Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

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I spend far too much time on Apple News (mostly saving stories to gmail folders or bookmarks in Chrome but I have a wide range of interests and they cover over 200 publications. I do not plan to stop using Apple News but am defiantly being more selective and delaying my reading to a later time. All the tips are practical and very useful. There are also reminders in the book and I have already recommended it to some of my friends. If you’re mowing the lawn, for example, instead of running away or rewarding yourself, look at the activity differently until you discover new challenges you didn’t see before (e.g., beating a record time). The chapter around identity was interesting. Much easier to make good decisions when you identify as someone who eats healthily or isn't a smoker than if you identify as someone who has a sweet tooth or a smoker trying to give up. What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused and overcome distractions? What if you had the power to become "indistractable"?

Time management = pain management. The drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior. Everything else is a proximate cause. To make time for traction, turn your values into time, schedule time for yourself and important relationships, and sync your calendar with stakeholders.

Prevent Distraction with Pacts

As a real estate broker, coach, and father of 6 boys, I am always being distracted by something. I would get anxious every time the phone chirped or beeped or pinged. Was it a client emergency, do my kids need me ... and most of the time it was nothing but a distraction. Being indistractable is about learning to channel master feelings of dissatisfaction to make things better.

We can manage distractions that originate from within by thinking differently about the trigger, the task, and our temperament. Furthermore, by reimagining an uncomfortable internal trigger, such as an urge to google something, we can disarm it. To master internal triggers, learn how to deal with discomfort, observe urges and allow them to dissolve, and reimagine the trigger or task. The rest was a very high-level introduction to behavioral adaption and change, with easy-to-use pointers to remember at the end of every chapter. It felt very informal, like a webinar or a collection of PowerPoint slides, and less in-depth or researched analysis, like I was hoping.All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort. If a behavior was previously effective at providing relief, we’re likely to continue using it as a tool to escape discomfort. However, you can’t call something a “distraction,” unless you know what it is distracting you from. Shifting where and when you use potentially distracting apps to your desktop instead of your phone;

Changing some of my beliefs such the reframing of my thinking about will power. (Refuting Ego depletion). Although I was aware of some of the studies it really didn’t sink in before. Very important and wide ranging applications. This has important implications, for example, in the basic beliefs of the AA program. Also the overwhelming data about the improving focus of nurses when they were being constantly distracted and even when initially they resisted methods used to lower their distractibility. In Indistractable, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more. The trouble is that some people like to “think out loud” in group chat, explaining their arguments and ideas in one-line blurbs. This rarely works because it’s hard to follow along with someone’s thoughts in real time while others comment with emoji and other potential distractions. Indistractable PDF Book People want autonomy yet, according to Robert Epstein, author of "The Myth of the Teen Brain" in Scientific American, his surveys showed that "teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than ten times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons." No wonder they love playing video games that give them a sense of control.In Indistractable, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices – abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more.

According to Michael Inzlicht, professor at University of Toronto, willpower is not finite. It's more like an emotion. "Just as we don't 'run out' of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows in response to what's happening to us and how we feel." Let go of this belief as it encourages you to believe you have a reason to quit because you have used up your willpower. Being indistractable is about understanding the real reasons why we do things against our best interests. Have you ever caught yourself getting distracted at the smallest things? It could be a pop-up notification on your phone, and you ditch your focus on work completely at that insignificant stimulus? The problem with the little gadgets is that they’re supposed to make our life easier, and while they do so, they also cause a series of other problems, like distraction. Contrary to belief, external triggers aren’t always harmful. Of each external trigger, ask: “Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” Does it lead to traction or distraction? If it’s the former, it serves you.In those days, it was considered strange, if not rude, to ask someone to smoke outside your home. Today, however, things are very different. I’ve never owned an ashtray. No one has ever asked to smoke in my home; they already know the answer. It scares me to imagine the look on my wife’s face if someone were to light up on our living room couch—that person wouldn’t be in our house or our circle of friends for long. I liked Nir's other book, "Hooked." It is one of my favorite and best product/business books ever (and also useful for non-product people). After "Hooked" taught the whole industry how to build addictive products, Nir is now basically selling the "cure."