How Distraction Works + How to Get Better at Doing What You Say You’re Going to Do || with Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal, author and behavioral designer, has spent years researching habit formation - specifically teaching tech and product companies how to get users hooked. He has a refreshing take, though, and discourages the all-or-nothing abandonment of your smart device for a 1990's flip phone and typewriter (from personal experience, seriously). Instead, Nir teaches 4 techniques that are really mindset shifts to address the 3 biggest reasons you're getting distracted.

If you've been here for any amount of time you'll recognize many of the things we discuss: values, discomfort, taking action, even time management. Tune in and you'll feel encouraged to take action on the attributes of the person you want to become and be equipped to become indistractable.

About a few other things...

Do you struggle to create habits that stick? It's not your fault. The truth is simple: you've been trying to form habits using methods designed for perfect robots--not real women living real lives. It's time to change that. If I could help you gain confidence in creating habits AND guide you to uncover the ONE supportive habit to deeply care for yourself, could you commit 21 days to learning this method? The Sticky Habit Method is a 21-day course that revolutionizes the habit-formation process. It's real habits for real women.

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This episode is brought to you by Vionic Shoes (use code PROGRESS) and OneSkin with the (use code PROGRESS) at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

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TRANSCRIPT

Nir: So my name is Nir Eyal. I am a behavioral designer and I taught many years at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and then later at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, and I taught a class which turned into a book around how to build habit forming products.

 The class was basically about the consumer psychology around How products are designed to get you hooked and that's the title of my first book hooked and the idea was not to benefit the video gaming companies in the social networks. They've known these techniques for decades My idea was that we could democratize these techniques so that all sorts of products could be made better By making them more habit forming.

A few years after I wrote Hooked, I found that I had a new problem myself, which was that I had gotten hooked to some of these technologies that many of us find very distracting.

Whether it's our cell phones or the television, the news Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, right? We find that sometimes it's very difficult for us to do what we say we're going to do. And so for me, I think the seminal moment When I knew I had to reconsider my relationship with Distraction, came when I was with my daughter one afternoon, and we had this this beautiful day planned, just some quality day daughter time, and we had this book of activities that dads and daughters could play together, build a paper airplane there was a crossword puzzle.

And there was also this question 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 I got distracted. I started looking at my phone as opposed to being there with my daughter and she got the message I was sending which was whatever was on my phone was more important than she was She left the room and by the time I looked up from my phone.

She was gone And she went to go play with some toy outside. And if I'm honest with you, it wasn't just with my daughter that I was distracted. I was distracted when I would sit down at my desk at work, and I would say I was going to do one thing, and I would do everything but. It would happen when I said I was going to exercise, and I wouldn't.

It would happen when I said I was going to eat right, and I didn't. And that's when I decided, if I could have any superpower, The superpower I would most want would be the power to be indistractable. And that's why I say that I think becoming indistractable is the skill of the century. I don't know anybody who doesn't struggle with distraction.

And so I really wanted to conquer this for myself. I spent the past five years writing this book because I face this problem more than anybody. I'm like, I've never had a lot of. Self control and willpower. In fact, I used to be clinically obese and it was very much a similar struggle that I had with technology that I used to have with food.

And so I wanted a methodology to help me simply live out my values so that I could be the person I know I could become.

Monica: That last phrase right there. That is our language here. That is the mission and the heart of what we do. It's being who you want to be. But first I wanted to talk about distraction. There's a lot of fear around it and I get it because it's so easy to fall into that pit of distraction. Is it new and why do we fall for it so easily?

Nir: Yeah, so I guess the best place to start is to really understand what that word means. And I didn't understand it when I first started studying this.

And I think the best way to understand what distraction is to understand what distraction is not. So most people would think, I used to think, the opposite of distraction was focus. Yeah. But that's not true. That in fact, if you look at the opposite of the word the opposite of distraction is not focus.

The opposite of distraction is focus. Traction. Yeah. That both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull. And you'll also notice that both words end in the same six letters, A C T I O N, that spells action. So traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you. towards what you say you're going to do.

Things that are in accordance with your values and help you be the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction, it's right there in the word, is distraction. Distraction is any action That pulls you away from what you plan to do. Anything that is not in accordance with your values, anything that pulls you away from being the kind of person you want to become.

