Indistractable

Livre de Nir Eyal sur le fait de ne plus subir de Distractions et maîtriser tes Déclencheurs.

Highlights Mes notes

Introduction: From Hooked to Indistractable

The fact is, in this day and age, if you are not equipped to manage distraction, your brain will be manipulated by time-wasting diversions.

Introduction: From Hooked to Indistractable

In the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves “indistractable.”

Introduction: From Hooked to Indistractable

The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. Planning ahead ensures you will follow through. With the techniques in this book, you’ll learn exactly what to do from this day forth to control your attention and choose your life.

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

we’ll take a fresh look at what really motivates our behavior and learn why time management is pain management.

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

We’ll also explore how to make just about any task enjoyable—not in the Mary Poppins way of “adding a spoonful of sugar,” but by cultivating the ability to focus intensely on what we’re doing.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

We are constantly reaching for something: more money, more experiences, more knowledge, more status, more stuff. The ancient Greeks thought this was just part of the curse of being a fallible mortal and used the story to portray the power of our incessant desires.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

All behaviors, whether they tend toward traction or distraction, are prompted by triggers, internal or external.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

Internal triggers cue us from within. When we feel our belly growl, we look for a snack. When we’re cold, we find a coat to warm up. And when we’re sad, lonely, or stressed, we might call a friend or loved one for support. External triggers, on the other hand, are cues in our environment that tell us what to do next, like the pings, dings, and rings that prompt us to check our emails, open a news alert, or answer a phone call. External triggers can also take the form of other people, such as a coworker who stops by our desk. They can also be objects, like a television set whose mere presence urges us to turn it on.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

Whether prompted by internal or external triggers, the resulting action is either aligned with our broader intention (traction) or misaligned (distraction). Traction helps us accomplish goals; distraction leads us away from them. The challenge, of course, is that our world has always been full of things designed to distract us.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

What is the cost of all that distraction? In 1971 the psychologist Herbert A. Simon presciently wrote, “The wealth of information means a dearth of something else … a poverty of attention.” Researchers tell us attention and focus are the raw materials of human creativity and flourishing. In the age of increased automation, the most sought-after jobs are those that require creative problem-solving, novel solutions, and the kind of human ingenuity that comes from focusing deeply on the task at hand.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

What would have happened to Tantalus if he had just stopped reaching? He was already in hell, after all, and dead people don’t need food and water, last time I checked. The curse is not that Tantalus spends all eternity reaching for things just out of reach, but rather his obliviousness to the greater folly of his actions. Tantalus’s curse was his blindness to the fact he didn’t need those things in the first place. That’s the real moral of the story.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

Tantalus’s curse is also our curse. We are compelled to reach for things we supposedly need but really don’t. We don’t need to check our email right this second or need to see the latest trending news, no matter how much we feel we must. Fortunately, unlike Tantalus, we can step back from our desires, recognize them for what they are, and do something about them. We want companies to innovate and solve our evolving needs, yet we must also ask whether better products bring out our best selves. Distractions will always exist; managing them is our responsibility.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

Distraction stops you from achieving your goals. It is any action that moves you away from what you really want.   •    Traction leads you closer to your goals. It is any action that moves you toward what you really want.   •    Triggers prompt both traction and distraction. External triggers prompt you to action with cues in your environment. Internal triggers prompt you to action with cues within you.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, said it best: “By pleasure, we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.”

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

For hundreds of years, we’ve believed that motivation is driven by reward and punishment. As Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher and founder of utilitarianism, put it, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.” The reality, however, is that motivation has much less to do with pleasure than was once thought.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

In the game of life, it’s often hard to see the root cause of things. When we’re passed over for a promotion, we might blame that cunning coworker for taking our job instead of reflecting on our lack of qualifications and initiative. When we get into a fight with our spouse, we might blame the conflict on one tiny incident, like a toilet seat left up, instead of acknowledging years of unresolved issues. And when we scapegoat our political and ideological opponents for the world’s troubles, we choose not to seek to understand the deeper systemic reasons behind the problems.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

These proximate causes have something in common—they help us deflect responsibility onto something or someone else. It’s not that the cue ball and stick don’t factor into the equation, just like the coworker or toilet seat, but they certainly aren’t entirely responsible for the outcome. Without understanding and tackling root causes, we’re stuck being helpless victims in a tragedy of our own creation. The distractions in our lives are the result of the same forces—they are proximate causes that we think are to blame, while the root causes stay hidden. We tend to blame things like television, junk food, social media, cigarettes, and video games—but these are all proximate causes of our distraction.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Solely blaming a smartphone for causing distraction is just as flawed as blaming a pedometer for making someone climb too many stairs

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

“It was an escape from reality,” she now admits. Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality. How we deal with uncomfortable internal triggers determines whether we pursue healthful acts of traction or self-defeating distractions.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Understand the root cause of distraction. Distraction is about more than your devices. Separate proximate causes from the root cause. •    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.   •    Anything that stops discomfort is potentially addictive, but that doesn’t make it irresistible. If you know the drivers of your behavior, you can take steps to manage them.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

distraction is just another way our brains attempt to deal with pain. If we accept this fact, it makes sense that the only way to handle distraction is by learning to handle discomfort.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

If distraction costs us time, then time management is pain management.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

Eons of evolution gave you and me a brain in a near-constant state of discontentment. We’re wired this way for a simple reason. As a study published in the Review of General Psychology notes, “If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances.” In other words, feeling contented wasn’t good for the species. Our ancestors worked harder and strove further because they evolved to be perpetually perturbed, and so we remain today. Unfortunately, the same evolutionary traits that helped our kin survive by driving them to constantly do more can conspire against us today.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

Let’s begin with the first factor: boredom. The lengths people will go to avoid boredom is shocking, sometimes literally. A 2014 study published in Science asked participants to sit in a room and think for fifteen minutes. The room was empty except for a device that allowed the participants to mildly but painfully electrocute themselves. “Why would anyone want to do that?” you might ask. When asked beforehand, every participant in the study said they would pay to avoid being shocked. However, when left alone in the room with the machine and nothing else to do, 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women shocked themselves, and many did so multiple times. The study’s authors conclude their paper by saying, “People prefer doing to thinking, even if what they are doing is so unpleasant that they would normally pay to avoid it. The untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself.” It’s no surprise, therefore, that most of the top twenty-five websites in America sell escape from our daily drudgery, whether through shopping, celebrity gossip, or bite-sized doses of social interaction.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

The second psychological factor driving us to distraction is negativity bias, “a phenomenon in which negative events are more salient and demand attention more powerfully than neutral or positive events.” As the author of one study concluded, “It appears to be a basic, pervasive fact of psychology that bad is stronger than good.” Such pessimism begins very early in life. Babies begin to show signs of negativity bias starting at just seven months of age, suggesting this tendency is inborn. As further evidence, researchers believe we tend to have an easier time recalling bad memories than good ones. Studies have found people are more likely to recall unhappy moments in their childhood, even if they would describe their upbringing as generally happy. Negativity bias almost certainly gave us an evolutionary edge. Good things are nice, but bad things can kill you, which is why we pay attention to and remember the bad stuff first. Useful, but what a bummer!

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

The third factor is rumination, our tendency to keep thinking about bad experiences. If you’ve ever chewed over something in your mind that you did, or that someone did to you, or over something that you don’t have but wanted, over and over again, seemingly unable to stop thinking about it, you’ve experienced what psychologists call rumination. This “passive comparison of one’s current situation with some unachieved standard” can manifest in self-critical thoughts such as, “Why can’t I handle things better?” As one study notes, “By reflecting on what went wrong and how to rectify it, people may be able to discover sources of error or alternative strategies, ultimately leading to not repeating mistakes and possibly doing better in the future.” Another potentially useful trait—but, boy, can it make us miserable.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

It’s good to know that feeling bad isn’t actually bad; it’s exactly what survival of the fittest intended.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

Time management is pain management. Distractions cost us time, and like all actions, they are spurred by the desire to escape discomfort.   •    Evolution favored dissatisfaction over contentment. Our tendencies toward boredom, negativity bias, rumination, and hedonic adaptation conspire to make sure we’re never satisfied for long.   •    Dissatisfaction is responsible for our species’ advancements as much as its faults. It is an innate power that can be channeled to help us make things better.   •    If we want to master distraction, we must learn to deal with discomfort.

Chapter 5: Deal with Distraction from Within

His work has been proven to effectively reduce the risk of cancer by changing patient behavior. Bricker writes, “Most people don’t think of cancer as a behavioral problem, but whether it’s quitting smoking or losing weight or exercising more, there are some definitive things you can do to reduce your risk and thereby live a longer and higher-quality life.”

Chapter 5: Deal with Distraction from Within

His work shows how learning certain techniques as part of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can disarm the discomfort that so often leads to harmful distractions. Bricker decided to focus his efforts on smoking cessation and developed an app to deliver ACT over the internet. Though he uses ACT specifically to help people quit smoking, the principles of the program have been shown to effectively reduce many types of urges. At the heart of the therapy is learning to notice and accept one’s cravings and to handle them healthfully. Instead of suppressing urges, ACT prescribes a method for stepping back, noticing, observing, and finally letting the desire disappear naturally. But why not simply fight our urges? Why not “just say no”?

Chapter 5: Deal with Distraction from Within

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in 1863, “Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.” One hundred twenty-four years later, the social psychologist Daniel Wegner put Dostoevsky’s claim to the test. In a study, participants who were told to avoid thinking of a white bear for five minutes did so on average once per minute, just as Dostoevsky predicted. But there was more to Wegner’s study. When the same group was told to try and conjure the white bear, they did so much more often than a group who hadn’t been asked to suppress the thought. “The results suggested that suppressing the thought for the first five minutes caused it to ‘rebound’ even more prominently into the participants’ minds later,” according to an article in Monitor on Psychology. Wegner later dubbed this tendency “ironic process theory” to explain why it’s so difficult to tame intruding thoughts. The irony being, of course, that relieving the tension of desire makes something all the more rewarding.

Chapter 5: Deal with Distraction from Within

An endless cycle of resisting, ruminating, and finally giving in to the desire perpetuates the cycle and quite possibly drives many of our unwanted behaviors.

Chapter 5: Deal with Distraction from Within

What affected their desire was not how much time had passed after a smoke, but how much time was left before they could smoke again. If, as this study suggests, a craving for something as addictive as nicotine can be manipulated in this way, why can’t we trick our brains into mastering other unhealthy desires? Thankfully, we can!

Chapter 5: Deal with Distraction from Within

Without techniques for disarming temptation, mental abstinence can backfire. Resisting an urge can trigger rumination and make the desire grow stronger.   •    We can manage distractions that originate from within by changing how we think about them. We can reimagine the trigger, the task, and our temperament.

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

A common problem I have while writing is the urge to google something. It’s easy to justify this bad habit as “doing research,” but deep down I know it’s often just a diversion from difficult work. Bricker advises focusing on the internal trigger that precedes the unwanted behavior, like “feeling anxious, having a craving, feeling restless, or thinking you are incompetent.”

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

STEP 1: LOOK FOR THE DISCOMFORT THAT PRECEDES THE DISTRACTION, FOCUSING IN ON THE INTERNAL TRIGGER

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

STEP 2: WRITE DOWN THE TRIGGER Bricker advises writing down the trigger, whether or not you subsequently give in to the distraction. He recommends noting the time of day, what you were doing, and how you felt when you noticed the internal trigger that led to the distracting behavior “as soon as you are aware of the behavior,” because it’s easier at that point to remember how you felt.

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

According to Bricker, while people can easily identify the external trigger, “it takes some time and trials to begin noticing those all-important inside triggers.” He recommends discussing the urge as if you were an observer, telling yourself something like, “I’m feeling that tension in my chest right now. And there I go, trying to reach for my iPhone.”

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

The better we are at noticing the behavior, the better we’ll be at managing it over time. “The anxiety goes away, the thought gets weaker or [is] replaced by another thought.”

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

When similar techniques were applied in a smoking cessation study, the participants who had learned to acknowledge and explore their cravings managed to quit at double the rate of those in the American Lung Association’s best-performing cessation program

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

STEP 3: EXPLORE YOUR SENSATIONS Bricker then recommends getting curious about that sensation. For example, do your fingers twitch when you’re about to be distracted? Do you get a flurry of butterflies in your stomach when you think about work when you’re with your kids? What does it feel like when the feelings crest and then subside? Bricker encourages staying with the feeling before acting on the impulse.

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

One of Bricker’s favorite techniques is the “leaves on a stream” method. When feeling the uncomfortable internal trigger to do something you’d rather not, “imagine you are seated beside a gently flowing stream,” he says. “Then imagine there are leaves floating down that stream. Place each thought in your mind on each leaf. It could be a memory, a word, a worry, an image. And let each of those leaves float down that stream, swirling away, as you sit and just watch.”

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

STEP 4: BEWARE OF LIMINAL MOMENTS Liminal moments are transitions from one thing to another throughout our days. Have you ever picked up your phone while waiting for a traffic light to change, then found yourself still looking at your phone while driving? Or opened a tab in your web browser, got annoyed by how long it’s taking to load, and opened up another page while you waited? Or looked at a social media app while walking from one meeting to the next, only to keep scrolling when you got back to your desk? There’s nothing wrong with any of these actions per se. Rather, what’s dangerous is that by doing them “for just a second,” we’re likely to do things we later regret, like getting off track for half an hour or getting into a car accident.

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

A technique I’ve found particularly helpful for dealing with this distraction trap is the “ten-minute rule.” If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes. This technique is effective at helping me deal with all sorts of potential distractions, like googling something rather than writing, eating something unhealthy when I’m bored, or watching another episode on Netflix when I’m “too tired to go to bed.” This rule allows time to do what some behavioral psychologists call “surfing the urge.” When an urge takes hold, noticing the sensations and riding them like a wave—neither pushing them away nor acting on them—helps us cope until the feelings subside. Surfing the urge, along with other techniques to bring attention to the craving, has been shown to reduce the number of cigarettes smokers consumed when compared to those in a control group who didn’t use the technique. If we still want to perform the action after ten minutes of urge surfing, we’re free to do it, but that’s rarely still the case. The liminal moment has passed, and we’re able to do the thing we really wanted to do.

