Strategies for becoming less distractible and improving focus | Nir Eyal

[00:00] I went to Alibaba and I bought myself one of these flip phones from China, you know, like we used to have in the 1990s with no apps, no Internet connection. And then I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I could just sit down and write and do the important stuff. [00:13] And even when I stopped using all the technology, even when I got rid of all the apps, I would sit down at my desk and I'd say, oh, you know what? There's that book that I've been meaning to do some research in, or let me just clean off my desk real quick, or you know what? I should take out the trash. And I kept getting distracted because the problem is not our technology. The problem is… [00:32] is our inability to deal with discomfort. So what I have adopted for myself and what I'd advise anyone who finds themselves in this situation is to always identify what is that internal trigger? What is that itch that you are looking to escape when you get distracted? Because that is the source of 90% of our distractions. It's not the pings, dings, and rings. [00:53] It's the feelings. But to me, that's incredibly empowering because once you realize, wait a minute, [00:58] just a feeling. It's all it is. It's just an emotion. Then you can have tools ready to go. You can have arrows in your quiver ready to take out as soon as you feel that discomfort.

[01:10] Today, my guest is Nir Eyal. Nir is the author of two bestselling books, [01:16] how to build habit-forming products, [01:17] and indistractable how to control your attention and choose your life. [01:22] Nir spends his time teaching and consulting at the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. [01:28] His books have sold over 1 million copies in over 30 languages. [01:31] In our conversation, we get very tactical about how to become less distractible and how to get better at focusing on doing the work that you know you need to do. Nir shares at least a dozen tools and tricks that you can put into place today to help you stay focused and avoid getting distracted. After this conversation, I've already implemented some of these tactics, and they're actually working. If you find these helpful or you want to go deeper, definitely check out Nir's book, Indistractable. [02:01] answers. [02:02] This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Com, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. [02:32] accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com slash lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot

[03:02] for a reason. But sometimes the day-to-day reality is a little different than you imagine. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers, and crafting a strategy, you're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates, and you're spending your days basically putting out fires. A better way is possible. [03:20] Introducing Jira Product Discovery, the new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams by Atlassian. With Jira Product Discovery, you can gather all your product ideas and insights in one place and prioritize confidently, finally replacing those endless spreadsheets. Create and share custom product roadmaps with any stakeholder in seconds. And it's all built on Jira, where your engineering team is already working, so true collaboration is finally possible. [03:50] engineers. Sales, support, leadership, even Greg from finance. Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in Jira product discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. Say goodbye to your spreadsheets and the never-ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Jira product discovery. Try it for free at Atlassian.com slash Lenny. That's Atlassian.com slash Lenny. [04:23] Nir, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much, Lenny. Great to be here. [04:28] I feel like we have a chance to record [04:31] the most valuable hour in podcast history because it could give people

[04:34] more time to do the things they want to do. [04:37] And this is based on a book that you wrote called Indistractable, which is all about helping people become less distracted, become better at focus. And in my opinion, it might be the most essential skill in the workplace today. And so what I'm hoping to do today in our chat is just basically give people as many ideas. [04:52] tactical skills and pieces of advice and tools to become [04:56] less distractible and to get better at focus. How does that sound? That sounds great. I love that you're setting the expectations high. I'll try and meet them. Well, now we got to hit them. Okay. So here's the question. I'll just start really broad and let's just see where this goes. My question is just how does one become less distractible slash how do I become less distractible? [05:14] Okay, so there's a deeper motivation here. I need help, which is great. That's my favorite thing to do is to actually get concrete with people about what their specific challenges are. But let me back up here. So this is what I spent five years writing a book about. Why did it take me five years to write a book? Because I was so distracted. So I wrote this book for me more than anyone else. That's the only reason I write books. It's not because of what I know, but because of what I want to know. [05:44] things that I was doing to hurt my own productivity. And when I really went down to first principles and looked at the research, I found that there were so many things that I was doing wrong. But since I've changed my ways and adopted what the research literature says about distraction, it's improved my life in inconceivable ways. I mean, I'm in the best shape of my life at 45 years old. I have a better relationship with my family than ever. I'm more productive at work than ever

[06:14] find is is uh really emblematic of of [06:17] people in today's is not that we don't know what to do it used to be maybe okay our grandparents they didn't know what to do because the information was scarce they had to go to the library and look things up well today with the internet we all basically know what to do and if you don't know what to do [06:31] Google it, right? You can find the answer out there. But we all basically know common sense stuff. Like if you want to get in shape, you have to exercise and eat right. Okay, you don't need a diet book to tell you that if you want to have better relationships with your family, you have to be fully present with people. If you want to do better at work, you have to do the hard work that other people don't want to do. We already know these things. What we don't know is how to get out of our own way, how to stop getting distracted. And so that was certainly my problem. And so what [07:01] Conventional solutions didn't work for me. [07:03] When I have a problem in my life, I'll think about it, I'll write about it, I'll talk to friends, I'll talk to my wife about it. If I still can't figure it out, I'll read books about it. [07:11] And what the conventional wisdom out there, written by a lot of college professors that are all tenured, is stop using technology. Stop checking email. Get off social media. It's melting your brain. [07:21] but that's not very helpful, right? Like maybe if you have tenure, that's okay, but I can't stop using technology, my career will plummet. I have to use these tools. So I wanted much more practical advice, and what I discovered was, [07:34] that the root cause of distraction is much more interesting and the solution is far more empowering than stop using technology. Technology is evil. It's melting your brain. So where do we begin? Maybe the best place to start is by first before we dive into the tactics around how do we become indistractable. The first place to start is what is distraction, right? Understanding the term really, really matters. And the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is not. What's the opposite of distraction?

[08:04] the opposite of distraction, they'll tell you focus, right? I don't want to be distracted. I want to be focused. [08:10] that's not exactly right then in fact the opposite of distraction is not focused the opposite of distraction [08:15] is traction becomes pretty easy when you look at both words traction distraction they're opposites because both words come from the same latin root trahare which means to pull and they both end in the same six letters a c t i o n that spells action reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us it is an action that we ourselves take so traction by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you say you were going to do things you do with intent things [08:45] you closer to your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. Now, the opposite of traction, distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your goals, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become. And what separates traction from distraction is one word. [09:04] and that one word is intent. I love this Dorothy Parker quote, she said, "The time you plan to waste is not wasted time." So I think we need to stop medicalizing and moralizing, you know, what people do with their time. Why is it that, you know, someone going on Reddit, or on social media, or watching a YouTube video, that's somehow morally inferior to watching a football game on TV? It's not. Anything you want to do with your time and attention is fine, as long as it's done with intent, as long as you're doing it on your schedule, [09:33] and not someone else, certainly not the tech company schedule. So,

[09:37] anything you do with intent is traction anything else is distraction so what I discovered [09:42] for me was that I was getting tripped by distraction in that, [09:48] The most pernicious form of distraction I discovered was the kind I didn't even realize was distracting me. So let me know if this sounds familiar to you, Lenny. I would sit down at my desk. [09:57] I would look at my to-do list. By the way, we can talk about why to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity. We can get back to that later. But I would sit down at my desk and I'd say, "Okay, I've got that big important project. "That's what I'm gonna do this morning. "I'm not gonna get distracted. "Nothing's gonna get in my way. "Here I go, I'm gonna get started. [10:15] But first, let me check some email. [10:17] - Are you watching me? 'Cause this happens to me every morning. You gotta stop. - This is totally autobiographical. This is what I used to do all the day. Let me just scroll that Slack channel. What's everybody at the office doing? Oh, let me just catch up on industry news. That's important, that's part of my job, right? I'm being productive, right? And what I didn't realize is that distraction was tricking me into prioritizing the urgent and the easy stuff at the expense of the hard and important work I had to do to move my life and career forward. So just because it's a work-related task, [10:46] doesn't mean it's not a distraction. In fact, that's the worst kind of distraction, far worse than playing Candy Crush or whatever, because then you know you're putzing around. Then at least it's obvious that you're distracted. But if you're just checking work email, you feel productive, even though that's a distraction because it's not what you said you want to do with your time and attention. So now we have this framework, right? We have traction, [11:06] We have distraction. Now, there's one more thing that's super important. Then we'll have the entire picture so that we can stop and stop thinking about the model and actually get to a brass tacks of what do we actually do now that we have traction, distraction. The other thing we have to consider are triggers. We have two kinds of triggers. We have external triggers. These are things in our outside environment. The usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings, all this stuff in our outside environment, which we tend to blame for distraction.

