Nir Eyal thinks were spending too much time trying to make work easy.
Hes a behavioral design expert who taught at Stanford and has written two best-selling books.
But he thinks most of the productivity panaceas, like forming habits or trying to get into flow, that we all turn to in order to get our work done arent always as useful as we might hope:
When most people talk about habits, what theyre saying is, I want something thats difficult to become effortless. I want the benefits but I dont want it to be hard, Nir said to me in an interview a few weeks ago. Well, I have news for you: some things are just hard. Theres no way of getting around it.
The problem is, when we expect work to be effortless and it ends up being difficult, we often blame ourselves. So the very tools were using to make work easier, can instead make it easier for us to give up.
Nir recommends a different approach. He thinks the number one barrier to getting our work done is distraction. Its all around us: from our social media feeds, to our app notifications, to pseudo work distractions like our email inbox or our todo lists.
Most people think distraction is caused by technology, or that being distracted means theres something wrong with them.
But Nir thinks that moments of distraction are actually our own human reaction to the discomfort we feel when we sit down to do our work. Theyre not character flaws, theyre emotional regulation problems, he says
Nir thinks that we should develop tools to deal with internal discomfort instead of burying ourselves in distraction. And that once were indistractable, well be ready to do our best work.
In this interview we talk about Nirs unorthodox definition of distraction, go through his four-step process to becoming indistractible, and explore how he uses this process in his own life.
Lets dive in!
Nir introduces himself
Hi, Im Nir Eyal. I’m a behavioral designer which means I use consumer psychology and behavioral design to help companies build the kind of products that build good habits in our lives.
Ive written two books, Hooked and Indistractable. Hooked was about how to build habit-forming products. Indistractable is about how to break bad habits.
I taught for many years at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business, and then later at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. And today, I mostly teach and write about how to build good habits and break bad ones.
Distraction is not what you think it is
Before we can eliminate distraction we have to understand what it is.
To define distraction, well define it by what it is not.
Most people say that the opposite of distraction is focus. But I dont think thats true. I think that the opposite of distraction is not focus, it is traction.
Both traction and distraction actually come from the same Latin root, trahere, which means to pull.
Traction is any action that pulls you toward what you want to do. By contrast, distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you planned to do.
This is a really, really important point. Because a lot of people in the productivity space dont differentiate between traction and distraction.
You can see this most clearly in people that do a lot of pseudo-work. I used to do it too: I would sit down at my desk and I would say, Okay, now Im going to get my work done, Im going to stop procrastinating. But first let me just check email real quick. Let me just do that one chore on my todo list.
What people dont realize is that if youre buried in your email inbox instead of doing your most important work, you are just as distracted as if you went on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Anything that is not what you planned to do is by definition a distraction.
And I think that things like email, or small todo list items are actually the most pernicious distractions because they feel productive. If Im checking something off of my todo list that feels productive.
What we dont realize is that in those instances, distraction has tricked us into prioritizing what feels urgent as opposed to what we really need to be doing. And that is toxic for your productivity, for your well-being, and for your happiness.
And by the way, this doesnt mean that you should never check Twitter or Facebook. If you want to scroll through Twitter or Facebook, do it! As long as you do it with intent, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time.
So: anything is a distraction as long as its not what you planned to do. In the same way, anything can be traction, too.
The word that differentiates the two is intent.
Nir has a simple strategy for eliminating distraction
In my book I describe my strategy for eliminating distraction. That word, strategy, is very important. The strategy is critical, because tactics are a dime a dozen.
There isnt going to be one tactic that works for everyone. You use the strategy to try individual tactics until you find the right formula for you.
My strategy for eliminating distraction is as follows:
- Master internal triggers
- Make time for traction
- Hack back external triggers
- Prevent distraction with pacts
Thats it. Well go into each of these and talk about what they are.
Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers
Distraction is caused by two things: internal triggers and external triggers.
External triggers are all of the things that we already think a lot about. Its the pings, and the dings, and all the things in our external environment that are pulling our attention away from the thing we had planned to spend our time on.
These are important to pay attention to, but if you actually observe how people spend their time, the thing that is more likely to steal our attention is the internal triggers.
Internal triggers are whats happening inside of us.
It turns out that distraction and procrastination are actually our default responses to uncomfortable feelings. Theyre not character flaws, theyre emotional regulation problems.
