit. When I go to the gym and I'm trying to beat my personal record, oh my God, I'm struggling. That requires a lot of effort. If I'm writing my book, believe me, it's a lot of conscious thought. How do you write without conscious thought? If I'm meditating and I'm not thinking, if I don't have conscious thought, I'm asleep. I'm doing it wrong, right? Meditation is all about thinking about your thoughts, right?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  And learning how to let them go, not to make it easy, but to be consciously aware of your thoughts. And so I think we've gone way overboard trying to make things easy. I think we need to do something different, which is to not expect that everything can become a habit. Some behaviors can become habits for sure, but these difficult behaviors will never, ever become habits. Rather, we should make them into routines. What is a routine? A routine is a series of behaviors frequently repeated. So every habit starts as a routine, but many routines will never become habits. And so we shouldn't expect them to. So as opposed to expecting they become easy, so why am I ranting about this? What's the big deal? Tomato, tomato. I'll tell you why I'm ranting about it. Because when we try and convince people

• 32:44Speaker 01

  that you can turn everything into a habit, and then they hear some guru's advice that says, oh, you need 66 days to form a habit, or 40 days, or 30 days. There's no magic number, people. It doesn't exist. But then they try, and then it doesn't work. It's still hard. They still hate exercise. Meditation is still difficult. Writing is still a chore. What do they do? Do they blame the guru? No, they blame themselves. They think, oh, I'm broken. You're not broken. It's this methodology is broken. Rather, when you have the expectation that when something is hard, good.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  It's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be difficult because if it was easy, everyone would do it. And so it's a different mindset. You have to do what I call reimagining the trigger in order to see that discomfort as something that's serving you rather than hurting you. So I'll give you an example. When I'm bored, okay, I'm bored every day because what do I do for a living? I write books and I have no idea how to make writing into a habit. It's always hard. Every day I gotta write. And all I want to do when I start writing is check the news or look at sports scores or check stock prices or check my email inbox. Anything but the doing the writing because it's hard fricking work. But what I do instead is I repeat to myself a personal mantra.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Okay. And you can use this mantra. You can make up your own. Feel free to steal it. My mantra is this. I take a deep breath. And I tell myself, this is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better. And so I'm reimagining that discomfort and I say, you know what? Good. I'm supposed, this is supposed to be difficult. This is supposed to be hard. You know why? Because this is what it feels like to get better. So that's a very important step is to reimagine that trigger as a positive rather than something we have to escape.

• 34:33John R. Miles?

  And I just wanted to give the audience that I recently interviewed someone named Carrie Leibowitz, who's a behavioral scientist who studies boredom and she recently came out with a new book called How to Winter. And what she's really talking about here is instead of being upset that it's winter, worrying how to get through it, treat it more as a gift and that this is a time that you have a season to quiet yourself down, that you can do more work for yourself, on yourself, reconnecting with others and not treat it as a negative in your life,

• 35:14John R. Miles?

  but using boredom as something that can fuel you through the rest of the year. So I thought I would just point that out.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Totally. And for some people, the first time they hear that, it sounds cheesy. I can't do that. And by the way, this is one of dozens of techniques. So not every technique will be the first go to solution. So I encourage people, check out the book. There's a lot more in Indistractable, all many different crayons you can color with. But this technique, this particular technique, has really served me in various areas of my life. For example, when I first started doing public speaking, I would have terrible stage fright. I still have terrible stage fright. But I used to tell myself this story. I chose to tell myself this story, that when I felt my heart beating, and my armpits were sweaty, and my throat was getting dry, oh, this must mean I'm not really a very good public speaker. I didn't prepare enough. I'm gonna choke on stage. If I was a real professional, this wouldn't