[11:36] and we get distracted. 10% of the time, it's because of something outside of us. What's the other 90%? [11:42] Turns out 90% of the time that we get distracted, it's not because of what's happening outside of us, but that most distraction begins from within. [11:52] So, [11:53] Boredom. [11:54] loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety, that is the cause of 90% of our distractions. So whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, you are always going to get distracted from one thing or another, unless you understand the root cause of the problem. So step number one to becoming indistractable is to master those internal triggers, or they will become your master. Then step number two, now we're working around those four points. Step number two, [12:24] Step number four, prevent distraction with PACT. So you asked a big question. I gave you a big answer. That's the overall framework. That's a strategy. Tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it. So I wanted to explain the strategy before we got into the tactics. Amazing. I love this word traction because it relates to kind of the other side of this podcast of growth, product market fit, building products. People want like getting traction with users. So I really like that there's this additional way of thinking about traction. [12:49] which is basically not being distracted. Can you just repeat the four steps again for people to have this in mind? [12:55] Step number one, master internal triggers. Step number two, make time for traction. So this is where we're turning our values into time. We can talk about how to do that. Step number three is hack back the external triggers. This is where we get into the pings, dings, and rings, not just the obvious stuff like your phone, your computer. I take about a page and a half to talk about that. That's kind of kindergarten stuff. But what about all the non-obvious external triggers? What about stupid meetings that didn't need to be called? What about emails that didn't need to be sent

[13:25] They're fantastic to have kids, but they can also be a source of distraction. So how do we deal with all those external triggers? And then finally, prevent distraction with pacts. And pacts are this firewall, this last resort against distraction that we can use to keep distraction at bay. And it's really about these four steps in concert in this order that anyone can use to become indistractable. Awesome. Does this spell something clever, by the way? No, I didn't have an acronym. I just but I do have a pretty picture. Awesome. [13:55] the example you shared, I think many people ran into this. There's a hard thing I need to do, and I'm just going to go check my email on Twitter instead. I feel like that's a very common distraction. And so getting into that at some point would be awesome, but otherwise, let's get into these four steps. [14:09] Yeah, well, we can absolutely do that. So is that something you encounter? It sounds like it is. 100% every time. I have my to-do list, work on next week's post, and then I'm like, oh, let me just go check Twitter. Maybe I'll tweet something. That'll be fun. And then my email, oh, inbox zero. Let's get all the way to zero. That's cool. Okay, now the days are over. [14:27] exactly exactly by the way we are cut from the same cloth this is exactly the pattern I used to get into and and I knew I wasn't doing my best because I wasn't putting in the time to the things that were most important I was doing just what was easy and what was urgent and that's not good enough so the first step so if we use this model step number one is master the internal triggers so for you Lenny so when you say okay I know I've got a bit do this big important thing but now I'm gonna go check email [14:54] I would guess that there's some kind of underlying emotion that you're trying to escape. Do you know if you can, can you like, let's put yourself in the shoes that you were in when you said I was going to do that big important thing, but now I'm going to check email instead. Do you remember the last time that happened, by the way? Every morning. Every morning. This morning? Yeah, this morning.

[15:16] Okay, perfect, perfect. Do you recall what you were feeling? [15:19] right before you went to Twitter or checked email or did the thing that you didn't want to do as opposed to the thing you said you were going to do? I don't know if this is an emotion or feeling, but there's just this like, I need to get... [15:31] serious and start using my brain and there's going to be this like deep work moment where I just get real deep and I it takes a lot of effort to push me into that you know not sometimes easier sometimes harder so maybe it's like avoiding this like okay I'm gonna really have to think it's like I guess it's the fear of the brain starting to really have to work. [15:51] Yeah, that's hard work, right? So maybe it's a bit of laziness, right? Maybe it's a bit of momentum. There's this uncomfortable feeling of this cold start problem. Oh, I don't really want to do it right now. So this is incredibly important. And I appreciate your candor here around what you feel because all of us experience it. And we don't want to talk about it. We want to think that it's, oh, I'll just grayscale my phone or I'll just turn off notifications and that's going to solve the problem. And it never does. And let me tell you, I tried all of it, right? [16:21] of these flip phones from China, you know, like we used to have in the 1990s with no apps, no internet connection. And then I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I, you know, I could just sit down and write and do the important stuff. [16:32] And even when I stopped using all the technology, even when I got rid of all the apps, I would sit down at my desk and I'd say, oh, you know what? There's that book that I've been meaning to do some research in, or let me just clean off my desk real quick, or you know what? I should take out the trash. And I kept getting distracted because the problem is not our technology. The problem is our inability to deal with discomfort.

[17:02] that internal trigger what is that itch that you are looking to escape when you get distracted because that is the source of 90 of our distractions it's not the pings dings and rings it's the feelings but to me that's incredibly empowering because once you realize wait a minute [17:17] Just a feeling. It's all it is. It's just an emotion. Then you can have tools ready to go. You can have arrows in your quiver ready to take out as soon as you feel that discomfort. So let me give you one tool that I use every single day. Feel free to use it next time you feel the same same problem. It's called the 10 minute rule. [17:37] And this is just one of a dozen different techniques that you can use that I put in the book, but this is one that I use almost every single day. So for me, you know, I've been a professional writer now for over a decade and writing is never easy. Like I hear people say like, oh, just form a writing habit. I think that's ridiculous. I don't know what they're talking about. Right. A habit is defined as a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. [17:57] I don't know how to write out of habit. Writing is always hard frickin' work. I've written two bestsellers, thousands of articles, and let me tell you, it's always difficult. It's hard, and all I want to do when I write is just Google this one thing, or let me just check the news real quick, or let me just do anything but the actual writing. So here's what I do. By the way, there's a great quote that I'll share real quick about this that I think I share often on this podcast that I think it's falsely attributed to Hemingway, but it's that writing is easy. You just sit down at the keyboard and bleed. [18:25] Oh my god, that's so true. It's so true. And I've not figured out how to make it suddenly easy. It's always every single word is hard to type out. But I got to do it, right? And I love doing it. I love having done it, right? In the process, it's very difficult. But after I make the discovery, after I create something that I think is useful, then it's a lot of fun. But doing the work is really difficult.

[18:55] What I will do is I will take out a timer, right? I'll take out my phone and I'll say set a timer for 10 minutes. I'll put the phone down. And my job is to, for those 10 minutes, whenever I'm ready, get back to the task at hand or do what's called surf the urge. Surfing the urge acknowledges that these emotions are like waves. They crest and then they subside. But that's not how we think about emotions. Most of us think about emotions as always being there. [19:25] frustrated it feels like I'm always gonna be frustrated that's never the case [19:28] Emotions are like waves. So your job is to set that timer for 10 minutes and realize you can do just about anything for just 10 minutes. Right. So the idea is not to say don't do it. We know that this technique that a lot of people use of abstinence, telling yourself, don't do that. That's bad, actually can backfire. And we can talk about the psychology. That's interesting of why abstinence backfires. But a much healthier technique is not to tell yourself. No, it's to tell yourself not yet. [19:55] right you're not saying no you're saying not yet and so you can do just about anything for 10 minutes so what i tell myself is okay i'm just going to wait 10 minutes before i check email before i scroll social media before i google something that is just trying to procrastinate doing the work i can do that i'm a grown man i can do whatever i want okay i can do that in 10 minutes and so for those 10 minutes all i have to do is either get back to the task at hand right get back to writing or surf the urge which is simply [20:22] experiencing that sensation acknowledging you know what this is hard work that's okay that's why I'm feeling frustrated that's why I'm feeling bored that's why I'm feeling anxious that's why I have this cold start around like I don't really want to do this work

[20:33] because it's difficult. So what I do is I take a deep breath. [20:36] and I repeat a mantra that I made up for myself. You can make up your own mantra. My personal mantra whenever I feel this internal trigger is I remind myself this. I say, [20:45] Whew. [20:46] This is what it feels like to get better. [20:49] "This is what it feels like to get better." And just saying that for as long as I need to, until that emotion crescent subsides, and then get back to work, what you will find nine times out of 10, is that by the time those 10 minutes are up, [21:02] You will have forgotten about that sensation. You'll be right back at the task at hand. And so that's what's called the 10 minute rule. And of course, what you're doing over time is that the 10 minute rule can become the 12 minute rule can become the 20 minute rule. And most importantly, you are proving to yourself that you have agency, that you said you were going to focus on a task and you did. That's the most important part. The flip that we need to change in people's minds is this ridiculous belief that technology is hijacking our brains. [21:32] focus is being stolen. It's not being stolen. We're giving it away. And so what we need to do is to empower ourselves by showing ourselves in practice, as well as in theory, that we can postpone that distraction when we say we will. What I like about this is one, it's kind of like the Pomodoro technique, but it's shorter. That 10 minutes, I think, is a really clever tweak versus 20 minutes, which a lot of people recommend. [21:54] And then I guess a couple of follow up questions. Do you do this [21:57] one time in the morning and then not come back to it is this like a jump start for the day and then you start like i find out if i start a thing like this it won't be 10 minutes it'll be like an hour because i'm like okay i did the hard thing i'm into it i'm just gonna keep working so is this like a jump start for the morning or do you come back to this throughout the day

