Prologue

Living the life we want not only requires doing the right things, but also neccessitates not doing the things we know we’ll regret Nir Eyal, american author

This session is about theories and tools that help us focus on what’s important instead of being constantly distracted by the dazzling, illuminated, and unsatisfying distractions of modern life.

Foundation

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

This unit is inspired by and based on the book Indistractable by Eyal (2019)

Nir understands distraction down to its DNA—its neurology, its psychology, its emotions—and the framework he lays out in Indistractable teaches the reader how to attack the problem of each of its levels and take control of the reins of their mind. Tim Urban, writer and illustrator

Introduction

Indistractable

Procrastination
= be honest with yourself

Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. Indistractable people are as honest with themselves as they are with others. Eyal (2019, 15)

Problem statement

The world is more distracting than ever

Things we reach for
!= important things

The world is and has always been full of things to distract us, but

The world today can be more distracting then ever (data, ubiquitous technology and unlimited access to content, …)
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.

Problem: Instead of keeping focus on the things we say we will do (i.e., the important things), we often inclined to reach for things we supposedly need but really don’t (Eyal 2019).

Traction and distraction

Traction comes from the Latin trahere and means to pull or drag. Traction lead you closer to your goals. It is any action that moves you towards what you really want.

Distraction is the opposite of traction and means ‘pulling the mind away.’ Distractions stops us from achieving our goals. It is any action that moves you away from what you really want.

Exercise

Take 10 minutes to reflect yesterday and write down …

one thing you did that moved you closer to what you really wanted
and the benefit you received from that action; and
one thing you did that moved you away from what you really wanted
and the foregone benefit of taking that action.

Share your findings with your neighbor.

The indistractable model

We can be indistractable by learning and adopting four key strategies: mastering internal triggers, hacking back external triggers, making time for traction, and preventing distraction with pacts.

Internal triggers

the pain of wanting

Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting. Eyal (2019, 15)

What motivates us

We are motivated by pleasure.

But what is pleasure? Pleasure means not profligate pleasures, but absence of bodily pain and mental tarachai or troubles (Greek philosopher Epicurus according to Annas 1987, 3)

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.

What prevents discomfort can be addictive, but that doesn’t make it irresistible. If you know the drivers of your behavior, you can take steps to manage them.

Exercise

Take 10 minutes to identify four things you tend to get distracted while doing.
Describe what you did to distract yourself.

Write down root causes of discomfort you may be trying to escape by doing the unwanted behavior.

Discuss your findings with your neighbor.

For example, when I was using my phone when I wanted to spend quality time with my daughter, I was trying to escape: 1) the fear that I might be missing out on something important happening at work, 2) the anticipation of a client email, and 3) the boredom that comes from playing with a young child for too long.

Satisfaction

I can’t get no satisfaction
’Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try Rolling stones

Why not?

Boredom, negativity bias, rumination & hedonic adaptation

Boredom: It’s shocking how far people will go to avoid boredom. For instance, Wilson et al. (2014) found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.
Negativity bias is a phenomenon in which negative events are more salient and demand attention more powerfully than neutral or positive events” (Chai et al. 2016, 2). There is ample empirical evidence that adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information (Vaish, Grossmann, and Woodward 2008). Such pessimism seems to begin very early in life. Vaish, Grossmann, and Woodward (2008) show that even babies as young as seven months show signs of negative bias. In a nutshell: bad ist stronger than good.
Rumination includes reflection and brooding. Reflection refers to ‘a purposeful turning inward to engage in cognitive problem solving’, while brooding reflects ‘a passive comparison of one’s current situation with some unachieved standard’ (Treynor, Gonzalez, and Nolen-Hoeksema 2003, 256). Put it simple, rumination is the tendency to keep thinking about bad experiences. Though rumination is a useful trait to discover sources of error or alternative strategies, it can make us miserable.
Hedonic adaptation: We have the tendency to return quickly to a baseline levle of satisfaction no matter what happens to as in life (Eyal 2019, 32). This leads to all kinds of life events that we think would make us happier not lasting very long.

