Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

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Is time management some sort of pain management? What is the best way to stay focused in this world filled with distractions? Nir Eyal tries to answer these questions through this book. Changing some of my beliefs such the reframing of my thinking about will power. (Refuting Ego depletion). Although I was aware of some of the studies it really didn’t sink in before. Very important and wide ranging applications. This has important implications, for example, in the basic beliefs of the AA program. Also the overwhelming data about the improving focus of nurses when they were being constantly distracted and even when initially they resisted methods used to lower their distractibility. If you value your time, your focus or your relationships, this book is essential reading' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind Another side affect of this book is that my desire to drink alcohol and other compulsive behavior has just disappeared, and I wasn't even particularly focusing on that. It just happened as a by product, and I'm so happy.

While it doesn’t seem like such a big issue at first sight, distraction can seriously impact our work performance, consume our precious time, and alter our work-life balance. Therefore, to increase productivity, have more time to spend with your loved ones, and target your focus better, Indistractable by Nir Eyal comes forth with a series of solutions for this concerning issue. To prevent distractions with pacts, plan for when you’re likely to get distracted, make unwanted behaviors more difficult, and call yourself “indistractable.” Another aspect I found frustrating about the writing style was the slightly condescending or braggadocious tone that occasionally cropped up (especially when it came to subtly flaunting his wealth). I imagine that wasn’t the intention, but it was hard to ignore when he bragged about what other books he wrote and what companies he invested in. Unfortunately, the joy of progress in the classroom is a waning feeling among kids today. Ryan warns, “We’re giving messages of ‘you’re not competent at what you’re doing at school,’ to so many kids.” He points to the rise of standardized testing as part of the problem. “It’s destroying classroom teaching practices, it’s destroying the self-esteem of so many kids, and it’s killing their learning and motivation.” The first half of "Indistractable" is ok, and there is some good general idea on "why" you are so easily addicted to your smartphone, Facebook, etc. However, I think I was intuitively trying and applying most of them just because of the knowledge I got from "Hooked."I especially enjoyed the section he put in the book on how to help our children become less distracted. As a father concerned with screen time and non-productive behaviors, there were some absolute gems here. Not surprisingly, I discovered where the problem lies. It's not the screen, it's the parenting and there are some brilliant ideas on how to achieve a better outcome. There are many curious contortions here. Eyal’s conception of distraction remains mercurial. His foundational claim that avoiding discomfort or dissatisfaction is our motivation for everything we do in life is simply asserted; no evidence is adduced. (It’s a claim that, in any event, seems unfalsifiable – can’t any desire for change be framed as “dissatisfaction” with some status quo?) Yet the essential rhetorical move, for which Eyal gives no justification, is his separation of inner motivations from external factors and his conception of them as root causes. This root/proximate cause distinction comes from a diagnostic process in engineering and management sciences called root cause analysis. Why is this method appropriate for diagnosing human behaviour? No reason is given. Why can’t a behaviour be the result of multiple root causes? The question goes unasked. Can’t technologies, like many other external influences, increase our degree of inner discomfort and dissatisfaction? The issue is not even raised. What even counts as a “root cause”? Eyal leaves it undefined. People want autonomy yet, according to Robert Epstein, author of "The Myth of the Teen Brain" in Scientific American, his surveys showed that "teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than ten times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons." No wonder they love playing video games that give them a sense of control. The best part of this entire book was his advice on setting guidelines on tech usage with your kids, partner, and your friends. I am reviewing this book because I received a preliminary copy and think it is a vitally important topic.

I recently read that the pope wanted to alter a line of the Lord’s Prayer, from “lead us not into temptation” to “do not let us fall into temptation”. Indistractable is Eyal’s attempt at a pope-like pivot. Thankfully, he can’t pivot by fiat. However, as the book Merchants of Doubt by Erik M Conway and Naomi Oreskes brilliantly chronicled in the domains of climate science and tobacco research, a smokescreen of doubt can be thrown up, which provides a cover for interests averse to systemic change, whether regulatory or otherwise. And Eyal can make people who get distracted by adversarial design less inclined to demand more from their technologies, and more inclined to demand “superpowers” of themselves that their all-too-human limitations render them unable to meet.

Prevent Distraction with Pacts

If you value your time, your focus, or your relationships, this book is essential reading. I'm putting these ideas into practice." Let’s get this out of the way up front: the guy who (literally) wrote the book on making addictive tech writing a guide on how to not get distracted by addictive tech is like someone writing a book on the merits of veganism and then writing a follow-up called “Eating Yummy Baby Cows and Other Ways to Fill Your Cramhole With the Savory Flesh of Delicious, Fluffy Creatures!” The rest was a very high-level introduction to behavioral adaption and change, with easy-to-use pointers to remember at the end of every chapter. It felt very informal, like a webinar or a collection of PowerPoint slides, and less in-depth or researched analysis, like I was hoping. Have you ever caught yourself getting distracted at the smallest things? It could be a pop-up notification on your phone, and you ditch your focus on work completely at that insignificant stimulus? The problem with the little gadgets is that they’re supposed to make our life easier, and while they do so, they also cause a series of other problems, like distraction. In Indistractable, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more.

Being indistractable is not about escaping from discomfort through distraction. Rather, it’s about learning to channel master feelings of dissatisfaction to make things better. Alexis Kirschbaum at Bloomsbury went above and beyond what any author could ask for in an editor and played a critical hand in improving this book. She and her colleagues, including Hermione Davis, Thi Dinh, Genevieve Nelsson, Andy Palmer, Genista Tate-Alexander, and Angelique Tran Van Sang, deserve my sincere gratitude. One way to master internal triggers, says Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is to reimagine an otherwise boring activity.Remind yourself that obstacles are part of the process of growth. We don’t get better without practice, which can be difficult at times. A good rule of thumb is to talk to yourself the way you might talk to a friend. Since we know so much about ourselves, we tend to be our own worst critics, but if we talk to ourselves the way we’d help a friend, we can see the situation for what it really is. Price pacts aren’t good at changing behaviors with external triggers you can’t escape (e.g. nail biting); Dissatisfaction and discomfort dominate our brain’s default state, but we can use them to motivate us instead of defeat us.”