Clint Murphy  00:00

Hey there, welcome to The Growth Guide podcast. I want to start before we dive into in distractible, I want to go back in time to when you taught people how to distract us by designing habit forming products versus a professor at Stanford and then through the best selling book “Hooked”. While some people use the concepts to design apps that would make our lives better, a lot of people use them to pull us in and keep us hooked to their products. So the question is, what prompted the journey from hooking people to making them indestructible?

Nir Eyal  00:40

Yeah, so you’re starting off right on the backfoot? There? Let me correct two things you say, number one, I wasn’t a professor, I was a lecturer. So I just want to clarify that. No big deal. The second thing is a big deal, which is “Hooked” doesn’t distract anybody. That is not the point of using products to build habits. So the point of “Hooked” is to build healthy habits in people’s lives. And I talked about this explicitly, there’s a whole section in the book called the morality of manipulation. So this isn’t an about face, this wasn’t hooked and unhooked. We want to build healthy habits in people’s lives, to help them do the things that they themselves want to do. exercise more, eat right, learn a new language, which we can do through our technologies. And also, disconnect from different apps. Disconnect from watching too much television, disconnect from reading too much news, disconnect from using too much social media, whatever it is, they think, is causing them to go off track. But it’s not the same apps, right? Nobody is getting addicted to enterprise software. It would be great if they use that type of software, it would be great if we could get people hooked to exercising more be great if we could get people hooked to learning a new language to saving money to eating more healthfully, we want to get people hooked, right? Not addicted. There’s a big difference between an addiction and a habit. A habit is simply an impulse to do behavior with little or no conscious thought. An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on behavior substance that harms the user. So the book is not called “Hooked” how to addict people, it’s called How to Build habit forming products, because half of our behavior is done purely out of habit. So you have these habits, guiding your behaviors 50% of the time, whether you like it or not. And so the point of “Hooked” is to if we can build those habits, let’s build them for good. So that book was written not for the social media companies, not for the video gaming companies, they already know these techniques. Where do you think I learned them from I stole them. I stole their secrets, to democratize these techniques for the rest of us. Because I know so many of us most of the people in the technology industry. Our problem is not that people are overusing our products. That’s almost nobody’s problem. Our problem is that we build wonderful products, that people don’t give a shit about, right? That’s the sad thing that they would really improve people’s lives if they just use the product. And so that’s why I wrote “Hooked” is to help those product makers that are building the kind of products and services that would really improve people’s lives if we could just get him to use it. So it’s not a negation that I wrote in distractible. It’s a supplement. It’s an addition. So “Hooked” is about how to build good habits in distractible, it’s about how do we break those bad habits.

Clint Murphy  03:23

And that leads to this statement that you have which I loved and would love you to expand on for the listeners if you say in the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world. Those who let their intention and lives be controlled and coerced by others. And those who proudly call themselves indestructible.

Nir Eyal  03:46

Yeah, and we all see this as the case because we can all identify that the world is becoming a more potentially distracting place. If you think the world is distracting now just wait a few years. Because when it comes to virtual reality, and augmented reality, and all the stuff that’s happening in reality reality, there will really be this bifurcation that if you don’t know, how do you control your time and attention, it’s going to be very difficult to succeed in this world. I think the most important skill you know, my favorite word is the word autodidact, someone who can teach themselves. And the fact of the matter is, we are all going to need to upskill ourselves much more frequently because of the rising pace of technological change. But to do that, in order to upgrade our skills in order to learn, we have to be able to control our time and attention. But there are vested interests, media products, frankly, and I’m not talking about new media. I’m not talking about social media alone. I’m talking about old media, right? There’s something called news junkies. But Fox News and CNN and the New York Times are never going to tell you hey, stop watching the news, even though it’s involved somebody’s problem 5000 miles away, he’s got nothing to do with you. We all feel like we constantly have to be abreast of everything that’s going on the world. Everything is our problem. It’s not it’s not you have to find it. Your zone of influence where you can actually make a difference in the world. And I’m sorry, I can’t stop the wars that are happening in the world. That’s not something I can do anything about. And I’m sorry, protesting in the streets with a little banner is not really going to move the needle very much, it’s much better if you find what you can really do to make other people’s lives better, whether it’s your local community, whether it’s your family, whether it’s yourself, right. And so that’s really what I want to help people do is to do the things that they believe are important. My goal is not to tell people what to do with their time and attention their life, my goal is to help people do the things that they themselves want to do. But for lack of good product design, if it’s the case of making the products, or if it’s lack of the skills that none of us have really been taught, we haven’t been taught the skills, what was the class in school, that taught you how to pay attention. And that skill set is incredibly easy to learn, we just have to sit down and learn it. And so that’s what indestructible is really for. It’s for those people who know that they can live a better life that they know that they’re capable of more, but they keep getting in their own way. Because the problem what I found in my research, is that very few people don’t know what to do. Right? If you want to get in shape, you do that you exercise and eat right? If you want to have better relationships, you have to be fully present with people. If you want to do better at your job, you have to do the work that other people don’t want to do we already know what to do. The problem is we don’t know how to stop getting in our own way. And so that’s what indestructible does, it helps people do the things that they themselves want to do.

Clint Murphy  06:27

It’s the age old adage that pretty much anything is simple. It’s just simple isn’t easy to do, you have to be able to do it, which is what we’re talking about today. And interestingly, another adage that you always hear is if you’re going to write a book, only write a book if there’s really a compulsion that’s pulling the book out of you. And for you. You said it took you five years to write it. And part of the drive for that was because you yourself, want it to learn how can I be more in distractible, and part of that came back to a moment with your child and a superpower question that they asked you and you realized, wait a second, I’m too distracted. I’m missing what matters? Can you share how that drove the process that led to the book we’re now talking about today?

