#54 [TRANSCRIPT]: How to stay focussed
#54 [TRANSCRIPT]: How to stay focussed
📄Full text of the podcast episode with Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable
This is a transcript of the podcast interview with Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.
🎧To listen to the podcast, click here 🎧
00.00
Work can be a distraction, it can also be very productive. Social media can be a distraction, it can also be great. It's about whether we do those things with intent, whether it's traction, and its according to our values, or it's a distraction that pulls us away from what we really want.
Welcome to Why Would Anyone. My name is Tania Rabesandratana. In this podcast and newsletter, I explore intrinsic motivation in our daily lives, and I wonder why we do the things we do.
00:36
I'm excited to introduce my first guest, Nir Eyal, to talk about how to stay focused. Eyal is a behavioural designer, an investor and the author of Hooked: how to build habit-forming products. Many tech companies turn to him to create products that users cannot put down. Then he wrote the antidote book: Indistractable, how to control your attention and choose your life. That's the book we're discussing today.
Now, there are plenty of tips and tricks out there to be more focused and productive. But in this conversation, we're going to concentrate on why we get distracted in the first place. So I speak with Eyal about time management as pain management. We also talk about children and why his daughter doesn't go to school. And of course, we talk about intrinsic motivation.
01:28
Let's start with the basics. What does it mean to you to be indistractable?
So, being indistractable means you are as honest with yourself as you are with others. It means striving to do what you say you're going to do. So it's the kind of person who says they're going to do something, whether it's to exercise, or eat right, or be fully present with their family, or finish that big project at work, or save money. Whatever it is that you say you're going to do, an indistractable person strives to do what they say they're going to do, in business and in life.
Distractable people live their life with regrets. They look back and they say, Why was I working on stuff that didn't help me move my business forward? Why was I not fully present with my kids, and I was worrying about drama, or television or Facebook, as opposed to being with people I love? The media doesn't give a shit about what you do with your time, as long as you spend it with them. The media is never going to tell you, you've had enough news, you've had enough Netflix, you've had enough Facebook, their interest is to get you hooked. And I know how to get you hooked. I wrote the book on it! And I know all the tips and tricks. But I can tell you that they're good, but they're not that good. That we have the ability to take back our time and attention, if we so choose.
02:40
If I play devil's advocate a little bit, how about being approachable, being available being flexible?
I recommend that people do spend time to be available to their business colleagues, to their children, whatever the case might be. But that time should be planned in advance. Because if you don't plan that time, your entire day becomes a distraction.
So my daughter and I, for example, we have actually today, this afternoon, we have planned spontaneity, scheduled spontaneity. Now that sounds like an oxymoron. How can you schedule spontaneity? But the reason we do that is that we have a big four-hour block of time to be together. And we don't know what we're going to do. Right? We might go to the museum, we might go get some ice cream, we might go to library, we're not sure what we're going to do.
But I know what I will not be doing. I will not be checking my cell phone, I will not be on social media, I will not be answering work emails. I will be with my daughter, I will be fully present with her. So that has to be scheduled because she also knows when I'm doing my work, that's a time when I can't be distracted, when I can't be interrupted. Many people, the problem is they try and do everything all at once. And that satisfies nobody.
03:45
Now, you say you tended to blame everybody and everything else. And you also felt some shame about yourself and about your inability to focus. Where's the happy medium?
So there's a third way. So there's the blamer. The blamer says: this is happening because of things outside of myself, right? They're the victim there. It's social media. It's my boss, it's my kids. It's all this stuff outside of my outside of me. And of course, that's a that's a very victim mentality. That doesn't help you actually do anything about it. The shamer, they take it on the inside. They shame themselves. It's not that what I do is wrong. It's: I am wrong. That's a different thing. Shaming and blaming is something that I am somehow broken.