[22:12] So you can do it whenever you find yourself slipping off track. And so the Pomodoro is a version of this. I don't think it's complete enough because Pomodoro just set the timer, do it. Okay, fine. And that's great. If it works for you, by the way, anything I'm saying right now, if the thing is working for you, if your life is awesome and you're doing what you said you're going to do, maybe this isn't the podcast. Maybe my book isn't the book for you, right? I'm talking to the people who, for whatever reason, you know you're capable of more. You know you're drifting off track. [22:42] going to work on that big task, but you procrastinate. That's really who I was, and that's who I wrote this book for. You can use that technique whenever you get distracted. [22:53] It's not the whole picture. Okay, so it's super important. Remember, we talked about those four steps. This is just step number one. There's about a dozen different things you can do. Maybe this particular 10-minute rule doesn't work for you, doesn't work for everyone. There might be other techniques you use. So there's dozens of different techniques just about this step around mastering internal triggers. But the next step to answer your question of, well, how long do I go for? Do I do it for an hour if now I'm in the zone? And my answer is emphatically no. You don't go as long as you think you can. [23:23] is you're making time for traction [23:25] by turning your values into time. [23:28] right which means you are going to make a time box schedule because [23:34] You cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. [23:39] I'll say that again. You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. So,

[23:44] For me at least, when I would succumb to, oh, let me just check email for a quick minute, let me just see what's happening on Twitter for a quick minute, part of that was because I would justify to myself, well, this is a work-related task, I got to do it sometime, and there wasn't a specific time to do it on my calendar. [24:00] So I would keep thinking, well, I got to do it sometime. Might as well just do it now. [24:03] And that's a huge mistake because if you can't look at your calendar and say, oh, that's traction. [24:09] Okay. [24:10] check email, write the blog post, post the podcast, go on social media. If that's not what's written in your calendar, [24:18] If it's not there... [24:20] It's a distraction. [24:22] And so it's not just work related stuff. Like I literally have time in my calendar, spend time with my daughter, go on social media, watch Netflix. It's in my calendar. So now I took what was previously distraction and I turned it into traction by putting it on my schedule. [24:36] So you actually do this through the day you have. I'm going to check Twitter during this time of the day. I'm going to hang out with my daughter during this time of the day. [24:44] Exactly. And so and you're you're adjusting it never in the day. So you never want to do that. You always want to make sure you're doing it the day before. And so what I do once a week, Sunday evenings, it takes me maybe 10 minutes a week. [24:55] 8:00 p.m. I sit down, I look at my schedule for the week ahead, and I ask myself, does this schedule reflect my values? What are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become. [25:06] I'll say it again, values or attributes of the person you want to become. So there's three life domains, you, your relationships, and finally your work. So what you got to do is you look at your calendar for the week ahead and you ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend time taking care of themselves? That's the you domain. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others. You can't make the world a better place. So then you put in your calendar how you want to take care of yourself. What might that include? Well, time for rest. We all know how important sleep is.

[25:36] oh, you know, it's your bedtime. You got to get to bed. And then one day she said to me, daddy, do you have a bedtime? She was absolutely right. I was a hypocrite because I know how important sleep is. And I didn't have a bedtime. [25:45] Now I have a bedtime. It's in my schedule. Then put in time for whatever else is important to you. Is reading important to you? Is prayer important to you? Is meditation? Is exercise? Is video games? Is that important to you? Great. Whatever's important to you according to your values, put it in your schedule. [26:01] Then you're going to put your relationships in. Right. So don't let the relationships in your life get whatever scraps of time are left over. Put time in your schedule for your significant other, for your kids, for your buddies. Right. How many of us are trapped in this loneliness epidemic because we don't make time for our closest relationships, including adult friendships. Don't let those wither away. [26:22] Put time in your schedule for those as well. We know that most friendships, they don't die in some big blowout. Relationships starve to death because we don't invest in them. Put time in your schedule for those relationships. We can talk about how to do that as well. Then finally, the work domain involves two kinds of work. We have what's called reactive work and reflective work. Reactive work, reacting to notifications, reacting to emails, reacting to taps on the shoulder from your colleagues. That's going to be part of everybody's day. I get that.

[26:52] most people do they habituate into not wanting to think. [26:55] They don't want to think what's important. So just let me look at my email inbox. My email inbox will tell me what to do. You know, what's really important for my business? Oh, that's really hard. I don't really want to think about that. I'll just look at my to-do list and I'll start taking off easy tasks to do that make me feel productive. That's terrible. What you want to do instead is to book time in your schedule, [27:13] for this reflective work time which is where you can you do the kind of work that requires you to work without distraction [27:20] planning, strategizing, thinking for God's sakes, can only be done without distraction. So that fills up your calendar as well. And what you're going to find that there's never enough time for everything, which is good, because what this forces you to do, and this is one of the main reasons why to do lists suck, is because to do lists have no constraints. [27:37] You can always add more to a to-do list. You can always add more. But here's what happens. This is what happened to me. I would get home from work. I have a very busy day. And I'd look at my to-do list and it's a hundred items long. And I think, wow, I've been working real hard all day. And look at all this stuff I still didn't do. [27:54] Loser. [27:55] And so day after day, week after week, month after month, I was reinforcing this self-image as someone who doesn't know how to manage their time. And then I started saying stupid stuff like, oh, maybe I'm no good at time management. Maybe I have undiagnosed ADHD. Maybe there's something wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me. There's something wrong with this very stupid to-do list method, which doesn't force you to understand that there are tradeoffs that you have to prioritize properly. And that can only be done with constraints. And that constraints come from your calendar.

[28:25] time by making time for traction and having this calendar and then only then you can look at your calendar and say ah whatever it is i plan to do that's traction [28:34] Everything else is distraction. I want to share a couple things that work for me that are very much along these lines. One is booking, I call it deep work time within the day. [28:44] This was like the only thing I had in the calendar, so I didn't do the other things, which I think would have been really helpful. But I had a, I called it deep work time. I will slap you if you book anything over this meeting. I love it. And I did that every Monday morning, Wednesday morning, and Friday sometime. Who was slapping you? I would be slapping the person that booked time over that slot. And nobody would book time. Oh, okay, got it. And I don't know if that's allowed these days. I don't know how this goes. It depends who you're booking with, I guess. Yeah, make it a little less aggressive maybe. [29:13] But that worked a ton, just like it was like a two or three hour block of deep work time. And that made a big dent in my ability to have time to focus because people weren't booking me as a PM. Yeah, I love it. And by the way, just I want to hear more of these. But that illustrates a really good point that when the stakes are high enough, right? I hear people a lot of times saying, I just can't find the time to focus and I can't get this done. And it's impossible these days. And then I say, well, let's make a little wager here, right? Let's say people, I get this around physical fitness a lot. Or somebody says, oh, I want to be an author. How do I do that? How do I write the book? [29:43] seem to find the time. [29:45] And they constantly say why they can't, they can't, they can't. There's this constraint. My boss wants this. My kids want that. They have every kind of excuse. And then I say, okay, let's say that – [29:54] If you don't work out,

[29:56] you know, 8 a.m. Monday morning, if you don't work out, you're going to have to pay me $10,000. [30:01] Are you going to do it? Are you going to work out? Well, of course, I'm going to work out right easily. Yes, of course. Well, OK, so we've established you can. Now we're just negotiating the price. [30:10] So this has to do with step four around making pacts, making what's called a pre-commitment. And one of them is a price pact. This is how I got in shape. I used to be clinically obese. Today I'm in the best shape of my life. [30:21] partially because I use these packs. Now, the important thing is you have to do this last. If you don't figure out the internal triggers, most importantly, if you don't make time for traction in your schedule, if you don't hack back the external triggers, this fourth step won't work. But as the last line of defense, it's incredibly impactful. And we can talk about how to do that as well. [30:38] I heard the All In guys did this to lose weight. I think Sax and Jason Schock-Cadden did a pact, too. I think it was like a lot of money, like $100,000 or something a while. Oh, that's awesome. Actually, that's what I used to finish this book as well. Maybe they read my book, I wonder, because I talk about this exact situation. And you hit it, it sounds like. I did, yeah. Great. Another trick I'll share that I found really useful around the to-do list. So I use to-do lists, but I've learned that I can't just let them grow,