Nir Eyal 07:20

Absolutely. Yeah. So I only write books that I need. And so it took me five years to write and distractible because I kept getting distracted. I wrote this book for me more than anyone. And this is kind of how I process my struggles in life. So when I have a struggle, when I have a problem, the first thing I’ll do is I’ll write about, I’ll try and figure it out for myself, right. So just the process of writing is how I think and it’s I think it’s a very underutilized tool, I think a lot of people would find that’s a very effective tool to sit down and write through a problem. So most of the time, I would say I solve it that way. If I still can’t solve it, I’ll talk to my wife about it, I’ll sometimes talk to my friends about it. If I still can’t solve it, well, then I’ll go find books about the topic, I’ll go read as much as I can about what’s already been written. And most of the time, by then 99% of my problems and issues, I figured out, you know, through those three steps, what happened with this problem of distraction was that even when I read other people’s books on the topic, most of them said pretty much the same thing. It’s technology’s fault stop using technology so much. And they were written by some professor who’s got tenure in some ivory tower, who is really easy for that professors, they stop using social media will will thanks a lot. But for the vast majority of us, if I stopped checking email, if I stopped checking social media, my professional life is gonna suffer, I might get fired, my career is at stake. So that’s not really great advice. And here’s the thing, even when I followed that advice, even when I put my phone away, even when I actually decided to get one of these flip phones off of Alibaba, you know, the kind, we used to use the 1990s, these kind of flip devices, no internet, no apps on it. And then I bought a word processor off of eBay from the 1990s. With, you know, that no internet connection, you just type on it. And then you have to like connect it hardwire, connected to download that what you wrote. And even when I did that, even when I got rid of all this, suppose the distractions that are melting our minds and stealing our focus. When I did that, I found I still got distracted because I was sit down to write and I had my little, you know, flip phone and my word processor with no internet connection, and nothing’s going to distract me and no apps and no websites. And then I would say, oh, you know what, there’s that book on the shelf that I’ve been meaning to read, or you know what my desk needs to be cleaned up? Or oh, you know what, now’s a great time to take out the trash. And I kept getting distracted. And so what I realized is, there was something deeper going on that the reason we are distracted, we love to blame the device in our hands. But there’s a much more profound, interesting and empowering reason as to why we’re really distracted. So the inciting moment for me what really cemented my need to write this book was when I was with my daughter one afternoon, and we had this book of activities. that just dads and daughters could do together make of paper airplane flying contest, do a sudoku puzzle, all these little games, one of the activities was to ask each other. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim. But I can’t tell you what my daughter said. Because in that moment, I thought it was a good time to just let me just check my phone real quick for a quick minute. And by the time I looked up from my device, she was gone. Because I was sending a very clear message that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was. And she went to go play with some toy outside. And so if I’m honest with you, it wasn’t just with my relationship with my daughter would happen when I would say, oh, today, I’m definitely going to exercise and eat right. But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t, it would happen when I would say, Oh, I’m definitely gonna work on that big project today. But yet, 3045 minutes later, as opposed to doing that big project. Here, I was scrolling and surfing and texting and doing all the other things other than the project I said I was gonna work on. So if you asked me today, what superpower I think is most important, it’s the power to be indestructible, because there’s no facet of your life, your mental health, your physical health, your business, everything depends on your ability to sustain your time, your focus and your attention. 

Clint Murphy  11:07

And it seems to align one of my favorite words over the last couple years has been intentionality. So everything I’m doing is with intention, I’m not doing it. Because I saw something it’s, Hey, when I woke up, these are the five things that, like you like to say, that are in the calendar that are time blocked, these are the things that I’m going to do not a to do list which week, which I will probably talk about later, and so near, what you’ve done is you’ve laid out a method for steps and we have the shape of a cross we have a horizontal axis, we have a vertical axis, can you take people through what that looks like? What are these four pieces of the axes? How do they interplay at a high level? And then we’ll dive into pieces of some of them? 

Nir Eyal 11:56

Yeah, absolutely. So let’s start with defining what this word means. Okay, when we talk about distraction, what is that word really mean? And so the best way to understand if you know what something really is, is to ask yourself, Do I know what it is not? What’s the opposite? What’s the antonym? If you ask most people, what is the opposite of distraction? They’ll tell you it’s focus, right? Doesn’t that make sense? I don’t want to be distracted. I want to be focused. But that’s not exactly right. If you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is not focused. The opposite of distraction is traction. Think about it, traction, and distraction. Both words come from the same Latin root to Hooray, which means to pull. And they both end in the same six letters ACTA when that spells action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. We like to think it is right. My kids distracted me, my boss distracted me, the news distracting me, my phone distracting me. We think about it, things happening to us, it is not. Distraction is an action that we ourselves take. traction, by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do, no matter what that thing is, it can be playing a video game, it can be scrolling social media, it could be watching Netflix, we need to stop moralizing and medicalizing these behaviors. There’s nothing wrong with going on social media. There’s nothing wrong with watching Netflix, there’s nothing wrong with playing video games, if that’s what you want to do with intent. Do it, enjoy. Don’t listen to these tech critic, idiots that tell you you’re getting your brain is getting hijacked, and your attention is being stolen. It’s not being stolen, we are giving it away people. So traction by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. As Dorothy Parker said, The time you plan to waste is not wasted time. So do anything you want. Right? Who am I to tell you not to do it, enjoy yourself, but do it on your schedule and according to your values, not someone else’s. Conversely, distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do away from your values away from becoming the kind of person you want to become those are acts of distraction. And just because something is a work related task doesn’t mean it’s not a distraction. Let me give it a great example. A lot of people justify the distractions in their life. Because they think well, it’s a work related task. Right? I know I have to do that big project right now. But let me just check email real quick. Okay, let me let me just see what’s going on in those Slack channels, right, just a quick way to do it. I gotta do it anyway, right. It’s a work related to being productive. And when they don’t realize is that is a much worse distraction than going on social media or playing Candy Crush or something. Because when you’re doing that, when you’re playing some game, you know, it’s a distraction. You know, you’re not supposed to be playing Candy Crush at work. But when you’re checking email, here I am Mr. productive, as opposed to working on that big project that I said I was going to work on. You’ve been tricked. You’ve been duped because you don’t even realize that you’re distracted. You don’t even realize that you’re not doing the thing you said you were going to do. So just because it’s a work related task doesn’t mean it’s not a distraction. That’s the most pernicious form of distraction, because you don’t even realize you’re off track. So again, traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Distraction is anything else. Okay, so now we’ve got those two arrows pointing to the left and to the right. Now we’ve got these two bisecting arrows pointing inwards, which represent our triggers these this is what causes us to move towards traction and distraction. We have two kinds of triggers. The usual suspects are the external triggers the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment, that leads us towards traction or distraction. Now, even though this is what people tend to blame, right, they say, Oh, my phone distracted me social media distracted me, the news distracted me, whatever, all these things that come from our outside environment. That’s what we tend to blame. They only account studies have found that they only account for 10% of our distractions. So they are a source of distractions, but they’re only 10% 10% of time you check your phone, do you check your phone because of an external trigger? What’s the other 90% the other 90% of the time that you check your phone then studies have found this when we do these time studies 90% time you check your phone, you are checking your phone because of what’s called an internal trigger. What is an internal trigger? An internal trigger is an uncomfortable emotional state that we seek to escape, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety, stress, these uncomfortable emotional states that we look to escape with oftentimes distraction, right? Distraction. This is the fundamental lesson that I had to learn that distraction is not a moral failing. There’s nothing wrong with you, your brains not broken. Distraction is simply an unhealthy response to an uncomfortable stimulus, right on a some kind of uncomfortable emotional state. So the first step to becoming in distractible, whether it’s too much news, too much booze, too much football too much Facebook, if you don’t understand that emotion that you are trying to escape, none of the tips and tricks and life hacks none of the bullshit out there that people say works, none of it is going to work. Unless you first start with understanding how to master those internal triggers, or they will become your master. So that’s step number one. Step number two, make time for traction. You cannot call something a distraction. Unless you know what it distracts you from. You can’t have distraction without traction. If you don’t know what was the thing that I was going to do. What did you get distracted from. So we can we can talk about that. So that’s step number two, step number three, hack back the external triggers. So even though they only make up about 10% of our distractions, very, very simple things we can do to hack back those external triggers. And then for prevent distraction with PACs, which is the firewall against distraction, the last line of defense. And so these are exactly these, these four strategies you mentioned earlier, Master internal triggers, make time for traction hack back external triggers and prevent distraction with PACs. And if you do one small thing, one small thing from each of these four categories, you are well on your way to becoming indestructible.