So this isn't just semantics. This is actually really important because it gives us very two very important insights. Number one, any action. Can become a distraction. Let me give you a great example. I would sit down at my desk at work and I would say, okay, I've got that big project that I need to do, right?

I've been, I have that thing that I've been procrastinating on this morning. I am going to do it. Nothing's going to get in my way. I'm not going to let myself get distracted. I'm just going to work on that project. Here I go. I'm going to get started right away. I'm going to do it right now, but first let me just check some email real quick.

Yeah. Let me just do that one thing on my to do list. Got to research. Oh my goodness. I used to do so much research. That's so important. I got to do that right now. And I would fool myself into prioritizing the easy tasks and the urgent tasks at the expense of the important tasks. tasks. And so this is why I say that any action can become a distraction because if it's not what you plan to do, it is a distraction by its very definition, even if it's productive, right?

Oh, I got a tricky email. I got to do that research. I'm trying to be a good citizen. Let me just check the news real quick. If it's not what you plan to do, even if it feels productive, it's just as much of a distraction as playing a video game or whatever else you think distracts people. And along those lines, just like anything can be a distraction.

Anything can be traction. So I think we hear a lot in the media these days about how technology is hijacking your brain, how it's addictive, how it's melting everybody's mind. And that stuff is not true. It's not scientific. And it's not helpful because, look we can't just stop using these tools, right?

I'm not some university professor in an ivory tower that says, oh, just stop using these tools. If you stop using these tools, many of us will get fired. Oh my goodness, talk about how thankful we should be to have these amazing technologies. And so the idea here is not. To vilify these technologies. This is this stuff isn't going away and it doesn't need to go away We shouldn't just stop using them. We should use them with intent. You see the difference between traction and Distraction is one word That one word is forethought.

The time you plan to waste is not wasted time. If you want to go on Netflix, or YouTube, or Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever it is you want to do with your time, there's no moral hierarchy. Why is watching football on TV somehow morally superior to playing a video game? It's not. They're both pastimes.

There's nothing wrong with either, as long as you use these tools on your schedule, not some media company's schedule, not some tech company's schedule, but your schedule. Indistractable is not about... A digital detox and stop using your technology. No, it's silly. In fact, I tried that I tried to I got rid of my cell phone And I got myself this flip phone from the 1990s Yeah with no internet connection just make and receive calls I also got myself this word processor that had no internet connection so that I you know, nothing would distract me and guess what?

I still got distracted Even without the internet I would say oh, okay. Now I'm going to work on this word processor with no internet connection. But, oh, you know what? There's that book that I've been meaning to, to look into. I should probably do some research in that book. Or, oh my goodness, my desk needs some tidying up.

Let me just clean up my desk. Or, look at the trash. I should probably take the trash right now. And I would say, Still distract myself because distraction is nothing new. 2, 500 years before the internet, the Greek philosopher Plato was complaining about boy, isn't the world such a distracting place.

Look at everybody getting so distracted these days because of the technology of the written word, like literally they said that the written word was going to, in the words of Socrates in feeble men's minds. So we have always been blaming technology for doing stuff that we do to ourselves. And so what we need to do is realize that these things are tools.

We don't have to stop using them. We just need to learn how to use them in a way that serves us as opposed to us serving them.

Monica: Absolutely. I think that takes a lot of the shame and guilt and fear away that instead, perpetuates that cycle, the all or nothing cycle that a lot of us can get into with technology.

But at the same time moving into forethought and intention that takes practice too, and that takes some skills as well. So let's talk about that too. Before we talk about the exterior, those. stuff, because that's where people want to go first. They're like looking at Pinterest, how to get control of my Instagram obsession or addiction, and then they have a whole list of things to do.

And still they find themselves back at it. I'm, I just did that. I took a month off Instagram and it was awesome. And I've taken many breaks. I did that more for my mental health, not because Instagram is a devil, but anyway, I still, like you said, found myself suddenly. reading the news a lot more than I was before.

In times past, there were a lot more Amazon packages that showed up to our house when I've taken a break. So let's still go to the heart of it. Where should people start instead of just going right to the tactics, although those are important, where should they start?