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

Techniques like surfing the urge and thinking of our cravings as leaves on a stream are mental skill-building exercises that can help us stop impulsively giving in to distractions. They recondition our minds to seek relief from internal triggers in a reflective rather than a reactive way. As Oliver Burkeman wrote in the Guardian, “It’s a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate—but positive ones expand.”

Chapter 6: Reimagine the Internal Trigger

By reimagining an uncomfortable internal trigger, we can disarm it.   •    Step 1. Look for the emotion preceding distraction.   •    Step 2. Write down the internal trigger.   •    Step 3. Explore the negative sensation with curiosity instead of contempt.   •    Step 4. Be extra cautious during liminal moments.

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

Given what we know about our propensity for distraction when we’re uncomfortable, reimagining difficult work as fun could prove incredibly empowering. Imagine how powerful you’d feel if you were able to transform the hard, focused work you have to do into something that felt like play. Is that even possible? Bogost thinks it is, but probably not in the way you think.

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

“Fun,” he writes, “turns out to be fun even if it doesn’t involve much (or any) enjoyment.” Huh? Doesn’t fun have to feel good? Not necessarily

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” Today, I write for the fun of it. Of course, it’s also my profession, but by finding the fun I’m able to do my work without getting as distracted as I once did.

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

Fun is looking for the variability in something other people don’t notice. It’s breaking through the boredom and monotony to discover its hidden beauty. The great thinkers and tinkerers of history made their discoveries because they were obsessed with the intoxicating draw of discovery—the mystery that pulls us in because we want to know more. But remember: finding novelty is only possible when we give ourselves the time to focus intently on a task and look hard for the variability. Whether it’s uncertainty about our ability to do a task better or faster than last time or coming back to challenge the unknown day after day, the quest to solve these mysteries is what turns the discomfort we seek to escape with distraction into an activity we embrace.

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

We can master internal triggers by reimagining an otherwise dreary task. Fun and play can be used as tools to keep us focused.   •    Play doesn’t have to be pleasurable. It just has to hold our attention.   •    Deliberateness and novelty can be added to any task to make it fun.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

To manage the discomfort that tugs us toward distraction, we need to think of ourselves differently. The way we perceive our temperament, which is defined as “a person’s or animal’s nature, especially as it permanently affects their behavior,” has a profound impact on how we behave.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

One of the most pervasive bits of folk psychology is the belief that self-control is limited—that, by the nature of our temperament, we only have so much willpower available to us. Furthermore, the thinking goes, we are liable to run out of willpower when we exert ourselves. Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: ego depletion.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

The bump in performance had nothing to do with the sugar in the drink and everything to do with the thoughts in our heads. In a study conducted by the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dweck concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in those test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource. It wasn’t the sugar in the lemonade but the belief in its impact that gave participants an extra boost.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

Not so long ago, my after-work routine looked like this: I’d sit on the couch and veg out for hours, keeping company with Netflix and a cold pint of ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, to be exact). I knew the ice cream and the sitting weren’t good for me, but I justified my actions by telling myself I was “spent,” acting as if my ego were depleted (even if I’d never heard the term). This theory would seem to perfectly explain my after-work indulgences. But is ego depletion real? In 2011, the psychologist Roy Baumeister wrote the best seller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength with New York Times journalist John Tierney. The book cited several of Baumeister’s studies demonstrating the ego depletion theory, including one notable experiment that showed a seemingly miraculous way to restore willpower—consuming sugar. The study claimed that participants who had sipped sugar-sweetened lemonade demonstrated increased self-control and stamina on difficult tasks.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

People who did not see willpower as a finite resource did not show signs of ego depletion. Many people still promote the idea of ego depletion, perhaps because they are unaware of the evidence that exists to the contrary. But if Dweck’s conclusions are correct, then perpetuating the idea is doing real harm. If ego depletion is essentially caused by self-defeating thoughts and not by any biological limitation, then the idea makes us less likely to accomplish our goals by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

the principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience, offers an alternative view. He believes that willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts 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. Seeing the link between temperament and willpower through a different lens has profound implications on the way we focus our attention. For one, if mental energy is more like an emotion than fuel in a tank, it can be managed and utilized as such. A toddler might throw a temper tantrum when refused a toy but will, with age, gain self-control and learn to ride out bad feelings. Similarly, when we need to perform a difficult task, it’s more productive and healthful to believe a lack of motivation is temporary than it is to tell ourselves we’re spent and need a break (and maybe some ice cream)

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

Addicts’ beliefs regarding their powerlessness was just as significant in determining whether they would relapse after treatment as their level of physical dependence.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

What we say to ourselves is vitally important. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control actually leads to less self-control. Rather than telling ourselves we failed because we’re somehow deficient, we should offer self-compassion by speaking to ourselves with kindness when we experience setbacks.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

Several studies have found people who are more self-compassionate experience a greater sense of well-being. A 2015 review of seventy-nine studies looking at the responses of over sixteen thousand volunteers found that people who have “a positive and caring attitude … toward her- or himself in the face of failures and individual shortcomings” tend to be happier. Another study found that people’s tendency to self-blame, along with how much they ruminated on a problem, could almost completely mediate the most common factors associated with depression and anxiety. An individual’s level of self-compassion had a greater effect on whether they would develop anxiety and depression than all the usual things that tend to screw up people’s lives, like traumatic life events, a family history of mental illness, low social status, or a lack of social support.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

Everyone struggles with distraction from one thing or another. The important thing is to take responsibility for our actions without heaping on the toxic guilt that makes us feel even worse and can, ironically, lead us to seek even more distraction in order to escape the pain of shame.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

Self-compassion makes people more resilient to letdowns by breaking the vicious cycle of stress that often accompanies failure.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

If you find yourself listening to the little voice in your head that sometimes bullies you around, it’s important to know how to respond. Instead of accepting what the voice says or arguing with it, remind yourself that obstacles are part of the process of growth. We don’t get better without practice, which can be difficult at times. A good rule of thumb is to talk to yourself the way you might talk to a friend. Since we know so much about ourselves, we tend to be our own worst critics, but if we talk to ourselves the way we’d help a friend, we can see the situation for what it really is. Telling yourself things like “This is what it’s like to get better at something” and “You’re on your way” are healthier ways to handle self-doubt.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

we can change the way we see ourselves to get rid of self-limiting beliefs. If we believe we’re short on willpower and self-control, then we will be. If we decide we’re powerless to resist temptation, it becomes true. If we tell ourselves we’re deficient by nature, we’ll believe every word. Thankfully, you don’t have to believe everything you think; you are only powerless if you think you are.

Chapter 8: Reimagine Your Temperament

Reimagining our temperament can help us manage our internal triggers.   •    We don’t run out of willpower. Believing we do makes us less likely to accomplish our goals by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.   •    What we say to ourselves matters. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control is self-defeating.   •    Practice self-compassion. Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend. People who are more self-compassionate are more resilient.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

only a third of Americans keep a daily schedule, which means the vast majority wake up every morning with no formal plans. Our most precious asset—our time—is unguarded, just waiting to be stolen. If we don’t plan our days, someone else will.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, values are “how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.” They are attributes of the person we want to be. For example, they may include being an honest person, being a loving parent, or being a valued part of a team. We never achieve our values any more than finishing a painting would let us achieve being creative. A value is like a guiding star; it’s the fixed point we use to help us navigate our life choices.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

If we chronically neglect our values, we become something we’re not proud of—our lives feel out of balance and diminished. Ironically, this ugly feeling makes us more likely to seek distractions to escape our dissatisfaction without actually solving the problem.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it’s distracting you from.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

oddly enough, we actually perform better under constraints. This is because limitations give us a structure, while a blank schedule and a mile-long to-do list torments us with too many choices. The most effective way to make time for traction is through “timeboxing.” Timeboxing uses a well-researched technique psychologists call “setting an implementation intention,” which is a fancy way of saying, “deciding what you’re going to do, and when you’re going to do it.” It’s a technique that can be used to make time for traction in each of your life domains.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

It’s fine to watch a video, scroll social media, daydream, or take a nap, as long as that’s what you planned to do. Alternatively, checking work email, a seemingly productive task, is a distraction if it’s done when you intended to spend time with your family or work on a presentation. Keeping a timeboxed schedule is the only way to know if you’re distracted. If you’re not spending your time doing what you’d planned, you’re off track.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

To create a weekly timeboxed schedule, you’ll need to decide how much time you want to spend on each domain of your life. How much time do you want to spend on yourself, on important relationships, and on your work? Note that “work” doesn’t exclusively mean paid labor. The work domain can include community service, activism, and side projects. How much time in each domain would allow you to be consistent with your values? Start by creating a weekly calendar template for your perfect week.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

Next, book fifteen minutes on your schedule every week to reflect and refine your calendar by asking two questions: Question 1 (Reflect): “When in my schedule did I do what I said I would do and when did I get distracted?” Answering this question requires you to look back at the past week. I recommend using the Distraction Tracker found at the back of this book to note when and why you become distracted, per Dr. Bricker’s suggestions of noting your internal trigger

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work out in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around. The idea is to commit to a practice that improves your schedule over time by helping you know the difference between traction and distraction for every moment of the day.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

When our lives change, our schedules can too. But once our schedule is set, the idea is to stick with it until we decide to improve it on the next go-round. Approaching the exercise of making a schedule as a curious scientist, rather than a drill sergeant, gives us the freedom to get better with each iteration.

Chapter 9: Turn Your Values into Time

You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. Planning ahead is the only way to know the difference between traction and distraction.   •    Does your calendar reflect your values? To be the person you want to be, you have to make time to live your values.   •    Timebox your day. The three life domains of you, relationships, and work provide a framework for planning how to spend your time.   •    Reflect and refine. Revise your schedule regularly, but you must commit to it once it’s set.

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

Like every valuable thing, you require maintenance and care, which takes time. Just as you wouldn’t blow off a meeting with your boss, you should never bail on appointments you make with yourself. After all, who’s more critical to helping you live the kind of life you want than you?

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

Exercise, sleep, healthy meals, and time spent reading or listening to an audiobook are all ways to invest in ourselves. Some people value mindfulness, spiritual connection, or reflection, and may want time to pray or meditate. Others value skillfulness and want time alone to practice a hobby. Taking care of yourself is at the core of the three domains because the other two depend on your health and wellness. If you’re not taking care of yourself, your relationships suffer. Likewise, your work isn’t its best when you haven’t given yourself the time you need to stay physically and psychologically healthy.

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

we need time in our schedules for sleep, hygiene, and proper nourishment. While it may sound simple to fulfill these needs, I must admit that before I learned to timebox my day, I was guilty of spending many late nights at work, after which I’d quickly grab a double cheeseburger,

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

By setting aside time to live out your values in the “you” domain, you will have the time to reflect on your calendar and visualize the qualities of the person you want to be. With your body and mind strong, you will also be much more likely to follow through on your promises.

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

You might be thinking, “It’s all well and good to schedule time for ourselves, but what happens when we don’t accomplish what we want to, despite making the time?” A few years ago, I started waking up at three o’clock every morning. Over the years I’d read many articles about the importance of rest and knew that the research was unequivocal—we need quality sleep. I’d toss and turn, disappointed that I wasn’t following through on my plan to get seven to eight hours of shut-eye. It was on my schedule, so why wasn’t I asleep? It turns out that sleeping wasn’t completely under my control. I couldn’t help the fact my body chose to wake me up, but I could control what I did in response. At first, I did what many of us do when things don’t go as planned—I freaked out. I’d lie in bed, thinking about how bad it was that I wasn’t sleeping and how groggy I was going to feel in the morning, and then I’d start thinking of all the things I had to do the next day. I’d mull over these thoughts until I could think of nothing else. Ironically, I wasn’t falling back asleep because I was worried about not falling back asleep—a common cause of insomnia. Once I realized my rumination was itself a distraction, I began to deal with it in a healthier manner. Specifically, if I woke up, I’d repeat a simple mantra, “The body gets what the body needs.” That subtle mind-set shift took the pressure off by no longer making sleep a requirement. My job was to provide my body with the proper time and place to rest—what happened next was out of my control. I started to think of waking up in the middle of the night as a chance to read on my Kindle and stopped worrying about when I’d fall back asleep.2 I assured myself that if I wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep right at that moment, it was because my body had already gotten enough rest. I let my mind relax without worry. You see where this is leading, don’t you? Once my rumination stopped, so did my sleepless nights. I soon started regularly falling back asleep in minutes. There’s an important lesson here that goes well beyond how to get enough sleep. The takeaway is that, when it comes to our time, we should stop worrying about outcomes we can’t control and instead focus on the inputs we can. The positive results of the time we spend doing something is a hope, not a certainty.

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

Not showing up guarantees failure

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

We tend to think we can solve our distraction problems by trying to get more done each minute, but more often the real problem is not giving ourselves time to do what we say we will. By timeboxing “you” time and faithfully following through, we keep the promises we make to ourselves.

Chapter 10: Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

Schedule time for yourself first. You are at the center of the three life domains. Without allocating time for yourself, the other two domains suffer.   •    Show up when you say you will. You can’t always control what you get out of time you spend, but you can control how much time you put into a task.   •    Input is much more certain than outcome. When it comes to living the life you want, making sure you allocate time to living your values is the only thing you should focus on.

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

Relationships Family and friends help us live our values of connection, loyalty, and responsibility. They need you and you need them, so they are clearly far more important than a mere “residual beneficiary,”

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

One of my most important values is to be a caring, involved, and fun dad. While I aspire to live out this value, being a fully present dad is not always “convenient.” An email from a client informs me that my website is down; the plumber texts to tell me that his train is stalled and he needs to reschedule; my bank notifies me of an unexpected charge on my card. Meanwhile, my daughter sits there, waiting for me to play my next card in our game of gin rummy.

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

To combat this problem, I’ve intentionally scheduled time with my daughter every week. Much like I schedule time for a business meeting or time for myself, I block out time on my schedule to be with her. To make sure we always have something fun to do, we spent one afternoon writing down over a hundred things to do together in town, each one on a separate little strip of paper. Then, we rolled up all the little strips and placed them inside our “fun jar.” Now, every Friday afternoon, we simply pull an activity from the fun jar and do it. Sometimes we’ll visit a museum, while other times we’ll play in the park or visit a highly rated ice cream parlor across town. That time is reserved just for us.