[31:08] I wrote it down in a notebook and every morning I rewrote the to-do list so that it reminded me like, okay, I've copied this thing 10 times now. I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to push it up. So that act of just rethinking about it every day. [31:22] It was really impactful, but that works for people that are okay with an analog. [31:25] to-do list if it's [31:26] digital, that doesn't go away. [31:28] Yeah, yeah. So that's there's nothing where I want to clarify. There's nothing wrong with taking things out of your brain and putting them on a piece of paper. That's that's wonderful. But that's step one. And so the big mistake that people make is they put stuff on their to do list and then they wake up in the morning and what are they supposed to do? Well, I'll do whatever's on my to do list. And so what they tend to do is the easy stuff. Right. I've known people I had to tell you I used to do this myself, too. I would. [31:52] do a task and then forget to put on my to do list. So I would go back in and write it on my to do list just so I could check off the box. [31:58] How messed up is that? [32:00] It's ridiculous. And I think this is something that I think really does need to change that we have this culture where checking stuff off your list is like our little emotional reward. [32:11] right but that's that's ridiculous we need to stop measuring ourselves by how many cute little boxes we check off and rather a much more important metric is not did i finish the task i don't want you to track did i finish that's not the important part okay but people are probably scratching their heads what do you mean isn't it all about finishing what i have to do no the important part is figuring out your productivity it's figuring out how efficient you are at using your time so a much

[32:39] is not did i check off the box did i finish rather it's did i do [32:44] what i said i was going to do for as long as i said i would without distraction i'll say it again did i do what i said i was going to do for as long as i said i would without distraction because that is the only way to understand how long things take you the problem with to-do lists [32:59] is that there is no feedback loop. There's no feedback mechanism. How long do things take you? So this is why you have what's called the planning fallacy with people who use to-do lists, which says that on average, studies have found that tasks take people three times longer to finish than they estimate. Why does that happen? Because when you say, OK, here's that thing on the to-do list. I'm going to work on that and see how long it takes me to get it done. So you work on it for five minutes, and then you get an email, and then you get a notification, and then you start talking to one of your colleagues. [33:26] And you never actually track how long that thing took you to finish as opposed to. [33:31] When you say look, [33:32] I'm going to work on that task for as long as I said I would, but without distraction. That's it. That's all I'm going to do. What you now have is a metric of how far you got. So I worked on that presentation. It needs to be 30 slides long and I worked on it for 30 minutes and I finished two slides. OK, great. Well, now I know that I need 10 more of those time boxes to finish the entire task.

[34:02] did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction, regardless of whether I finished, the kicker here is they actually finish more. [34:11] They get more done. [34:13] than the to-do list people, because now they understand how long things take them to finish, and they can appropriately time that as opposed to what most of us did, what I used to do before I wrote Indistractable, was procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate. Oh, crap, I got to get this done. The deadline's here, so I'm going to work all night to finish it. And of course, that's not when you do your best work. [34:29] And it's very stressful. [34:31] Since you mentioned deadlines, do you have any advice lessons on that as a tool to get things done? [34:36] What we find is that people who are very deadline motivated, they do finish what they say they're going to do, but of course the quality is crap. [34:46] They're typically getting by by the skin of their teeth, and I did this all the time. This is like my entire college career and my MBA at Stanford career was waiting, waiting, waiting, and then finishing at the last moment. And I could do well enough, but of course I could do so much better if I worked without distraction. [35:04] And so it wasn't until, and we all know this basically, right? We know that putting in a little bit of diligent effort, a little bit of time with plenty of lead time is going to give us a much better result than cramming at the last minute. But the reason people don't do this is because they don't understand how important it is, one, to manage those internal triggers.

[35:34] deal with that discomfort. [35:35] you're always going to procrastinate because fundamentally procrastination is an emotion regulation problem. It's not a character flaw. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. It's just that you don't have the tools to deal with emotional discomfort. And that's the part that everybody skips over. So we don't want to talk about these uncomfortable feelings, but that's where it has to start. And then the part that people don't do is actually planning out not the task itself, but the time to work on the task without distraction. That's the part that [36:05] out of making time for traction, that becomes a game changer. [36:08] So I've tried things like this where it's here throughout the day. I'm gonna try this I'm gonna do this and this is and I just don't end up doing it things come up or I just get distracted. I'm like, I whatever. I guess one question is how often do you find yourself? [36:20] doing the things you set out in your calendar. And then two, any other advice for actually staying on track [36:25] and doing things. Yeah. [36:27] Okay, so number one, did you have tools in place to deal with the discomfort? What did you do when you didn't feel like doing something? [36:45] procrastination is an emotion regulation problem. And I think this is fascinating. Personally, you know, I really wanted to dive deep and not only understand why do we not do what we say we're going to do, but why do we do anything and everything? What is the seat of human motivation? And I think I didn't understand it properly. I think most people don't understand motivation properly. Right? Doesn't that blow your mind if you think about it? I know what to do.

[37:07] I agree. This is what needs to get done. [37:10] I just don't do it. [37:11] Isn't that ridiculous? And by the way, this is not a new problem. [37:14] Plato, 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher, talked about this very same problem. 2500 years before the internet, before social media, before all these things that we think are so distracting online, [37:25] The Greek philosophers had the same exact problem. This is part of the human condition. It is part of our DNA that we constantly get distracted. But to me, that's a that's a fascinating mystery. Why is that? Well, if you look at the deeper question of why do we do anything and everything? [37:39] The seat of human motivation, most people think, is about carrots and sticks. If you ask people, why do we do what we do, it's about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Jeremy Bentham said something similar to this. Sigmund Freud called it the pleasure principle. [37:51] neurologically speaking, it's not true. [37:55] It's not true. [37:56] It's not about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. It's not about carrots and sticks. But in fact, the carrot is the stick. Okay, this is where I want to give you that like matrix like remember that scene the matrix where there's that kid with a spoon and the spoon starts bending and the kid says imagine there is no spoon. [38:13] Right? Well, [38:15] The carrot is the stick. What do I mean by that? We know that the only reason we do everything and anything from a neurological perspective is not about the pursuit of pleasure. It is all about the desire to escape discomfort. [38:29] Everything you do, even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations, the carrot is the stick because even wanting to feel good.

[38:38] Craving, lusting, desire, hunger, that desire for something that feels good is itself psychologically destabilizing. [38:46] The carrot is the stick. So what that means, I think that's incredibly empowering because what that means is that whenever we don't do something, whenever we procrastinate, [38:54] It's just a feeling. [38:56] That's all it is. It's just a feeling. And so when we learn those tools, it doesn't mean where I think people start intellectualizing it and thinking, oh, there must be something broken with me. Maybe I need a pill. Maybe I need a treatment. Chances are there's a 99% chance there's nothing wrong with you. It's simply that you don't have these tools. So that's where we have to start is absolutely – [39:15] understanding and applying these techniques so that when you feel that discomfort you use that discover what I found in my research writing this book is that high performers in every industry business the arts sports high performers they feel the same internal triggers they also feel lonely they also feel bored they also feel stressed they also feel anxious but they use that discomfort to [39:37] like rocket fuel to propel them towards traction. Whereas what distractible people do, as soon as they feel uncomfortable, as soon as they feel bored, as soon as they feel lonesome, as soon as they feel indecisive or stressed, boom, they're escaping it with a drink, with a click, with something to take their mind off of that discomfort. So that has to be step number one. [39:54] That is fascinating. Basically, distraction is an emotional regulation problem is the way you put it. What else works in helping you manage that discomfort? We've talked about this 10 minute trick, the timer, the surfing of the urge. What else is in that bucket of things I could try when I'm just like, nah, I'm just going to go check Twitter. I need to work on this thing right now.

[40:12] Yeah, yeah. So there's a bunch of different techniques you can use there in terms of the internal triggers. We can get into some of the more nitty gritty techniques. There's lots and lots of them. [40:22] The most important thing here, though, is that once you have some in your toolkit that you want to try, let's say it's a 10-minute rule, it's surfing the urge, there's reimagining the task, the temperament, all kinds of things that you can do. The next thing is to put it on your calendar, which we talked about briefly. So let's say you say, okay, I've got that time. What did you say that you wanted to do that you checked? Start on my newsletter post for the next week or just continue. To write it? Yeah, write it. [40:45] Okay. And did you have that in your calendar? You said that was part of the time, punch me in the face if I don't do it kind of thing? That was back when I had a regular job. These days, it's just what I used to do is my first half of the day until three o'clock is just deep work time. I called it time to build time. And then three beyond is meetings. [41:04] So it was actually a huge block of time of focus time, but it was not... [41:07] subdivided by the things I wanted to do throughout the day. [41:10] I see. So step two would be putting on your calendar, I am going to work on writing this newsletter for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever amount of time. Make it whatever is reasonable for you based on how long you think you can do it. Put that on your schedule. Step number three is hack back the external triggers. So did you find that when you said I was going to work on writing this newsletter, was there anything in your external environment that was pinging, dinging, kids, pets, spouse, anything like that? [41:40] just that fact that only 10% of distractions are from that. So it makes me...