• 36:02Speaker 01

  happen to me. I had this dialogue in my head, telling me all these negative things that were going to happen, and making me doubt myself, all these limiting beliefs. And then I read this research about reimagining the trigger. And till this day, I get the exact same cues, right? I get the same exact emotions happen to me. I still get the palpitations, I still get the dry throat, I still get the sweating armpits. I'm feeling them right now, as we speak. And yet, now I reinterpret them. So now, before I get on stage, and I feel my heart racing, I tell myself a different story. The story I tell myself, until this very day, I tell myself, ah, my heart is racing right now, so that it can send more oxygen to my brain, so I can deliver my best possible talk. And once I change that narrative,

• 36:47Speaker 01

  I stop ruminating, stop being so anxious about that dilemma, this fear of what might happen, and I can be fully present in the moment, just by flipping the narrative. But that required me to see it completely different. So what I'm trying to encourage people to do, because it sounds crazy, if you're like, no, I could never see boredom as a good thing, and no, I can never see winter, or getting on stage as a good thing, flip the script. Try and tell yourself the exact opposite. And you'd be amazed, how you can actually abide by that new belief, if you just tried on for size.

• 37:18John R. Miles?

  Near another one that I wanted to talk about was negativity bias, which is something that affects me. I think it affects all of us and we have this tendency to focus on what's going wrong over what's going well. But I'd never before reading your book really looked at negativity bias as something that was linked to distraction. So I was hoping you you might be able to bring some clarity to that and how do we counteract this to stay focused?

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Sure. So if we know, go back to what we were talking about earlier, that all distraction is a desire to escape discomfort, and this discomfort comes from these internal triggers, we need to ask ourselves, what is the preceding emotion? What is that sensation that comes right before the distraction? And that actually is probably the most difficult step because we become so habituated, the brain is a cognitive miser. It wants to seek the path of least resistance. So when it feels discomfort, what's the quickest thing that can solve that problem? If I'm hungry, where is there a snack? If I'm thirsty, where can I get a drink? Right? So it really immediately wants to find the easiest path to get what we want. And the way we know we want something is that we feel this internal trigger, we feel

• 38:30Speaker 01

  this discomfort. So when we train our brains, that at every drop of a hat of boredom, uncertainty, discomfort, stress, anxiety, where's my phone? Where's the TV? Where's the cigarette? Where's the drink? When we train ourselves to do that, it becomes easier and easier. That actually does become a habit, something we do with little or no conscious thought. And so what we have to do is to reintroduce that space between the stimulus and the response, right? As Viktor Frankl said, that's where our humanity lies, is between that stimulus and response. So just recognizing what is going on there? What am I doing here? What's what feeling precedes that sensation? And oftentimes, it is that negativity bias, that the reason we are so addicted to the news, and I don't blame social media, all forms of media, I

• 39:14Speaker 01

  don't care if it's the New York Times, if it's CNN, if it's Fox News, if it's the BBC. If it's Facebook, it doesn't matter. All of them thrive on negativity bias. They don't tell you all the wonderful things that happen in the world today. No, they only tell you about the plane crashes and the murders and the wars and all the bad stuff. Because guess what? The first rule of journalism is if it bleeds, it leads. And so that's what they tell you because we love the negativity bias. Why? Because it was evolutionarily beneficial, right? Good things are nice. Bad things can kill you. So our brains are uniquely tuned to scan our environment and look for threats, right? That's not a bug. That's a feature. We're supposed to be like that.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  It makes us vigilant against dangerous threats. But that negativity bias, when it's used against us to sell our attention to advertisers, it goes too far. And so that's where we need to be very careful of media and ask ourselves, why do we compulsively check so much? Why are there such a thing as a news junkie, right? Somebody who's constantly checking. Is staying informed a good thing? Sure. But what tends to happen is we convince ourselves, oh, it's important for me to be a concerned voter. It's important for me to take civic action. Let me just go read the news or watch television. Well, you're not doing anything constructive. You're just feeding this, this monster that lives inside you that wants nothing but negativity all day. And so we really need to take a step back and ask ourselves,

• 40:40Speaker 01

  is this media serving us or is it hurting us? Is it consistent with our values or is it nothing more than a distraction?