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

Truth be told, the fun jar idea doesn’t always work as smoothly as I’d like. It’s hard for me to muster up the energy to head to the playground when New York’s temperatures fall below freezing. On those days, a cup of hot cocoa and a couple of chapters of Harry Potter sound way more inviting for us both. What’s important, though, is that I’ve made it a priority in my weekly schedule to live up to my values. Having this time in my schedule allows me to be the dad that I envision myself to be.

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

Similarly, my wife, Julie, and I make sure we have time scheduled for each other. Twice a month, we plan a special date. Sometimes we see a live show or indulge in an exotic meal. But mostly, we just walk and talk for hours. Regardless of what we do, we know that this time is cemented in our schedules and will not be compromised. In the absence of this scheduled time together, it’s too easy to fill our days with other errands, like running to the grocery store or cleaning the house. My scheduled time with Julie allows me to live out my value of intimacy

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

During one of our date days, we sat down and listed all the household tasks that each of us performed; making sure nothing was left out. Comparing Julie’s (seemingly endless) list to mine was a wake-up call that my value of equality in our marriage needed some help. We agreed to split the household jobs and, most important, timeboxed the tasks on our schedules, leaving no doubt about when they would get done.

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

Recent studies have shown that a dearth of social interaction not only leads to loneliness but is also linked to a range of harmful physical effects. In fact, a lack of close friendships may be hazardous to your health. Perhaps the most compelling evidence that friendships affect longevity comes from the ongoing Harvard Study of Adult Development. Since 1938, researchers have been following the physical health and social habits of 724 men. Robert Waldinger, the study’s current director, said in a TEDx talk, “The clearest message that we get from this seventy-five-year study is this: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.” Socially disconnected people are, according to Waldinger, “less happy; their health declines earlier in midlife; their brain functioning declines sooner; [and] they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.” Waldinger warned, “It’s not just the number of friends you have … It’s the quality of your close relationships that matters.” What makes for a quality friendship? William Rawlins, a professor of interpersonal communications at Ohio University who studies the way people interact over the course of their lives, told the Atlantic that satisfying friendships need three things: “somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy.” Finding someone to talk to, depend on, and enjoy often comes naturally when we’re young, but as we grow into adulthood, the model for how to maintain friendships is less clear. We graduate and go our separate ways, pursuing careers and starting new lives miles apart from our best friends. Suddenly work obligations and ambitions take priority over having beers with buddies. If children enter the picture, exhilarating nights on the town become exhausted nights on the couch. Unfortunately, the less time we invest in people, the easier it is to make do without them, until one day it is too awkward to reconnect.

Chapter 11: Schedule Important Relationships

The people you love deserve more than getting whatever time is left over. If someone is important to you, make regular time for them on your calendar.   •    Go beyond scheduling date days with your significant other. Put domestic chores on your calendar to ensure an equitable split.   •    A lack of close friendships may be hazardous to your health. Ensure you maintain important relationships by scheduling time for regular get-togethers.

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

Given that work likely takes up more of your waking hours than any of the other domains, it’s even more important to ensure the time spent there is consistent with your values.

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

many of us find that our workday is a hectic mess, plagued by constant interruptions, pointless meetings, and a never-ending flow of emails. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can do more and live better by clarifying our values and expectations with each other at work. Clarification around how we spend our time at work fosters and reinforces the central quality of a positive working relationship: trust.

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

when it comes to how employees manage their workloads, many managers have little idea how their colleagues spend their time. Similarly, perhaps the biggest unknown to the employee is how they should spend their time, both inside and outside of work. How responsive should employees be after hours? Are they required to attend happy hours or other events full of “mandatory fun”? Will managers and clients expect employees to fulfill last-minute deadlines?

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

In response to underperformance, managers often ask employees to do more and work longer hours. But this common knee-jerk reaction asks employees to give more than they expected, stressing the working relationship and prompting them to push back in subtle ways. What does this pushback look like? While often done unknowingly, we find ourselves doing low-priority work, slacking off at our desks, chitchatting too much with colleagues, and generally reducing productive output. Other times, we (perhaps unconsciously) sabotage our companies by doing pseudowork, tasks that look like work but aren’t in line with the company’s top priorities. (Think: spending time on pet projects, corporate politicking, sending more emails, or holding more meetings than necessary.) This sort of pushback seems to increase when people work more hours.

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

Striving to be more productive was making April miserable and was causing her to neglect the other domains of her life. But productivity itself wasn’t her problem; she was a productive person who could squeeze a lot out of a small amount of time. Rather, the problem was her lack of a timeboxed schedule, compounded by the self-limiting belief that she, and not her management of time, was the problem. “I’m too slow,” she told me over lunch one day. But there was nothing wrong with April. She wasn’t slow, but she was lacking the productivity tools for her new role.

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

April subdivided her workday to account for the most important tasks she wanted to accomplish. She carved out time for focused work first, aware that creating new client proposals could be done faster and better if she did it without interruption. Every diversion slowed her down and made it more difficult to get back to customizing the pitch. Then she reserved a block of time for client calls and meetings, followed by time in the afternoon for processing emails and messages. I encouraged April to share her work-related timeboxed schedule with her manager, David. To her surprise, when they sat down to discuss her schedule, April found that David was extremely supportive of her intention to stick to a more planned-out day. “He knew I was burning the candle at both ends,” she told me. “When I proposed a weekly schedule, he actually seemed relieved. He told me it was helpful to know when he could call or message me instead of guessing if I was with my family.”

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

Whether at work, at home, or on our own, planning ahead and timeboxing our schedules is an essential step to becoming indistractable. By defining how we spend our time and syncing with the stakeholders in our lives, we ensure that we do the things that matter and ignore the things that don’t. It frees us from the trivialities of our day and gives us back the time we can’t afford to waste.

Chapter 12: Sync with Stakeholders at Work

Syncing your schedule with stakeholders at work is critical for making time for traction in your day. Without visibility into how you spend your time, colleagues and managers are more likely to distract you with superfluous tasks.   •    Sync as frequently as your schedule changes. If your schedule template changes from day to day, have a daily check-in. However, most people find a weekly alignment is sufficient.

Chapter 13: Ask the Critical Question

The Fogg Behavior Model states that for a behavior (B) to occur, three things must be present at the same time: motivation (M), ability (A), and a trigger (T). More succinctly, B = MAT. Motivation is “the energy for action,” according to Edward Deci, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. When we’re highly motivated, we have a strong desire, and the requisite energy, to take an action, and when we’re not motivated, we lack the energy to perform a task. Meanwhile, in Fogg’s formula, ability relates to facility of action. Quite simply, the harder something is to do, the less likely people are to do it. Conversely, the easier something is to do, the more likely we are to do it. When people have sufficient motivation and ability, they’re primed for certain behavior. However, without the critical third component, the behavior will not occur. A trigger to tell us what to do next is always required.

Chapter 13: Ask the Critical Question

The more we respond to external triggers, the more we train our brain in a never-ending stimulus–response loop. We condition ourselves to respond instantly. Soon, it feels impossible to do what we’ve planned because we’re constantly reacting to external triggers instead of attending to what’s in front of us.

Chapter 13: Ask the Critical Question

A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance found that receiving a cell phone notification but not replying to it was just as distracting as responding to a message or call. Similarly, the authors of a study conducted at the University of Texas at Austin proposed that “the mere presence of one’s smartphone may impose a ‘brain drain’ as limited-capacity attentional resources are recruited to inhibit automatic attention to one’s phone, and are thus unavailable for engaging with the task at hand.” By having your phone in your field of view, your brain must work hard to ignore it, but if your phone isn’t easily accessible or visually present, your brain is able to focus on the task at hand.

Chapter 13: Ask the Critical Question

Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?

Chapter 13: Ask the Critical Question

Viewed through the lens of this critical question, triggers can now be identified for what they rightly are: tools. If we use them properly, they can help us stay on track. If the trigger helps us do the thing we planned to do in our schedule, it’s helping us gain traction. If it leads to distraction, then it isn’t serving us.

Chapter 13: Ask the Critical Question

External triggers often lead to distraction. Cues in our environment like the pings, dings, and rings from devices, as well as interruptions from other people, frequently take us off track.   •    External triggers aren’t always harmful. If an external trigger leads us to traction, it serves us.   •    We must ask ourselves: Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it? Then we can hack back the external triggers that don’t serve us.

Chapter 14: Hack Back Work Interruptions

Interruptions lead to mistakes. You can’t do your best work if you’re frequently distracted.   •    Open-office floor plans increase distraction.   •    Defend your focus. Signal when you do not want to be interrupted. Use a screen sign or some other clear cue to let people know you are indistractable.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

Email is perhaps the mother of all habit-forming products. For one thing, it provides a variable reward. As the psychologist B. F. Skinner famously discovered, pigeons pecked at levers more often when given a reward on a variable schedule of reinforcement. Similarly, email’s uncertainty keeps us checking and pecking. It provides good news and bad, exciting information as well as frivolity, messages from our closest loved ones and from anonymous strangers. All that uncertainty provides a powerful draw to see what we might find when we next check our inboxes. As a result, we keep clicking or pulling to refresh in a never-ending effort to quell the discomfort of anticipation. Second, we have a strong tendency for reciprocity—responding in kind to the actions of another. When someone says “Hello” or extends their hand to shake our own, we feel the urge to reciprocate—not doing so breaks a strong social norm and feels cold. Though the grace of reciprocity works well in person, it can lead to a host of problems online. Finally, and perhaps most materially, email is a tool we have little choice but to use.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

Most emails we send and receive are not urgent. Yet our brain’s weakness for variable rewards makes us treat every message, regardless of form, as if it’s time sensitive. That tendency conditions us to check constantly, return replies, and bark out whatever requests come to mind instantaneously. These are all mistakes.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

To receive fewer emails, we must send fewer emails. It seems obvious, but most of us don’t act in accordance with this basic fact.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

become irrelevant when you give them a little time to breathe. By asking the other party to wait, you’ve given them the chance to come up with an answer for themselves—or, as is often the case, time for the problem to just disappear under the weight of some other priority.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

But what if the sender still needs to discuss the question and can’t figure out the problem for themselves? All the better! Difficult questions are better handled in person than over email, where there is more risk of misunderstandings. The bottom line is that asking people to discuss complex matters during regular office hours will lead to better communication and fewer emails.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

fewer emails sent per day results in fewer emails sent back per day. Not only does delaying delivery allow time for the matter to resolve through other means, it also makes it less likely I’ll receive emails when I don’t want them

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

There’s mounting evidence that processing your email in batches is much more efficient and less stress inducing than checking it throughout the day. This is because our brains take time to switch between tasks, so it’s better to focus on answering emails all at once.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

Checking email isn’t so much the problem; it’s the habitual rechecking that gets us into trouble.

Chapter 15: Hack Back Email

Break down the problem. Time spent on email (T) is a function of the number of messages received (n) multiplied by the average time (t) spent per message: T = n × t.   •    Reduce the number of messages received. Schedule office hours, delay when messages are sent, and reduce time-wasting messages from reaching your inbox.   •    Spend less time on each message. Label emails by when each message needs a response. Reply to emails during a scheduled time on your calendar.

Chapter 16: Hack Back Group Chat

Group chat is best avoided altogether when discussing sensitive topics. Remember that the ability to directly observe another person’s mood, tone, and nonverbal signals adds critical context to conversations. As Fried suggests, “Chat should be about quick, ephemeral things,” while “important topics need time, traction, and separation from the rest of the chatter.”

Chapter 16: Hack Back Group Chat

. The secret lies in the answer to our critical question: Are these triggers serving me, or am I serving them? We should use group chat where it helps us gain traction and weed out the external triggers that lead to distraction.

Chapter 16: Hack Back Group Chat

Real-time communication channels should be used sparingly. Time spent communicating should not come at the sacrifice of time spent concentrating.   •    Company culture matters. Changing group chat practices may involve questioning company norms. We’ll discuss this topic in part five.   •    Different communication channels have different uses. Rather than use every technology as an always-on channel, use the best tools for the job.   •    Get in and get out. Group chat is great for replacing in-person meetings but terrible if it becomes an all-day affair.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

The primary objective of most meetings should be to gain consensus around a decision, not to create an echo chamber for the meeting organizer’s own thoughts

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

First, meeting organizers must circulate an agenda of what problem will be discussed. No agenda, no meeting. Second, they must give their best shot at a solution in the form of a brief, written digest. The digest need not be more than a page or two discussing the problem, their reasoning, and their recommendation.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

Requiring an agenda and a brief not only saves everyone time by getting to the answer faster but also cuts down on unnecessary meetings by adding a bit of effort on the part of the organizer before calling one.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

what about sharing collective wisdom and brainstorming? Those are good things, just not in meetings of more than two people. Unless the meeting is called because of an emergency or as an open forum to listen to employee concerns

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

I consistently saw how teams who brainstormed individually before coming together not only generated better ideas but were also more likely to have a wider diversity of solutions as they were less likely to be overrun by the louder, more dominating members of the group.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

there’s a new problem: people on their devices instead of being fully present. Attendees check email or fiddle around on their phones during meetings despite the many studies showing that our brains are awful at absorbing information when we’re not paying close attention

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

If we are going to spend our time in a meeting, we must make sure that we are present, both in body and mind.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

the only things attendees really need in a meeting are paper, a pen, and perhaps some sticky notes. If slides need to be presented on screen, designate one member of the team to present from their computer or have a dedicated laptop that stays in the meeting room. Rather than sparking the desires of others to use their devices, anyone attempting to use a phone or laptop during the meeting should receive disapproving stares from you and your colleagues.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

Why do we really use our devices in meetings? Our technology gives us a way of being physically present but mentally absent; the uncomfortable truth is that we like to have our phones, tablets, and laptops in meetings not for the sake of productivity but for psychological escape. Meetings can be unbearably tense, socially awkward, and exceedingly boring—devices provide a way to manage our uncomfortable internal triggers.