So the third way is to not be a blamer or not to be a shamer, but to be what we call a claimer. A claimer claims responsibility, not for how they feel, but for how they react to those feelings. So many people conflate a feeling with something they can control. And that's not true. You cannot control an urge. If you have the urge to check your phone, an urge to eat something unhealthy, an urge to smoke a cigarette, you don't control that urge. You cannot control urges. What you can control is how you respond to the urge. It's about having that toolkit ready to go so that when distraction and those uncomfortable urges rear their ugly head, we know how to fight them.
05:04
Because you talk about the fact that time management is pain management, right? So we're dealing with the pain, we're trying to avoid that pain. But we're not really dealing with the thing in the first place. Maybe if I'm distracted, it's because I'm unhappy. Maybe I'm not in the right place. Maybe I'm not doing the right thing. And I should deal with that in the first place, rather than trying to just, you know, do time [boxing]1.
Absolutely. Oh, so that is the internal trigger. That is the internal trigger. The internal trigger is: why can't I sit with my child without looking at my phone? The internal trigger is: why am I constantly wanting to do everything but the work that I get paid to do? The internal trigger is: Why am I trying to escape being around other people by having a drink? That's the internal trigger. It's absolutely the real deal. The uncomfortable work that many of us don't want to do of: What am I trying to escape?
Distraction is always an escape from an uncomfortable sensation: boredom, fearfulness, stress, anxiety, fatigue, loneliness. That's step number one, whether it's watching the news to worry about somebody's problems 3000 miles away, or, you know, a drink, or football or Facebook, it doesn't matter. You're always going to find a distraction. Unless you know what that deeper real problem is. And that's where we have to start.
You know, there's a lot of people who say, Oh, just meditate your problems away. No, I think there's many problems you need to get off your butt and fix for God's sakes! You hate your job? Find a new one! Relationships need mending? Okay, let's fix them. Let's do something about it. Not every problem can be fixed, right? Sometimes there are internal triggers that just come from being alive, that sometimes we feel crappy, that we feel like shit. And we can't always control those sensations.
So in those cases, we need tools to deal with those sensations in a healthy way that lead us towards traction, rather than trying to escape them with distraction. So that's why it's not about the activity itself, right? Work can be a distraction, it can also be very productive. Social media can be a distraction, it can also be great. It's about whether we do those things with intent, whether it's traction, and its according to our values, or it's a distraction that pulls us away from what we really want.
I think you've really answered the question I was asking all the time, without really getting to it.
07:29
Okay, I want to talk about the link between intrinsic motivation and distraction. You write in the book that all motivation is a desire to escape discomfort, which we've talked about. My understanding of intrinsic motivation is that it's not about avoiding external negative consequences, like punishment, but on the contrary, it's seeking things that interest us and give us joy. So it's different from trying to avoid pain, but it's really seeking joy. So how do you articulate the two things?
Even if I, let's say, it's the, the intrinsic motivation of I want to paint, I want to be with my kids, I want to take a walk. These are all things that, you know, many people find to be intrinsically motivating, and there's no prize at the end for doing these things. Even that—that urge, that sensation, that desire, that craving, that itch to do that thing—is psychologically stabilising. So even that is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort.
You know, we think about carrots and sticks and pain and pleasure. But I think it's a very, it's not a very useful metaphor. If we only do the things that feel good, we don't have a very enriching, deep life. Sometimes you have to have conversations that don't feel good. Sometimes you have to do work that doesn't feel good. Sometimes you have to make decisions today that are not so fun, but for a benefit long term, like eating healthy or saving money, right? We want to spend now we but we don't want to save. So it's, I think if we only look for the things that are pleasurable, we don't get the kind of life we want.
08:55
Yeah, there's something quite liberating in what you're saying... If we have to chase pleasure all the time, it's exhausting!
Right? It's unrealistic. It's exhausting. And I think it gives people a motivation to quit! Because they say, you know, I read a book on how to make habits. And I've been doing this, and this still sucks. It's still hard. I don't like it. So maybe I'm broken? Well, you're not broken. It's the methodology that is broken. Many things should not, and will never be easy.