Pain management

Gearing towards traction is pain management. Distractions cost us time, and like all actions, they are spurred by the desire to escape discomfort.

Four psychological factors make satisfaction temporary. Our tendencies toward boredom, negativity bias, rumination, and hedonic aadaptations conspire to make sure we’re never satisfied for long.

Boredom: It’s shocking how far people will go to avoid boredom. For instance, Wilson et al. (2014) found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.
Negativity bias is a phenomenon in which negative events are more salient and demand attention more powerfully than neutral or positive events” (Chai et al. 2016, 2). There is ample empirical evidence that adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information (Vaish, Grossmann, and Woodward 2008). Such pessimism seems to begin very early in life. Vaish, Grossmann, and Woodward (2008) show that even babies as young as seven months show signs of negative bias. In a nutshell: bad ist stronger than good.
Rumination includes reflection and brooding. Reflection refers to ‘a purposeful turning inward to engage in cognitive problem solving’, while brooding reflects ‘a passive comparison of one’s current situation with some unachieved standard’ (Treynor, Gonzalez, and Nolen-Hoeksema 2003, 256). Put it simple, rumination is the tendency to keep thinking about bad experiences. Though rumination is a useful trait to discover sources of error or alternative strategies, it can make us miserable.
Hedonic adaptation: We have the tendency to return quickly to a baseline levle of satisfaction no matter what happens to as in life (Eyal 2019, 32). This leads to all kinds of life events that we think would make us happier not lasting very long.

Feeling bad isn’t actually bad; it’s exactly what survival of the fittest intended. 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. Eyal (2019, 33)

Dealing with internal triggers

Don’t ignore the trigger, because mental abstinence can backfire.

Resisting an urge can lead to rumination and increase cravings, ultimately leading to undesirable behaviors.

An endless cycle of resisting, ruminating, and finally giving in to the desire perpetuates the cycle and quite possibly drives many of our unwanted behaviours. Eyal (2019, 36)

Internal triggers can be managed by changing how we think about them.

Implications: Reimagine the trigger, the task, and your temperament.

Reimagine the trigger

Notice the urge and ride it like a surfer riding a wave, instead of giving in.

Implications:

Step 1: Look for the emotion preceding distraction.
Step 2: Write down the internal trigger (e.g, using an distraction tracker).
Step 3: Acknowledge and explore your cravings with curiosity instead of contempt.
Step 4: Be extra cautious during liminal moments¹.

Ten-minute-rule

Eyal (2019, 42) recommends the ‘ten-minute-rule’ (McGonigal 2013) to deal with distraction traps. When you are tempted to distraction, tell yourself that it’s fine to give in, but not right now, just wait ten minutes. This rule allows time to do what some behavioral psychologist call ‘urge surfing’. This accepting attitude allows an urge to grow and recede without taking action (to reduce negative affect or increase positive affect), when it takes hold (Ostafin and Marlatt 2008).

Reimagine the task

Use fun and play in dreary task to keep you focused.

Fun is looking for the variabiltiy in something other people don’t notice. It’s breaking through the boredom and monotony to discover its hiden beauty. Eyal (2019, 48)

Implications:

Look for challenges in (tedious) tasks—deliberateness and novelty can be added to any task to make it fun.

I try to make gardening more fun by soaking up as much information as I can about the way grass (and weed) grows and how to treat it. I find it challenging to deal with the constraints I have (weather, tools, weed), be it fighting the weed or beating my record time in cutting grass. Operating under constraints is key to creativity and fun.

Exercise

Describe one frequent task you have to do that you see as boring.

What can you do to reimagine the task to make it feel more like play?

What small challenges, constraints, or novelty can you add to make it fun?

Reimagine your temperament

I run out of willpower. You can do it if you really want (and tell yourself).

Many studies offer evidence for a phenomenon called ego depletion—the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up (Baumeister and Tierney 2012). Some researchers also concluded that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source (i.e., the fuel in our willpower tank).