Chapter 17: Hack Back Meetings

Make it harder to call a meeting. To call a meeting, the organizer must circulate an agenda and briefing document.   •    Meetings are for consensus building. With few exceptions, creative problem-solving should occur before the meeting, individually or in very small groups.   •    Be fully present. People use devices during meetings to escape monotony and boredom, which subsequently makes meetings even worse.

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

The good news is, being dependent is not the same thing as being addicted. We can get the best out of our devices without letting them get the best of us. By hacking back our phones, we can short-circuit the external triggers that spark harmful behaviors

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

kept apps for learning and staying healthy and removed news apps with blaring alerts and stress-inducing headlines. I also deleted all games from my phone. I’m not saying you need to do the same, of course. Many games today, particularly those made by indie studios, are works of masterful craftsmanship and are no less entertaining or morally virtuous than quality books or films. But I decided that, for me, games didn’t align with how I wanted to spend my time on my phone.

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

I often found myself checking YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter on my phone when I’d planned to spend time with my daughter. When I’d feel a tinge of boredom, I’d watch a short video or give a social network a quick pull-to-refresh. Unfortunately, this also pulled me out of the moment with my daughter. But abandoning these services entirely wasn’t an option for me; I still wanted to use them to keep in touch with friends and watch interesting videos. I found my solution by replacing when and where I used the problematic services. Since I’d set aside time for social media in my timeboxed schedule, there was no longer any need to have them on my phone. After a few minutes of hesitation, removing them from my phone felt like a breath of fresh air.

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

When I started wearing a watch again, I noticed that I checked my phone far less frequently.

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

The idea here is to find the best time and place to do the things you want to do

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

“Primary Tools,” “Aspirations,” and “Slot Machines.” He says Primary Tools “help you accomplish defined tasks that you rely on frequently: getting a ride, finding a location, adding an appointment. There should be no more than five or six.” He calls Aspirations “the things you want to spend time doing: meditation, yoga, exercise, reading books, or listening to podcasts.” Stubblebine describes Slot Machines as “the apps that you open and get lost in: email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.” He recommends rearranging your phone’s home screen so it only displays your Primary Tools and your Aspirations.

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

In 2013 Apple announced that its servers had sent 7.4 trillion push notifications. Unfortunately, few people do anything to avoid those external triggers

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

less than 15 percent of smartphone users adjust their notification settings—meaning the remaining 85 percent allow app makers to interrupt them whenever they’d like. It’s up to us to make adjustments to suit our needs; the app makers won’t do it for us.

Chapter 18: Hack Back Your Smartphone

You can hack back the external triggers on your phone in four steps and in less than one hour.   •    Remove: Uninstall the apps you no longer need.   •    Replace: Shift where and when you use potentially distracting apps, like social media and YouTube, to your desktop instead of on your phone. Get a wristwatch so you don’t have to look at your phone for the time.   •    Rearrange: Move any apps that may trigger mindless checking from your phone’s home screen.   •    Reclaim: Change the notification settings for each app. Be very selective regarding which apps can send you sound and sight cues. Learn to use your phone’s Do Not Disturb settings.

Chapter 19: Hack Back Your Desktop

A study by researchers at Princeton University found people performed poorly on cognitive tasks when objects in their field of vision were in disarray as opposed to neatly arranged. The same effect applies to digital environments, according to a study published in the academic journal Behaviour & Information Technology.

Chapter 19: Hack Back Your Desktop

our brains have a tougher time finding things when they are positioned in a disorganized manner, which means every errant icon, open tab, or unnecessary bookmark serves as a nagging reminder of things left undone or unexplored. With so many external triggers, it’s easy to mindlessly click away from the task at hand.

Chapter 19: Hack Back Your Desktop

According to Sophie Leroy at the University of Minnesota, moving from one thing to another hurts our concentration by leaving what she calls an “attention residue” that makes it harder to get back on track once we have been distracted

Chapter 19: Hack Back Your Desktop

Removing unnecessary external triggers from our line of sight declutters our workspace and frees the mind to concentrate on what’s really important.

Chapter 19: Hack Back Your Desktop

Desktop clutter takes a heavy psychological toll on your attention. Clearing away external triggers in your digital workspace can help you stay focused.   •    Turn off desktop notifications. Disabling notifications on your computer ensures you won’t get distracted by external triggers while doing focused work.

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

a simple rule fixed all my tab troubles and has helped me steer clear of mindless web browsing: I never read articles in my web browser. As you can imagine, as a writer, I use the web for research every day. However, whenever I discover a new article, I no longer read it in my web browser right away. Instead, I’ve time-shifted when and how I read online, thereby removing the temptation to read for longer than I intend. Here’s how: I started by installing an app called Pocket on my phone, along with its browser extension on my laptop. In order to abide by my “never read articles in my browser” rule, I simply click the Pocket button in my browser every time I see an article I’d like to read. Pocket then pulls the text from the web page and saves it (without ads and any other superfluous content) to the app on my phone. I replaced my old habit of either reading online content immediately or letting it clog up my web browser with the new habit of saving the articles for consumption at a later time. With this new behavior, my temptation to digest the content wasn’t thwarted; I was just as satisfied knowing that the content was safe and sound, waiting for me until later.

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

Everyone knows that multitasking destroys productivity, right? Haven’t we all seen studies and read articles telling us that it’s impossible to do two things at the same time? In some ways, that’s true. The evidence is pretty clear that humans are awful at performing two complex tasks at once. Generally speaking, we commit more errors when juggling many tasks at the same time, and we also take longer—sometimes double the time—to complete the tasks. Scientists believe this wasted time and decreased proficiency occurs because the brain has to work hard to refocus attention. However, when used correctly, multitasking can let us get more out of our schedules with little extra effort. I call it “multichannel multitasking,” and it’s a terrific trick for getting more out of your day

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

To multitask the right way, we need to understand our brain’s limitations that prevent us from doing more than one thing at the same time. First, the brain has a limit on its processing horsepower—the more concentration a task requires, the less room it has for anything else. That’s why we can’t solve two math problems at the same time. Second, the brain has a limited number of attention channels, and it can only make sense of one sensory signal at a time. Try listening to two different podcasts, one in each ear. Not surprisingly, you won’t be able to understand what’s going on in one without mentally tuning out the other. However, although we can only receive information from one visual or auditory source at a time, we are perfectly capable of processing multichannel inputs. Scientists call this “cross-modal attention,” and it allows our brains to place certain mental processes on autopilot while we think about other things. As long as we’re not required to concentrate too much on any one channel, we’re able to do more than one thing at a time.

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

Studies have found that people can do some things better when they engage multiple sensory inputs. For example, some types of learning are enhanced when people also engage their auditory, visual, and tactile senses at the same time. A recent study found walking, even if done slowly and on a treadmill, improved performance on a creativity test when compared to sitting down. Some forms of multichannel multitasking pair particularly well together. Cooking and eating a healthy meal with friends allows you to do something good for your body while also investing in your relationships. Stepping out of the office for a long walk while taking a phone call or inviting a colleague for a walking meeting checks off two positive things at once. Listening to a nonfiction audiobook on the way to work is a good example of making the most of a commute while investing time in self-improvement. Doing the same while cooking or cleaning makes the chores seem to pass more quickly. Another form of multichannel multitasking has been shown to be an effective way to help people get fit. Katherine Milkman at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has shown how leveraging a behavior we want to do can help us do things we know we should do. In her study, Milkman gave participants an iPod loaded with an audiobook they could only listen to at the gym. Milkman chose books like The Hunger Games and Twilight that she knew had story lines likely to keep people wanting more. The results were amazing: “Participants who had access to the audiobooks only at the gym made 51 percent more gym visits than those in the control group.”

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

Milkman gave participants an iPod loaded with an audiobook they could only listen to at the gym. Milkman chose books like The Hunger Games and Twilight that she knew had story lines likely to keep people wanting more. The results were amazing: “Participants who had access to the audiobooks only at the gym made 51 percent more gym visits than those in the control group.” Milkman’s technique is called “temptation bundling” and can be used whenever we want to use the rewards from one behavior to incentivize another.

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

Getting through my articles feels like a small reward, often encouraging me to work out or take a stroll while satisfying my need for intellectual stimulation and saving me the temptation of reading at my desk. That, folks, is what we call a triple win in the hack-back battle against distraction!

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

Multichannel multitasking is an underutilized tactic for getting more out of each day. We can build this technique into our schedules to help us make more time for traction and use temptation bundling to make activities, like exercising, more enjoyable.

Chapter 20: Hack Back Online Articles

Online articles are full of potentially distracting external triggers. Open tabs can pull us off course and tend to suck us down a time-wasting content vortex.   •    Make a rule. Promise yourself you’ll save interesting content for later by using an app like Pocket.   •    Surprise! You can multitask. Use multichannel multitasking like listening to articles while working out or taking walking meetings.

Chapter 21: Hack Back Feeds

The infinite scroll of Facebook’s News Feed is an ingenious bit of behavioral design and is the company’s response to the human penchant for perpetually searching for novelty.

Chapter 21: Hack Back Feeds

A free web browser extension called News Feed Eradicator for Facebook does exactly what it says; it eliminates the source of countless alluring external triggers and replaces them with an inspirational quote

Chapter 21: Hack Back Feeds

By avoiding the feed, I’m much more likely to use social media mindfully while still allowing time to connect with others proactively.

Chapter 21: Hack Back Feeds

Just as companies like Facebook and LinkedIn implement behavioral design to keep us scrolling, YouTube deploys similar psychological hacks to keep us watching with its powerful external triggers. As you watch a video, YouTube’s algorithm hums away at predicting what you’ll likely want to watch next, based on the topic of the video you’re currently watching and your video history. YouTube serves up thumbnail images of recommended videos along the right side of the web page, usually next to advertisements for sponsored videos targeted at you. Similar to a news feed, these thumbnails also appear as soon as you land on YouTube’s homepage, sending you on a hunt for more digital treasure. Such external triggers are there to keep you watching video after video.

Chapter 21: Hack Back Feeds

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with spending time on YouTube. I have time reserved in my timeboxed calendar to indulge in YouTube videos, and I love it! But rather than mindlessly viewing the next recommended video or clicking on yet another enticing suggestion, I use some hacks of my own to make sure I only watch videos I’d planned to see.

Chapter 21: Hack Back Feeds

Feeds, like the ones we scroll through on social media, are designed to keep you engaged. Feeds are full of external triggers that can drive us to distraction.   •    Take control of feeds by hacking back.

Chapter 22: The Power of Precommitments

focus not only requires keeping distraction out; it also necessitates keeping ourselves in. After we’ve learned to master internal triggers, make time for traction, and hack back external triggers, the last step to becoming indistractable involves preventing ourselves from sliding into distraction. To do so, we must learn a powerful technique called a “precommitment,” which involves removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsivity. Although researchers are still studying why it is so effective, precommitment is, in fact, an age-old tactic. Perhaps the most iconic precommitment in history appears in the ancient telling of the Odyssey. In the story, Ulysses must sail his ship and crew past the land of the Sirens, who sing a bewitching song known to draw sailors to their shores. When sailors approach, they wreck their ships on the Sirens’ rocky coast and perish. Knowing the danger ahead, Ulysses hatches a clever plan to avoid this fate. He orders his men to fill their ears with beeswax so they cannot hear the Sirens’ call. Everyone follows Ulysses’s orders, with the exception of Ulysses, who wants to hear the beautiful song for himself. But Ulysses knows that he will be tempted to either steer his ship toward the rocks or jump into the sea to reach the Sirens. To safeguard himself and his men, he instructs his crew to tie him to the mast of the ship and instructs them not to set him free nor change course until the ship is in the clear, no matter what he says or does. The crew follows Ulysses’s commands, and as the ship passes the Sirens’ shores, he is driven temporarily insane by their song. In an angry rage, he calls for his men to let him go, but since they cannot hear the Sirens nor their captain, they navigate past the danger safely.

Chapter 22: The Power of Precommitments

A “Ulysses pact” is defined as “a freely made decision that is designed and intended to bind oneself in the future,

Chapter 22: The Power of Precommitments

Such precommitments are powerful because they cement our intentions when we’re clearheaded and make us less likely to act against our best interests later. Just as we make precommitments in other areas of our lives, we can utilize them in our counteroffensive against distraction.

Chapter 22: The Power of Precommitments

If we haven’t fundamentally dealt with the internal triggers driving us toward distraction, as we learned in part one, we’ll be set up for failure. Similarly, if we haven’t set aside time for traction, as we learned in part two, our precommitments will be useless. And finally, if we don’t first remove the external triggers that aren’t serving us before we make a precommitment, it’s likely not going to work. Precommitments are the last line of defense preventing us from sliding into distraction.

Chapter 22: The Power of Precommitments

Being indistractable does not only require keeping distraction out. It also necessitates reining ourselves in.   •    Precommitments can reduce the likelihood of distraction. They help us stick with decisions we’ve made in advance.   •    Precommitments should only be used after the other three indistractable strategies have already been applied. Don’t skip the first three steps.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

KSafe is an example of a precommitment. Specifically, it demonstrates the usefulness of an effort pact—a kind of precommitment that involves increasing the amount of effort required to perform an undesirable action. This type of precommitment can help us become indistractable.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

An effort pact prevents distraction by making unwanted behaviors more difficult to do.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

Adding a bit of additional effort forces us to ask if a distraction is worth it. Whether with the help of a product like kSafe or an app like Forest, effort pacts are not limited to those we make with ourselves; another highly effective way to forge them involves making pacts with other people.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

In previous generations, social pressure helped us stay on task—before the invention of the personal computer, procrastinating at our desks was obvious to the entire office. Reading a copy of Sports Illustrated or Vogue or recapping the details of our long weekend while on the phone with a friend sent clear signals to our colleagues that we were slacking off. In contrast, few people today can see what we’re scrolling through or clicking on while at the office.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

The problem becomes more acute when we work remotely. Since I tend to work from home, I find it all too easy to get off track when I know I should be writing. Perhaps bringing back a bit of social pressure when I’m having trouble staying focused could be helpful? I put the question to the test and asked my friend Taylor, a fellow author, to co-work with me. Most mornings, we sat at adjacent desks in my home office and agreed to work in timed sprints of forty-five minutes. Seeing him hard at work, particularly at times when I found myself losing steam, and knowing that he could see me, kept me doing the work I knew I needed to do. Scheduling time with a friend for focused work proved to be an effective way to commit to doing what mattered most.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

While Taylor was away, I signed up at Focusmate.com and was paired with a Czech medical school student named Martin. Because I knew he would be waiting for me to co-work at our scheduled time, I didn’t want to let him down. While Martin was hard at work memorizing human anatomy, I stayed focused on my writing.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

Effort pacts make us less likely to abandon the task at hand. Whether we make them with friends and colleagues, or via tools like Forest, SelfControl, Focusmate, or kSafe, effort pacts are a simple yet highly effective way to keep us from getting distracted.