Nir: Yeah. Great question. Okay. So now that in your mind, you can say, okay, I've got traction and I have distraction and those are diametrically opposed.

And in the center are our actions like our actions are neutral It's based on what we decide to do that makes those actions traction or distraction anything that we plan to do intent That is traction. Everything else is distraction. Now. The next question is well, what drives our actions? What prompts us to attraction or distraction we have two?

triggers. We have what we call external triggers, and we have what we call internal triggers. I'll get back to the internal triggers in a second. External triggers, these are the usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in your outside environment that leads you towards traction or distraction.

It's not that external triggers are always bad, right? If you get a notification on your phone, That says, Oh, it's time for that call with your parents. It's time for the exercise you said you would, or you were going to do. It's time to have lunch with your kids, whatever it is. If the external trigger is serving you, it's leading you towards traction.

If it's leading you to towards anything else, that's not what you said you would do. Like for example, when I was with my daughter and my phone buzzed and I picked up my phone as opposed to being with someone I love very much. Now that's a distraction because that's not what I plan to do with my time So those are external triggers and there's a lot we can do to do what I call Hack back the external triggers and we can get back to that in a minute There's a lot of very practical techniques that we can use but it turns out what you know I think one of the biggest surprises for me originally, I thought I was going to write a book about how to hack back all these external triggers and get rid of all these potential distractions that I just you know, thought was synonymous with all of these external triggers.

And I didn't realize that the number one source of distraction, the root cause of more distractions than all the distractions that come from external triggers combined, are not the things that are happening outside of us, but rather what is happening inside of us. That most distraction begins from within.

And these are called internal triggers. What are internal triggers? Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from. All procrastination All distraction. It's not a character flaw. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken in any way It's simply that you don't have the tools to deal with emotional discomfort in a healthier manner because all distraction and procrastination is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort.

Okay? In fact, all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort. We call this the homeostatic response. For example, if you go outside and it's cold, your brain says, ooh, that's not comfortable, you should put on a coat. And when you come back inside, now it's too warm, the brain says, oh, that's not comfortable, take it off.

So those are physiological responses to discomfort and that guides our behavior The same rule applies to our psychological reaction. So for example, what website do we visit when we're feeling lonely?

Check Facebook, right? Or Instagram, some other social network. When we're uncertain, where do we go? We Google it, of course. And what about when we're feeling bored? Oh my goodness, so many products to help deal with that uncomfortable sensation of boredom, right?

Whether it's watching sports or Pinterest or stock prices, you name it. Lots and lots of products. Cater to this internal trigger of boredom because we don't like to feel those things. So here's the thing Whether it's too much news too much booze too much football too much facebook all Distraction begins from a desire to escape discomfort So if we don't deal with these internal triggers first and foremost This is the first step to becoming indistractable if we don't deal with that first none of the life hacks None of the tips and tricks, none of the little productivity gurus advice will work unless we understand what is the internal trigger we are trying to escape from and then how we deal with in a healthier manner that leads us towards traction rather than distraction.

So that's step one, mastering the internal triggers.

Monica: Ironically, It's also very uncomfortable to face, head on what that discomfort really is. A lot of people don't really want to spend the time to think Oh, I'm, I don't have a problem with Instagram itself. I have a problem with my own security.

Like I don't really like myself very much. I don't like to be alone with my thoughts and that's not really pleasant to have to face that.

Nir: It's always about a desire to escape discomfort, but that can also be very empowering. Because instead of thinking that we are addicted and that it's hijacking our brains and there's nothing we can do about it, which is what the media tells you, because guess what? They're in the same business. Yeah.

Whether you're watching CNN or Fox News or the New York Times, it doesn't matter. Every media company, guess what? They're in the same business as Facebook. They sell your attention to advertisers. And you know what gets your attention better than anything else in the world? Fear. That's what they use.

I know, I wrote the book Hooked. I know exactly the psychology. So when they use that fear of it's addicting you, it's hijacking your brains, what they're doing is they're teaching you what we call learned helplessness. Because when I'm addicted to something, I can't do anything about it. It's outside my control.