Clint Murphy  18:02

I love it. And let’s start with the idea of the human psyche, because it reminds me I read a tweet that often, every you know, six months, I’ll put it out there and get yelled at by a lot of people. I simply say before you drink, do drugs binge Netflix, ask yourself what you’re trying to avoid. And people go crazy near but it’s really that point you make that it’s the drive to relieve discomfort that is more powerful than the old simple pain pleasure model that we’re all taught growing up. It’s this, Hey, I don’t want to be uncomfortable. So I’m just gonna go do something else. Instead of saying, Well, what is it that’s making me uncomfortable? And that’s why you talk about this idea that time management is actually pain management. That’s right. Can you expand on that concept for people?

Nir Eyal 18:55

Sure. Yeah, yeah, there’s almost this. For me, there was a matrix like moment, remember that movie, that part of the movie, The Matrix, where Neo goes into that room, and he sees the boy with the spoon, and the spoon starts bending on its own? And the boy asks, you know, imagine there is no spoon? What if there is no spoon? And then, you know, that’s supposed to be this, oh, my God moment. And I had a similar moment when I understood what neuroscientists have understood for quite a while that this model that most of us carry around that human motivation is about carrots and sticks. We’ve all heard this model, right? That motivation is about this pursuit of pleasure, the avoidance of pain. Jeremy Bentham said something like this, Sigmund Freud said something like this. He talked quite a bit about this. And we all kind of have this notion, right? It’s as simple as carrots and sticks, right? I want this I don’t want that. Turns out that that’s a nice metaphor, but biologically, that is not true. That when you talk to neuroscientists, they will tell you that is not how the brain motivates us. That motivation, the energy for action comes from one place in one place only. The carrot is the stick, just like there is no spoon in the movie, The Matrix. In real life, the carrot is the stick, that everything you do, everything you do, everything you buy, everything you crave every action you take, you take for one reason, and one reason only. And that is the desire to escape discomfort. All human motivation is about the desire to escape discomfort, even wanting right, even the reward. The carrot is the stick, craving, desire, lusting, hunger, all those things are psychologically destabilizing. The brain doesn’t get us to act based on what feels good, the brain gets us to act based on what felt good. The memory of what felt good is what drives us to feel bad in order to alleviate that discomfort, because wanting and craving is uncomfortable. So what that means therefore, if all human behavior, all human behavior is driven by a desire to escape discomfort, well, then that must therefore mean that behaviors around time management, require pain management, money management, is pain management, weight management, right? All of these things. 100% are all about pain management. And so that is the essential first step that if we don’t understand how to manage that discomfort, we’ll always be slaves to these sensations. 

Clint Murphy  21:22

And so it makes sense that a lot of the work that you looked at to say, Well, how do we stop these urges? Or how do we suppress these urges stemmed from smoking and drug cessation techniques in you looked at the work done by Becker, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, came up with a four step process for reimagining internal triggers, starting with looking for the discomfort that precedes the distraction, focusing in on the internal trigger, etc. And it can you take our listeners through like, what are the steps so that we can ease off that discomfort and not need that answer to get us away from it. And at the same time, it reminded me a lot of the concepts of thought auditing and the mindfulness practice of rain of really just exploring, what am I thinking? What am I feeling? And what do I want to do about that? How do I want to accept it? How can I just hold that with compassion? Instead of feeling a need? To do something to get rid of it?