Chapter 23: Prevent Distraction with Effort Pacts

An effort pact prevents distraction by making unwanted behaviors more difficult to do.   •    In the age of the personal computer, social pressure to stay on task has largely disappeared. No one can see what you’re working on, so it’s easier to slack off. Working next to a colleague or friend for a set period of time can be a highly effective effort pact.   •    You can use tech to stay off tech. Apps like SelfControl, Forest, and Focusmate can help you make effort pacts.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

and you forfeit the funds. It sounds harsh, but the results are stunning. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine illustrated the power of price pacts by examining three groups of smokers who were trying to quit their unhealthy habit. In the study, a control group was offered educational information and traditional methods, such as free nicotine patches, to encourage smoking cessation. After six months, 6 percent of people in the control group had stopped smoking. The next group, called the “reward group,” was offered $800iftheyhadstoppedsmokingaftersixmonths—17percentofthemweresuccessful.However,thethirdgroupofparticipantsprovidedthemostinterestingresults.Inthisgroup,calledthe“depositgroup,”participantswererequiredtomakeaprecommitmentdepositof$150 of their own money with a pledge to be smoke-free after six months. If, and only if, they reached their goal, they would receive the $150depositback.Inadditiontorecoupingtheircash,successfuldeposit-groupparticipantswouldalsoreceivea$650 bonus prize (as opposed to the $800 offered to the “reward” participants) from their employer. The results? Of those who accepted the deposit challenge, an astounding 52 percent succeeded in meeting their goal!

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

“people are typically more motivated to avoid losses than to seek gains.” Losing hurts more than winning feels good. This irrational tendency, known as “loss aversion,” is a cornerstone of behavioral economics.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

I decided to make a price pact with myself. After making time in my timeboxed schedule, I taped a crisp hundred-dollar bill to the calendar on my wall, next to the date of my upcoming workout. Then I bought a ninety-nine-cent lighter and placed it nearby. Every day, I had a choice to make: I would either burn the calories by exercising or burn the hundred-dollar bill. Unless I was certifiably sick, those were the only two options I allowed myself. Any time I found myself coming up with petty excuses, I had a crystal clear external trigger that reminded me of the precommitment I made to myself and to my health. I know what you’re thinking: “That’s too extreme! You can’t burn money like that!” That’s exactly my point. I’ve used this “burn or burn” technique for over three years and have gained twelve pounds of muscle, without ever burning the hundred dollars.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

As exemplified by my “burn or burn” method, a price pact binds us to action by attaching a price to distraction

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

I found it helpful for achieving my professional ambitions as well. After spending nearly five years conducting the research for this book, I knew it was finally time to start putting words on the page, but I found it difficult to get down to writing each day and instead found myself doing even more research, both online and offline. Even worse, I found myself a few clicks away from consuming media that was entirely irrelevant to my writing goals. Clearly, I was not making traction. Eventually, I’d had enough of my false starts, half-finished chapters, and incomplete outlines. I decided to put some skin in the game and enter a price pact to hold myself accountable to my important goal of finishing this book. I asked my friend Mark to be my accountability partner in my price pact; if I didn’t finish a first draft of this book by a set date, I had to pay him $10,000. The thought of it made me sick to my stomach—if I forfeited the money, gone would be the vacation budget I’d set aside for my fortieth birthday; gone would be my self-indulgent fund reserved for my new adjustable desk; most devastatingly, gone would be the completion of this book, a goal I so desperately wanted to achieve.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

A price pact is effective because it moves the pain of losing to the present moment, as opposed to a far-off future. There’s also nothing special about the dollar amount so long as the sum hurts to lose. For me, the price pact worked like a charm, because knowing that I had so much on the line kicked me into high gear. I committed to a minimum of two hours of distraction-free writing time six days per week, added it to my timeboxed schedule, and got down to work each day. In the end, I was able to keep my money (and my vacation and adjustable desk), and you’re now reading the result of my work.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

There are certain behaviors that aren’t suitable for changing through a price pact. This kind of precommitment is not recommended when you can’t remove the external trigger associated with the behavior. For example, nail biting is a devilishly hard habit to break because biters are constantly tempted whenever they become aware of their hands. Such body-focused repetitive behaviors are not good candidates for price pacts. Similarly, attempting to finish a big project that requires intense focus while working next to a colleague who wants to continuously show you the latest photos of their “super-cute” puppy is unreasonable. Price pacts only work when you can tune out or turn off the external triggers.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

Implementing price pacts like my “burn or burn” technique work well because they require short bursts of motivation—a quick trip to the gym, two hours of focused writing time, or “surfing the urge” of a cigarette craving, for example. If we are bound by a pact for too long, we begin to associate it with punishment, which can spawn counterproductive effects, such as resentment of the task or goal.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

PITFALL 3: ENTERING A PRICE PACT IS SCARY Despite knowing how effective they are, most people cringe at the idea of making a price pact in their own lives—I sure did at first! I struggled with committing to my “burn or burn” regimen because I knew it meant I would have to do the uncomfortable work of hitting the gym. Similarly, shaking Mark’s hand and pledging to finish my manuscript made me sweat. Only later did I realize how illogical it was to resist a goal-setting technique that makes success so much more likely. Expect some trepidation when entering into a price pact, but do it anyway.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

PITFALL 4: PRICE PACTS AREN’T FOR PEOPLE WHO BEAT THEMSELVES UP Though the study discussed above was one of the most successful smoking cessation studies ever conducted, some 48 percent of the participants in the deposit group did not achieve their goal. Behavior change is hard, and some people will fail. Any program for long-term behavior modification must accommodate those of us who, for one reason or another, don’t stick with it. It’s critical to know how to bounce back from failure—as we learned in chapter eight, responding to setbacks with self-compassion instead of self-criticism is the way to get back on track. While trying a price pact, make sure you are able to be kind to yourself and understand that you can always adjust the program to give it another go.

Chapter 24: Prevent Distraction with Price Pacts

A price pact adds a cost to getting distracted. It has been shown to be a highly effective motivator.   •    Price pacts are most effective when you can remove the external triggers that lead to distraction.   •    Price pacts work best when the distraction is temporary.   •    Price pacts can be difficult to start. We fear making a price pact because we know we’ll have to actually do the thing we’re scared to do.   •    Learn self-compassion before making a price pact.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

One of the most effective ways to change our behavior is to change our identity.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

They found that those shown the survey about being a “voter” were much more likely to vote than those who were asked how likely they were “to vote.” The results were so surprising that the researchers replicated the experiment during another election to confirm their validity. The results were the same: the “voter” group dramatically outperformed the “to vote” group. Bryan concluded, “People may be more likely to vote when voting is represented as an expression of self—as symbolic of a person’s fundamental character—rather than as simply a behavior.” Our self-image has a sizable impact on our behavior and has implications well beyond the voting booth. Identity is another cognitive shortcut that helps our brains make otherwise difficult choices in advance, thereby streamlining decision-making.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

Our perception of who we are changes what we do. The way we think of ourselves also has a profound impact on how we deal with distractions and unintended behaviors. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research tested the words people use when faced with temptation. During the experiment, one group was instructed to use the words “I can’t” when considering unhealthy food choices, while the other group used “I don’t.” At the end of the study, participants were offered either a chocolate bar or granola bar to thank them for their time. Nearly twice as many people in the “I don’t” group picked the healthier option on their way out the door. The authors of the study attributed the difference to the “psychological empowerment” that comes with saying “I don’t” rather than “I can’t.” The results were similar to those in the voting study: “I can’t” relates to the behavior, while “I don’t” says something about the person.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

To leverage the power of identity to prevent distraction, we can enter into what I call an “identity pact,” which is a precommitment to a self-image that helps us pursue what we really want.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

There’s an old joke that goes, “How do you know someone is a vegetarian?” The punch line: “Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” You could replace “vegetarian” with any number of monikers, from marathoner to marine, and the joke would still ring true. I was a vegetarian for five years. As anyone who has tried a meat-free diet knows, friends always ask, “Don’t you miss meat? I mean, it tastes so good!” Of course I missed meat! However, when I began calling myself a vegetarian, somehow what was once appetizing suddenly became something else. The things I once loved to eat were now unpalatable because I had changed how I defined myself. It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat meat; I was a vegetarian, and vegetarians don’t eat meat. When I made this identity pact, I was limiting my future choices, but saying no to meat was no longer difficult. Rather than being a chore or a burden, it became something I simply did not do, much in the same way observant Muslims do not drink alcohol and devout Jews do not eat pork—they just don’t.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

By aligning our behaviors to our identity, we make choices based on who we believe we are

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

With that in mind, what identity should we take on to help fight distraction? It should now be clear why this book is titled Indistractable. Welcome to your new moniker! By thinking of yourself as indistractable, you empower yourself through your new identity. You can also use this identity as a rationale to tell others why you do “strange” things like meticulously plan your time, refuse to respond to every notification immediately, or put a sign on your screen when you don’t want to be disturbed. These acts are no more unusual than other expressions of identity, like wearing religious garb or eating a particular diet. It’s time to be indistractable and proud! Telling others about your new identity is a great way to solidify your pact. Have you noticed how many religions encourage adherents to evangelize their faith? Missionary work is a way to grow the number of adherents, but, psychologically speaking, there’s more to proselytizing than getting nonbelievers to join the fold. According to several recent studies, preaching to others can have a great impact on the motivation and adherence of the teacher

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

Researchers Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach have run experiments on diverse groups, from unemployed workers looking for a job to children struggling in school. Their results consistently show that teaching others provides more motivation for the teacher to change their own behavior than if the teacher learned from an expert.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

behavior than if the teacher learned from an expert. But do we have a right to teach others about something we haven’t quite figured out ourselves? Should we preach when we’re far from perfect? Studies show teaching others can be even more effective at changing our future behavior when we admit our own struggles. As Eskreis-Winkler and Fishbach note in the MIT Sloan Management Review, when people confess past mistakes they are able to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong without developing a negative self-image. Rather, teaching empowers us to construct a different identity, as shown by the act of helping other people prevent the same mistakes.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

Another way to reinforce our identity is through rituals. Let’s look again at religion. Many religious practices aren’t easy, at least not for outsiders. Praying five times per day toward Mecca or reciting prescribed blessings before each meal takes effort. And yet, for strict adherents, these routines are something they just do, without fail and without question. What if we could tap into some of that dedication to accomplish difficult tasks? Imagine having the fortitude to focus on whatever you wanted with the discipline of a true believer.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

New research suggests that secular rituals, in the workplace and in everyday life, can have a powerful effect. A study conducted by Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino and her colleagues explored how rituals affect self-control by studying people trying to lose weight. The first group in their study was asked to be mindful of what they ate for five days. The second group was taught a three-step premeal ritual: first, they had to cut their food; second, arrange the pieces symmetrically on the plate; and third, tap their food three times with their utensils before eating. Silly, yes, but also surprisingly effective. The study participants who followed the pre-eating ritual ate, on average, fewer calories, less fat, and less sugar than those in the “mindful group.” Professor Gino believes rituals “may seem like a waste of time. Yet, as our research suggests, they are quite powerful.” She continues, “Even when they are not embedded in years of tradition, simple rituals can help us build personal discipline and self-control.”7

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

Though conventional wisdom says our beliefs shape our behaviors, the opposite is also true

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

Evidence of the importance of rituals supports the idea of keeping a regular schedule, as described in part two. The more we stick to our plans, the more we reinforce our identity. We can also incorporate other rituals into our lives to help remind us of our identity. For example, I have a ritual of repeating a series of short mantras every morning. I’ve collected them over the years and say them before I start my work every day. A quick reading of these snippets of indistractable wisdom, such as the William James quote “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook,” reinforces my identity through ritual.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

I also find opportunities to label myself as indistractable. For instance, when I’m working from home, I tell my wife and daughter that I’m indistractable before starting a focused work block. As you learned in chapter eighteen, I use my phone’s Do Not Disturb function to send an auto-reply message stating that I’m indistractable to anyone who might contact me during my focused time. I even printed T-shirts with Indistractable across the chest to reinforce my identity whenever I look in the mirror or someone asks me about my shirt.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

By making identity pacts, we are able to build the self-image we want. Whether the behavior is related to what we eat, how we treat others, or how we manage distraction, this technique can help shape our behavior to reflect our values. Though we often assume our identity is fixed, our self-image is, in fact, flexible and is nothing more than a construct in our minds. It’s a habit of thought, and, as we’ve learned, habits can be changed for the better.

Chapter 25: Prevent Distraction with Identity Pacts

Identity greatly influences our behavior. People tend to align their actions with how they see themselves.   •    An identity pact is a precommitment to a self-image. You can prevent distraction by acting in line with your identity.   •    Become a noun. By assigning yourself a moniker, you increase the likelihood of following through with behaviors consistent with what you call yourself. Call yourself “indistractable.”   •    Share with others. Teaching others solidifies your commitment, even if you’re still struggling. A great way to be indistractable is to tell friends about what you learned in this book and the changes you’re making in your life.   •    Adopt rituals. Repeating mantras, keeping a timeboxed schedule, or performing other routines reinforces your identity and influences your future actions.

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

many distractions originate from a need to escape psychological discomfort. So what is making the modern employee so uncomfortable? There is mounting evidence that some organizations make their employees feel a great deal of pain.