It's biological. And that's not true. Now some people are addicted, okay? Just like with alcohol is highly addictive, much more addictive than video games and Facebook, right? But is everybody who has a glass of wine with dinner an alcoholic?

Of course not. There are some people who are alcoholics, and there's a number of reasons why, but it's single digit percentages. So it's ridiculous to think that everybody is addicted to video games and social media. That's not true. We say that because it makes us feel better because then we don't have to do anything about it.

But when we look at it realistically, that this isn't an addiction for the vast majority of us. You know what it is? It's a distraction, but distraction we can do something about, but of course, oh man, no, I gotta do something, that's no fun.

Monica: It takes work. Yeah, it takes work. It's easier to just pretend it's someone else's problem, or it's not our fault and it's not to say we need to hate ourselves.

Nir: Yeah. I do want to say real quick, I'm so sorry to interrupt. It, this isn't your fault. Okay. This is very important to understand. It is not your fault. You didn't invent Facebook. You didn't invent Instagram. You didn't invent these things. They're not your fault. But you know what? A lot of things in life are not your fault, but they are still your responsibility.

Because if we want the good aspects of these technologies, if we want the way they connect us to each other, if we want the fact that we get, how many friends I would have no connection with because I moved across the country and I had to say goodbye to them. These technologies are miracles.

If you would have told me, when I was a kid that I would be talking to you right now, I'm in Singapore, you're in Utah. We're talking for free across thousands of miles. It's amazing. It's science fiction. But if we want all those benefits, the price of progress is that, what we need to learn some new skills and they're actually not that hard once, once we understand how to become indistractable.

Monica: Yeah. I appreciate that so much in the book too, just like the science behind this. I loved how you talked about how they moralized. The radio coming out and the printing press, people, blaming it for the destruction of the youth so it is freeing in a way because then you can look at it a little bit differently, reframe it, but also take more action on it.

 One thing I loved in the book, this is from my memory. Sorry. So this might not be word for word, but you can't say you're distracted unless you know what you're distracted from. And that's going back to, did I, okay. A few times in my quotes, just stick right there Nir.

And that was one of them. Can you go down this track with me for just a moment? I have a lot of listeners who are mothers and they feel like their life is hijacked in some ways because of the nature of their work of needing to be reactive to the needs around them. And that kind of is a complicated environment. How can, women, and especially the moms get to these roots of distraction while also, knowing that's part of the nature of their season right now is having to be more reactive.

Nir: Absolutely. Number one, there are more of these internal triggers. With more uncertainty and fear in the world, we feel uncomfortable more often, right?

The world is suddenly a much scarier place and there's so much more uncertainty around what we should be doing every day. That for many people, if they don't know how to deal with those internal triggers in a healthy way, they deal with it by looking for more distraction. And I understand, right? Like the days just flow together. And where am I supposed to be? And what am I supposed to do? Because that structure is gone. Now, the good news is, we can impose that structure for ourselves. Okay. We don't need the boss to tell us what to do. We're not children, right?

We're not babies. We can impose that structure. I know many people resist this because they think, Oh, my life is so chaotic. You don't understand. I'm a busy parent. I have so many demands on me. I need to be always available all the time, 24 hours a day. And what they don't realize is that is the fear of actually having to do what you say you're going to do expressing itself.

Yeah, that's the fear that you may actually have to exercise because you said you wanted to exercise. It's the fear of I may actually sit down and read a book and tell my kid I can't talk to them right now because I said I was going to read a book. It's the fear of having to do the things that you yourself said you were going to do because it's so easy to say This and this happened.

Okay, and I get that lots of unforeseen things happen. So the difference between a distractible person and an indistractable person is that an indistractable person understands Why they got distracted and they do something to fix it because there are only three reasons for every single distraction in the world. It's either an external trigger, an internal trigger, or a planning problem.

That's it. There are only three potential reasons. So a distractible person keeps doing the same things day after day, just like I used to do. Complaining about getting distracted without actually fixing the problem. And every one of these problems is in fact fixable, if it happens more than once, right?

If it, an alien comes from outer space, that's unexpected. Sitting in traffic, or your kid interrupting you, that happens all the time! Yeah! We can plan ahead of that. So the idea here, and you, just to go back to what you said earlier, is that you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.