[41:44] On the one hand, I recognize that most of the time there's not like a thing pulling me to Twitter, LinkedIn or whatever. Most of the time it's just like, that's probably something interesting going on. But there's definitely times when I see a little badge or my little phone gets a little push or, yeah, my wife's with a kid in the distance. I'm like, oh, let's go check out what's happening there. Yeah, yeah. So that's where we want to hack back. So the reason I use the term hack, to hack something is to gain unauthorized access, right? So someone hacks into your bank account or hacks into your database. [42:14] So we know that these technologies are gaining unauthorized access to our attention span when they're constantly pinging and dinging us. So there's some very simple things you can do, right? Setting a schedule in advance so that your device turns off as it goes to do not disturb during certain times of the day, right? Or before you begin this task, before you start writing, you make sure to turn on do not disturb so that there's nothing in your way. [42:44] the time. It's constantly on do not disturb because I don't want those constant notifications disturbing me when I'm doing focused work, so making sure that that's on. When it comes to, many of us work from home today, so making sure that your family knows when the time is that you are indistractable. I'll give you one tip. I know you have a baby at home, but soon that baby is going to be a toddler. One thing that we did in my household is that my wife went to Amazon and

[43:14] what we call the concentration crown. And the concentration crown is just this little wreath thing that she wears. It looks like a little princess thing. It has little LED lights. It lights up. There's a picture of it in the book. And when my daughter was only six years old, [43:27] We told her, we said, "Look, whenever mommy is wearing the concentration crown, that means that she can't be interrupted. [43:35] And she will be with you within 30 minutes. So her time block was always no more than 30 minutes. So we said, we will be with you within 30 minutes. Please don't interrupt unless you're bleeding. [43:46] If you're bleeding, you can interrupt us. But unless you're bleeding, this is when my daughter was only six years old. She could find something to do. It's okay for kids to be bored time to time. But as long as mommy was wearing the concentration crown, that told her. And by the way, me as her significant other, as her husband, worked really, really well. Because I would always interrupt her and say, hey, Julie, can I ask you this one thing? And she was working on her computer. But I didn't know whether she was listening to a podcast or a video or doing work that needed concentration. [44:16] gain unauthorized access by interrupting the interruption, whether it's with your kids, your colleagues. So every copy of Indistractable has this little pull out piece of paper, this piece of cardstock that you fold into thirds and you put on your computer monitor. [44:33] It's this big red sign on your computer monitor that says, "I'm indistractable at the moment. Please come back later." Now you can say, "Well, why don't I just put on headphones and my colleagues will know I'm not to be interrupted." Yeah, but then they think you're putzing around playing video games or something on your machine, as opposed to if you say, "No, I'm doing focused work right now. Please come back later." You're making it acceptable to not constantly be interrupted. You're making it okay, culturally appropriate to work without distraction. So those are just some ways that you can hack back those external triggers.

[45:03] I love that crown idea. I think a lot of people are going to use that. [45:33] Teal is the all-in-one platform you need to run a more streamlined and efficient job search and stand out in this competitive market. There's a reason nearly 1 million people have trusted Teal to run their job search. If you're thinking of making a change in the new year, leverage Teal to grow your career on your own terms. Get started for free at tealhq.com slash Lenny. That's tealhq.com slash Lenny. [45:57] Thank you. [45:58] for avoiding distractions, triggers, pushes, all that stuff. Is there any tools you recommend? I imagine this is a lot of people are thinking, is there like a weighted block Twitter? Yeah, absolutely. [46:08] That's a perfect lead-in to step number four. We talked about step number one, master internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back the external triggers. We just talked about step number three. Step number four is preventing distraction with packs. With packs, there's three kinds of packs. We have a price pack where there's some kind of financial disincentive to go off track. This is where we talked about earlier, you're making some kind of bet. We could talk about how I got into shape for the first time in my life using something like this, how I finished the book using something like this. That's a price pack.

[46:38] There's an identity pact, which is very, very impactful, which is what you're doing is you're forming a personal identity. So this comes out of the psychology of religion where we know that people who call themselves a certain moniker, [46:51] For example, if you say you're a devout Muslim, you're not debating whether you should have a gin and tonic because devout Muslims don't drink. If you say I'm a vegan or vegetarian, a vegetarian doesn't wake up in the morning and say, hmm, I wonder if I should have a bacon sandwich for breakfast. No, they are vegetarian. That is who they are. So that's why the book is called Indistractable. [47:09] Indistractable is meant to sound like indestructible. It is your identity. It is who you are. And so is it any different for someone to say, you know what, I'm sorry, I don't check every ping and ding every 30 seconds. I'm indistractable. Or, you know what, if we're going to have a meal together, if we're going to sit down and have lunch together, I want to have that lunch free of distraction. So can we put away our phones? [47:39] but that's what I think it's going to take for the world to become indistractable is that more of us show how great of a life we can have when we have some of these principles and make it part of our identity. And then the third pact is what's called an effort pact. And this gets into your question around what kind of tools we can use. An effort pact. [47:56] is where there's some kind of friction, some kind of effort that you need to take in order to get distracted. So as the last line of defense, that's why this is the fourth step. The last line of defense, the firewall against distraction is making sure that you keep yourself in just as much as we keep distractions out. So I'll give you a personal story here. Is it okay if – I don't know if this is a family show. Is it okay if I talk about my sex life a little bit? Absolutely. Let's get into it.

[48:26] as it might sound. I've been married for 22 years now. My wife and I found that we weren't being as intimate as we used to be. This was when I first started writing the book. Part of the problem was that every night, we would go to bed. [48:41] And she would be fondling her iPhone and I would be caressing my iPad and we weren't [48:47] Being intimate because we were busy playing with our devices as opposed to each other and so I started doing this research around around indistractable and I learned about [48:59] This technique around making an effort pact and so what we did I went to the hardware store and I bought us this $10 outlet timer and this outlet timer anything you plug into it will turn on or off at a particular time of day or night [49:17] every night at 10 p.m. [49:20] My internet router [49:21] shuts off. [49:23] So what does that do? We know that every night, 10 p.m., the Internet router is going to shut off. So my daughter knows, my wife knows, I know I got to get everything done that I need to do online because the Internet's going to shut off. Now, could I turn the Internet back on? Of course I could. I could tether. I could go pull out the router and replug it in. But that takes effort. [49:53] used to be mindless about. Now I have to ask myself, wait a minute, do I really need to go all that trouble of replugging and unplugging my router? Or should I do what I said I was going to do, which is get to bed on time and maybe be intimate with my wife? It's made a world of difference. And I'll tell you honestly now, Lenny, now after a few years of doing this, it's become part of our routine. We all know bedtime's at 10 p.m. That's when we need to start getting ready for bed. The internet router is going to shut off. We actually don't even need

[50:23] tool anyone can use as part of this effort pact another thing that that i use almost every day my daughter uses it as well is this wonderful app called forest do you know forest no it's it's awesome so here's the way forest works so it's this cute little app here i can show it to you i'll pull it up and the way forest works is when you say you're going to do focused work time you you plug in how much work time you want so let's say i'm going to do 40 minutes of of focused work [50:53] hit go. And if I pick up my phone, and I do anything with it, that cute little virtual tree gets cut down. [51:01] Right. It's it's just a small reminder to say, oh, that's not what you said you were going to do right now. You said you were going to work without distraction. Here you are picking up your phone. It reminds you this is not what you said you were going to do. So it inserts that bit of friction, that bit of effort. Another you ask for more tools. Another product I love is called Focus Mate. Have you have you tried Focus Mate? Is that the one where they match you with somebody and you're kind of working, watching each other work? [51:26] Exactly. It's like chat roulette without the dirty bits. So I love this company so much I actually invested in it. So basically what you do is you go online, you look at this calendar, and you pick a time when you want to do focused work. So one of my issues used to be getting started. Once I got started, I was good. [51:44] But getting started 8 a.m., kind of like what you were saying with this cold start problem. So what it does is it gives you this pact, again, this pre-commitment you're making with another person. Okay, 8 a.m., I'm going to be there. And if you don't show up, you're going to get a bad review. So it binds you to another person to build this pact, this effort pact, to say, I will be here at that time. You say, okay, what are you working on? What am I working on? All right, go. And for that entire time box, you work without distraction.