• 40:47John R. Miles?

  Yeah, and I, I know from listening to you on previous episodes, you love that movie Social Dilemma.

• 40:55John R. Miles?

  So accurately portrays what's happening with getting all perspectives on the table. So it's a balanced view of what's happening with our distraction.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. We could talk about that if you want. Although what's interesting, that movie is interesting because it has not aged well. The movie is all about how Facebook is melting our brains and Facebook is so terrible. And these kids in the movie do, they smash this container so that they can get to their cellphones because they want to check. No, kids don't use Facebook anymore. Find me anyone under 30 who uses Facebook proper, right? They used Instagram, they use TikTok, they use other tools, which don't look anything like what Facebook used to look like, right? It's like scrolling a feed and watching video after video, not that it's any better or worse, but it's different. And guess what? Wait another few years, TikTok and Instagram, they'll look like child's play compared to whatever's coming next, which proves the point that this is a constant cycle. We freak out about the latest technology.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  We think it's melting everybody's brain and it's not necessarily a good thing for everybody. I'm not a tech apologist. It's just that we never get to the root cause of the problem. And most importantly, what we can do about the problem. So that's just so to fill everybody in, that's what really made me mad about the movie is that they interviewed me for three hours and I told them everything I knew. I did five years of research. I handed them on a silver platter. Hey, here's how to fix this problem. They didn't include any of it in the movie. It's as if you go to the doctor and the doctor says, hey, you have a terrible disease. Say, oh my goodness, that's awful. Is there a cure? Yes, there's a cure. Amazing, can I get the treatment? No, sorry, we're not going to give you the treatment. That's malpractice. And so ironically, this movie, as all media does, freaked people out, made them scared,

• 42:33Speaker 01

  took advantage of their psychological weaknesses that they derived, right? They talk about how all these tech companies are using psychological tricks. The movie used every psychological trick in the book to scare people, right? To make more money for this company that made the movie without giving them any solutions, which turns out anyone can do, anyone can use to fix the problem.

• 42:55John R. Miles?

  That's something I have learned very much over my career and as I have written books is you need people who have the counter view constantly looking at what you're creating. Because if you want someone to really believe what you're writing, you need to get all perspectives on there because there are so many different ways to see an issue that you're trying to lay out. And the more inclusive you can be about it, the longer it's going to, as you say, weather the test of time.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  The problem is unfortunately, I can't remember the name of this rule. It's an Italian guy who said this, so I apologize that I don't remember his name, Mr. Italian guy, but it's something that goes, the amount of effort to refute bullshit is 10 times the effort to create it. So there are some ideas that are just really hard to stomp out. It requires so much effort to tell people, guess what? It's not social media. That's the problem, right? It's not, that's not why your kids are crazy. There's a lot of other stuff going on because it's such a popular narrative that we all want to believe that the amount of effort to refute that theory is orders of magnitude more.

• 44:06John R. Miles?

  Definitely. Well, since I brought up time, I want to ask you a couple of questions about this concept of time. I talk a lot about on this show values, but I say we really need to align our values with our ambitions and our long-term aspirations. Indistractable, you talk about the importance of turning your values into time. And I thought that was really important because I, I think that time and energy are two of the biggest variables that we can control. And your values are how you should live. So turning them into time is a really interesting way to think about this. Could you explain that a little bit more?