And so one of the most well studied techniques in the psychology community for doing what you said you're going to do, for achieving your goals, for making sure that you live with personal integrity and live according to your values, is called making an implementation intention, which is just a very fancy way that psychologists use to describe planning out a calendar.

It's as simple as that, deciding in advance how you want to spend your time and how you want to spend your time needs to be based on your values. Now, what does that mean? What are values right? I didn't actually know the definition of values the definition of values Attributes of the person you want to become values are attributes of the person want to become so it's about the promise You are going to make to yourself.

So a lot of us, we talk the talk, right? we say we want to be good friends or Sons and daughters or good parents, but then when it comes to is that time on our calendars? Not so much, right? We say we want to make time for prayer. We say we wanted to make time for meditation or physical health, right?

But do we plan ahead? Is that time in our calendars? For most people, it isn't. We just, maybe some people put on a to do list, which by the way, we can get into in a minute, why to do lists are horrible for your personal productivity. Why it's a much better to have what we call a time box calendar because Only when you know how you plan to spend your time can you say you got distracted because if you don't have a calendar with how you want to spend your time, everything is a distraction.

You can't say you got distracted if you don't know what you got distracted from.

Monica: The time boxing thing I think it works, but not in the way people are thinking it can, especially, I am primarily a stay at home mom. So my time boxing might mean I have a three hour time period where I know.

Kids is my focus, the kids, that's it. And underneath that there's a whole, realm of to do's or tasks I need to do, but that's my focus. And then I have other few hours with work. And then again, the tasks underneath that it's more about rhythms. And it is like eight to eight 30, this very specific only check email.

I think people get too rigid with what that can look like. I love that we're talking about some ways to hack back those triggers. So implementation intention, what are some other ways for people to start on this when they're like, I'm at the beginning, I'm at the baseline, where do I go?

Nir: Yeah, so what we want to do is to turn our values into time and the way we do that is we start with these concentric circles of our values. And a lot of people get hung up with this technique of what are my values? Then maybe I should make a vision board and what's my five year plan and don't do that.

Okay. Let's just start with tomorrow. And what we want to ask ourselves is how would the person I want to become spend their time tomorrow? Again, values are attributes of the person you want to become. Yes. So how would the person I want to become spend their time tomorrow? Okay. So we start with the you domain.

You are at the center of these three domains. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people. You can't make the world better. You have to take care of yourself first. So how much time would the person you want to become spend on themselves? Given all the other stuff you have to do.

What is important to you? Do you have time in your calendar for prayer, meditation reading exercise, whatever it is that's important to you. It's not up to me or anyone else to tell you what your value should be. What I want to help you do is to make sure that you have those values on your calendar so that you follow through and actually do become the person you want to become.

The next domain is your relationships. So as opposed to just saying, Oh yeah, I'll check in with my friends. I'll see how my parents are doing. What's up with my siblings. I want you to put that time in your calendar, we are going through a loneliness epidemic in this country because people don't reserve time for the important people in their lives So get into that habit no matter what it is that you want to do to live out your values And again, i'm not saying you have to call your parents every week But if something like that is important to you checking in on your best friend Put that time in your calendar.

And then the final domain Is your work domain so whether you're stay at home or whether you work in an office You have basically two types of work.

You have reactive work and you have reflective work. And most people don't make any time for the reflective work. Their entire day is spent reacting to stuff, reacting to emails, reacting to notifications, reacting to. Kids, right? They're constantly on call and everybody's job does require some element of reactive work.

I get that, right? If you work in an office, you are expected to pick up the phone from certain hours. If you are a stay at home parent, you're expected to react to what your kids need during certain hours, but don't make that your entire day. Have some time in your day reserved for thinking. So many people go through their entire day without even a minute of Reflective work and you have got to be able to plan that time and protect it Keep it sacred even if it's 30 minutes a day because remember You know, we call it paying attention for a reason we don't give attention we pay attention So just like we wouldn't you know Stand on a street corner and pay with dollars and cents to whoever asks for it, right?