When we procrastinate or distract ourselves its because we want to escape from uncomfortable sensations: boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty. Sometimes we escape through news, booze, football, or Facebook. Everyone has their drug of choice. But were all trying to do the same thing with these distractions: attempting to relieve emotional discomfort.
So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it.
None of the other shit works, whatever any productivity guru says. You first and foremost have to start with the internal triggers.
If you dont have the tools to deal with emotional discomfort, none of the life hacks work.
How he deals with internal triggers in his writing routine
One of the places in my life where I have to deal with a lot of internal triggers is in my writing routine.
I write every day in the morning for 2 hours, 5 days a week. No exceptions.
In this system I only have one goal: to work on whatever it is I say Im going to work on for as long as I say Im going to work on it. Thats it.
What youll also notice is that I dont set a word count. Word counts are terrible. Its really hard to use things like word counts because study after study has shown that people are terrible at predicting how long it will take to do something. Were awful at it.
So some days Ill produce 300 words. Sometimes its 1,000. Sometimes its 3. But it doesnt matter. I just stay at my desk and try to write for the 2 hours on my schedule. And thats the most important thing.
Now, people might think that because I write every day that its easy.
Thats just not true.
When I sit down to write a few things come up regularly. Boredom. Fatigue. Anxiety. Uncertainty.
Theres a lot of uncertainty in writing. I never know if a particular line of research is going to be a waste of time. Most of the stuff I write about doesnt get published.
Most of what I produce isnt illuminating. Its not exciting. It gets trashed.
So theres constantly this uncertainty of, Is this going to be any good? Am I right? Are people going to find it useful?
One way to deal with that is to lean into it instead of trying to get away from it. If you lean into the uncertainty, you can start to find beauty in the unknown.
For example, you can look for the variability in the work on how the way you feel about it, that feeling of uncertainty, is changing over time. You can also focus more intently on the details of the work the minute details that make it the way it is. Thats how people learn to love all kinds of things.
So a piece of research isnt this dark scary thing anymore, it starts to unfold like a flower. You start to see the beauty in the task. For me, thats what uncertainty is. Its actually what drives me back to research now rather than causing me to be distracted because I dont know whats going to happen. And thats exciting.
But there are other ways to deal with the triggers that come up too. For example, another trigger for me is the desire to look something up. Ill be writing and Ill get this insane itch to go Google something which I know will send me down a rabbit hole of distraction.
l have something I call the 10 minute rule for this.
Rather than Google it, what I’ll often do is write down on a piece of paper whatever it is I think I need to look up. And then I’ll give myself 10 minutes. And if it’s so important after ten minutes then maybe Ill look it up. Usually that works, and I can just get back to work.
By the time the ten minutes are up what I felt like I needed to Google doesnt seem that important anymore.
Sometimes, though, the urge doesnt go away. Its the same type of urge that you might feel when you want to eat a piece of chocolate cake.
If that happens, then I do what I call surfing the urge. You basically sit with the sensation, and examine it. Youll find that if you can do that, it doesnt last forever even though it feels like it will.
The key is not to always expect things to be easy
But the key here, the point I really want to drive home, is that sometimes this stuff just isnt easy.
When people say, I want to start a habit, what theyre really saying is: I want something that’s difficult to become effortless. Theyre saying: I want the benefits, but I don’t want it to be hard.
That’s why there’s this myth of habits, because people know the definition of a habit is a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. But I have news for you folks: writing, like many other behaviors, is hard, it requires a lot of conscious thought, at least it is for me.
Its the same deal with flow. Youve heard, Im sure all of the research on flow, and its actually not very good advice for most people. Because again, it makes you think you can make anything effortless. You know, professional basketball players are in flow. But how do you get into flow when youre doing your taxes?
Same with writing. I’ve written two books, and hundreds of articles. Writing is never easy. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It’s difficult. It’s anxiety producing.
There’s all these internal triggers when I write. And so if I don’t have the techniques to disarm that discomfort so that I can stay on task I’ll get distracted. And that’s why we shouldn’t worship at this altar of habits or flow.
We have to get comfortable with discomfort.
How to plan your time
Once youve started down the path of mastering your internal triggers, the next step is to plan how you spend your time. I call this making time for traction.
Your schedule needs to be defined by your values. Values are the attributes of the person that you want to become. Once we understand the kind of people we want to become, we can create a schedule that maps to that.