Nir Eyal  22:29

Yeah, absolutely. There’s that joke in our community of don’t just do something sit there, right, as opposed to Don’t just sit there do something. Our natural impulse is don’t just sit there do something, I have to do something. Where does that come from? Fundamentally, it comes from discomfort. And so if we know that distraction is simply a desire to escape discomfort, like all other sensations, what we have to do is to analyze Wait, are we in motion? are we checking our devices? Are we getting distracted? Are we working on things that we shouldn’t be working on, because of its emotional pacification effects, or because I really want to do that thing. And so in order to have that kind of introspection, we have to slow down sometimes and develop this skill. You know, in order to speed up, sometimes you have to slow down, you have to go back to basics. And what many of us have done, we’re just on autopilot where we let our feelings direct our actions, right? I’m not really sure what to do right now at work, let me check email, email will tell me what to do. Doesn’t matter that that’s not the most important thing to be working on right now. But that’s, that’s what I’ll do. Right? So what happens is it gets you to focus on the urgent stuff, and the easy stuff at the expense of the hard, important work you have to do to move your life and career forward. So just because it feels like the right thing to do doesn’t mean it is. And so what we have to do is to break that association, we have to pause and build this new muscle of Wait a minute, why am I doing what I’m doing? Right? If I said I was going to do one thing, I was gonna go to the gym, and I’m not at the gym. Why? If I said I was gonna work on that big sales presentation, but now I’m checking the news or email. Why if I said I was gonna have dinner with my family, but I’m looking at my phone. Why? I tell you why folks, it’s not the phone. If you can’t sit at a desk with your family, without checking your phone for an hour, it ain’t the phone. Okay, it’s what you were feeling. And so we have to back up and ask ourselves, what is that preceding sensation? Is it loneliness? Is it boredom? Is it uncertainty? Is it fear is it stress, and when you identify that sensation, now you can do something about it. Okay, so step number one is identifying the preceding emotion, they will want to do if you’re, for example, in a work context, what you want to do is you want to have this distraction log, okay? So if you can simply write down that sensation, simply writing it down, it seems like a petty step. It’s okay, I know I’m bored. So it’s incredibly empowering. Just by naming that thing. You can start getting control over it, because then This feeling which your brain is interpreting as a dangerous signal as something that requires action, you realize, wait a minute, it’s just a feeling. And to me that’s incredibly empowering. You know, if you think about it, why don’t people accomplish a goal? You know what the number one reason we don’t accomplish a goal, all kinds of goals, business goals, health goals, personal goals, the number one reason people don’t accomplish a goal, of course, is they quit. Okay, that’s the number one reason why do people quit? What’s the number one reason people quit? The number one reason people would tell you if you ask them on surveys, I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t feel like continuing. That’s it. That’s it. You know, we talked about structural inequities. And you know, these problems and these, you know, the trauma and all this stuff we talked about, at the end of the day, the number one reason people don’t follow through something is that they don’t feel like it. It’s just a feeling, right? Happy, sad, uncomfortable boards, stress, it’s just a feeling. So to me, that’s incredibly empowering. Because that means it’s simply in our head. And when we have tools and practices to deal with that discomfort in a healthy way, we can overcome that discomfort. So what I do in the book is I don’t, I don’t give you a one size fits all solution, what I do is to tell you here are things that not only are backed by the science, okay, there’s over 30 pages of peer reviewed study citations. But all these techniques work for me as well. Right, you find that with most books, it’s either one or the other. It’s like, here’s a bunch of academic stuff, maybe you’re maybe not works in the real world, or here’s a bunch of stuff that worked for me, it’s gonna work for you. And I don’t like either one of those approaches. I like the hybrid approach of not only do I know this stuff works for me personally, and it’s backed by good peer reviewed research. And so I’ll just share one technique that I use, honestly, almost every single day, because I’ve been a professional writer for well over a decade now. And every time that I sit down to write, it’s hard, like, you know, people say, oh, I want to get into the writing habit. Well, they clearly don’t understand the definition of a habit, habit is a desire, or is an impulse to do behavior with little or no conscious thought. How do you write with little or no conscious thought? I don’t know what that means, like writing is hard, frickin work. And when I’m writing, it’s tons of conscious thought, all I want to do is, you know, go Google something to do some quote unquote, research or check my email or look on social media or do anything but the hard task of writing, it’s hard, right? And I’m sure everyone listening has that one task. They know they have to do to move their life and career forward, but it’s hard doesn’t feel good. It’s difficult. So what do I do when I feel that discomfort? Okay, when I feel that itch to go check email, or Google something, or read the news, whatever the case might be, whatever the distraction, that would take me away from what I said I was going to do, I use this protocol. So this is what works really well for me. And of course, this is also backed by I didn’t invent this, these techniques I’m about to share with you this is this is been very well studied. I use what’s called an acceptance of commitment therapy, the 10 Minute Rule, the 10 Minute Rule acknowledges that our sensations of these internal triggers, they crest, and then they subside, okay, they come and they go. But of course, when you feel those things, your brain doesn’t make that connection. When you feel angry, when you feel bored. When you feel stressed. When you feel anxious, you feel like you’re always going to feel that way. But we know logically sitting here when we don’t feel that way. That’s not true. They crest and subside. And so what you’re going to do is you’re going to tell yourself, I can give into that distraction, right? I can get into that distraction. But not right now. But not right now. So you’re not saying no, because one of the common myths is just say no, right? Abstinence. Don’t get distracted. Stop doing that. But we know that when you tell yourself No, it elicits what’s called psychological reactance. Psychological reactance is this rebelliousness that we feel whenever our agency and autonomy is threatened. So if your mom ever told you put on a coat, it’s cold outside or you’ve been micromanaged by a boss, that feeling of like, don’t tell me what to do. That’s reactance now the crazy thing is you can elicit reactance even when you are telling yourself what to do. That’s how crazy the human psyche is. So you want to disarm reactance, you want to tell yourself, you don’t want to tell yourself No, you want to tell yourself not yet. I can give into that distraction. In 10 minutes, that’s what’s called the 10 Minute Rule. Okay, not for 10 minutes, don’t miss it. Or some people misinterpret Oh, I can do it in 10 minutes. So here’s what I do. When I feel that itch of oh, let me just go check that one thing real quick. When I know I’m supposed to be writing, I will take out my phone, I’ll say set a time for 10 minutes, I’ll put it down. And now I have a choice to make. I can either get back to the task at hand. Okay, whenever I want. If I’m ready, I can get back to the writing. Or I can do what psychologists call surf the urge. Okay, surfing the urge acknowledges that if I can ride that wave of emotion like a surfer on a surfboard. By the time that emotion dissipates, I’ll be ready to get back to writing. So here’s what I do when I feel bored, indecisive stress, you know, is anybody going to like this article? Is this going to be any good? What’s going to happen to this? You know, when it’s full of these uncomfortable sensations, so when I feel that discomfort, I take a deep breath And I repeat to myself a simple mantra. Now I made up this mantra, you can use a different monitor, you can steal this one, if you’d like I say to myself, whenever I’m doing a task that I want to get distracted while I’m doing, I say, to myself, this simple mantra, this is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better. So just taking a few seconds to say that in my head, and I give you all kinds of other prompts in the book that you can use for yourself to see what works, what you will find is that by the time those 10 minutes are up, you’ll be right back at the task at hand. So you can get back to it. Whenever you’re ready to get back to work, get back to work. The idea is that you’re training yourself to weather that storm to ride that wave like a surfer on a surfboard. And what you will find is that over time, the 10 Minute Rule becomes the 12 Minute Rule becomes the 15 Minute Rule becomes the 20 Minute Rule. And you’re proving to yourself that you have agency, and that’s the most important thing. Most people never develop this practice of testing whether Wait a minute, if I have a few practices in place, am I a slave to these distractions? Or am I in control? And so by using this 10 minute rule, what you’re doing is you’re strengthening that muscle over time, and you’re realizing, hey, actually, you know what, if I just take a few breaths, I repeat the simple mantra, yeah, I can get back to work, I can get back to the desk without having to go get distracted with something else. And so it’s a very simple tool. By the way, not only do you can use this with social media or email, you can use it if you’re trying to quit that cigarette, you can use it if you’re trying to if you’re on a diet and you’re trying to not snack as much. This same exact technique will work with any distraction.