Somebody comes by and says give me a hundred dollars. You don't say okay. Sure. Here you go Because we're judicious about how we spend our money. We don't pay money to anybody who asks it We ask if we're getting something valuable in return and yet when it comes to our time and our attention Hey Banks open come steal as much of it as you want.

Oh, you need something. No problem Here's my time and attention go ahead Take as much of it as you want And so we need to be careful about how we spend our time because it is a very finite resource I don't care how much money you have you can be bill gates or jeff bezos And have billions of dollars in the bank.

You still have the same 24 hours in a day as everybody else has And so we have to be judicious about how we spend our time by turning our values into time that's the second step to becoming indistractable. We adjust this by the way You know week to week once we make our time box calendar I'll give you a link to a special tool I built That you can put in the show notes to make this super easy.

It's absolutely free. You don't sign up for anything But the idea here is that once you start making this time box calendar, It's exactly as you say it's not about every 15 minutes. It can be about big chunks of time I do the same thing with my daughter. So tomorrow I have three hours with my daughter in the afternoon Now, why is that important to plan?

Here's the thing part of my values are to be a loving father, right? That's one of the attributes of the person I want to become and so a loving father spends time with their kids And if I don't plan that time there is a risk That I will not make that time. I'll do something else. Because planning that three hours, I don't know what I'm going to do with my daughter.

Maybe we'll go to the museum, maybe we'll go to the park, maybe we'll go fly a kite. I don't know. But here's what I know we will not be doing. We will not be checking email. I will not be talking on the phone. I will not be distracted with something else because I know I have carved out that time to spend with my kid.

And then for that three hours, I can be completely reactive. I can do whatever it is she wants to do because that time is carved out for her.

Monica: Absolutely. I think that is key to what you're not going to do during a time is probably even more important than what you're saying you're going to do. And with that, is that discomfort people have of making trade offs.

They have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable with trade offs because you can't do all the things at all the times.

Nir: Because with the do list, it's infinite.

I just keep adding, I want this, I want to do that. I should do that. A calendar imposes a constraint. You can't go over 24 hours a day. It has to come at the expense of something, which is why I think making time box calendars are so much better than to do lists.

Monica: Yeah. I had a guest on, his name is Steven Lawson and he's the owner of Monk Manual.

It's a great planner, but we use this time block system as part of it. But he says, time is finite to do lists are forever. That really is true. You will never be done. You'll never be done with what's on your list.

Nir: And nobody ever finishes, right? If you bought a phone at the store and then you brought it home and every day it crashed, right?

The operating system of your phone crashed every single day. Wouldn't you go back to the store and say, Hey, this phone isn't working. And yet our life operating system, when you keep a to do list every day, I don't know one person. I've never met anybody who finishes everything on their to do list. Their operating system crashes every day.

And we never consider, Hey, maybe this system isn't working so well. Maybe I should find a different way to do things.

Monica: Absolutely. I want to, again, redirect people to your book, because there are so many more hacks as you call them to take back these triggers and to really work on things.

It also gives you more possibility. Cause I think a lot of people might be listening to this and think, Oh, that doesn't work for me or this excuse, and we want to honor you and whatever you're going through, but think in terms of possibility, there are possibilities for you.

There are options and this book. It gives a lot of them. But what I did want to talk about was how to deal with setbacks. I thought it was really profound how you did that. We live in a world of toxic positivity, where a lot of thought leaders, especially in the self development world are just like, choose your day, choose your reality, do things.

And then they ignore the anxiety or the depression or the overwhelm and the missteps that come along the way and how to actually deal with that in a way that's going to still propel you forward. Instead of thinking I didn't choose my reality today. I'm a piece of crap. No. How do you deal with setbacks?

I love how you talk about this Nir.

Nir: Absolutely. Yeah. This, so this is incredibly important because we do see that there's a type of person who does tend to fall off the wagon who doesn't stick to this. And that person it's interesting. It's not the kind of person who has low self control or doesn't have enough willpower that, you know, even right now in the psychology community, we're even debating whether willpower is a real thing.

Monica: I know I read that part and I was like, Oh man, I just. I just shared about that scientific study on my podcast like a month ago, the one that you debunked. And I was like, Oh no, but yes,

Nir: And so it turns out that people who do fall off the wagon and don't get back on, you know what the defining trait is people who lack self compassion.