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

two particular conditions that predicted a higher likelihood of developing depression at work. “It doesn’t so much matter what you do, but rather the work environment you do it in,” Stansfeld told me

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

“job strain.” This factor was found in environments where employees were expected to meet high expectations yet lacked the ability to control the outcomes.

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

The second factor that correlates with workplace depression is an environment with an “effort-reward imbalance,” in which workers don’t see much return for their hard work, be it through increased pay or recognition. At the heart of both job strain and effort-reward imbalance, according to Stansfeld, is a lack of control.

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

Because we turn to our devices to escape discomfort, we often reach for our tech tools to feel better when we experience a lack of control. Checking email or chiming in on a group-chat thread provides the feeling of being productive, regardless of whether our actions are actually making things better.

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

Once Perlow realized the source of the problem, she helped the company change its toxic culture. In the process, she revealed that if a company was unable to address an issue like technology overuse, it was likely also concealing all sorts of deeper problems

Chapter 26: Distraction Is a Sign of Dysfunction

Jobs where employees encounter high expectations and low control have been shown to lead to symptoms of depression.   •    Depression-like symptoms are painful. When people feel bad, they use distractions to avoid their pain and regain a sense of control.   •    Tech overuse at work is a symptom of a dysfunctional company culture.   •    More tech use makes the underlying problems worse, perpetuating a “cycle of responsiveness.”

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

A common workplace dilemma that was often dismissed as “the way things had to be” could be solved if people had a safe space to talk about the issue, without fear of being labeled as “lazy” for wanting to turn off their phones and computers for a few hours. To Perlow’s surprise, these meetings yielded far greater benefits than she expected, addressing topics well beyond disconnecting from technology. The meetings to discuss predictable time off “made it okay for people to speak openly,” which, in Perlow’s words, “was a big deal.” Team members found themselves questioning other company norms. Having a place to ask, “Why do things have to be this way?” gave them a forum to generate new ideas. “There was no taboo,” one consultant said. “You could talk about anything.” The senior members of the team “did not always agree, but it was okay to bring anything up.”

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

The toxic always-on culture was no longer accepted as the way things had to be but was seen as another challenge that could be overcome once people were allowed to address it openly. What began as a challenge to find a way to let members of one team disconnect one night per week profoundly changed the working culture at BCG. Once the epitome of the sort of workplace environment associated with higher rates of depression, as identified in Stansfeld and Candy’s study, BCG began a company-wide transformation. Today, teams throughout the firm (including George Martin’s Boston office) have adopted the practice of conducting regular meetings to ensure everyone has time to disconnect. More important, providing a safe place for open dialogue about all sorts of issues increased employees’ sense of control and turned out to be an unexpected way of improving job satisfaction and staff retention. When team members were given what they needed to flourish, they found ways to address the real problems that had been holding them, and their company, back.

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

Companies consistently confuse the disease of bad culture with symptoms like tech overuse and high employee turnover.

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

“What makes a Google team effective?” Heading into the study, the research team was fairly confident of what they would find: that teams are most effective when they are composed of great people. As Julia Rozovsky, a researcher on the project, writes, Take one Rhodes Scholar, two extroverts, one engineer who rocks at AngularJS, and a PhD. Voila. Dream team assembled, right? We were dead wrong. Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions. The researchers found five key dynamics that set successful teams apart. The first four were dependability, structure and clarity, meaning of work, and impact of work. However, the fifth dynamic was without doubt the most important and actually underpinned the other four. It was something called psychological safety. Rozovsky explains, Individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google, they’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they’re rated as effective twice as often by executives.

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” Speaking up sounds easy, but if you don’t feel psychological safety you’ll keep your concerns and ideas to yourself. Rozovsky continues, Turns out, we’re all reluctant to engage in behaviors that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and positivity. Although this kind of self-protection is a natural strategy in the workplace, it is detrimental to effective teamwork. On the flip side, the safer team members feel with one another, the more likely they are to admit mistakes, to partner, and to take on new roles. Psychological safety is the antidote to the depression-inducing work environments

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

Knowing that your voice matters and that you’re not stuck in an uncaring, unchangeable machine has a positive impact on well-being.

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

How does a team—or a company, for that matter—create psychological safety? Edmondson provides a three-step answer in her talk:        •    Step 1: “Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.” Because the future is uncertain, emphasize that “we’ve got to have everyone’s brains and voices in the game.”        •    Step 2: “Acknowledge your own fallibility.” Managers need to let people know that nobody has all the answers—we’re in this together.        •    Step 3: Finally, leaders must “model curiosity and ask lots of questions.”

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

Edmondson insists that organizations—particularly those operating in conditions of high uncertainty and interdependence among team members—need to also have high levels of motivation and psychological safety, a state she calls the “learning zone.” It’s in the learning zone that teams perform at their best and it’s where they can air concerns without fear of being attacked or fired. It’s where they can solve problems, like that of tech overuse and distraction, without being judged as unwilling to carry their share. It’s where they can enjoy a company culture that frees them from the nagging internal triggers brought on when they feel a lack of control.

Chapter 27: Fixing Distraction Is a Test of Company Culture

Don’t suffer in silence. A workplace where people can’t talk about technology overuse is also one where people keep other important issues (and insights) to themselves.   •    Knowing that your voice matters is essential. Teams that foster psychological safety and facilitate regular open discussions about concerns not only have fewer problems with distraction but also have happier employees and customers.

Chapter 28: The Indistractable Workplace

“When I give someone my time, I’m focused 100 percent and never open a phone during a meeting. That is super important for me.” By taking steps to remove the buzzes and rings typical of modern meetings, he practices the idea of “hacking back external triggers”

Chapter 28: The Indistractable Workplace

regular meetings were critical in airing employee concerns. Companies that make time to discuss their issues are more likely to foster psychological safety and hear the looming problems employees would otherwise keep to themselves.

Chapter 28: The Indistractable Workplace

dealing with distraction starts by understanding what’s going on inside us. If internal triggers are crying out for relief, employees will find ways to address them one way or another—whether healthily or not.

Chapter 28: The Indistractable Workplace

Indistractable organizations, like Slack and BCG, foster psychological safety, provide a place for open discussions about concerns, and, most important, have leaders who exemplify the importance of doing focused work.

Chapter 29: Avoid Convenient Excuses

simple answers to complex questions are often wron

Chapter 29: Avoid Convenient Excuses

every parent obviously knows children become hyperactive when they eat sugar. We’ve all heard a parent claim the reason behind their kid’s bratty behavior at the birthday party was the ominous “sugar high.” I must admit I’ve used that excuse on more than one occasion myself. That is, until I learned that the concept of a “sugar high” is total scientific bunk. An exhaustive meta-analysis of sixteen studies “found that sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children.” Interestingly, though the so-called sugar high is a myth for kids, it does have a real effect on parents. A study found that mothers, when told that their sons were given sugar, rated their child’s behavior as more hyperactive—despite that child having been given a placebo. In fact, videotapes of the mothers’ interactions with their sons revealed that they were more likely to trail their children and criticize them when they believed they were “high” on sugar—again, despite the fact that their sons hadn’t eaten any.

Chapter 29: Avoid Convenient Excuses

Everyone knows that teenagers act horribly toward their parents because their raging hormones and underdeveloped brains make them act that way. Wrong. Studies have found that teenagers in many societies, particularly preindustrialized ones, don’t act especially rebelliously and, conversely, spend “almost all their time with adults.” In an article titled “The Myth of the Teen Brain,” Robert Epstein writes, “Many historians note that through most of recorded human history, the teen years were a relatively peaceful time of transition to adulthood.” Apparently, our teenagers’ brains are fine—it is our brains that are underdeveloped.

Chapter 29: Avoid Convenient Excuses

“We are not unique; our fears do not differ significantly from those of our predecessors.” When it comes to the undesirable behavior of children today, convenient myths about devices are just as dubious as the blame parents deflect onto sugar highs, underdeveloped teen brains, and other technologies like the book and the radio.

Chapter 29: Avoid Convenient Excuses

A study conducted by Andrew Przybylski at the Oxford Internet Institute found that mental well-being actually increased with moderate amounts of screen time

Chapter 29: Avoid Convenient Excuses

Stop deflecting blame. When kids don’t act the way parents want, it’s natural to look for answers that help parents divert responsibility.   •    Techno-panics are nothing new. From the book, to the radio, to video games, the history of parenting is strewn with moral panic over things supposedly making kids act in strange ways.   •    Tech isn’t evil. Used in the right way and in the right amounts, kids’ tech use can be beneficial, while too much (or too little) can have slightly harmful effects.   •    Teach kids to be indistractable. Teaching children how to manage distraction will benefit them throughout their lives.

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

“self-determination theory” is widely regarded as the backbone of psychological well-being, and countless studies have supported their conclusions since they began research in the 1970s. Just as the human body requires three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) to run properly, Ryan and Deci proposed the human psyche needs three things to flourish: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When the body is starved, it elicits hunger pangs; when the psyche is undernourished, it produces anxiety, restlessness, and other symptoms that something is missing.

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Without sufficient amounts of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, kids turn to distractions for psychological nourishment.

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Overall, the study found that American children could focus for only half as long as Mayan kids. Even more interesting was the finding that the Mayan children with less exposure to formal education “showed more sustained attention and learning than their counterparts from Mayan families with extensive involvement in Western schooling.” In other words, less schooling meant more focus. How could that be? Psychologist Suzanne Gaskins has studied Mayan villages for decades and told NPR that Mayan parents give their kids a tremendous amount of freedom. “Rather than having the mom set the goal—and then having to offer enticements and rewards to reach that goal—the child is setting the goal. Then the parents support that goal however they can,” Gaskins said. Mayan parents “feel very strongly that every child knows best what they want and that goals can be achieved only when a child wants it.”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Ryan’s research reveals exactly where we lose kids’ attention. “Whenever children enter middle school, whenever they start leaving home-based classrooms and go into the more police-state style of schools, where bells are ringing, detentions are happening, punishment is occurring, they’re learning right then that this is not an intrinsically motivating environment,” he says. Robert Epstein, the researcher who wrote “The Myth of the Teen Brain” in Scientific American, has a similar conclusion: “Surveys I have conducted show 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.”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Most formal schooling in America and similar industrialized countries, on the other hand, is the antithesis of a place where kids have the autonomy to make their own choices. According to Rogoff, “It may be the case that children give up control of their attention when it’s always managed by an adult.”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Unlike their offline lives, kids have a tremendous amount of freedom online; they have the autonomy to call the shots and experiment with creative strategies to solve problems. “In internet spaces, there tends to be myriad choices and opportunities, and a lot less adult control and surveillance,” says Ryan. “One can thus feel freedom, competence, and connection online, especially when the teenager’s contrasting environments are overly controlling, restrictive, or understimulating.”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

“What we’ve found is that parents who address internet use or screen time with kids in an autonomy-supported way have kids who are more self-regulated with respect to it, so less likely to use screen time for excessive hours,” he says.

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Think about something you’re good at: your ability to present onstage, pull together a delicious meal, or parallel park in the tightest of spaces. Competence feels good, and that feeling grows alongside your ability. Unfortunately, the joy of progress in the classroom is a waning feeling among kids today. Ryan warns, “We’re giving messages of ‘you’re not competent at what you’re doing at school,’ to so many kids.” He points to the rise of standardized testing as part of the problem. “It’s destroying classroom teaching practices, it’s destroying the self-esteem of so many kids, and it’s killing their learning and motivation.”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

If a child isn’t doing well in school and doesn’t get the necessary individualized support, they start to believe that achieving competence is impossible, so they stop trying.

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

In the absence of competency in the classroom, kids turn to other outlets to experience the feeling of growth and development. Companies making games, apps, and other potential distractions are happy to fill that void by selling ready-made solutions for the “psychological nutrients” kids lack. Tech makers know how much consumers enjoy leveling up, gaining more followers, or getting likes—those accomplishments provide the fast feedback of achievement that feels good. According to Ryan, when children spend their time in school doing something they don’t enjoy, don’t value, and don’t see potential for improvement, “it should be no surprise to us that at nighttime [they] would rather turn to an activity where they can feel a lot of competence.”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

THEY SEEK RELATEDNESS—FEELING IMPORTANT TO OTHERS AND THAT OTHERS ARE IMPORTANT TO THEM

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

teens increasingly experience social interactions in virtual environments because doing so in the real world is inconvenient or off limits. The very nature of play is rapidly changing. Remember playing pickup games at the basketball court, hanging out at the mall on weekends, or simply roaming around the neighborhood until you found a friend? Sadly, spontaneous socializing simply isn’t happening as much as it used to. As Peter Gray, who has studied the decline of play in America, wrote in the American Journal of Play, “It is hard to find groups of children outdoors at all, and, if you do find them, they are likely to be wearing uniforms and following the directions of coaches.” Whereas previous generations were allowed to simply play after school and form close social bonds, many children today are raised by parents who restrict outdoor play because of “child predators, road traffic, and bullies,”

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

“What the data show,” says Ryan, “is that kids who aren’t feeling relatedness, who are feeling isolated or excluded in school are going to be more drawn to media where they can get connections with other people and find subgroups they can identify with

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Since about 1955 … children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities … Somehow, as a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, settings almost designed to produce anxiety and depression

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

We can start by sharing some of the coping and reimagining tactics we learned in part one. Let your children know what you’re doing differently in your own life to manage distraction; being vulnerable and showing kids that we understand their struggle and face similar challenges helps build trust. Just as we saw in the previous section how good bosses model disconnecting from distraction, parents should model how to be indistractable. We may also want to consider providing real-world opportunities for children to find the autonomy, competence, and relatedness they need. Easing up on structured academic or athletic activities and giving them more time for free play may help them find the connections they otherwise look for online.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

Boredom, negativity bias, and rumination can each prompt us to distraction. But a fourth factor may be the cruelest of all. Hedonic adaptation, the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction, no matter what happens to us in life, is Mother Nature’s bait and switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don’t, or at least they don’t for long. For instance, people who have experienced extremely good fortune, such as winning the lottery, have reported that things they had previously enjoyed lost their luster, effectively returning them to their previous levels of satisfaction. As David Myers writes in The Pursuit of Happiness, “Every desirable experience—passionate love, a spiritual high, the pleasure of a new possession, the exhilaration of success—is transitory.” Of course, as with the other three factors, there are evolutionary benefits to hedonic adaptation. The author of one study explains that as “new goals continually capture one’s attention, one constantly strives to be happy without realizing that in the long run such efforts are futile.”