Clint Murphy  31:30

In essence, we’re building the indestructible muscle. So each time that we do that, and we go from 10, then we go to 12, 15, 20. And we expanded over time, our indestructibility is growing.

Nir Eyal  31:44

That’s right. That’s right. You’re the most important thing is that you’re proving to yourself this new identity. So I made up the word indestructible, right. So it’s a made up word. And indestructible is meant to sound like indestructible. It’s meant to be a moniker. It’s something that you are. In the later chapters of the book, I talk about making an identity pact. And this comes from the psychology around religion, that we know that when people have a certain moniker when they call themselves by a noun, they are much more likely to achieve the goals associated with that noun. So for example, when someone says that they’re a devout Muslim, okay? They don’t debate whether they should have that beer with dinner, or that gin and tonic because Muslims don’t drink alcohol. When someone says they’re a vegan or vegetarian, they don’t wake up in the morning, say, I wonder if I should have that bacon sandwich for breakfast. They know no, vegans don’t eat meat, it is who they are, it is part of their identity. So that’s what I tried to create within distractible that by proving to yourself I am indestructible, that is who I am. That’s part of my identity. Is that any different from someone who calls themselves a Muslim or a Christian or a vegan? No, it’s who you are. And so by proving to yourself through these actions, actually look at this, I am indestructible, I can live with personal integrity and do what I say I’m going to do.

Clint Murphy  32:58

I love that. And it’s very relevant right now, because nine days ago was national quitters day. So when you were talking earlier about distraction and quitting. We have January 12 is the day most people give up on their resolutions and apparently, pizza sales spike on that day. So we will help people last until at least the 13th and 14th and then they’ll go one more day each year. 

Nir Eyal 33:26

So, one of the benefits of creating a new word is that you can define it any way you want. So being in distractible doesn’t mean you never get distracted. Okay? So if you get distracted doesn’t mean Oh, that’s it. I quit. I can never you know, this method doesn’t work. No, no. The definition of being in distractible is that you are the kind of person who strives to do what they say they’re going to do. Everyone gets distracted from time to time, I still get distracted and time and time and I wrote the book in distractible because being in distractible doesn’t mean you never get distracted. It means that you learn from those distractions so they won’t happen again. So Paulo Coelho, had a wonderful quote he said, a mistake repeated more than once is a decision a such a such a mistake repeated more than once as a decision. So the point here is how many times can we get distracted by the same things? How many times we’re gonna get distracted? Say, oh, stupid social media and Twitter and the news. How many times do we keep getting distracted by these things? Before we say enough’s enough, right? We keep making the same mistakes. So a distractible person keeps making the same mistake again and again and again. Which is why I say those people decide to get distracted. Whereas an indestructible person says, oh, okay, okay, I saw what you did there, right? It happened once. I’m not going to let it happen again, because there’s only three causes for every distraction, an external trigger, an internal trigger or a planning problem. That’s it. And once you know why that distraction happened, if you take steps today, there’s no distraction you can prevent from happening tomorrow. 

Clint Murphy  34:56

And we’re going to work on that third one, the planning problem right now, if we go back early in the conversation, you talked about this idea that people blame getting hijacked. It’s my phone, it’s social media, it’s all hijacking. You said, No, you’re choosing to give up your time. Right? You’re making that choice. And like you just said, right there, you’re repeating the same behavior, you’re making a decision, you’re making a choice, and you’re giving up your time. So one of the things that it reminds me of when you write about this in the book is, is the quote that says, Tell me what you value. And I might believe you, but show me your calendar and your bank statement. And I will tell you what you value. And so how do you recommend that we use our calendar in lieu of or in conjunction with a to do list to say, Well, what do I really want to if I go back to the start of this conversation, what do I want to get traction on? Because if we don’t have that thing that we’re trying to get traction on? We aren’t actually getting distracted? 