Yeah. People who are more likely to give themselves self compassion are much more likely to accomplish their long term goals. Because what happens is, people tend to fall into these two buckets when it comes to distraction. I call them the blamers and the shamers.

The blamers, they blame stuff outside themselves. Oh, it's Facebook. Oh, it's the world these days. It's, they blame everything outside themselves. But of course that's futile because You can't change that stuff, right? We can't hop into a tie machine and go back in time. These things, this, the world is the way it is.

And then you have the shamers. The shamers, they don't complain about stuff outside themselves. They take it on the inside, right? They shame themselves. Oh, I'm there. I go again. I'm so lazy. I have a short attention span. Maybe there's something wrong with me. They shame themselves. And of course, that doesn't work either, because the more shame you feel, the more internal triggers you feel, and the more internal triggers you feel, the more likely you are to use more distraction to take your mind off of that uncomfortable emotional state. So that doesn't work either. So we don't want to be blamers. We don't want to be shamers. We want to be claimers. Claimers claim responsibility not for their urges and feelings. This is a really important point. People think they can control their urges and feelings.

That's not true. You cannot control your urges and feelings any more than you control the urge to sneeze. If I have the urge to sneeze suddenly, I can't rewind that. I don't control the urge to sneeze. I already had the urge. All I can do is to choose how I respond to that urge. Hence the term responsibility.

So the responsible thing to do when I feel the urge to sneeze is to grab a handkerchief and cover my face so I don't sneeze all over everyone. That's how I can respond to that urge, that sensation. The same goes with our feelings. We can choose how we respond to boredom, loneliness, fatigue, stress, anxiety.

Do we choose to escape that sensation? Do we choose to take our minds away from that sensation? Or can we actually use that uncomfortable sensation as rocket fuel to propel us towards traction? rather than distraction. So the way we cultivate self compassion, it's actually very simple. The way we cultivate self compassion is to talk to ourselves the way we would talk to a good friend.

That's it. It's that easy. And it sounds so simple, when I learned this and this is backed by peer reviewed studies, it, I realized that I would be such a bully to myself. I would say things to myself. That I would never say to a good friend, right? That when I got distracted with my daughter.

Ugh, I'm the worst dad in the world. This was a bad idea. I'm such a horrible person. How could I let myself do this? And I would guilt myself and shame myself. And I would never do that to a friend, right? I wouldn't talk to my good friend that way. I would be more compassionate. So remembering that simple rule.

Of allowing yourself to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend and realize that you know This is a step process that there are four steps to becoming indistractable And we can take tiny steps every day to implement these four techniques We talked about two of them mastering the internal triggers and making time for traction But whether it's hacking back the external triggers the third step around Finding the external triggers in our environment and doing small things to hack those backs to make sure they serve us as opposed To us serving them And the last technique that we didn't have time to talk much about is about preventing distraction with pacts where we're making promises with ourselves, with other people, even with our technology, believe it or not, it's a way that prevents us as a last line of defense as the firewall from getting distracted to make these pre commitments with our devices, so to speak, and with ourselves.

And it's using these four techniques in concert, which anybody can do. That's how we become indistractable.

Monica: And speaking of that, how we can become indistractable. Is there ever a point where you just arrive where you're like, Oh, I'm it. I'm fully indistractable. Like I'm there.

Nir: Yeah, so it depends how you define indistractable.

So the nice thing is I made up the word. I made up indistractable so I can define it anyway. Becoming indistractable doesn't mean you never get distracted. As I said earlier, everybody gets distracted from time to time because something really unexpected happens, the first time you get a free pass It's the second time that we have to do something about it So becoming indistractable doesn't mean you never get distracted It means you strive to do what you say you're going to do you strive to live with personal integrity So I still get distracted from time to time, But again, the idea is to learn from them so that we don't keep getting distracted, again and again from them So you never?

You never are done. It's a process. It's almost like saying you can learn to be more creative, but you're never done being creative. You apply that skill to the various domains of your life.

Monica: Absolutely. That's so much of what I love about what you do too, is this connection, back to identity, really owning who we are and who we want to be.