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

“fun is the aftermath of deliberately manipulating a familiar situation in a new way.” The answer, therefore, is to focus on the task itself. Instead of running away from our pain or using rewards like prizes and treats to help motivate us, the idea is to pay such close attention that you find new challenges you didn’t see before. Those new challenges provide the novelty to engage our attention and maintain focus when tempted by distraction.

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

Bogost gives the example of mowing his lawn. “It may seem ridiculous to call an activity like this ‘fun,’” he writes, yet he learned to love it. Here’s how: “First, pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things.” For Bogost, he soaked up as much information as he could about the way grass grows and how to treat it. Then, he created an “imaginary playground” in which the limitations actually helped to produce meaningful experiences. He learned about the constraints he had to operate under, including his local weather conditions and what different kinds of equipment can and can’t do. Operating under constraints, Bogost says, is the key to creativity and fun. Finding the optimal path for the mower or beating a record time are other ways to create an imaginary playground.

Chapter 7: Reimagine the Task

For me, I learned to stay focused on the tedious work of writing books by finding the mystery in my work. I write to answer interesting questions and discover novel solutions to old problems.

Chapter 30: Understand Their Internal Triggers

Internal triggers drive behavior. To understand how to help kids manage distraction, we need to start by understanding the source of the problem.   •    Our kids need psychological nutrients. According to a widely accepted theory of human motivation, all people need three things to thrive: a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.   •    Distractions satisfy deficiencies. When our kids’ psychological needs are not met in the real world, they go looking for satisfaction—often in virtual environments.   •    Kids need alternatives. Parents and guardians can take steps to help kids find balance between their online and offline worlds by providing more offline opportunities to find autonomy, competence, and relatedness.   •    The four-part Indistractable Model is valuable for kids as well. Teach them methods for handling distraction, and, most important, model being indistractable yourself.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Getz wants her daughters to continue to ask themselves questions to self-monitor and self-regulate their behavior: “Is my behavior working for me? Am I proud of myself, in the way I’m behaving?” she asks them to ask themselves. “I work with a lot of teenagers who will often tell me that they don’t want to be distracted, they don’t want to be sucked into all this stuff, but they just don’t know how to stop.”

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Getz acknowledges that admitting you don’t have all the answers is a great way to involve the kids in finding new solutions

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Getz decided it was time for a family talk. During the family huddle, they all confirmed their desire to spend quality time together (aka traction). By agreeing upon how they wanted to spend their time and what needed to get done, it became clear that doing anything else was a distraction interfering with their plans

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

To help children learn self-regulation, we must teach them how to make time for traction. We can encourage regular discussions about our values and theirs, and teach them how to set aside time to be the people they want to be. Keep in mind that while it’s easy for us to think, “Kids have all the time in the world,” it’s important to remember they have their own priorities within each of their life domains.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Working with our kids to create a values-based schedule can help them make time for their personal health and wellness domain, ensuring ample time for rest, hygiene, exercise, and proper nourishment.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

For example, while my wife and I don’t enforce a strict bedtime for our daughter, we made it a point to expose her to research findings showing the importance of ample sleep during adolescent years. After she realized that sleep was important to her well-being, it didn’t take much for her to conclude that screen time after 9 pm on a school night was a bad idea—a distraction from her value of staying healthy

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Without a clear plan, many kids are left to make impulsive decisions that often involve digital distraction.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

recently had coffee with a friend who is the mother of twin teenage boys. She bemoaned the mind-altering influence of her kids’ obsession with the latest techno-villain: the online game Fortnite. “They can’t stop!” she told me. She was convinced the game was addictive and her kids were junkies. Every evening involved fights to get them to stop playing and finish their homework. Exasperated, she asked me what I thought she should do. My advice involved a few unorthodox ideas. First, I advised her to have a conversation with her sons and to listen to them without judgment. Potential questions to ask included the following: Is keeping up with their schoolwork consistent with their values? Do they know why they are asked to do their homework? What are the consequences of not doing their assignments? Are they OK with those consequences, both short term (getting a bad grade) and long term (settling for a low-skilled job)? Without their agreement that schoolwork mattered to them, forcing them to do something they didn’t want to do amounted to coercion and would only breed resentment. “But if I don’t hound my kids, they’ll fail,” she objected. “So?” I asked. “If the only reason they study is to get you off their backs, what will they do when they get to college or start a job and you’re not around? Maybe they need to know what failure feels like sooner rather than later.” I advised her that teenagers are generally old enough to make decisions about how they spend their time. If that means flunking a test, then so be it. Coercion may be a band-aid solution, but it is certainly not a remedy.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Next, I proposed she ask them to suggest how much time they’d like to spend on various activities such as studying, being with family or friends, or playing Fortnite. I warned that while she may not like her kids’ answers, it’s important to honor their input. The goal here is to teach them to spend their time mindfully by reserving a place for important activities on their weekly schedules. Remember, their schedules (like ours) should be assessed and adjusted weekly to ensure that their time is spent living out their values.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Last, I advised her to make sure her kids’ days include plenty of time for play, both with their friends and with their parents. Her boys were using Fortnite to have fun with their buddies, and would continue to play online without an offline alternative. If we want our kids to fulfill their need for relatedness offline, they need time to build face-to-face friendships outside school. These relationships should be free from the pressure of coaches, teachers, and parents telling them what to do. Unfortunately, for the typical child these days, playtime won’t happen unless it’s scheduled. Conscious parents can bring back playtime for kids of all ages by deliberately making time for it in their weekly schedules and seeking out other parents who understand the importance of unstructured play

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

schedule regular get-togethers to let the kids hang out, just as you would make time for a jog in the park or a jam session in the garage. Research studies overwhelmingly support the importance of unstructured playtime on kids’ ability to focus and to develop capacity for social interactions. Given that, unstructured play is arguably their most important extracurricular activity.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

scheduling family meals is perhaps the single most important thing parents and kids can do together. Studies demonstrate that children who eat regularly with their families show lower rates of drug use, depression, school problems, and eating disorders. Unfortunately, many families miss meals together because they “play it by ear,” a strategy that often leaves everyone eating alone on their own schedules.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

As our kids develop, we can invite them to shape these family meal experiences by suggesting menu themes like “Finger-Food Fridays,” cooking together, or contributing conversation topics.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

As a family, play can and should extend beyond mealtimes. In my household, we’ve established a weekly “Sunday Funday,” where we rotate the responsibility to plan a three-hour activity. When it’s my turn, I might take the family to the park for a long conversation while we walk. My daughter typically requests to play a board game when it’s her turn to pick. My wife often proposes a trip to a local farmers’ market to discover and sample new foods. Whatever the choice, the idea is to regularly set aside time together to feed our need for relatedness.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

Teach traction. With so many potential distractions in kids’ lives, teaching them how to make time for traction is critical.   •    Just as with our own timeboxed schedules, kids can learn how to make time for what’s important to them. If they don’t learn to make their own plans in advance, kids will turn to distractions.   •    It’s OK to let your kids fail. Failure is how we learn. Show kids how to adjust their schedules to make time to live up to their values.

Chapter 31: Make Time for Traction Together

While we must be prepared to make adjustments to our family schedule, we need to involve our kids in setting our routines and honoring our commitments to each other. Teaching them to make their own schedules and being indistractable together helps us pass on our values.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

As parents, we often forget that a kid wanting something “really, really badly” is not a good enough reason.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

we can easily think of a host of activities we wouldn’t let our kids experience before they’re ready: reading certain books, watching violent films, driving a car, having an alcoholic drink, and, of course, using digital devices—each comes in its own time, not whenever a kid says so. Exploring the world and navigating its risks are an important part of growing up, but giving a kid a smartphone or other gadgetry before they have the faculties to use it properly is just as irresponsible as letting them jump headfirst into a pool without knowing how to swim.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

Instead of giving our kids a fully functional pinging and dinging smartphone, it’s better to start with a feature phone that only makes calls and sends text messages. Such a phone can be purchased for less than twenty-five dollars and does not come with the apps that can distract a child with external triggers. If location tracking is a priority, a GPS-enabled wristwatch like the GizmoWatch keeps track of kids through an app on parents’ phones but only allows incoming and outgoing calls to and from select numbers.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

As kids get older, a good test of whether they are ready for a particular device is their ability to understand and use the built-in settings for turning off external triggers. Do they know how to use the Do Not Disturb feature? Do they know how to set their phones to automatically turn off notifications when their schedule demands concentration? Are they able to place their phones out of sight and out of mind during family time or when friends come over? If not, they’re not ready, and they need to take a few more “swimming lessons,” so to speak

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

There’s little justification for allowing kids to have a television, laptop, or any other potentially distracting external trigger in their rooms; these screens should be kept in communal areas. The temptation to overuse these devices is too much to expect our kids to manage on their own, particularly in the absence of parental oversight.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

Anya Kamenetz, author of The Art of Screen Time, writes that making sure kids get enough sleep is “the one issue with the most incontrovertible evidence.” Kamenetz strongly advises that “screens and sleep don’t mix” and implores parents to keep all digital devices out of kids’ rooms at nighttime and to shut down screens at least an hour before bedtime.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

It’s equally important to help our kids remove unwanted external triggers during activities like homework, chores, mealtime, playtime, and hobbies that require sustained attention. Just as you may ask your boss for time to focus at work, parents need to respect kids’ scheduled time as well. If they are spending time on homework according to their timeboxed schedules, we must, of course, minimize distraction. But the same rule applies to scheduled time with their friends or playing video games. If they’ve made their plans in advance and with intent, it’s your job to honor that plan and leave them alone.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

Recall the critical question: “Is this external trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” Sometimes, as parents, we can be a source of distraction. The dog barking, the doorbell ringing, dad’s subsequent command to answer the door, mom’s question about the baseball team’s game schedule, or a sibling’s invitation to play can all interfere with the time scheduled for something else. Though these interruptions seem trivial, any disturbance at the wrong time is a distraction, and we must do our part to help kids use their time as they planned by removing unwanted external triggers.

Chapter 32: Help Them with External Triggers

Teach your children to swim before they dive in. Like swimming in a pool, children should not be allowed to partake in certain risky behaviors before they are ready.   •    Test for tech readiness. A good measure of a child’s readiness is the ability to manage distraction by using the settings on the device to turn off external triggers.   •    Kids need sleep. There is little justification for having a television or other potential distractions in a kid’s room overnight. Make sure nothing gets in the way of them getting good rest.   •    Don’t be the unwanted external trigger. Respect their time and don’t interrupt them when they have scheduled time to focus on something, be that work or play.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

We also explained that the apps and videos on the iPad were made by some very smart people and were intentionally designed to keep her hooked and habitually watching. It’s important that our kids understand the motives of the gaming companies and social networks—while these products sell us fun and connection, they also profit from our time and attention. This might seem like a lot to teach a five-year-old, but we felt a strong need to equip her with the ability to make decisions about her screen usage and enforce her own rules.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

It was her job to know when to stop because she couldn’t rely upon the app makers or her parents to tell her when she’d had enough.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

We then asked her how much screen time per day she thought was good for her. We took a risk by giving her the autonomy to make the decision for herself, but it was worth a shot. Truthfully, I expected her to say, “All day!” but she didn’t. Instead, armed with the logic behind why limiting screen time was important and with the freedom to decide in her hands, she sheepishly asked for “two shows.” Two episodes of a kid-appropriate program on Netflix is about forty-five minutes, I explained. “Does forty-five minutes seem like the right amount of screen time per day for you?” I sincerely asked. She nodded in agreement, and I could tell by the hint of a smile that she felt she had gotten the better end of the deal.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

we explained, as simply as we could, that too much screen time comes at the expense of other things. As a kindergartner, she was learning to tell time, so we could explain that there was only so much of it for things she enjoyed. Spending too much time with apps and videos meant less time to play with friends at the park, swim at the community pool, or be with Mom and Dad.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

How do you plan to make sure you don’t watch for more than forty-five minutes per day?” I asked. Not wanting to lose the negotiation that she clearly felt she was winning, she proposed using a kitchen timer she could set herself. “Sounds good,” I agreed. “But if Mommy and Daddy notice you’re not able to keep the promise you made to yourself and to us, we’ll have to revisit this discussion,” I said, and she agreed.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

The important thing is that these are her rules, not ours, and that she’s in charge of enforcing them. Best of all, when her time is up, it’s not her dad who has to be the bad guy; it’s her device telling her she’s had enough. Without realizing it, she entered into an effort pact, as described in part four.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

When parents impose limits without their kids’ input, they are setting them up to be resentful and incentivizing them to cheat the system.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

It’s only when kids can monitor their own behavior that they learn the skills they need to be indistractable—even when their parents aren’t around.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

distraction is a problem like any other. Whether in a large corporation or in a small family, when we discuss our problems openly and in an environment where we feel safe and supported, we can resolve them together.

Chapter 33: Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts

Don’t underestimate your child’s ability to precommit and follow through. Even young children can learn to use precommitments as long as they set the rules and know how to use a timer or some other binding system.   •    Consumer skepticism is healthy. Understanding that companies are motivated to keep kids spending time watching or playing is an important part of teaching media literacy.   •    Put the kids in charge. It’s only when kids practice monitoring their own behavior that they learn how to manage their own time and attention.

Chapter 34: Spread Social Antibodies Among Friends

Unfortunately, distraction is contagious. When smokers get together, the first one to take out a pack sends a cue, and when others notice, they do the same. In a similar way, digital devices can prompt others’ behaviors. When one person takes out a phone at dinner, it acts as an external trigger. Soon, others are lost in their screens, at the expense of the conversation. Psychologists call this phenomenon “social contagion,” and researchers have found that it influences our behaviors, from drug use to overeating. It’s hard to watch your weight if your spouse and kids insist on mowing down a dozen frosted donuts as you pick at your kale salad, and it’s difficult to change your tech habits when your family and friends shun you in favor of their screens.