Nir Eyal 36:06

That’s right. So yeah, to repeat this mantra of you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. So if you don’t know what you got distracted from, you have no right to say you got distract. Well, how do you know what you got distracted from? It has to be in your calendar. If you want to know what someone’s values are, now, you don’t ask them? What are your values? Right? That’s the worst way to understand what someone’s values are. Because they’ll tell you all kinds of junk, you don’t listen to the words coming out of their mouth, you look at two things, you look at how they spend their money, and how they spend their time. That’s how you know someone’s what someone’s values actually are. People say okay, what are your values? Oh, health health is number one health above everything. You got to take care of your health. Okay. Well, do you have time in your day to take care of your physical health? Your family family’s family is super my friends, my family? That’s number one that I my values are totally around my family. Okay. Have you planned time for your family? And your friends? All right. Oh, my business, my that’s the most important thing, you know, the strategy that we’re going to follow, that’s the most important thing. Okay, well, is that in your schedule, because if it’s not, if you don’t have a schedule, if you don’t decide in advance how you will spend your time and attention, I promise you, you’re gonna run real fast in the wrong direction. So this is where we need to go from a to do list mentality to a time boxing mentality. Keeping it to do list is one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity. Unless you pair it with a calendar, what most people do is that they write all these aspirations they have on a to do list, I want to write a novel and I want to start a business and I want to be a great father and I want to be a great mother. And I want to do this, I wanted to do all this stuff they want to do. But to do lists have no constraints, there’s no constraint, you can write more and more more and more and more things on a to do list. And so what happens with a to do list is that you come home from work, you feel like you’ve run around like crazy all day, you’ve worked super hard. And yet, you’ve got all these things that you said you were going to do, but you didn’t. So what does that do to your psyche? What does that do to your self image? We talked about that earlier, right? That the way you identify yourself? There’s all these things you said you would do you promise you’re going to do? You wrote them down? You didn’t do them? What does that make you a loser. So day after day, week, after week, month, after month, year after year, you’re reinforcing the self image as someone who doesn’t live with personal integrity, you don’t do what you say you’re going to do. You’re a liar. And so what we want to do is to break that self image because what you hear people saying eventually, after years of this stupid practice, I’m no good at time management or I’ve gotten probably have undiagnosed ADHD or there’s something broken about me, No, there’s nothing broken about you. There’s something broken about this stupid to do lists technique that to do lists have no constraints. So what you want to do is sure, get things out of your brain, put them on a piece of paper or put them in an app, that’s step one. Step two, is that you want to turn your values into time. I’ll say that again, you turn your values into time. You do that by asking yourself what are my values, okay? Values are defined as attributes of the person you want to become. Values are defined as attribute the person you want to become. So you have to ask yourself, I give you these three life domains. Starting with you, you are at the center of these three life domains. You have to ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend time taking care of themselves? Because if you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of others. You can’t make the world a better place. Okay? So before you try and improve the world, and you know, stop the wars and global warming and I’ll have to take care of yourself. Okay. Ask yourself, how would the person I want to become take care of themselves starting with some basics, sleep, right? I used to yell at my daughter all the time. Do you often get to bed at your bedtime? And then one day she said Daddy, when’s your bedtime? She was absolutely right. I wish I didn’t have a bedtime. I know how important sleep is right? We’ve read books about it. We all know sleep is important. But how many of us actually have a bedtime in our calendar? I do now I do. I didn’t used to And now I do so that when I have a bedtime at 1030, I know that okay, well, 10 o’clock. That’s my time to start my hygiene practice and showering and shaving and all that stuff I have to do, I got to do that at 10 o’clock so that I can back up the rest of my day, right? Do I want time for reading, reflection, prayer meditation exercise, again, I’m not telling you what to do. But if any of that stuff is important, if that’s something you value, put it in your schedule, then the next life domain relationships, if your family is important, if your friends are important, is that time in your schedule, so I have time for dates with my wife, I have time for play with my daughter, it’s in my schedule, I don’t give them whatever scraps of time are leftover. I put it in my schedule my best friends, we have regularly scheduled calls from now until forever, that are in the calendar, the third Tuesday of the month is my time to talk with Travis and Jeff, I talk to you on Sunday evening, that time is in the schedule. So we don’t have to go back and forth a million times, hey, when can we catch up, we know when we’re going to catch up, it’s in the schedule, because that’s one of my values. Finally, the work domain. When it comes to work, this is where most people start, they start by first putting in all the work stuff, I actually think that’s the last thing we put into our schedule. And when we do that, we need to realize that there are two kinds of work. We have what we call reactive work. Reactive work is the kind of work that most people spend most of their day doing reacting to emails, reacting to notifications, reacting to taps on the shoulder from clients and colleagues, I get that everybody has that in their day. The problem is that that’s a very psychologically easy place to be. Because all I have to do I have to go to my desk and I just have to wait for people to ask things of me. Okay, things coming to my email inbox, things coming over texts, colleagues asked for stuff. It’s very cognitively lazy, I don’t have to think about what are my priorities, my priorities are told to me by other people. And that is the recipe for being a loser. That is the recipe for being very mid. Because if you follow that formula, always doing reactive work, and it’s very habitual, right, it’s very easy to get into that rhythm of Okay, here I am at work, tell me what to do. email inbox tells me what to do other people without actually stopping to reflect and do what’s called reflective work, to stop and make that time in your schedule, to think if you want to have an edge over everyone in your industry, make time to think because I bet you 90% of people in your industry aren’t doing it. 90% of the people in your industry are doing 100% reactive work. They’re not sitting down to think to strategize to plan, the kind of work that can only be done without distraction. So yes, you’ve got to have some time in your day for reactive work. But make sure you have some time in your day for that reflective work as well. And you got to protect that time, as if it was a meeting with your greatest hero, right? Like if you’re sports hero, you’re you’re maybe you have a political hero, I don’t know. So imagine the most famous person in history wanted time with you? Would you make that time for them? Of course you would. And yet when it comes time for ourselves, I’ll get to it later. Right? I can skip that meeting with myself. No, you’ve got to have that time in your schedule and keep it sacred. Because Because you are the most important person in your life. So that time for reflective work is in your calendar as well. And what you will find invariably, when you do this exercise of making time for you, your relationships, and finally your work, you will find there isn’t enough time, there isn’t enough time, you will not be able to do everything. Yeah. And so this is the genius have a timebox calendar, unlike a to do list where you can always add more and more and more and more and you feel like crap about yourself. When you have a time box calendar. Now I’m forcing you to make trade offs. I’m forcing you to ask yourself, Okay, I don’t have time to spend the two hours with my kid that I’d like every day. Bummer, right? Because I need you know what’s more important right now than spending two hours of my kid making my business succeed? Fine. But I’m making you make those trade offs. Because every single one of us we only have 24 hours in a day. And I don’t care how much money you have, right? If you’re Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, you can always make more money. You can’t make more time time is a non renewable resource. You can always renew money, you can make more money, you can’t make more time. And so what you get at the end of this process, which it sounds complicated, like I’m giving a big explanation it actually you know, I spend literally five minutes a week on it now, I 8pm. Sunday evenings, I make my calendar for the week ahead, maybe five to 10 minutes a week. And I don’t think many people have experienced the sheer joy that euphoria that comes from doing what you said you were going to do i Seriously I think very few people like everybody needs to try this at least once in their life. Plan a day down to the minute in a way that you say to yourself boy, if I did that, that would feel amazing. Not what did I finish? Okay, this is a super important point another point on Why to do lists suck to do lists? Cause you are they make you measure yourself by how many things you finished? It’s all about checking off cute little boxes, right? That’s what it’s all about, check off the box, check off the box, right? That’s a really stupid way to do things. Because what would that incentivizes is checking off the easy stuff, checking off the fun stuff, the hard stuff, Oh, that’ll wait for a little longer, right? I’ve known people who will write something on their to do list after they finish it just for the joy of checking it off how stupid 100 100%

Clint Murphy  45:29

There’s normal people. And there’s people who do that, like you’ve already done it, don’t put it in the list, so you can cross it out and stuff. 

