Brilliant Books Club: Indistractable
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
By Nir Eyal With Julie Li (Bloomsbury)
Nir Eyal spent years working in industries - gaming and advertising - which are designed to distract us. Now he’s more than making amends with this fabulous, practical guide to controlling the one thing which seems so hard to tame in modern life: our attention.
Indistractable presents a four-step guide to wrestling our attention spans back under control - which is a blessed gift to civilisation and might even see the end of ‘phubbing’ (snubbing someone for your darn phone).
We distracted Nir long enough to ask a few pertinent questions.
If you’re stuck in a lift with a cynic, what would you say to encourage them to read your book?
My honest answer: if I’m stuck in a lift with a cynic, my book would probably be the last thing I’d talk about! I don’t want to be that guy.
So I’d probably make small talk about the weather, my family, or discuss how many supplies we’ve got left between the two of us to survive in the elevator until it gets unstuck.
But assuming it’s a temporary elevator hiccup — and assuming the topic of my book somehow comes up! — I’d probably tell them that I wrote the book to solve my own problem: why was it that I was so easily distracted from the things I said I wanted to do? Of course, I’m not the only one who has that affliction, and the book was an attempt to help people figure out how to defeat distraction, once and for all. Through that process, Indistractable was born.
What are three lessons you want readers to take away?
1) Master your internal triggers… A lot of writing about distraction focuses on the surface issues: how to turn off notifications on your phone, how to reduce the apps you use. All of that is well and good, but I think the process of becoming indistractable runs a bit deeper. For me, what worked was getting a real handle on why I was getting distracted in the first place. I knew that if I started with the tactics—like setting up my schedule or eliminating technology—then I’d just find other ways to distract myself. So I focused on what I call “mastering internal triggers”—what discomfort was I avoiding by turning to social media or my phone? Then I was able to work on those distractions and build my work habits around them.
2) Turn your values into time… You have to build a schedule that’s not just ticking off your daily to-do list, but instead helps you achieve the things you value most. That could be family, friends, work, hobbies—anything. But the point is to organize your time around these domains—specifically, to the things you say you want to focus on. I’ve found it helpful to be explicit about those values, and then to turn those values into a schedule.
3) Hack back external distractions at work… This is a common enough one for many people, which is why I wrote a whole chapter in the book titled “Hack Back Work Interruptions.” Ironically, it’s at our workplaces and in our work environments when we’re often the most distracted from doing our work. Here, you have to get creative, and you have to design an environment that allows you to do your best work.
For example, the hardcover copy of the book includes a little piece of card stock that has the words “I NEED TO FOCUS RIGHT NOW, BUT PLEASE COME BACK SOON” on it. I encourage readers to put it up so that even your colleagues walking by can know that you’re in the zone, and you need to focus. It might make you feel a bit awkward using it at first, but I can’t tell you the difference it’s made for me.
Don’t distract me
What inspired you to write the book? Was there a particular event/thought which set you in motion?
It was a specific moment and one that I can remember vividly. I was with my daughter, and we were playing a game from a book designed to bring dads and daughters closer together. Activity 1: we each had to name the other’s favorite things. Activity 2: build a paper airplane. And activity 3: we both had to say what superpower we would have if we could choose any of them.
In the middle of that wonderful father-daughter moment, I felt compelled to check my phone, and I told my daughter, “Just a second. I just need to respond to this one thing.” That’s when it hit me: I was ruining an otherwise perfectly lovely afternoon with my daughter to check an email that couldn’t have mattered more than what I was doing with her at that moment. And the worst part is that it all happened somewhat unconsciously—I had gotten distracted by a kind of default setting in my brain, which had become primed to want to check email.
That’s when I knew I had to figure out my issues with distraction, and it’s what led me down a multi-year rabbit hole of trying to understand what causes distraction and what we can do about it.
What’s been the biggest adversity you’ve faced - and what did you learn from the experience?
I wrote Indistractable because I was trying to overcome a massive hurdle in my life: I was putting distractions before people. I was trying to get things done, and repeatedly coming up short. I was spending time “working”—and then realizing that hours had gone by but that I had done anything but work.
My learnings from those difficulties are what produced the book. I figured out how much of distraction is not about the thing that distract us, but about the emotions and internal triggers that lead us to be distracted in the first place. I also learned how to fix those issues and approach them in a way that doesn’t require you to throw your smartphone away or move to a cabin in the woods.
What piece of advice/wisdom from your book don’t you follow enough?
I can just be honest: all of it! Defeating distraction isn’t a one-time bout. I have to regularly check in with myself, rewire my systems, and keep distraction at bay. Everything I recommend in the book — mastering internal triggers, time-boxing my schedule, hacking back external triggers, using precommitment devices — are things I still use every day. I’m my own guinea pig—and I didn’t write this book sitting high atop the mountain of focus, but as a fellow traveler trying to figure out to defeat distraction.
“ I was trying to overcome a massive hurdle in my life: I was putting distractions before people”
What’s the most moving - or strangest - reaction you’ve had from a reader?
I would say the most moving reactions have been from two categories of people: students who have written me to tell me how the book has helped them improve their study habits, and parents who have told me that the book has helped them be less distracted with their children. I write books to answer questions I have, but obviously I think a lot about how the answers can help other people. So when people reach out or drop me a line to tell me that a book has helped them in some way, it’s gratifying. It’s every author hopes for when they set out on the long road of book writing.
Which book (by another author) has you changed your life - and why?
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham inspired me to start essay writing. I love the way he turns over apple carts and I strive to do the same in my writing by busting societal myths.
And, most importantly, what snack keeps you going whilst writing?
Is coffee a snack?
THREE SIGNS NIR SAYS OUR ATTENTION SPANS ARE IN TROUBLE
Knowledge workers spend 41% of their time doing low-value work, i.e. tasks that that are either not important to them or their firm and relatively easy to drop, delegate or outsource
Half the time we spend on emails is completely wasted researchers concluded, after finding 25% of email time is spent reading messages that should not have been sent, and a further 25% of time spent responding to messages that should never have been answered
A third of Americans would rather give up sex than their smartphone
So put down your phone. Once you've ordered Indestructible