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Sure. So if you want to know what someone's values really are, you don't listen to what they say. You look at two things. You look at how they spend their time and how they spend their money. That really will show you what their values are. And it's interesting in society, we place so much currency, if you will, on money is so important. We have to save every dollar. We put our money in banks protected by guards. We split checks, we use coupons, we have to save money. But when it comes to time, we just give it away, right? Whoever wants it, sure, just take it. And I think it should be exactly the opposite, that you can always make more money, right? You can always make more money. You can do something to find how to make a buck. You cannot make more time.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  So I don't care if you're Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or Elon Musk, you cannot make more time. We all get a finite amount of time on earth. And so I think we should flip the script. We should be generous with our money and stingy with our time because we can't make more of it. And so what do we do with that? How do we put this into practice? You turn your values into time. So what are values? How do you define values? My definition of values are attributes of the person I want to become. Values are attributes of the person you want to become. So what I offer folks is this three-part framework of how you can start. Turning your values into time, starting with you. You're at the center of these three life domains. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of the people, you can't make the world a better place.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  So what I advise people to do is to look at their calendar for the week ahead and ask themselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time taking care of themselves? In whatever way is important to you. So if prayer is important, if meditation is important, if physical fitness, right? You ask people, what do you value? Oh, my health is number one. Well, do you have time in your calendar to exercise, eat right and get proper rest? If not, is that really one of your values? And I'm not telling you it has to be. If you don't like to exercise and it's not part of your value system, don't do it. I'm not going to tell you to do it. But if it is one of your values, if being healthy is important to you, it's got to have that time on your calendar. As does time for the things you enjoy. If you like watching YouTube videos or Netflix or golf, or I don't care what it is.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  If you enjoy that stuff, put it on your calendar as long as it's consistent with your values and your schedule, not someone else's. So don't medicalize and moralize. Do it, enjoy it, but do it because you said you were going to do it, not because you're looking for an escape from reality. So put it on your schedule. That's the you domain. Then time for your relationships. So part of the reason we have a loneliness epidemic in the industrialized world is that as society became more secular, these institutions that used to give us a time and a place on our calendars to meet with other people started to disappear. So the church group, the Kiwanis Club, the local thing, the bowling league, the things that we used to do together,

• 47:40Speaker 01

  became less and less part of our lives. And this is a long-term phenomenon. This is not because of social media. This was happening in the 1990s. Robert Putnam wrote about this in his book Bowling Alone in the 90s. So this has been a long-term trend. We need to bring that back. We need to have time for the people in our community, the time for our best friends, the time for our significant others, for our kids, for our family members. It needs to be in our calendar because if we don't put that time in our calendar, it's not going to happen. We become ships in the night. So put that time for the important relationships in your life on your schedule. And then finally, the last domain is the work domain. And work comes in two flavors. There's two kinds of work. We have what's called reactive work, which is how most people spend most of their day reacting to emails, reacting to

• 48:25Speaker 01

  notifications, reacting to taps on the shoulder from their boss. That's reactive work. Then there's what's called reflective work. Reflective work is the kind of work that can only be done without distraction. Planning, strategizing, thinking, for God's sakes, requires you to work without distraction. The problem is that reflective work is hard and reactive work is easy. Why? Because reactive work always tells you what to do. I don't want to have to think about, am I doing the right thing? Reactive work will tell me, let me check my inbox. Let me go to this meeting. Let me do the stuff that other people want me to do. Therefore, I don't have to ask myself, is this actually worth doing? It's very cognitively easy to do reactive work all day long. Now, some

• 49:09Speaker 01

  people's job is reactive work all day long. If you work in a call center, the phone rings, you pick it up. It's all reactive work. But most people have some kind of blend of reactive and reflective work. So what's important is you have to carve aside that time for reflective work and keep it sacred. Whether it's 20 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an hour of your day, you have to plan that time and think of it as a meeting with the most important person in the world. You are the most important person in your world. So keep that commitment to yourself. Have that time for reflective work because if you don't, I promise you, you're going to run real fast in the wrong direction.

• 49:48John R. Miles?

  One of the favorite sermons I ever heard a pastor do was the sermon was on the main thing about the main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing. Stephen Coveyish. But he spent the whole time of the sermon talking about your main thing is determined by your wallet and your calendar. And then he went into the Eisenhower matrix to explain how you need to think about that. So if you want stronger connections, those are the two equations that you have to look at. If you want more competence about something in your life, you have to look at those equations, getting back to self determination theories. So that's why I wanted to hit on it. The other thing I really liked.