Nir Eyal 45:37

I didn’t want to say this, but I used to do that. Okay. But here’s the thing, when you use time boxing, that is no longer the goal. The goal of time boxing is not to finish anything. What did you just say? The goal of time boxing is not to finish anything? How can that be? When am I going to get stuff done? Here’s the thing. The goal of time boxing is one thing and one thing only. And that is to do what you said you were going to do not finish. But to do the thing you said you were going to do for as long as you said you would without distraction. That’s it. It’s not about finishing. It’s about working on that task doing the thing you said you’re going to do for as long as you said you would without distraction. That thing you said you were gonna do could be playing with your kid, it could be playing a video game, it could be watching Netflix, it doesn’t matter what that thing is, but do it without distraction. And here’s the kicker, here’s really the punchline here is that studies have found that people who measure themselves by that sole metric of did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction, actually finish more, they actually get more done than that to do list people. Why? Because when you just put stuff on a to do list, here’s what most people do, oh, they work on that thing for five minutes. And then oh my gosh, you know what, there’s that email I need to get back to, and oh, let me check my phone. And then let me do this. And then 2030 45 minutes later, what was I working on again, and so they have no feedback loop to know how long things actually took. And here’s where we have what’s called the planning fallacy, where we know that things take three times longer on average than people estimate. Whereas when you’re a to do list when you’re a time box, or when you do what I talked about in distract, when you say okay, I’m going to work on that task for 30 minutes, that’s all I’m going to do without distraction, I’m going to work on those slides, I’m going to commit this code, whatever it is, I’m going to just do this thing for 30 minutes. Now, you can say to yourself, Okay, I worked on this task for 30 minutes, I need to make a 10 slide presentation, I did two slides at a 10. That means I need five more time boxes of this slide to finish the project. So now I have a feedback loop. You can’t get that from to do lists, to time boxing, eats to do lists for breakfast, but it starts from Sorry, that was such a long explanation, it starts to bring out your values, how you will turn your values into time, and then committing to that time box calendar so that you can experience this euphoria of oh my god, I said I was gonna do that. And that’s exactly what I did. 

Clint Murphy  47:49

So when you’re working on your time box, and you’re thinking about, for example, work, and you talk about that person that just strikes off the easy things on the to do list, because then they get more done on the checklist. Do you ascribe to any form of let’s say, like an Eisenhower matrix format, where where when you’re adding something to the app, or the or to the To Do lists that are later that will later get time boxed? Do any sort of hey, is this important? Or is this urgent? And do you have a scoring system so that when you go to Time box on a Sunday night, and you look at the things that you’ve added to that list over the course of the week, you say, okay, here are the ones I’m going to time box, and here’s why I’m going to time box them? Or is that a bit second nature to you now, and so you don’t need to have that ranking and scoring system. So the beauty of making a time box calendar is that it forces the implicit results of the Eisenhower matrix out of you. So the Eisenhower matrix, again, is you’re focusing on things that are urgent and important that it qualifies them into four quadrants as a very useful tool. And if it works for you keep doing it right. Whatever is working, you can’t argue with success. If that works, keep doing it. But what I found is, when I make a time box schedule, it forces you to say, You know what, that thing that I really want to work on? That’s actually not that important, and not that urgent. But you know, it is really urgent that other thing.

Nir Eyal 49:14

So, implicitly forces you to think in an Eisenhower matrix type of way in order to essentially get the same results. But again, if the Eisenhower matrix works for you do it. 

Clint Murphy  49:23

So, for the person that’s listening, we must have said the word email at least 10 to 15 times in this conversation, and you talk about a number of ways to hack certain areas. And one of the ways you talk about is email. Can you throw out some ideas on how people can hack email to help them be in distractible and for the rest of the ones they can go read the book and figure out how to hack their way around the workplace and a number of other ways.

Nir Eyal 49:49

 We can look at that absolutely, yeah, email. When we do surveys of what technologies people think are distracting in the workplace. The number one most distracting to technology in the workplace is email number two, I was surprised I thought it’d be reversed. Number two is group messaging, right like Slack and things like you know, things like that. Turns out that email is actually the number one most distracting technology in the workplace. But it’s not the most distracting thing in the workplace. The most distracting thing in the workplace is other people, like tapped on the shoulder from your boss asking for that TPS report. That actually is more distracting events. But in terms of technology, people say email. So okay, what’s going on? Well, we know that about 50%, this was in the Harvard Business Review that about 50% of emails, the average knowledge worker receives did not need to be received, and about 50% of the emails they send did not need to be sent. So we are wasting a huge amount of time on email. And what we are doing is playing a heck of a lot of email ping pong, right? This email ping pong game of back and forth and back and forth. Because back to where we started the conversation around internal triggers. When I feel oh, my God, there’s a task that I need to do, and somebody is waiting for me to do that, that task to get them back the reply, that generates quite a bit of emotional angst, right? You’ve got social pressure, you’ve got anxiety, you’ve got stress, all these bubbles, these these uncomfortable feelings start bubbling up. So the easiest thing to do is to pop off a reply, irrespective on whether that reply is actually necessary, or if it is urgent, doesn’t need a reply right now. So when we find when we analyze how people spend their time, and how they waste their time on email, it turns out that if you look at the time wasted on email, not only is it that we spend way too much time sending and receiving emails that didn’t be sent, the place we waste the most time is not just the checking. It’s the rechecking of email. So let me know if this sounds familiar. You check that email on your phone and you read a little bit. Okay, got it. Okay, I’ll get back to that later. And then, you know, maybe 2030 more minutes later. Okay, let me check that email inbox again. Oh, yeah, there’s that email that I’ll get to that later. And then you keep doing this four or five or six times, who knows how many times until you actually do something with that email. And so that’s where we waste the most time that is unnecessary. So from now on, everyone listening, you don’t even have to buy the book to adopt this technique. The idea here is that you want to touch each email, no more than two times maximum. Okay, how do you do that? The first time you receive that email, you have to decide one thing, it’s not about what is in the email. The one question you need to ask yourself, is when does this email need a reply? Okay, so that should be the mantra going through your head every time you get an email? What’s in it? Okay, great. When does it need a reply? If it never needs a reply, go ahead and delete or archive it. Okay. But if it does need a reply, you need to ask yourself by when doesn’t need to reply. Now, a small, a very small portion of email, maybe less than 1% of emails actually need to reply right now. Right? Very, very, your house is on fire. So everything if your house is on fire, it was gonna email you. Right, they’re gonna call you they’re gonna find another way to reach you. So almost no emails are actually all my god right now. But how many emails do we pop off just because we can real quick and this Two Minute Rule? I know David Allen has this Two Minute Rule, I think it’s a bad idea. Because he wrote getting things done before email. He says everything is less than 100 minutes, just do every email. Most emails are less than two minutes. But you know, what, two minutes times 30 is an hour. You just wasted an hour on the budget two minute tasks. So I don’t like that rule at all. So the tiny 1% of emails that oh my god, your house is on fire. That’s a separate category, it almost never happens. But we think it happens a lot because of the psychological discomfort it causes us. I would say that, you know, in my experience, about 80% of those emails that need to reply can be replied to some time this week. And about 20% of those emails. For the average knowledge worker it needs to be replied to sometime today. So here’s what you’re going to do. You are going to when you check those emails, if they need to reply, you’re going to tag them by just one of those two tags, either today is one tag or this week is the other tag. Okay? Then what you’re gonna do is every day in your schedule, you need time box, you need to time box time for checking only emails that need to reply today those 20% of emails that need to reply today that’s the only emails are going to reply to that they are the ones that urgently need to apply some time today. And you’re gonna put in your schedule. And for me, I have you know, one block per day some people they say you know, but no, I need to get back to people more frequently no problem. Put three block time blocks per day when you’re checking email if that’s what you want. What I don’t want you to do is to check email whenever you feel like it. Right whenever I’m not sure what to do. Whenever a project is boring. Let me just check email for a second that is death that is productivity held. Don’t do that. Only check email when it is the appropriate time in your calendar when you have said I need to check and say oh yeah, but what if somebody needs me urgently? Okay, they can wait an hour. Okay. Like if it’s really house on fire type of urgent, they’ll find you another way. So you only reply to those emails that you reply to today. Now, what about the 80% of emails that you say they can reply to sometime this week? here’s the magic. Okay? Remember how we said that the Harvard Business Review said that about 50% of the email that you receive didn’t need to be sent and doesn’t need to reply. The magic of using this technique is that you will find that when you let emails simmer, when you just let them sit there, the ones that can be replied to some time this week, 80% of your emails that you’re receiving, can be replied to sometime this week, when you give them some time, what you will find is that 50% of the 80%, you will never have to reply to something, some other project will come up, they’ll be crushed under the weight of some other project, somebody else will chime in, and then you didn’t have to waste that time. Whereas otherwise, what most people do today is oh, I’ll just reply to what’s at the top of my of my inbox. How stupid is that? Right, I’m gonna let other people tell me what’s important. No, you decide this email can can wait for a little while. And then what are you going to do? For example, for me, I have message Mondays, every Monday, I have a three hour block of time when my job on message Mondays is to go through all those emails that could be replied to sometime this week. Does that make sense? So every day, I have a few about an hour for emails that need to reply today. And then on Mondays, I have three hours for those emails that need reply sometime this week. And I’m telling you, it works like magic every week, week after week 50% those emails archive archive archive, whereas if I had replied to them the day I would receive them. Yeah. Exactly. So that’s Well, that’s the email. Remember, when we talked about email ping pong? The number one rule if you want to get fewer emails, is to send fewer emails? Of course it is it’sits common sense. So we’re slowing down the email ping pong game by being thoughtful about when things need to reply either today, if it’s actually urgent, or this week, if it can wait for a bit