[52:14] is a wonderful way to bind you into what you said you were going to do. So those are just a few tools. There's many, many others. [52:19] Amazing. Okay, so let me actually try to just list out all the things you've shared so far, and it's going to be across all the four steps, and then I'm going to follow up on a couple things here. [52:29] So here's my notes. One is this idea of just set a 10-minute timer. [52:33] And just tell yourself, I am going to... [52:36] work on something [52:38] that I really want to work on right now for 10 minutes, and that's all I'm going to do. And while you're doing that, surf the urge. You're going to feel like you don't, but just surf it and feel it and be aware that this is difficult. [52:50] The calendaring of your day, that feels like a fundamental part of your journey. [52:54] Your approach is just figure out what you want to do during the day ahead of time, put it on the calendar, so your to-do list is your calendar, essentially. [53:01] Thank you. [53:02] So there's this whole idea of PACT. You shared a bunch of different PACT ideas. There's like, I will pay you a lot of money if I don't do this. There's this Wi-Fi. Okay. And then I guess that translates into some of these other things. The Wi-Fi killer device, the Forest app, the Focusmate app and product. [53:32] contacts. And then, uh, [53:35] make your family aware of when you're going to be working so that they know not to bother you. Maybe this crown, concentration crown. Yeah. [53:42] Okay, before we move on to a different topic, I'd love to spend a little more time in that first bucket because it feels like your point is so important that

[53:49] Most of our distraction is [53:50] this emotional regulation and we just don't like discomfort. [53:54] And so I'm curious what else you could teach me and teach people about. [53:57] getting better at managing that emotion? Are there any other [54:00] tactics in that bucket that might be useful. [54:02] Absolutely. So there's three big buckets in terms of mastering these internal triggers. We can reimagine the task, reimagine the trigger and reimagine our temperament. And so maybe I can give you one big tip I think that I discovered when it came to reimagining our temperament. If we think about our temperament as these immutable qualities, as the attributes of our personality, we have to be very careful about what kind of identity and what kind of limitations we let in to our psyche. [54:32] A few years ago, there was this line of research around what's called ego depletion. Ego depletion is this idea that willpower is a depletable resource. And you saw some researchers doing studies that seemed to suggest that willpower was something that you run out of. For me, I would come home after a long day of work and I'd say, oh, I'm out of willpower. I'm, quote, spent. There's nothing else I can do. Give me that pint of Ben and Jerry's. I'm going to sit in front of the TV because I'm spent. There's no more willpower. [55:02] left. And some of these studies seem to suggest there was this phenomenon, except the problem became that, you know, in the social sciences, when something sounds a little fishy, when it sounds too good to be true, the scientific process dictates that we should rerun those studies. And it turns out that these studies around ego depletion could not replicate. We couldn't find the effect. And so there was one exception to this. And that exception was in a study done by Carol

[55:32] probably familiar with. And she did a fascinating study where she found that [55:36] that ego depletion does actually exist, but only for one group of people. [55:42] Who was that group of people? It turns out that the only people who really did run out of willpower the way you would run out of charge in a battery were people who believed that willpower was a limited resource. [55:56] And so this is super, super important to not let ourselves be influenced by these ridiculous notions, these beliefs that somehow we are impaired, that we are limited, that we're addicted. That's a really popular one that we're all addicted. We're all unable to control these these behaviors. That is not true. In fact, it's only true if you believe it is true. So it should be part of our practice to tell ourselves we are indistractable. Indistractable is meant to sound like indestructible. It's meant to sound like a superpower. [56:26] So repeating to yourself that you're not limited. It's just about your actions. It's not a moral failing. It's not something wrong with you. It's not that technologies are doing it to you. It's simply a series of behaviors that we have to practice. [56:37] I really like that. That's a theme that comes up a lot on this podcast is people that feel like they're responsible for their situation. [56:44] They didn't cause it, but they're still responsible. It is their responsibility to deal with it. [56:48] end up being more successful. [56:50] And there's this idea of just being high agency. [56:52] So one of the things that I think is important to remember here is that there's a lot of things that the individual can do. I think there's a lot of things that we can do within a company or an organization as well that we can make our workplace indistractable. Then I think there's some things that we can do on a societal level, and these are called social antibodies.

[57:22] that we have been here before with something far more harmful and far more addictive than social media or technology distractions. If you think back to the 1980s, I was a child of the 80s. I remember the 80s very well. [57:36] And I remember when I was growing up, we had ashtrays in our living room. In fact, everyone I knew had ashtrays in their living room. And today that sounds crazy, right? You couldn't imagine walking into someone's home and lighting up a cigarette. If someone did that to you, that would be crazy, right? No one would do that today. Well, why? Why did that happen? Why would it be so incredibly rude to just walk into someone's home and light up a cigarette? Well, because there wasn't a law that said that that was illegal, right? It's someone's private residence. [58:06] we have new norms, new manners around how to behave when it comes to these destructive behaviors. So I remember when my mom, [58:15] took away those ashtrays in our living room and she threw them away. And one day, one of her friends came over and took out a pack of cigarettes and was about to light a cigarette. My mom said, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. [58:24] We are non-smokers. You see, she had this noun that she used to describe herself. She described herself as a non-smoker. If you'd like to smoke, if you'd kindly go outside. And of course, that's the norm today. But it took brave people like my mom to go against the trend for these antisocial behaviors.

[58:54] how to use a technology well is that we adapt and we adopt. We adapt to the technology by forming new behaviors, new norms. So just like my mom said, hey, we are non-smokers. That's my identity. I'm a non-smoker. If you'd like to smoke, you're going to have to go outside. [59:09] We need to be comfortable with saying, hey, we are indistractable. If someone sits down with you across the table and you're having a nice conversation, they take out their phone and say, hey, hey, if we're going to have a conversation, let's be here both in body and mind. That means putting these devices outside of meetings. If we're going to have a business meeting or a personal meeting, we're going to declare these no phone zones because that's who we are. We want to be indistractable. So we adopt these new behaviors, and we see that happening already. [59:39] and then we adopt new technologies that help us fight the bad aspects of the last generation of technology. And that's what we have always done. [59:48] Right now, there's an explosion of tech companies that are making a lot of money. A lot of these apps and startups are making money with tools to help fix the last generation of technology. And so there's all kinds of tools listed in my book from Forrest and Focusmate, all kinds of tools that can help us put technology in its place, ironically enough, with new and better technology. [1:00:08] You've touched on this point that I want to come back to around how... [1:00:13] You're not as confident that we're as addicted to technology and apps as we think. [1:00:17] And I think that's really important. I'm excited to chat about it before we get there. [1:00:21] I wanted to chat and follow this thread essentially of [1:00:23] becoming indistractable at work and building a company essentially that helps your teammates.

[1:00:29] become less distractible. [1:00:30] What advice would you give to leaders at companies to help employees at the company have better focus, essentially? [1:00:37] A lot of folks that I've worked with in the past have said, look, I can become indistractable. I'll follow these four steps. Fantastic. I'm indistractable. But what if my company is not indistractable? How do I help other people become indistractable? Or what if my boss is not indistractable and they're constantly asking me and pinging and dinging me for stuff and I'm not able to do my best work? So what do I do about that? So there's a whole section in the book on how to build an indistractable workplace. And what I discovered was in the research in writing this book is that indistractable companies have three traits. [1:01:07] first trait is that indistractable companies provide employees with what's called psychological safety. This comes out of the research from Amy Edmondson at the Harvard Business School. And what she discovered was that truly that companies have to provide employees with psychological safety, meaning if you can't talk about a problem, if you can't raise your hand and say, hey, you know what? I'm just not able to do my best work when I'm constantly expected to reply [1:01:37] can't talk about this problem, that is the problem. As I like to say, distraction is a symptom of dysfunction. [1:01:44] Distraction is a symptom of dysfunction. And when it comes to the workplace, if you don't give employees that psychological safety to say, hey, you know, how do we deal with this problem? Just like any other problem that, in fact, is a problem. It's not the technology. It's the fact that you can't get together and talk about this problem without fear of somebody thinking, oh, you're lazy or you don't want to be on call or you're expecting other people to work for you. No, that's not the issue at all.

[1:02:05] It's simply that we need to formulate how to fix this problem just like any other business challenge. The second trait is employees need a forum to talk about this problem. So. [1:02:15] In researching this book, [1:02:18] I asked people what's the most distracting technology what technology in the workplace do you find to be most distraction and most distracting the number two was some kind of group messaging service and slack was mentioned the most number of times by the way number one was email number two was some kind of group messaging platform and slack was mentioned the most often and so I went to visit slack headquarters I went to go see my friend Amir who used to work there at the time and I knocked on the door and I expected to see a company that was incredibly distracted because [1:02:47] if it was the technology that was the source of the problem nobody uses slack more than slack they should be the most distracted company on earth [1:02:54] But that's not what I found at all. Right. Because. [1:02:58] Slack, in fact, embodied these three attributes. They gave people psychological safety. They gave people a forum to talk about these problems. How did they do that? They actually created Slack channels at Slack. They had one Slack channel called Beef Tweets. [1:03:12] and beef tweets was a channel where people could talk about their beef with the company. And it wasn't that necessarily management had to fix every problem. That's not the point. It's that they had to acknowledge that employees' voices were being heard. And how did they do that? Surprisingly enough, they did it with emoji. [1:03:26] So when a problem that an employee mentioned was fixed, they sent the green checkmark emoji. But if it was a problem that maybe couldn't be fixed, but they wanted to acknowledge that management had seen it, they would send the eyes emoji. And so the important thing here is to give employees some kind of form. It could be a Slack channel. It could be another case study in the book is the Boston Consulting Group, which I used to work at. They've gone from one of the most distractible companies to today. They're ranked as one of the best places to work in America.