• 50:32John R. Miles?

  Was your technique of time boxing? Because to me, a lot of people say, I never have time to focus on what really matters for me. And I thought that this technique is so important because it can be applied to relationships, personal growth, self-care. Can you explain what it is and what's the best way to get started?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So first of all, you do have time. I hear this all the time. We do have time. We all have the same 24 hours in the day and you can do it all. You really can do it all. You just can't do it all at the same time. So one of the problems with the self-help community is that we use a lot of research that doesn't have very good backing. So it turns out that this technique that everybody uses, I used to use it, is the to-do list. And to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity because to-do lists have no constraints. You can always add more to a to-do list. So here's what invariably happens. You add more and more things to a to-do list. You come home from work every day, you're exhausted, you look at the to-do list, and here's all these things you still didn't get done.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  So what does that do to your psyche if day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you're looking at this list of things that you said you were gonna do and you didn't? Loser. And so that's why people get this terrible dialogue, these limiting beliefs in their heads that says, oh, I'm no good, I don't know how to manage my time, maybe I have undiagnosed something or another, and they think that there's something wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with them. Again, it's this stupid technique that has very little scientific backing, that to-do lists are not the best personal productivity technique. The best personal productivity technique used, and this has been studied thousands of times, I didn't invent it, it was around before I was born. It's called setting an implementation intention. It is the best technique that few people use.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  And that is simply saying what you're gonna do and when you're going to do it. And people don't do it, those who don't do it, either they don't know about it, or they don't do it because they're scared that if they did it, they would do the work. And so they had this little saboteur that says, ooh, if I actually schedule the workout, I might have to actually go work out and I don't want to. So again, this is step two, back to step one, the most important step. If you don't deal with those mind goblins in your head that are telling you this hurts. I don't want to do it. This sucks. Let me escape. If you don't deal with those internal triggers, none of the other techniques will work. You have to tackle step one first to have arrows in your quiver, ready to go, that will kill those mind goblins telling you how terrible the behavior is. So that's step number one.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Step number two is then planning when you're going to do the behavior because unlike with a to do list, a time box calendar where you say, here's what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it. Now you have a constraint and that constraint is 24 hours in a day. Unlike a to do list that can go on and on, a time box calendar only gives you 24 hours in a day. So it forces you to make those trade offs. So if it's taking care of your kids or your ailing parents or exercise or working or playing video games, you have to make that trade off. And any trade off you want to make is fine. It's not up to me or anyone else to tell you how to live your life. You have to decide based on your values, but you're doing it in advance because remember, if there's one thing I want everyone to remember, it's that you can't call something a distraction

• 53:49Speaker 01

  unless you know what it distracted you from. I'm going to say it again, you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. So if there's nothing on your calendar, what didn't you have time for exactly? What did you get distracted from? Everything is a distraction unless you know what you got distracted from. So that's why we have to plan out our day and I mean down to the minute. Doesn't mean you can't have fun. You can plan time to watch TV or play video games or take a walk or do whatever you want, but plan it in advance. Okay, very important technique. That's the only way we can turn our values into time.

• 54:22John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. And the last thing I wanted to talk about is another concept that I have personally talked about in my solo episodes on this show, and that is this concept of transition points. You call them liminal moments, but the way I describe it is when I was in the military and I thought about when people got hurt, it wasn't. When we were in the heat of a battle, oftentimes it was during the transition points when we were letting our guard down, when boredom set in, when we got distracted, that nefarious things would happen and we would get caught off guard. And the same thing happens in our lives. As we transition from one activity to another,

• 55:08John R. Miles?