Chapter 34: Spread Social Antibodies Among Friends

How did the norms around smoking change so dramatically in the course of just one generation? According to Graham’s theory, people adopted social antibodies to protect themselves, similar to the way our bodies fight back against bacteria and viruses that can harm us. The remedy for distraction in social situations involves the development of new norms that make it taboo to check one’s phone when in the company of others.

Chapter 34: Spread Social Antibodies Among Friends

The only way to make sure certain unhealthy behaviors are no longer acceptable is to call them out and address them with social antibodies that block their spread. This tactic worked with smoking, and it can work with digital distractions. Let’s imagine you’re at a dinner party when someone takes out his phone and starts to tap away. While you likely already know that spending time on a device in an intimate social setting is rude, there’s often at least one person who hasn’t learned the new social norm. Embarrassing him in front of others isn’t a good idea, assuming you want to stay friends; a subtler tactic is required. To help keep things cordial, a simple and effective approach is to ask a direct question that can snap the offender out of the phone zone by giving him two simple options: (1) excuse himself to attend to the crisis happening on his device or (2) kindly put away his phone. The question goes like this: “I see you’re on your phone. Is everything OK?” Remember to be sincere—after all, there might really be an emergency. But more often than not, he’ll mutter a little excuse, tuck his phone back into his pocket, and start enjoying the night again.

Chapter 34: Spread Social Antibodies Among Friends

All external triggers—whether coming from our phones or our kids’—deserve scrutiny to determine whether they are serving us. Our children are also better served when they learn to take care of themselves, and by watching their parents model fellowship, they learn the importance of tuning out distraction to focus on friends. If we are not intentional about making the time and space for distraction-free discussions, we risk losing the opportunity to truly know others and allow them to truly know us.

Chapter 34: Spread Social Antibodies Among Friends

Distraction in social situations can keep us from being fully present with important people in our lives. Interruptions degrade our ability to form close social bonds.   •    Block the spread of unhealthy behaviors. “Social antibodies” are ways groups protect themselves from harmful behaviors by making them taboo.   •    Develop new social norms. We can tackle distraction among friends the same way we beat social smoking, by making it unacceptable to use devices in social situations. Prepare a few tactful phrases—like asking, “Is everything OK?”—to discourage phone usage among friends.

Chapter 35: Be an Indistractable Lover

We were among the 65 percent of American adults who, according to the Pew Research Center, sleep with their phones on or next to their beds. Since habits rely on a cue to trigger a behavior, action is often sparked by the things around us. We decided to move our phones from our bedroom to the living room, and with the external triggers gone, we regained a bit more control over our techno-infidelity.

Chapter 35: Be an Indistractable Lover

more control over our techno-infidelity. But after a few phone-free evenings, I began to notice a stressful anxiety. My mind became occupied with all the things calling for my attention. Had someone sent me an urgent email? What was the latest comment on my blog about? Did I miss something important on Twitter? The stress was palpable and painful, so I did what anyone who makes a firm commitment to breaking a bad habit would do: I cheated. With my cell phone unavailable, I needed to find a new partner. To my relief, I felt the anxiety melt away as I pulled out my laptop and began to bang on the keyboard. My wife, seeing what I was doing, pounced on the opportunity to relieve her own stress, and we were back at it again. After a few late nights on our machines, we sheepishly admitted that we had failed. Embarrassed but determined to understand where we’d gone wrong, we realized we had skipped a critical step. We hadn’t learned to deal with the discomfort that had drawn us back in. With self-compassion, this time, we decided to start by finding ways to manage the internal triggers driving our unwanted behaviors. We implemented a ten-minute rule and promised that if we really wanted to use a device in the evening, we would wait ten minutes before doing so. The rule allowed us time to “surf the urge” and insert a pause to interrupt the otherwise mindless habit. We also connected our internet router and monitors to seven-dollar timer outlets purchased at a local hardware store and set them to turn off at 10 pm each night. Using this effort pact meant that in order to “cheat” we would have to uncomfortably contort behind our desks and flip the override switch.

Chapter 35: Be an Indistractable Lover

We scheduled a strict bedtime, claiming the bedroom as a sacred space and leaving external triggers, like our cell phones and the television, outside. The outlet timer that turned off the unwanted distractions made compliance with our precommitment something we came to expect every night.

Chapter 35: Be an Indistractable Lover

My wife and I still love our gadgets and fully embrace the potential of innovation to improve our lives, but we want to benefit from technology without suffering from the corrosive effects it can have on our relationship. By learning to deal with our internal triggers, making time for the things we really want to do, removing harmful external triggers, and using precommitments, we were finally able to conquer distractions in our relationship.

Chapter 35: Be an Indistractable Lover

“Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do.” To strive means “to struggle or fight vigorously.” It does not mean being perfect or never failing. Like everyone, I still struggle with distraction at times. When I’m particularly stressed or my schedule changes unexpectedly, I can fall off track. Thankfully, the five years of researching and writing this book have taught me how to fight distraction and win. Distractions still happen, but now I know what to do about them so they don’t keep happening. These techniques have allowed me to take control of my life in ways I never could before. I’m as honest with myself as I am with others, I live up to my values, I fulfill my commitments to the people I love, and am more professionally productive than ever.

Chapter Takeaways

Chapter 1: Living the life you want requires not only doing the right things but also avoiding doing the wrong things. •    Chapter 2: Traction moves you toward what you really want while distraction moves you further away. Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do.

Chapter Takeaways

•    Chapter 3: Motivation is a desire to escape discomfort. Find the root causes of distraction rather than proximate ones. •    Chapter 4: Learn to deal with discomfort rather than attempting to escape it with distraction. •    Chapter 5: Stop trying to actively suppress urges—this only makes them stronger. Instead, observe and allow them to dissolve. •    Chapter 6: Reimagine the internal trigger. Look for the negative emotion preceding the distraction, write it down, and pay attention to the negative sensation with curiosity rather than contempt. •    Chapter 7: Reimagine the task. Turn it into play by paying “foolish, even absurd” attention to it. Deliberately look for novelty. •    Chapter 8: Reimagine your temperament. Self-talk matters. Your willpower runs out only if you believe it does. Avoid labeling yourself as “easily distracted” or having an “addictive personality.”

Chapter Takeaways

•    Chapter 9: Turn your values into time. Timebox your day by creating a schedule template. •    Chapter 10: Schedule time for yourself. Plan the inputs and the outcome will follow. •    Chapter 11: Schedule time for important relationships. Include household responsibilities as well as time for people you love. Put regular time on your schedule for friends. •    Chapter 12: Sync your schedule with stakeholders.

Chapter Takeaways

Chapter 13: Of each external trigger, ask: “Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” Does it lead to traction or distraction? •    Chapter 14: Defend your focus. Signal when you do not want to be interrupted. •    Chapter 15: To get fewer emails, send fewer emails. When you check email, tag each message with when it needs a reply and respond at a scheduled time. •    Chapter 16: When it comes to group chat, get in and out at scheduled times. Only involve who is necessary and don’t use it to think out loud. •    Chapter 17: Make it harder to call meetings. No agenda, no meeting. Meetings are for consensus building rather than problem solving. Leave devices outside the conference room except for one laptop. •    Chapter 18: Use distracting apps on your desktop rather than your phone. Organize apps and manage notifications. Turn on “Do Not Disturb.” •    Chapter 19: Turn off desktop notifications. Remove potential distractions from your workspace. •    Chapter 20: Save online articles in Pocket to read or listen to at a scheduled time. Use “multichannel multitasking.” •    Chapter 21: Use browser extensions that give you the benefits of social media without all the distractions

Chapter Takeaways

Chapter 22: The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. Plan ahead for when you’re likely to get distracted. •    Chapter 23: Use effort pacts to make unwanted behaviors more difficult. •    Chapter 24: Use a price pact to make getting distracted expensive. •    Chapter 25: Use identity pacts as a precommitment to a self-image. Call yourself “indistractable.”

Chapter Takeaways

Chapter 26: An “always on” culture drives people crazy. •    Chapter 27: Tech overuse at work is a symptom of dysfunctional company culture. The root cause is a culture lacking “psychological safety.” •    Chapter 28: To create a culture that values doing focused work, start small and find ways to facilitate an open dialogue among colleagues about the problem

Chapter Takeaways

Chapter 29: Find the root causes of why children get distracted. Teach them the four-part indistractable model. •    Chapter 30: Make sure children’s psychological needs are met. All people need to feel a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. If kids don’t get their needs met in the real world, they look to fulfill them online. •    Chapter 31: Teach children to timebox their schedule. Let them make time for activities they enjoy, including time online. •    Chapter 32: Work with your children to remove unhelpful external triggers. Make sure they know how to turn off distracting triggers, and don’t become a distracting external trigger yourself. •    Chapter 33: Help your kids make pacts and make sure they know managing distraction is their responsibility. Teach them that distraction is a solvable problem and that becoming indistractable is a lifelong skill

Chapter Takeaways

•    Chapter 34: When someone uses a device in a social setting, ask, “I see you’re on your phone. Is everything OK?” •    Chapter 35: Remove devices from your bedroom and have the internet automatically turn off at a specific time.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

from the Latin trahere, meaning “to draw or pull.” We can think of traction as the actions that draw us toward what we want in life.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

Distractions impede us from making progress toward the life we envision.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

The amount of information available, the speed at which it can be disseminated, and the ubiquity of access to new content on our devices has made for a trifecta of distraction. If it’s a distraction you seek, it’s easier than ever to find.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

close friendships are the bedrock of our psychological and physical health. Loneliness, according to researchers, is more dangerous than obesity. But, of course, we can’t cultivate close friendships if we’re constantly distracted.

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. Indistractable people are as honest with themselves as they are with others. If you care about your work, your family, and your physical and mental well-being, you must learn how to become indistractable

Chapter 2: Being Indistractable

The ancient Greeks immortalized the story of a man who was perpetually distracted. We call something that is desirable but just out of reach “tantalizing” after his name. The story goes that Tantalus was banished to the underworld by his father, Zeus, as a punishment. There he found himself wading in a pool of water while a tree dangled ripe fruit above his head. The curse seems benign, but when Tantalus tried to pluck the fruit, the branch moved away from him, always just out of reach. When he bent down to drink the cool water, it receded so that he could never quench his thirst. Tantalus’s punishment was to yearn for things he desired but could never grasp. You have to hand it to the ancient Greeks for their allegories. It’s hard to portray a better representation of the human condition.

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

I discovered that living the life we want requires not only doing the right things; it also requires we stop doing the wrong things that take us off track. We all know eating cake is worse for our waistlines than having a healthy salad. We agree that aimlessly scrolling our social media feeds is not as enriching as spending time with real friends in real life. We understand that if we want to be more productive at work, we need to stop wasting time and actually do the work. We already know what to do. What we don’t know is how to stop getting distracted.

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

You’ll learn why you can’t call something a “distraction” unless you know what it is distracting you from. You’ll learn to plan your time with intention, even if you choose to spend it scrolling through celebrity headlines or reading a steamy romance novel. After all, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time.

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

While technology companies use cues like the pings and dings on our phones to hack our behavior, external triggers are not confined to our digital devices. They’re all around us—

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

the last key to making you indistractable: pacts. While removing external triggers is helpful in keeping distractions out, pacts are a proven way of reining ourselves in, ensuring we do what we say we’re going to do. In this part, we’ll apply the ancient practice of precommitment to modern challenges.

Chapter 1: What’s Your Superpower?

We need to learn how to avoid distraction. Living the lives we want not only requires doing the right things but also necessitates not doing the things we know we’ll regret.   •    The problem is deeper than tech. Being indistractable isn’t about being a Luddite. It’s about understanding the real reasons why we do things against our best interests.   •    Here’s what it takes: We can be indistractable by learning and adopting four key strategies.

Introduction: From Hooked to Indistractable

In the case of user-friendly products and services, what makes some products engaging and easy to use can also make them distracting

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Unless we deal with the root causes of our distraction, we’ll continue to find ways to distract ourselves. Distraction, it turns out, isn’t about the distraction itself; rather, it’s about how we respond to it.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Chance felt stuck. “I knew that even my best efforts couldn’t guarantee a good outcome for either my marriage or the job market, and in hindsight, I can see that Striiv gave me something I could control and succeed at.” During this particularly difficult time in her life, she says she used her Striiv as a coping device. “It was an escape from reality,” she now admits.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

For other people, the escape comes from checking social media, spending more time in the office, watching television, or, in some cases, drinking or taking hard drugs. If you’re trying to escape the pain of something as serious as impending divorce, the real problem is not your pedometer; without dealing with the discomfort driving the desire for escape, we’ll continue to resort to one distraction or another.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

Only by understanding our pain can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges.

Chapter 3: What Motivates Us, Really?

she focused on the real source of discomfort in her life, narrowing in on the internal triggers she was trying to escape. Though she did end up separating from her husband, she says she’s in a much better place in her life now. Professionally, she got a full-time post at Yale, where she still teaches today. She has also found better ways to stay healthy and in control of her time, scheduling regular fitness activities instead of letting her pedometer rule over her. Though overcoming her obsession was a positive step for Chance, the Striiv pedometer won’t be the last distraction in her life. But by pinpointing the root cause, rather than blaming the proximate, she’ll be better able to address the real issue next time

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

after digesting the scientific literature, I had to face the fact that the motivation for diversion originates within us.

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

where does our discomfort come from? Why are we perpetually restless and unsatisfied? We live in the safest, healthiest, most well-educated, most democratic time in human history, and yet some part of the human psyche causes us to constantly look for an escape from things stirring inside us. As the eighteenth-century poet Samuel Johnson said, “My life is one long escape from myself.”

Chapter 4: Time Management Is Pain Management

we can take solace in knowing we are hardwired for this sort of dissatisfaction. Sorry to say, but odds are you and I are never going to be fully happy with our lives. Sporadic bouts of joy, sure. An occasional feeling of euphoria? Yes. Singing “Happy” by Pharrell Williams in your underwear once in a while? OK, who hasn’t? But the sustained “happily ever after” sort of satisfaction you see in the movies? Forget it. It’s a myth. That sort of happiness is designed to never last for long.