Notes and Takeaways from Indistractable
When I read it: April 2021
Why I read it: I discovered Nir Eyal’s work on the NFX podcast. His concept of traction vs distraction really spoke to me. I read this book to get a deeper understanding of his framework for becoming "indistractable".
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My notes
About Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal (@nireyal) focuses on the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Nir is the author of two bestselling books: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
About Indistractable
In Indistractable, Nir Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction and shares a 4-step model to become “indistractable”.
Being indistractable
Being indistractable is about understanding the real reasons why you do things against your best interests and striving to do what you say you will do.
Traction vs distraction
To live the life you want, you must intentionally avoid the wrong things while you try to do the right things ⇒ a wrong thing is “distraction”; the right thing is “traction”.
Traction comes from the Latin verb trahere, meaning “to draw or pull” ⇒ think of traction as the actions that draw us toward what we want in life.
Traction leads you closer to your goals ⇒ it's any action that moves you toward what you want.
Distraction is the opposite of traction ⇒ it’s derived from the same Latin root and means the “drawing away of the mind.”
Distraction stops you from achieving your goals ⇒ it's any action that moves you away from what you want.
Action triggers
All action, whether it leads to traction or distraction, is prompted by a trigger.
There are two types of triggers
Internal triggers ⇒ internal cues that prompt action (e.g. feeling cold)
External triggers ⇒ environmental cues that prompt action (e.g. phone notifications)
Distraction is an age old problem
Our world has always been full of things designed to distract us:
Today ⇒ it’s computers
Decades ago ⇒ it was televisions
A century ago ⇒ it was telephones
Two millennia ago ⇒ it was books
Distractions will always exist; managing them is our responsibility.
The cost of distraction
The cost of distraction is attention and focus, which are the raw materials of human creativity and advancement.
Psychologist Herbert A. Simon wrote: “The wealth of information means a dearth of something else… a poverty of attention”
We're motivated by pain; not pleasure
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus said: “By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.”
The desire to relieve discomfort is the root cause of our behavior. Motivation has little to do with seeking pleasure and much to do with relieving pain.
(Aside: The inverse is also true ⇒ we’re drawn to things that relieve discomfort. Therefore, anything that provides relief from discomfort is potentially addictive.)
Satisfaction is fleeting
This is good for the human species.
Human dissatisfaction is its superpower.
Our relatives used dissatisfaction to hunt, explore, and invent. They channeled their dissatisfaction into advancements for our species.
We can channel our dissatisfaction to improve our lives too. It's normal to be dissatisfied.
Dissatisfaction drives us to do amazing things. If satisfaction were permanent, we'd lack an incentive to seek improvement.
The following four psychological tendencies conspire to make sure we’re never satisfied for too long:
Boredom ⇒ we prefer doing to thinking
Negativity bias ⇒ we pay more attention to negative things than to neutral or positive things
Rumination ⇒ we tend to keep thinking about bad experiences
Hedonic adaptation ⇒ we tend to quickly return to a baseline satisfaction, no matter what happens to us (i.e. happiness is fleeting)
Use your values to define traction
It’s impossible to tell the difference between traction and distraction if you aren't clear on what you want.
One way to clarify what you want is to focus on who you want to become. This has to do with values.
Values are attributes of the person we want to be. They're guiding stars that aid our decision-making. When we maintain our values, we become someone we're proud of. When we neglect our values, we become someone we’re ashamed of.
To be the person you want to be, you have to dedicate time to live your values.
The three life domains
One way to thinking about your values is to break them down by the three life domains.
The three life domains are you, your relationships, and your work.
The you domain is at the center. If you don't take care of yourself, your relationships and work will suffer. Values in the you domain have to do with your personal health.
The relationships domain comes next. Our relationships with family, friends, and coworkers help us avoid loneliness. Values in the relationship domain have to do with connection and trust. (William Rawlins told the Atlantic that satisfying friendships need three things: “somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy.”)
The work domain comes last. This includes everything we work on from paid labor to community service and side projects. Values in the work domain have to do with hard work and causes.
The 4-step “Indistractable” model
We can become "Indistractable" by adopting four key strategies:
Master internal triggers
Make time for traction
Hack back external triggers
Prevent distraction with pacts
1. Master internal triggers
The source of most distractions is internal discomfort. If you know the root causes of your discomfort, you can manage them. If you don't understand the root causes, you'll continue to find ways to distract yourself.
To manage distraction, we must learn to deal with internal discomfort and channel it rather than try to escape it. How we deal with discomfort determines whether we pursue self-fulfilling traction or self-defeating distractions.
Here are a few tricks:
Avoid suppressing the trigger (i.e. resisting an urge often makes it stronger)
Observe the trigger (i.e. “surf the urge”)
Reflect on what discomfort is causing the trigger
Get curious about the source of discomfort; don't criticize the negative feeling
Pay special attention during “liminal moments” (i.e. the moments between tasks)
Use games to make a task more attractive (i.e. create challenges, mystery, and novelty)
Use self-talk to replenish your willpower (i.e. tell yourself you can stay focused)
2. Make time for traction
The most effective way to make time for traction is with a technique called "timeboxing".
With timeboxing, you decide what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it (i.e. you make what psychologists call an “implementation intention”).
With timeboxing, the key is to focus on controlling the inputs, not the outcome. You can’t control what you produce during a timebox, but you can control how you spend the time.
The idea is to plan the inputs and let the outcome follow. Your input is certain; your outcome is possible. With timeboxing, the biggest input is simply showing up.
Schedule syncing is a way to align expectations around how you and your team members will spend their time.