[1:03:56] time off and so they've completely changed that organizational culture by following these steps as well the last the third attribute which is the most important of the three is [1:04:05] is that [1:04:07] Management must exemplify what it means to be indistractable because culture is like water. It flows downhill. And so people will look to management to see how they behave and they will act in accordance with with those expectations. So at Slack company headquarters in the company canteen, it says in bright pink letters, it says. [1:04:28] Work hard and go home. [1:04:31] Work hard and go home. That is not something you would expect to see at a hard-charging Silicon Valley startup, but that's what you see there because everybody in the company – this was before the acquisition. I don't know what it's like now, but when I wrote the book, this was certainly the case that everybody from Stuart Butterfield on down, the CEO on down, believed that to do people's best work, they had to work without distraction. [1:05:01] and management has to exemplify what it means to be indistractable. [1:05:04] I want to move to a different topic, but before we do, is there one thing or maybe two things that a listener can do, say, today or tomorrow? [1:05:11] Tomorrow or this week, that would... [1:05:13] make it significant dent on their ability to focus and avoid distraction. I would say, you know, understanding these four steps of master the internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back the external triggers and preventing distraction with packs. If you can do one small thing in each of those four strategies, one small thing, that's a wonderful, wonderful first step. It doesn't you have to do everything in the book. I'm giving you a many of different options, but one small thing in each of those categories is huge. Now, when it comes to the workplace,

[1:05:42] One of the benefits of making a time box calendar is that you have a physical artifact, right? You have something that you can print out and show to other people. And so I hear this a lot when it comes to people who say, okay, I'm indistractable, but my boss isn't. What do I do, right? I'm constantly pinged and dinged for my boss. How do I get control over my time? Here's what you do. This is called schedule syncing or managing your manager. Here's what happens. You print out your calendar or you show it to them on your screen. [1:06:12] morning is that okay can I get 10 minutes with you and now what you're gonna do is you're gonna show them your time box calendar for your working hours you're gonna say okay boss you see here's my time for email here's my time for that meeting you asked me to go to here's time for that big project I'm working on now you see this other piece of paper [1:06:28] Okay, you see this other list here? This is a list of things you've asked me to do that I'm having trouble fitting into my calendar. [1:06:35] So what I'm helping you do here is avoiding the worst piece of personal productivity advice. The worst piece of personal productivity advice is if you want to be better at time management, you need to learn how to say no. [1:06:48] What kind of stupid advice is that? Only a tenured professor who can't get fired would give you that kind of stupid advice. If you tell your boss no, you're going to get fired. That's dumb. You don't tell your boss no. You ask your boss to help you prioritize. That is your boss's most important job is to prioritize. So you're not saying no. You're saying here's my calendar. Here's this list of stuff you've asked me to do. Help me prioritize. And here's what's going to happen. Your boss is going to look at your calendar and say, you know what? That meeting, you really don't need to be at that meeting.

[1:07:18] meeting, but that thing on that piece of paper that you listed over here, that's way more important. Can you swap that out? Let me tell you, I started three companies, I sold two so far, and bosses, your manager, will worship the ground you walk on because we're all wondering what is it that you're doing? I know we have to trust our employees, etc., etc., yes, but we're still wondering, "Hey, that thing that you said was going to be done isn't done. Why not? How are you spending your time?" If you can proactively. [1:07:43] Sit down with your boss so that they understand how you are spending your time and again this takes maybe 10 minutes you do this schedule sync process that not only works really well in the workplace it's life-changing it also works really well at home so my wife and I used to have conflicts over you know did you you know who's gonna pick up our daughter and why didn't you take out the trash and we would have these conflicts because we didn't synchronize our schedules well now we take maybe five minutes a week Sunday evening we sit down together let me look at your schedule let me look at my schedule okay [1:08:13] Okay, now we're synchronized. [1:08:15] it's amazing we prevent so many conflicts just by doing this simple schedule sync process [1:08:20] I love that advice. I recommend a very similar approach to people to align with their managers. Basically, I call it managing up. And the way I describe it, manager taught me this is I call it [1:08:30] Prioritizing and communicating. You could prioritize and not communicate. [1:08:33] And your manager would be like, "What the hell? Why didn't you do this thing? I prioritized. I never told you here is where I put it on my list." [1:08:38] Or you could just communicate like no, and that doesn't work as you said. The best combination is just like here's what I'm doing, here's why I will prioritize this, and here's – and let me know what you think. Would you agree? You want to move it up? You want to move it down? Exactly. And how much input, right? We always talk about like one of the reasons I hate to-do lists is because to-do lists are just a register of output.

[1:08:59] It's the stuff you want to have done, but you can't have output without input. If you go to a baker, let's say it's your kid's birthday party and say, hey, I want two dozen cupcakes. Well, the baker's going to say, okay, I need flour, I need sugar, I need butter, I need all these inputs in order to make the output. But somehow when it comes to knowledge work, we just add more and more outputs without input. [1:09:19] considering the input what is the input for knowledge work it's only two things it's your time and your attention [1:09:25] That's it, your time and your attention. So in order to get the output, we have to think about the input, which is why the schedule syncing and timeboxing is so important. Again, that's something that a to-do list can never give you. [1:09:36] Awesome. Okay. For our last topic, I wanted to spend some time on Hooked, which I think could be its own podcast. That could be a whole other episode of your first book that did really well. And essentially, this book, Hooked, is about teaching people how to get people hooked on their product. I know that you have this very contrarian perspective on [1:09:54] Are we actually addicted to technology? Is it hurting mental health? All these things. So this is Contrarian Corner. I'd love to hear your kind of perspective on just why is it that we're not as, [1:10:04] hooked on [1:10:05] social media and technology as people think. [1:10:07] Yeah, okay, so there's a lot there. So let me explain what Hooked was for compared to Indistractable. So Hooked is about how do we build habit-forming products for good. And so the idea there was that I think we need to use more of these techniques when it comes to healthy behaviors, right? We want people to get hooked to a language learning app, Duolingo, one of my former clients, right? That's a great thing that they found ways to get people hooked to learning a new language compared to the way we used to learn languages.

[1:10:37] which is an app that helps people form these habits around exercise, getting hooked to a personal finance app to help you save money, getting hooked to enterprise software. That's all great, right? If it helps you become more productive, helps you live a happier, healthier life, that's wonderful. So, you know, nobody's worried about people getting addicted to enterprise SaaS. That's not an issue. So the vast majority of products out there, they're not worried about addicting anyone. The real problem the vast majority of businesses out there have is that nobody cares, right? [1:11:07] They have a wonderful product that could really improve people's lives, but people aren't using it. And so it's really about how do you get people to keep coming back to your product or service, not because they have to, but because they want to. And so what essentially I do in Hooked is steal the secrets of these Silicon Valley giants. I literally ripped out their psychology to understand what makes their products work so well so that everybody in every conceivable industry that is devoted to improving people's lives can use those habits for good. So that's what Hooked is for. [1:11:37] is about good habits, Indistractable is about how do we break bad habits, but for different products. We want to build a good habit with the exercise app, with the SaaS app, with the good habits, and we also want to break the bad habits. That's the two sides of the same coin. They're not negations, they're compliments. I think I am uniquely qualified to write both these books because I know these techniques work and I know where they don't work, and I can tell you having written Hooked, I'm [1:12:05] These techniques are very good. They're very effective.

[1:12:08] They're not that good. This isn't mind control. We're not hijacking people's brains. There's a lot of people out there, a lot of tech critics have made a lot of money and gotten a lot of speaking gigs over scaring the crap out of people because people love that stuff. I was a journalism co-major in college, and the first rule of journalism is if it bleeds, it leads. [1:12:38] brain it's super evil let's shut it all down you know this is the classic chicken little story people love that stuff the truth is much more nuanced but nobody likes nuance nobody likes the answer to every complex question which is always the same it depends [1:12:52] It depends, right? For some people, overusing technology is a real problem. So for people who are pathologically addicted, [1:13:00] That can be very harmful, right? Because what is the definition of addiction? An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms the user. Now, that's about three to five percent of the population is pathologically addicted. But we toss out this word addiction all the time. Everything's addictive. My wife ordered a shoes from DSW and on the box, it says danger, addictive contents inside. It's shoes, people, shoes. [1:13:30] this behavior is that now everything's an addiction. Oh, you like playing Candy Crush? It's addictive. You like social media? It's addictive. No, it's not addictive to everyone. No more than saying, hey, a lot of people have a glass of wine with dinner, but not everyone's an alcoholic. So why do we think everyone who uses social media is addicted? They're not. But we love that terminology, right? We love it. Why? Because even the word addiction comes from the Latin addictio, which means slave. So it's much easier to tell ourselves, I'm enslaved.