Believing we do run out of willpower makes us less likely to accomplish our goals by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.

However, only recently Job et al. (2013) concluded that only people who view willpower as limited and easily depleted exhibited improved self-control after sugar consumption. People how did not see willpower as a finite resource did not show signs of ego depletion.

There is also the viewpoint that willpower acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run dry” of joy or anger, willpower fluctuates depending on what is happening to us and how we are feeling. Eyal (2019, 51) does concludes that “if mental energy is more like an emotion than fuel in a tank, it can be managed and utilized as such”.

What we say to ourselves matters. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control (e.g., the cravings are stronger then my willpower) actually leads to less self-control.

Implications:

Belief in your willpower and practice self-compassion, because people how do not see their willpower as limited resource and are more self-compassionate are more resilient.

Traction

Time planning

If you don’t plan our time, someone else will help to waste it. Ziglar (2021, 52)

Parkinson’s law is the observation that the duration of public administration, bureaucracy and officialdom expands to fill its allotted time span, regardless of the amount of work to be done (Parkinson 1959).

Turn values into time

Be aware of your values, i.e., know why you do what you do.

By being aware of your values (i.e., why you do what you do) and plan time to live up to your values, the difference between traction and distraction gets clear.

We should stop worrying about outcomes we can’t control and instead focus on the inputs we can. Eyal (2019, 70)

Implications:

Timebox your day². Plan time to live your values; plan time not only for work, but also for you (e.g., distraction) and your relationships.
Reflect and refine. Revisit and refine your schedule regularly, but stick to it once it’s set(Gollwitzer 1999).

Eyal (2019, 63–64) recommends to set aside fifteen minutes a week to revisit and refine your calendar by asking following questions:

When in my schedule did I do what I said I would do and when did I get distracted?
What strategies can I use to manage the trigger next time?
Are there changes I can make to my calendar that will give me the time I need to better express my values?

Eyal (2019, 64) also advises creating a schedule as a curious scientist rather than a drill sergant. This gives the freedom to get better with each iteration.

Exercise

Values are not end goals; they are guidelines for our actions.

What three to five values are most important to you?

What activities reflect these values?

How much time would you set aside each week for these activities?

Schedule relationships

You and the people you love deserve more than getting the time you have left.

This is how friendships die—they starve to death. Eyal (2019, 78)

Implications:

Schedule time for yourself first. By not allocating time for yourself, relationships and work will suffer.
Schedule regular gatherings with loved ones. A lack of close friendships may be hazardous to your health, so plan time for maintaining important relationships.

Sync at work

Without visibility into how you spend your time, colleagues and managers are more likely to distract you with superfluous tasks. Eyal (2019, 87)

Defining how you spend your time and syncing your plans with the stakeholders in your life is critical for making time for traction in your day. Also at work.

Implications

Sync your schedule with your boss and your team to align expectations around how you spend your time.

Get transparency in you schedule (e.g., use timeboxing)
Ensure alignment on a regular basis (e.g., daily or weekly check-ins)

External triggers

Problem

Today much of our struggle with distraction is a struggle with external triggers. Eyal (2019, 94)

Effects

Tech devices often gain unauthorized access to our brains by exploiting a vulnerability.

Uncomfortable feeling
+ easy action to perform
+ trigger
= waste of time

The ubiquity of external triggers like notifications, pings, alerts, etc. makes them hard to ignore—they are intentionally designed to change our behavior.

For a behavior to occur, three things must be present at the same time: motivation (i.e., energy for action), ability (i.e., difficulty of a behavior), and a trigger (Fogg 2009).

So if we feel uncomfortable and the action is easy to perform, we just need a trigger to tell us what to do next.

Review the trigger

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

Use the former, hack back the latter.

Not all external triggers are harmful to our attention, we can also leverage them to our advantage.