To create a weekly timeboxed schedule, you’ll need to :
Schedule how you plan to spend your time each week.
Sync your weekly schedule with important relationships.
Reflect on how you spent your actual time at the end of each week.
Refine the next week's schedule based on learnings.
Good weekly reflection questions include:
“When did I do what I said I would do and when did I get distracted?”
“Are there changes I can make to my calendar that will give me the time I need to better live out my values?”
3. Hack back external triggers
External triggers are triggers in your environment. Think sound notifications, visual cues, and people.
Some external triggers are helpful and lead us to traction. Others are harmful and lead us to distraction. The trick is to keep the ones that serve us and eliminate those that work against us.
Here are some tips:
Limit interruptions from other people by making it clear when you are unavailable.
Reduce the time you spend checking and replying to messages by scheduling time to batch process them once or twice per day.
Reduce the number of unnecessary messages you receive by sending fewer outbound messages, unsubscribing from or blocking distracting messages, and pushing difficult conversations to synchronous meetings. Also, consider scheduling messages to send at a later time.
Reduce the number of unnecessary meetings you have by requiring agendas and briefs ahead of time (i.e. make it harder to schedule meetings).
Reduce distracting triggers on electronic devices by uninstalling apps you no longer need, customizing notification settings, and configuring your devices' do not disturb settings. You can also set time limits on distracting apps and move them off of your primary screens. Also, consider installing extensions that allow you to block apps and websites at specific times during the day.
Remove physical and digital clutter from your line of sight. Clutter takes a psychological toll on your attention.
Queue articles and content to review at a scheduled time. Online articles, news feeds, and social media content are full of triggers that can send you down rabbit holes.
4. Prevent distraction with pacts
The goal of pacts is to create forcing functions that help you avoid distraction in the future.
Pacts leverage the power of precommitment, which removes a future choice to overcome our impulsivity. Precommitments allow us to cement our intentions when we’re clearheaded and help us avoid succumbing to distractions when we're tired.
One example of a precommitment is a Ulysses pact. A Ulysses pact is “a freely made decision that is designed and intended to bind oneself in the future.” In Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses resists the Sirens’ song by making a precommitment.
There are three types of pacts:
Effort pacts increase the amount of effort required to do an action. The idea is to make unwanted behaviors more difficult to do. If a distraction is hard, we are less likely to do it.
Price pacts increase the cost of doing an action. The idea is to make unwanted behaviors expensive to do by attaching a price to unwanted behavior. If a distraction causes us to lose money, we're less likely to do it (see loss aversion or "deprival-super-reaction tendency").
Identity pacts increase the internal conflict associated with doing an action. The idea is to commit to a self-image that doesn't do the unwanted behavior. If a distraction conflicts with our beliefs about who we are, we're less likely to do it.
Reducing distraction at work
Persistent distraction at work is often a sign of organizational dysfunction.
Reducing distractions at work requires company culture to change.
Start small and focus on facilitating open dialogue about the problem.
Reducing distraction in relationships
Distraction can keep us from being fully present with important relationships.
Even worse, we are likely to adopt the behaviors of people we spend time with. In this way, distraction is contagious (for more, see social contagion.)
Distractions in relationships can take many forms including televisions, phones, and even your children.
Here are some tips:
Be aware of social contagion.
Call out distractions and work with your relationships to address them together.
Develop “social antibodies” as defenses against distraction by making unwanted behaviors taboo.
Remove devices from your bedroom.
Have the internet automatically turn off at specific times.
Helping kids manage distraction
Richard Ryan and Edward Deci proposed the human psyche needs three things to flourish: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. If any of these are lacking for a child, they are more prone to distractions. (For more, see their work on self-determination theory.)
Try to understand their struggle with distractions within each of these buckets.
Here are some tips:
Teach the differences between distraction and traction.
Help your kids define traction and make time for it.
Ask questions to help them self-monitor and self-regulate their behavior (and triggers).
Encourage play. Unstructured play is an important extracurricular activity. It teaches focus and builds social skills.
Random anecdotes
Tantalus’s curse is to forever reach for something. Tantalus was banished to the underworld by his father, Zeus. His punishment was to yearn for things he desired but could never grasp. As humans, we are constantly reaching for something: more money, more experiences, more knowledge, more status, more stuff, etc.
According to researchers, loneliness is more deadly than obesity.
“Ironic process theory” by Daniel Wegner refers to the idea that attempting to suppress thoughts can make them more likely to surface.
Technological leaps are often followed by moral panics ⇒ “Each successive historical age has ardently believed that an unprecedented ‘crisis’ in youth behavior is taking place." (For more, see Youth culture and crime: what can we learn from history?)
Ian Bogost in Play Anything ⇒ “We fail to have fun because we don’t take things seriously enough, not because we take them so seriously that we’d have to cut their bitter taste with sugar. Fun is not a feeling so much as an exhaust produced when an operator can treat something with dignity.” ⇒ “fun is the aftermath of deliberately manipulating a familiar situation in a new way.”
Ego depletion isn't real? According to Michael Inzlicht, willpower acts like an emotion and doesn't deplete. Our willpower ebbs and flows in response to how we feel.
Psychological empowerment ⇒ What we say to ourselves matters. Self-compassion can increase resilience.
According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap: values are “how we want to be, what we stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.”
Robert Waldinger TEDx Talk ⇒ “good relationships keep us happier and healthier”.
Random quotes
“If I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” —Seneca
“Every desirable experience—passionate love, a spiritual high, the pleasure of a new possession, the exhilaration of success—is transitory.” —David Myers in The Pursuit of Happiness.
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
“It’s a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate—but positive ones expand.” —Oliver Burkeman