I'll give you a great example. So I am a professional public speaker. And it's ironic because I used to have crazy stage fright. You know, this is what I used to say to myself: Wait a minute, if I'm anxious, and I feel horrible, and all I want to do is run away. Maybe I'm not really a public speaker? Maybe I'm not cut out for this! Maybe I'll never be good at this. Because look, if I'm feeling this way, this must be evidence that I'm not good at it because I'm not enjoying it.
That's not helpful. Right? So I changed my mindset. Now my mindset is when I do, when I am about to go on stage, and I feel crazy—the most anxious I ever feel is right before I go on stage—and my heart's racing: I change the script. I say that these physiological and psychological responses aren't my enemy. They're not signs that I'm somehow not cut out for the job. But actually, they're serving me. When I feel my heart racing, instead of the old bad scripts I used to use, I think to myself: Wait a minute, my heart is racing, because my brain needs more oxygen right now! So my heart is pumping faster to send more oxygen to my brain, so I can deliver my best possible talk, right?
10:28
When you say change your mindset, you mean talking to yourself?
Right, right. How we see these, how we see the world around us. I mean, there's no rule that says feeling sad is going to harm you. Or, you know, that's a bad thing. It's up for interpretation. So we can change that interpretation. That's what it means to change our mindset.
Do you think that is available for everyone? I'm trying to be really mindful, being aware of the privilege that I might have, and that some things might not be available to everyone.
You know, if you look at who struggles with distraction in many, many forms in their life, in my experience, it's not the person who has necessarily the most adversity. Many times it's the person with the most privilege, right? It's, it's the spoiled rich kid who blames the world for their circumstances. It's not the person working two or three jobs—they know what they need to do with their time and attention, because other people depend on them. The world has, in fact, forced them to be focused because their kids need them, their spouse needs them, their parents need them. They don't have the luxury of getting distracted. Many times it's people who have the world [...] at their feet, who can do whatever they want, who spend the most time spinning their wheels.
11:47
I want to talk about school. You say school tends to rob children of their basic needs for autonomy, competence and connectedness. And you quote psychologist Richard Ryan, who's one of the founders of self-determination theory. He says: "Whenever children enter middle school, whenever they start leaving home-based classrooms, and going to the more police-state style of schools, where bells are ringing, detention, that happening, punishment is occurring, they're learning right then, that this is not an intrinsically motivating environment." That's a pretty depressing picture.
So just like the internet is amazing, and also has some costs, institutionalised learning is amazing and has many, many costs. Self-determination theory tells us these three macronutrients for our minds, right? We need autonomy, mastery, and relatedness. And these are the three things that institutionalised learning takes away from children.
For some children, I won't say everyone, but for many children, I think it's very helpful to approach that with compassion--to realise, you know what, you probably wouldn't trade places with them, right? There's only two places in the world where you're told what to do, what to wear, what to think, who to be friends with, what to eat all day, and that’s school and prison. So how many of us would trade places with our kids? It sucks!
So it's not that all is lost. We need to compensate. So starting with understanding that we should give our children more opportunities to have autonomy, mastery and relatedness. One of the best things you can do, there's a magic solution that provides all three psychological nutrients, and that is free play. Free play is in severe decline in the industrialised world, children used to have time just to be kids. And today that's decreasing, because one—at least in the States—you know, children were or parents were told, you know, Stranger danger, never let your kid go outside because someone might kidnap them. And the media scared the crap out of everyone. And it's just not true. This is still the safest time in history to be a child. Kidnappings are rarer than ever. But parents are so scared, they don't let their kids outside.
Or—and this happens a lot in Asia where I am right now—kids are so hyper scheduled, right? They have the the Kumon lessons and the test prep and the Mandarin and the swimming and the ballet, they're so hyper scheduled that they have no time to just be kids, just play with their friends, without being told what to do by parents, coaches and teachers.
14:11
And what do we do about school?
What do we do about school itself? That's not my area of expertise in terms of how do we reform school itself. I can only, you know, give you a parent's perspective. What I do is we homeschool. So she homeschools in the morning, from eight to noon. At noon, we have lunch together and then the rest of the day, she plays with other homeschoolers.