The trouble is, despite the potential benefits external triggers can provide, receiving too many can wreak havoc on our productivity and happiness. Eyal (2019, 95)

Implications:

Ask the critical question: is the trigger serving me, or am I serving it.
If the trigger helps doing the thing planned, use it as a tool to stay on track.
Hack back the external triggers that don’t help you gain traction.

Exercise

What external triggers have you noticed during the last 30 minutes?

Have they changed your behavior? Why (not)?

Has the trigger served you living up to your values?

Interruptions

Interruptions lead to errors—so eliminate them and don’t let your brain drain.

For critical activities, the work environment is designed to reduce disruption and distraction (e.g., sterile cockpit concept in nursing (see e.g., Broom et al. 2011)). Even the presence of our smartphone may impose a “brain drain”. Research shows that our brain has to work hard to ignore our cell phone when it is in your field of vision—so ignoring is not very helpful (Ward et al. 2017).

Implications: Defend your focus and signal when you do not want to be interrupted.

Hack back strategies

Some strategies to hack back common work-related distractions

Email: To get fewer emails, send fewer emails (e.g., respond not immediately but at a scheduled time).
Group chat: Use it like a sauna and get in and out at scheduled time, only involve who is necessary.
Meetings: Make it harder to call a meeting, no agenda, no meeting. Use the meeting for consensus not for problem-solving, be fully present and leave devices outside except for one laptop.
Apps: Use distracting apps on your desktop rather than on your phone, organize apps and manage notifications.
Browsing: Save articles, read or listen at a scheduled time and use apps to makes consumption less distracting.

You will find additional tips when doing a quick research on the web, e.g.

Distraction

Self-control

Being indistractable not only requires keeping distraction out, it also necessitates reining ourselves in. Eyal (2019, 159)

Precommitments

Removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsiveness

After mastering internal and external triggers and making time for traction, precommitments help to prevent ourselves from distraction.

Precommitment means removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsiveness (e.g., Ulysses pact, marriage, pension plans) (Kurth-Nelson and Redish 2012)

Precommitments are powerfull because they cement our intentions when we’re clearheaded and make us less likely to act against our best interests later. Eyal (2019, 158)

We can prevent distraction with effort pacts, price pacts and identity pacts.

Exercise

Recall a precommitment you made that successfully helped you to become what you want to be.

Why do you think this precommitment worked for you?

Effort and price pacts

Make unwanted behavior more difficult to perform or add a cost to getting distracted.

An effort pact prevents distraction by making unwanted behavior more difficult to perform, e.g. by

blocking access to distracting websites/tools or
increasing social pressure by working next to someone).

An price pact adds cost to getting distracted (e.g., losing money).

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.

Identity pacts

An identity pact is a precommitment to a self-image.

Become a noun,
share it with others
& adopt rituals

Research shows that an action (in this case, voting) that is presented as an expression of the self—a symbol of a person’s fundamental character (e.g., being a voter)—more likely to be performed than if it is simply referred to as a behavior (e.g., to vote) (Bryan et al. 2011).

Implications:

Become a noun: call yourself “indistractable”
Share with others: teaching others solidifies your commitment, even if you’re struggling
Adopt rituals: perform routines that reinforce your identity and influence your future actions (Tian et al. 2018)

Challenges

You want to learn how to control your attention and chose your life, in short to became indistractable? Here are three challenges that might help you along the way.

Level 1: Observe yourself over the next few weeks, note when you have been distracted, analyze the cause, and consider how you might become less distracted. You might use the distraction tracker.
Level 2: Take three weeks and consequently timebox your day in all life domains (e.g., you, relationships, work). Reflect an refine your schedule regularly, but commit to it, once it’s set.
Level 3: Engage with the people in your work context(s) (university, job), share the findings and strategies outlined here, discuss how you could apply the strategies to positively influence company culture and create an indistractable workplace, apply what you have agreed on and reflect the outcomes.