[1:14:00] is being stolen it's all Silicon Valley's fault as opposed to saying wait a minute this isn't really a distraction [1:14:07] I'm sorry, it's not really an addiction, it's a distraction. Because then now I have personal responsibility, now I have to do something about it. That's no fun. Can't I just blame somebody? But for the vast majority of people, save the people who are actually pathologically addicted, which by the way, I do think we need special protections for. If you're not a child who I do think we need special protections for, and you're not pathologically addicted, this is a personal responsibility issue that thankfully, all of us can overcome if we have the right tools. [1:14:33] Wow, this is quite the contrarian juicy corner. I wish we had more time to dig into all this stuff. So you're saying, basically, I check Twitter a lot, I check my phone a lot. You're saying that essentially, don't call it addiction. I'm just... [1:14:46] Finding more things to get distracted by to push away from all these uncomfortable emotions that I'm feeling doing hard work. [1:14:52] That's exactly right. And it doesn't mean, again, it doesn't mean it's your fault, but it is your responsibility, as we talked about earlier, because who else's responsibility is it, right? Like, we love these simple narratives. We love these simple stories of something bad is happening, so this is the bad guy. Well, sometimes the bad guy is also us, or at least we have a role to play in taking responsibility for this stuff.

[1:15:22] can't walk into a bar and order a gin and tonic. She can't walk into a casino and start playing blackjack. She's not ready for that. So I do think we need regulations to protect children. I think we also need protections around people who are actually pathologically addicted. If you know people are getting addicted to your product, you do have an ethical responsibility. And I've written about this for the past 10 years now about specific legislation that I think we need around what's called a use and abuse policy for people who are pathologically addicted. But for 95% of us, [1:15:51] It's not an addiction. It's something we can absolutely take control over if we want to and if we have the right tools. Very interesting food for thought. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you want to share or leave listeners with? [1:16:05] There's a wonderful quote that I really love from Paolo Coelho who said that a mistake repeated more than once is a decision. [1:16:13] A mistake repeated more than once is a decision. Such a great quote. And I think it's time that we realize that if we are not doing something about this problem, we are deciding to be distractible. The difference between an indistractable person and a distractible person is that an indistractable person says, ah, okay, I see what you did to me there. I see I got distracted. I'm not going to let it happen again.

[1:16:43] tomorrow. That's what defines an indistractable person. So I think, you know, the antidote, if you really want to summarize my work in indistractable into one mantra, it's that the antidote for impulsiveness is forethought. The antidote for impulsiveness is forethought. Fundamentally, distraction is an impulse control issue. That's all it is. And it's a skill like any other, right? We learn skills. Why do we expect that we should just be born with this innate skill to fight distraction? It's a skill like any other. And so the antidote, [1:17:11] for impulsiveness is forethought. If we plan ahead, if we know that we're going to take steps today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow, there's no distraction we can't overcome. [1:17:21] I love it. I love the message of empowerment and agency. I feel like that's so applicable to product management and a lot of the people who listen to this podcast. It's just another example that even though the world is making life more difficult for us potentially. [1:17:34] you can still do something about it. And I really like just the general message that you can do something about it. [1:17:39] With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [1:17:43] I am ready. All right. What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? [1:17:48] There's this book called Alchemy by Rory Sutherland that I love. It's a fantastic book. It delves into the psychology of various experiences, so I highly recommend that. And I'm reading a book right now, actually telling myself right here, called The Experience Machine by Andy Clark, which I'm really enjoying. [1:18:03] What is a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? [1:18:07] Okay, so it's not very recent, but it's one of my all-time favorite movies that nobody's seen, which is Empire of the Sun. Have you ever seen Empire of the Sun? Nope.

[1:18:17] Okay. [1:18:18] You got to see it. So one of my favorite movies, it has Christian Bale in it when he was only, I think, 12 or 13 years old. Steven Spielberg was the director. John Malkovich stars in it. Unbelievable movie that for some reason nobody saw. So if you're a Christian Bale fan, which I am, I think he's a fantastic actor, Empire of the Sun, classic, awesome movie. [1:18:37] Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask people when you're hiring them for a job? [1:18:42] You know, I'm not a big fan of interviews in general. I'm a huge fan of small projects. So what I'll oftentimes do is pay people to do a small project and then I can see their work output. I find that that works much, much better than any question I can come up with. [1:18:59] Awesome. A few other people have mentioned that exact idea, especially at a company. [1:19:04] I think about linear where they pay people to do a little project within their company. They're kind of like contractors for the company for a little bit. Yeah, yeah. [1:19:10] Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love, whether it's an app or something physical? I went to Japan a few months ago, and I just became obsessed with all things Japanese. And so I bought like a hundred different little gadgets that helped me make Japanese food at home. So like I had this little sesame grinder thing. You know, the Japanese are so good at making devices for everything. So I would just put this under the general bucket of everything Japanese. [1:19:35] I use Muji pens, which is an amazing Japanese brand. [1:19:40] We have Muji here. Yes, exactly. I have some of those as well. They're great. Go Japan. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to or share with friends, either at work or at life, that you find really useful?

[1:19:52] So I do have several mantras that I repeat to myself daily. One of those is my life purpose. And my purpose in life is to explain the world so that it can be made better. Now, that might not apply to everyone, right? That's my personal life motto. It kind of just helps me recenter and refocus my purpose for living, which is to serve others, to make the world a better place. And the way I do that is to explain the world so that it can be made better. So, of course, that's not going to apply to everyone. But I do think there is something. [1:20:17] very useful about sitting down and saying, "Wait, what is the purpose of my life?" And so for me, like having that mantra that which I literally repeat every single day, is like a little prayer. I'm very secular. I don't believe in anything supernatural, but I think there's a lot of wisdom to be adopted from the practices of organized religion. And one of those is kind of this secular prayer reminding me of my purpose. I love that. Final question. You wrote a book about building habits. What's your best and worst habit these days? [1:20:43] Oh, this is this is tricky. So. [1:20:48] I think I think, you know, I still OK. So the reason I'm struggling answering this is because there's a difference between habits and routines. And a lot of things that people think are habits are not really habits. So like I was going to say, you know, exercise. I used to be clinically obese and now I exercise. But that's not technically a habit because it's not done with little or no conscious thought. It's a routine. But I think that's probably one of my best routines is that I've finally, for the first time in my life, really gotten into physical fitness.

[1:21:18] pack at 45 years old I'm pretty proud of that and I'm not saying that to brag I'm saying it as a testimony to the fact that when you say you're gonna do something and actually do it how how wonderful that feels just live your life with intent I'm not athletic I've never was athletic I still don't really like exercise but I do it and I eat right because I say I will so I think that's probably my best routine and probably my worst habit is that I still feel these impulses you know if the definition of a habit is an impulse to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought [1:21:48] I feel the impulse to check Instagram for a quick minute or to look at this. I still feel that. I think the difference is that now I know I'm going to feel those. I know that's part of my daily experience and I have those practices in place so that they don't get the best of me. [1:22:04] Just along those lines, something I was going to ask, but I forgot, is how often do you not do the things you have in your calendar? Like what percentage of the things don't get done the way you planned? [1:22:12] So when things change dramatically, then I tend to fall off track. So the first time, if I make a big change in my calendar, I'm much more likely to fall off track. So the more I can go from week to week with small parts of my calendar changing, the more I'll get to 100% doing what I say I'm going to do. But I would say on average, once I have, you know, I pretty much have my more or less calendar set for the week, I would say maybe 10% of the tasks I'll go a little too late on or I'll start. But then, of course, the idea is to make sure that doesn't happen again next time. [1:22:42] some wiggle room. When that might happen, let's say it's 10% of the time I go off track, well, then I'll say, "You know what? I put in too much time for writing. An hour of writing is too much. Maybe I should just start with 45 minutes. Let's see if I can do that block. I'll adjust it a little bit because I got other stuff that I want to take care of." It's those small adjustments within day-to-day, whereas before I wrote Indistractable, it was all kinds of stuff. It was half the day that I would go off track.

[1:23:07] Amazing. I was going to ask what it was like beforehand. Nir, I think we delivered on our promise. There's at least a dozen very tactical things you can do to become more indistractable and to focus better. Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks learn more about the stuff you're doing? Where do they buy your book? Where do they learn more about the things you can do for them? And then finally, how can listeners be useful to you? [1:23:28] I appreciate it. Thanks. So my website is near and far.com. That's about like my first name and I are and far.com and my two books hooked how to build habit forming products and indistractable how to control your attention and choose your life. And they're available wherever books are sold and what you can do for me become indistractable. That's that's honestly I don't care if you buy the book if you can adopt some of these practices and help change this mindset that we're all victims that were you know being hijacked because of the tech companies. [1:23:58] that this is something that has improved your life in some small way and tell others about it. This is how we start spreading those social antibodies, just like my mom did around smoking. I think we should all do the same. I am going to be working on that as soon as we get off. Nir, thank you so much for being here. [1:24:14] Thank you. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast.com. See you in the next episode.