  those are the moments when distractions creep in because that's when we check our email, that's when we check our social account, that's when we get distracted with something that's taking our focus away from the main thing we need to be working on. So how through your research can we become more aware of these liminal moments? And use them as opportunities to strengthen our focus rather than cues to engage in distractions?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  First of all, thank you for your service. You're here on my book for serving our country. And then when it comes to this question of liminal moments, it's not that we need to, it's impossible to not have them in our life. We always have these transition points, as you say. If you're waiting for a light to turn green while you're waiting at the red light, you have that temptation to check your phone for a quick second until the light turns green. So it's not necessarily the checking of the phone that's the problem. It's when the light turns green and the guy behind you honks at you, or you might get in an accident if you start going and checking your phone at the same time, that's when it becomes dangerous. So what you want to do is to have hard stops between these liminal moments. And so this goes back to the solution to answer your question is time boxing. Because when you have the next thing you're supposed to do,

• 56:21Speaker 01

  and you're measuring yourself not by did you finish, this is a very important point. People get this wrong about time boxing all the time. They think time boxing is about getting things done. It's about, I hear this all the time, well, what if I plan to do a task and I don't finish it? Can I just expand the time box? And the answer is absolutely not, because the goal of time boxing is not to finish anything. What? How can that be? How if how am I going to be productive if I don't finish things? The idea here, unlike a to-do list, you measure your productivity, you measure your self-worth by how many cute little boxes you check off. So what do you do? You check off the easy stuff. You check off the fun stuff. I used to do a task and then forget, oh, it wasn't on my to-do list, so I would go back and write it down just so I can feel the joy of crossing it off.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  It's stupid. It makes no sense because I was trained in this methodology of, oh, it feels so good to check boxes. But I wasn't doing the important stuff that I really had to do to move my life and career forward. Whereas with a time box calendar, rather what you're doing, you're not measuring yourself by, did you finish? You're measuring yourself by, did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction? That's the only metric that matters. Not did I finish? Did I do what I said I was going to do? And that could be being with my kids. It could be having dinner with my family. It could be watching television. Did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction? And it turns out, studies find, that people who use that productivity technique and just measure themselves by, did they work without distraction?

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Actually finish more. They get more done than the to-do list people because the to-do list people, they work on a task for five minutes. Let me just check email. Let me go get a cup of coffee. Oh, Janet's at the water cooler. They do this. They, oh, what was I working on again? I totally forgot. Whereas the people who time box and they say, I'm just going to focus on this one task. Now they know how long things take and they can plan accordingly. So the solution to these liminal moments is to have a hard stop to say, okay, I've got this meeting. On the way back from that meeting, I'm going to look at my phone because I'm just walking back to my desk. But as soon as nine fifteen or whatever the next time box starts, that's what I have to do next.

• 58:23John R. Miles?

  When I hear you talking about this concept, to me, it equates to flow state. And an interesting statistic, if you've never heard this before, is if you can enter flow state, Mackenzie did this big examination of executives who use it compared to people who don't. They're eight times more productive. They can accomplish in two hours what their peers are doing in an entire day or beyond. Just because of using this time boxing technique.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  This is another ancillary benefit of time boxing is that when you allow yourself the time and measure yourself simply by that metric of, did I do nothing but focus on the task at hand? Sometimes you can get into those flow states and that's terrific. You're very lucky. What I would caution against and my beef with flow states is that flow states only happen for fun things, for things people enjoy doing. When you read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, he talks about basketball players, he talks about artists, he talks about poets, he talks about people who are doing things they enjoy doing. I've never heard of anyone getting into flow state doing their taxes, maybe accountants, hopefully if they love their

• 59:35Speaker 01

  job. It's very difficult to get into flow state for a task you don't want to do, which is the stuff that we get distracted while we're doing, right? It's when a chapter is not going well, not when I'm in flow state. When I'm in flow state, I don't want to get out of it. When a chapter is not going well, that's when I get distracted. So I just want to caution people, don't expect that flow state. Don't think that you're somehow doing something wrong if you don't feel a flow state, because you know what? Hard tasks are hard. Don't expect them to feel easy.

• 1:00:05John R. Miles?