Reading list

For digging deeper, I recommend starting with following articles:

Fogg behavior model: Fogg (2009)
Implementation intention: Gollwitzer (1999)
Negativity bias: Vaish, Grossmann, and Woodward (2008)
Precommitments: Kurth-Nelson and Redish (2012)
Rituals: Tian et al. (2018)
Rumination: Treynor, Gonzalez, and Nolen-Hoeksema (2003)
Urge surfing Ostafin and Marlatt (2008)
Self-determination theory: Deci, Olafsen, and Ryan (2017)
Willpower: Job et al. (2015)

Q&A

Literature

Annas, Julia. 1987. “Epicurus on Pleasure and Happiness.” Philosophical Topics 15 (2): 5–21.

Baumeister, Roy F, and John Tierney. 2012. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Penguin.

Broom, MA, AL Capek, P Carachi, MA Akeroyd, and G Hilditch. 2011. “Critical Phase Distractions in Anaesthesia and the Sterile Cockpit Concept.” Anaesthesia 66 (3): 175–79.

Bryan, Christopher J, Gregory M Walton, Todd Rogers, and Carol S Dweck. 2011. “Motivating Voter Turnout by Invoking the Self.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (31): 12653–56.

Chai, Jing, Weina Qu, Xianghong Sun, Kan Zhang, and Yan Ge. 2016. “Negativity Bias in Dangerous Drivers.” PloS One 11 (1): e0147083.

Deci, Edward L, Anja H Olafsen, and Richard M Ryan. 2017. “Self-Determination Theory in Work Organizations: The State of a Science.” Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 4: 19–43.

Eyal, N. 2019. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Fogg, Brian J. 2009. “A Behavior Model for Persuasive Design.” In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, 1–7.

Gollwitzer, Peter M. 1999. “Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans.” American Psychologist 54 (7): 493.

Job, Veronika, Gregory M Walton, Katharina Bernecker, and Carol S Dweck. 2013. “Beliefs about Willpower Determine the Impact of Glucose on Self-Control.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (37): 14837–42.

———. 2015. “Implicit Theories about Willpower Predict Self-Regulation and Grades in Everyday Life.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (4): 637.

Kurth-Nelson, Zeb, and A David Redish. 2012. “Don’t Let Me Do That!–Models of Precommitment.” Frontiers in Neuroscience 6: 138.

McGonigal, Kelly. 2013. The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Penguin.

Ostafin, Brian D, and G Alan Marlatt. 2008. “Surfing the Urge: Experiential Acceptance Moderates the Relation Between Automatic Alcohol Motivation and Hazardous Drinking.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 27 (4): 404–18.

Parkinson, Cyril Northcote. 1959. Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress. Readers Union [in association with] John Murray.

Tian, Allen Ding, Juliana Schroeder, Gerald Häubl, Jane L Risen, Michael I Norton, and Francesca Gino. 2018. “Enacting Rituals to Improve Self-Control.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 114 (6): 851.

Treynor, Wendy, Richard Gonzalez, and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. 2003. “Rumination Reconsidered: A Psychometric Analysis.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 27 (3): 247–59.

Vaish, Amrisha, Tobias Grossmann, and Amanda Woodward. 2008. “Not All Emotions Are Created Equal: The Negativity Bias in Social-Emotional Development.” Psychological Bulletin 134 (3): 383.

Ward, Adrian F, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W Bos. 2017. “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2 (2): 140–54.

Wilson, Timothy D, David A Reinhard, Erin C Westgate, Daniel T Gilbert, Nicole Ellerbeck, Cheryl Hahn, Casey L Brown, and Adi Shaked. 2014. “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind.” Science 345 (6192): 75–77.

Ziglar, Z. 2021. Born to Win. PRABHAT PRAKASHAN PVT Limited.

Footnotes

Liminal moments are distraction traps that transition us from one thing to another, like picking up our phone while waiting for a traffic light to change.↩︎
There are several tutorials available on how to use a calendaring tool for timeboxing, see e.g., (How to Block Time on Google Calendar)[https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/block-time-google-calendar/].↩︎