This feels complicated but its not. I dont want you to do a vision board. I dont want you to do a 5 year plan. All I want you to do is make a schedule for tomorrow. Thats it. Just make a schedule.
There are three life domains that are important to consider: You, Your Relationships, Your Work.
I want you to block time on your schedule tomorrow for each of those three life domains. The project is to figure out how to turn your values into time. So, if one of your values is your mental well-being the question is: how much time are you going to put on your schedule for meditation, or therapy, or whatever else supports you in that way? When are you going to do it?
How much time do you want for your relationships? Put it in your calendar.
How much time do you need for work? And keep in mind there are two types of work: reactive work (responding to emails, Slacks, etc.) and reflective work. Put that in your calendar.
Thats it.
You cant call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. The only way to know if you were distracted is if you planned to spend your time on one thing, and instead you spent your time on something else.
Once youve mastered your internal triggers, and planned your time youre ready for the 3rd step: hacking back external triggers.
How he deals with external triggers in his writing routine
Once I sit down at my desk, I try to eliminate my external triggers. This is the kindergarten stuff.
I turn off all of the notifications, and make sure my workspace is free from distraction. For example, youll notice my desktop is totally empty. That’s a big deal, right?
(Want to automatically keep your desktop clean? Try Sparkle for Superorganizers Members.)
You don’t want any external triggers in your workspace. Do Not Disturb is always turned on. So I don’t get any bothersome notifications on my desktop. That’s all the time. I think notifications on your desktop are a bad idea. If someone really needs to get in touch with me they can use my phone.
One big external trigger, especially right now, is kids. This is especially difficult for us now that were working from home.
To deal with kids, the first thing you need to have, of course, is a really strong relationship with your partner. Ideally you can share the load of taking care of them at different times, so that each of you can get things done. You set a schedule where one partner takes the kids from W hour to X hour, and then the other partner takes them from Y to Z
But aside from that, I have a technique thats been really effective for reducing the number of interruptions I get from my kids. Its a hat that I put on when Im working. We call it the concentration crown.
Nirs wife, Julie, wearing the concentration crown
When Im wearing the concentration crown it sends a signal to my daughter that I cant be interrupted. By the way, this also works for co-workers too. You dont necessarily need a silly hat you just need a way of letting people know when you can and cant be interrupted.
It’s incredibly effective with her.
He uses pacts to deal with the tasks he has the most trouble with like exercise
I do my writing routine every day by:
- Mastering internal triggers
- Making time for traction
- Hacking back external triggers
And thats enough for me for writing. But theres actually a fourth component of the system that I want to talk about: pacts.
I dont use them for writing, but I do use them for the tasks that I have to do that Im most likely to skip out on.
For example, I always hated working out, and I actually used to be clinically obese. I really always hated exercise. But I work out every morning anyway so the question is, how?
Well first, Ive done the three other steps in the system. Ive mastered my internal triggers around exercise. Its on my schedule every day. And Ive eliminated external triggers that might prevent from doing it.
But sometimes even that doesn’t always work. In those cases, I use a pact.
There are a few types of pacts, but when it comes to exercise I use a price pact. Basically, what that means is Ive established a monetary disincentive for me to skip my workout. It works like this:
In my closet I have a calendar, and pinned to the calendar is a $100 bill. For each day on the calendar I can either burn the calories by going to the gym, or I have to burn the $100 bill. Each day I move the bill to the next day on the calendar and make the choice over again.
And guess what? It’s been years now and I’ve never burned the money.
Most people are shocked by this.
Do you really have to burn the money? they ask.
The answer is yes. You have to burn it. It’s called burn or burn. Why? Because giving it away feels good, you have to feel bad about it in order for this to work.
By the way, I’ve never burned the money. Why? Because I just do the 20 fucking pushups.
Nir Eyals latest book, Indistractable is available on Amazon.
This piece was edited by Nathan Baschez and Paul Smalera.
Want to keep your desktop clean like Nir Eyal?
We built an app to help you keep your desktop clean.
Its called Sparkle and its made exclusively for Superorganizers Premium members.
It automatically turns this:
Into this:
Its inspired by Tiago Fortes PARA methodology the idea that files should be sorted by actionability.
Sparkle sorts your files into two folders: Recents and Archives.
Recents is any file that has been created or modified in the last 3 days
Archives is everything else
Its simple, and clean, and designed to make sure that your desktop is free from external triggers, so that you can do your most important work.
Learn More
Become a Member
