A Guide to Becoming

Indistractable

Nir Eyal

LEVEL 🏆

TYPE 💡

BONUS RESOURCES 🎁

⏱️ DURATION: 12 minutes

INTERACTIVE CASE STUDY #3

Alright, now our that we got our time planned, the next step to becoming indstractable is to hack back the external triggers. 

As you've probably experienced yourself, many mistakes are cause by distractions.

For example, Prescription mistakes, which is the third leading cause of death, is predominantly found to be caused by distraction.

In order to eliminate potential distractions, a group of nurses from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) wore cheap plastic vests that said "drug round in progress, do not disturb".

This was hugely successful. By reducing the likelihood of people interrupting them, they found a way to hacked back the external trigger. These vests eventually reduced this problem by 88%!

In other settings like in the office, you can do something similar. You can use the screen sign, where you simply put this on your computer monitor and it tells your colleagues, "Hey, I'm indistractable at the moment. Please come back later".

Then what about your kids? What can you do about kids when they distract you? 

Simple! First, go around your house and find your silliest hat.

And every time you do work that requires your concentration, I want you to put on this hat and tell your kid beforehand that this is called the concentration crown.

Every time mommy or daddy wears a concentration crown, that means that he or she can't be interrupted. It works like a charm, and it also works really well with significant other or spouses.

We can also use technology to help us block out distraction from technology. 

Everybody's phone these days comes with the do not disturb while driving mode, where as soon as you push one button, if somebody calls or text you, they'll receive an automatic reply.

And they don't have to know whether you're driving or not. You can be in your office or your home doing the focus work you need to do. 

Another thing we can do is to clear away all of that digital clutter.

Scientists tell us that digital clutter can degrade our performance.

What to do? We can take of all those external triggers and stuff them away in a folder, and search for them if you need them. Very simple.

The same goes with our phones.

We don't need all those notifications, those pings and dings. We can turn that stuff off.

We have no right to complain that technology is distracting us if we haven't just taken these simple steps to only keep the external triggers that serve us. 

There's nothing wrong with technology or external triggers. If the technology's telling you, hey, it's time to do that thing you wanted to do. It's serving you.

But if it's taking you away from what you did, wanted to do, you're serving it.

So ask yourself that critical question, am I serving it or is it serving me?

..and then adjust the notifications that are not serving you.

Then finally, what we want to do is to leave those distracting devices outside of meetings.

Whether it's meetings with our friends or family and certainly in the workplace, if we are going to be together in the physical world, we need to be present both in body and mind. So declare no phone zones.

HACK BACK EXTERNAL TRIGGERS

Great job once again for mastering another INDISTRACTABLE skill!

This final strategy is to prevent distractions with pacts. 

Now, we have come to our last strategy to becoming INDISTRACTABLE.

Now, this is the last resort. This is the thing we do as a failsafe, as a firewall to prevent distraction.

In the first recorded case of someone using one of these pacts comes to us from the 2,500 year old story of Ulysses told by Homer.

This is the story of a Greek hero who has to sail his ship past the island of the sirens. 

Now, the sirens are these mythical creatures that sing this magical song, and any sailor who hears the siren song sails their ship on to the Sirens Island. And that's where the ship crashes and everyone dies. Ouch!

Ulysses knows this is going to happen and he makes a pact. He makes a precommitment with himself and his crew...

He instructed every member of his crew to put beeswax in their ears so they can't hear the siren song. And then he tells them to bind him to the mast of the ship and he tells them "What I do, no matter what I say, don't let me go."

...and the plan works. He's able to sail his ship past the island of the sirens and not get distracted, not do something he doesn't want to do because he made a promise, a pact in advance. 

Now, I hope you see the metaphor here. That could be you there dead on the sirens. But you don't want to be those dead people. You want to be Ulysses here by making these pacts.

There are thousands of free tools out there that you could used to prevent distraction with pacts. I described many of these in my book that you can use. Most of them are absolutely free tools that you can use to block out tech. 

One is FOREST app, which lets you set the time you want to concentrate and plant a cute little virtual tree on your phone.

Now, if you pick up your phone and do anything with it, the cute little virtual tree dies, and you don't want to be a virtual tree murderer 😅
So it's a bit of a reminder to tell you that's not what you wanted to do.

Another thing you can do is to find a focus friend. Just working next to somebody can be an incredibly effective approach.

There's company that helps facilitate this called FOCUSMATE 

Focusmate helps you find a partner to make a pact with in order to make sure you get started and do the work you know you need to do.  

There are several other pacts we can employ. There's an effort pact, a price pact and an identity pact, all of which I talk about as well in the book.  

       Other pacts (find out more in my book!)  

Here's a quick summary of how to prevent distraction with pacts.

PREVENT DISTRACTIONS WITH PACTS

Congratulations for mastering all the skills!!

You have now become INDISTRACTABLE!!

However, let me warn you that this is a technique you need to be careful with, because it can backfire in a few ways.

One is if you do it out of order. You have to first master the internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back the external triggers. Only last do you use this technique of preventing distraction with pacts.

The other way this can backfire is that when some people fail (as we all invariably will from time to time), some have a really tough time getting back on track. 

Therefore, it is important to remember to have self compassion for oneself.

Self compassion is critical to achieving our long term goals, and people who give themselves self compassion are much more likely to do what they say they're going to do. 

As an ending note, I would like to emphasize that the idea that "technology is somehow addicting all of us and there's nothing we can do about it" is just not true.

We can master the internal triggers. We can make time for traction. We can hack back the external triggers and we can prevent distractions with pacts.

And so there's a lot more that I didn't get to here. But I really hope you'll check out the book INDISTRACTABLE to control your attention and choose your life.

And the message I want to leave with you today is that we can do this.

We can all become INDISTRACTABLE.

A Guide to Becoming Indistractable

We covered a lot of ground in this two-part case study, so hopefully this cheat sheet can be helpful!

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