And that is power. That's where we can really start. So Nir, I have a final question for you. And it's, I just want to hear more of the human of what you're working on right now. What are you trying to aspire in, in your life and who you want to be?

Nir: Yeah. So my, my dream with InDistractible and that's all I'm working on right now.

It took me five years to write this book. It's been a long personal journey. The reason it took me five years to write this book is because for the first. Three, I kept getting distracted until I learned these techniques. And I didn't, there wasn't a book at the time that taught me how to do this.

I had to go find the research and put together methodology, try it on myself. I worked with hundreds of clients and people over the years who use these techniques. So it took me a long time to figure out this methodology. And now that I have it's completely changed my life. I'm 42 years old and I'm in the best shape physically that I've ever been because I actually work out when I say I will.

And I eat healthy because I said I will. I'm in a better relationship with my wife. We've been married now for 18 years and we've never been closer because I do what I say I'm going to do for her, right? So she can depend upon me. With my daughter, I have a better relationship than ever because also, it's much easier to have a close relationship when we are fully present with the people we love.

And it's super important to me that I raise a child who is indistractable because, if you think the world is distracting now, just wait a few years. The world that our kids inherit is only going to be more distracted. So it's incredibly important to teach our kids how to be indistractable themselves.

So my goal is to really, spread this message. So that someday, my dream is that I hear somebody use the word indistractable to describe themselves the way I described myself without knowing that I came up with that term, right? If this becomes part of the conversation, if this becomes part of an identity, as you said that's really the mission here, that's really what I'm working towards because when we have that moniker, when we have that identity, it actually helps us conform to our values.

And this actually comes from the psychology of religion, that when someone Calls themselves a devout christian or even a vegetarian right a vegetarian doesn't wake up in the morning and say should I have a bacon sandwich for breakfast? They know that's off limits because of who they are so It's the same way for becoming indistractable.

That's why the book is called what it is, because that becomes our new moniker. That becomes our new identity that helps us become the people we want to be.

Monica: I'm grateful I get to be a small part of sharing your mission here and the methodology too. It's just, it's so brilliant. I love the four step process too.

And I love how doable it is. So I just want to honor you and thank you so much. So I want to make sure we send people the right direction. So if they want to learn more first, I'd say pick up the book. We'll link that in the show notes, but what else can they do to connect with you better?

Nir: Absolutely, yeah, so my blog is at nirandfar.

com, and nir is spelled like my first name, so that's n i r and far. com. And there's actually a a bonus material on the site that we actually couldn't fit into the final edition of the book. There's an 18 page... That's completely complimentary. Anybody can get it. You don't have to buy the book.

And that's at near and far dot com And also there's that schedule maker tool which will walk you through exactly if you're interested in making a time box calendar a lot of people think it's a lot of heavy lifting Maybe take you 20 minutes to make one and i'll give the link for the in the show notes I'll tell it to you right now as well.

It's near and far dot com forward slash schedule hyphen maker here far. com forward slash schedule hyphen maker Totally free. I just built the tool because I kept getting asked this question about where do I get started with my inbox calendar? You don't have to sign up for anything, not even your email.

It's just there for you.

Monica: All right, near, this is probably the most notes I've taken in an interview in a long time and thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to be on the show, for writing this book and all you do, and we're now your biggest fans.

So thank you.

Nir: Oh, I really appreciate it. I wish the listeners could see the book. I love you. You sent me a picture of the book and I can see it there. The, all the tabs and notes. Nothing makes me happier than to see someone actually apply this. Thank you so much.

Monica: So Oh, Nir, tell me your full name. Everyone pronounces my last name wrong. So I'm sure you have the same experience. So tell me your full name here while we

Nir: Yeah, it's Nir Eyal. Eyal.

Monica: Okay. Okay. Thank you. It's funny. I looked at and they told

Nir: me Eeyaw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's very common.

So as long as you get the first name that's the important part because I made my blog near and far and you would not believe how many people still get it wrong.

I actually gave a talk before COVID. I was giving a speech and the person who introduced me said, okay, now we're going to hear from a, an expert on habit formation.

He runs a popular blog called Near and Far. Please welcome NER. Oh no.

Monica: The thing is that person would be me. That's why I have my guests say their name. Once I press record.

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