But that's not a solution for everyone. The most important thing we wanted to give our daughter is the ability to be an autodidact. That's like one of my favourite words. autodidact is someone who can teach themselves. So the internet has given her the ability to do that in a way that we couldn't in my in my generation, right? I'm 44; when I was her age, there was no internet. We could not do that. But now we can let her kind of steer her own education.
There might be other ways to do it, right? Like maybe there are learning centres where kids go during the day and homeschool themselves, and parents can still go to work. Does it have to be: Okay, a bell rings and there's 30 kids listening to some lecturer talk about boring stuff they don't care about? Is that really, is that the best we can do? Maybe not.
15:15
You say something like: Surgeons don't leave the operating theatre when school calls because their child is sick. They make plans, they rely on a friend or someone else to go pick up the child. So why is it okay for that someone else, your friend or your spouse, to be distracted and do those tasks, and not for you? And what if I decide that this is a distraction I actually want in my life, that I want to be the person who is going to pick up my child?
You can definitely be a writer and a parent, you just can't do it all at the same time. All right? And this is what people, I think, where they go off track, is that they put too many expectations on themselves. They think: I'm gonna crank out this manuscript while I'm being an available, good parent. At the same time! I don't know how to do that. You have to make time in your day for an hour or two of writing, where your kid is not allowed to bother you, not allowed to distract you. And that means putting in contingency plans, that means putting them in day care, that means having a friend or neighbour take your kid for a little bit. That means putting in a plan in place so that you can do your, you know, few hours of writing. And then when you're with your kid, be fully with your kid.
16:30
So that's what you mean by time [boxing]?
Exactly. You can you can have it in the course of your day, right? The brain surgeon can come home to their family, of course, but the brain surgeon can't be with their family while they're doing the operation.
16:42
Okay, can we talk briefly about some of the tools you mentioned in the book? I can spend hours making a really pretty colour-coded time-blocked schedule on Google Sheets, but then I will never do anything with it.
The tools are cheap, right, the tips and tricks, that's the tactics. What's more important is the strategy. Once you understand the strategy, you can come up with your own tactics. So tactics are what you do, strategy is why you do it. In terms of your comment of: Oh, you know, I make a schedule, then I don't stick with it. So, it's a practice that gets easier with time. So I would start by planning just one day, right, just one day, maybe even a weekend. And it doesn't have to be down to the, you know, every minute increment. It can be you know, 20-30 minutes at a time is how you block out your day, maybe you have, you know, two hours or three hours to be with with your family, for example. You don't have to plan out what you're going to do that time you're just gonna plan out family time, for example, and then see what that feels like.
The right mindset is not to be a drill sergeant. The right mindset is to be a scientist. A scientist makes a hypothesis, runs an experiment, and then sees the result and then runs another experiment. It gets easier and easier over time. And today, maybe I spend 10 minutes a week, adjusting the calendar and it's, that's on my calendar too, by the way. Sunday nights at 8pm, I look at my calendar for the week ahead and I make adjustments accordingly.
18:06
We're reaching the end...
These were very thoughtful questions. I appreciate it. And I like that you're working with this stuff yourself. That's fantastic.
Thank you. I'm good at thinking about stuff. But you know, not necessarily putting them into practice.
One step at a time.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care.
Bye.
18:30
Thank you to Nir Eyal and to you for listening to our conversation. If you would like to find out more about his work and his books, Indistractable and Hooked, go to his website nirandfar.com.
This was the first episode of the Why Would Anyone podcast with me, Tania Rabesandratana.
For the complete show notes, go to my newsletter about intrinsic motivation. That's tania.substack.com. Finally, I want to let you know I am the recipient of the first annual Attuned writer fellowship. Atttuned is a psychology- and AI-powered platform that tracks and measures intrinsic motivation to boost employee engagement, drive performance and make work more meaningful. Find out more and sign up for a free demo at attuned.ai.
Thank you, and till soon.
19:39
Ends.
I use “time blocking” in the podcast; Eyal’s term is “time boxing”.