  And Nir, last thing I wanted to ask you about is for someone who's looking to start living a more intentional life today, what's the first thing that they should do to stop being distracted and to begin focusing on what truly matters to them?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Sure. So I'll give you, I think if you want a summary of my decade of research, it would be this, that the antidote for impulsiveness is forethought. The antidote for impulsiveness is forethought, meaning that everything we're talking about, distraction, is simply an impulse control issue. That's all it is. It's not a character flaw, it's not a moral failing, there's nothing broken about you. It's simply a skill issue that you haven't learned how to deal with this impulse control issue. But the antidote is forethought. What do I mean by that? That if you wait to the last minute, you're gonna lose. If you're on a diet and you have a piece of chocolate cake on the fork on the way to your mouth, you're gonna eat it. If you are trying to quit smoking, but you have a cigarette in

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  your hand lit, you're gonna smoke it. If you sleep next to your cellphone every night, it's gonna be the first thing you reach for in the morning before you even say hello to your loved one. So if you leave it to the last minute, too late, you will lose, they will get you. However, if you plan ahead, if you use forethought, there is no distraction you can't overcome tomorrow by planning for it today. So don't leave it to the last moment, plan today to make sure that you don't get distracted tomorrow. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.

• 1:01:36John R. Miles?

  Thank you for that. And lastly, where is the best place people can go to learn more about you?

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Sure, thank you. So my website is nirandfar.com. That's where I publish blog posts every other week about personal productivity, about all kinds of topics around behavior change and behavioral design. And my latest book is called Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. And you can find that wherever books are sold.

• 1:01:59John R. Miles?

  Nir, it's such an honor to have you today. Thank you so much. Coming all the way from Singapore to us today.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Thank you again. Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:02:10John R. Miles?

  And that's a wrap on today's episode. What an insightful conversation with Nir Eyal. His expertise on focus, habit formation, and managing distractions is a powerful reminder that our time and attention are our most valuable assets, and learning how to master them is the key to living with greater intention. From understanding how internal triggers drive distraction to implementing practical strategies to reclaim control of our time, Nir has given us a blueprint for becoming truly indistractable. And as we close out today's episode, I encourage you to reflect on a few key takeaways. What are the biggest internal triggers pulling you away from what truly matters? How can you create more traction in your daily life instead of falling

• 1:02:53John R. Miles?

  into distractions? And what simple changes can you make today to reclaim control over your attention and design a more intentional life? If this conversation resonated with you, please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review. Your support helps continue bringing impactful conversations like this one to the Passion Struck community. And if someone in your life struggles with focus or feels overwhelmed by distractions, share this episode with them. It could be the game changer they need. For all the resources we discussed, including Nir's books, Indistractable and Hooked, visit the show notes at passionstruck.com. And if you want to go even deeper, watch the video version of this episode on my John R. Miles YouTube channel, where you'll find more enticing conversations. Make sure to subscribe and

• 1:03:36John R. Miles?

  join our growing community. If today's episode inspired you and you'd like to bring these transformative insights into your organization or team, visit johnrmiles.com/speaking.

• 1:03:45John R. Miles?

  To explore how we can work together to create meaningful change. Coming up next, I'm joined by Anne-Marie Anderson, an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, sports journalist, and leadership expert. Anne-Marie has spent years breaking barriers in sports media, navigating high-stakes environments, and coaching top athletes and executives on leadership, resilience, and communication. In our conversation, we'll dive into the mental frameworks of high performers, the art of storytelling, and how to build confidence in any field. So make sure you're subscribed and get ready for another powerful and inspiring episode.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  I think in working with your inner critic is acknowledging it's always going to be there, John. Your inner critic is always going to be alongside you chirping away. You need to be able to recognize when it's talking and take away its ability to make decisions for you. You can explore the ideas, but your inner critic does not get to be a decision maker.

• 1:04:40John R. Miles?

  And remember, the fee for the show is simple. If you found value today, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And most importantly, take what you've learned and put it into action, because knowledge alone doesn't create change, but action does. Until next time, live life, passion struck.