Clint Murphy  56:46

I’ll fire one more question it from the book and then a few rapid fire ones to wrap it up is this idea of the last step in this game is to make time for traction, hack back external triggers. Last step to become in distractible involves President preventing ourselves from sliding back into distraction. So to do that, we want to do pre commitments. And you talk about this idea of packs. For example, you have effort packed or price packed, can you clue the listener into what are we talking about by pre committing path? Is this identity based, similar to how James clear talks about becoming an identity based for creating habits as an example? 

Nir Eyal 57:37

Yeah, so I’m in James’s book, actually, I’m in atomic habits for this very concept. He’s a quoted me which I very much appreciate you. So first, let me say that this is the last of the four techniques, the techniques are not created equally, and that I put the most effective strategies first. So the first step has to be mastering the internal triggers, none of the other techniques will work unless you first and foremost have a practice for dealing with that emotional discomfort and healthy weight. Anybody can do it, you don’t have to go see a psychiatrist to do this, anybody can adopt these techniques. Step number two is making time for traction we talked about earlier, knowing the difference between traction and distraction by making a time box calendar. Step number three, hacking back the external triggers. And then finally, as the fourth step, the last line of defense, the firewall against distraction. This is where we can make these packs. And packs come in three different kinds. We have what’s called an effort pact, a price pact and identity pack. So an effort pact, put some bit of friction between you and the thing you don’t want to do. Okay, a price pact, inflict some kind of monetary disincentive between you and the distraction. And then finally, an identity patch we talked about a little earlier. That’s when we have this this moniker, this name that we use to identify ourselves by I am indestructible, it is who I am. It is what I do. That can also be one of these packs. So essentially, what we’re doing is we’re using these three types of PACs as the last line of defense don’t jump to this. So one of the techniques I talked about in the book that’s been a bit controversial but incredibly effective. Is this this price pact, where there’s some kind of financial disincentive to getting distracted? So for me, you know, I used to be clinically obese, and I hated exercise. I still don’t really like exercise. But I will say that at the age of 46, I’m in the best shape of my life. I have not quite a six pack, but maybe like a five and a half pack abs. And I’m not saying that to brag I’m saying that to tell you look even a very unathletic person I was I never made any varsity teams in my entire life. I was very I hated exercise, clinically obese. The reason my life changed in this regard was that I did what I said I was going to do so for me, what really worked was called the burn or burn technique. The burner burn technique is this technique I made up adapted from the most successful smoking cessation study in history, the most successful smoking cessation. His study in history was where people wagered some money in order to quit smoking that turned out to be way more effective than nicotine. patches and gum and all this stuff that people traditionally do to quit smoking. If there was some kind of money at stake, it was super effective. So I adapted that technique. I wasn’t a smoker, but I definitely did that technique to help me stay consistent with exercise. How did I do that I have if you still this day, if you go to my closet, I have on my wall, I have my calendar, okay, it says today’s date. And tape to the day is a fresh, crisp, $100 bill. And every day I have a choice to make. In order to move that dollar bill to the next day to progress to tomorrow, I have to do one of two things, I can either burn some calories, right? And for me, I made up these rules and you can do any way you want. For me, it’s I need to do some kind of physical activity every day, go on a walk, do some push ups, go to the gym, go for a swim, go surfing, whatever, do some kind of physical activity every day. Okay? Now, I can either burn those calories, or here’s why it’s called burn or burn. Because if I don’t do it, my other choice is that I have to light the money on fire. Like literally set it ablaze. And I have a Bic lighter right above the calendar on a little shelf there. If you take the big, lighter and light on fire. Now, I’ve been using this technique since before I wrote the book, obviously, right? I’ve never had to burn the money. I’ve never had to burn the money. That’s the point, right? I don’t need to burn the money. If I paid a personal trainer, that money is gone. Right? It’s effectively for me burned. I don’t have to pay a personal trainer. You know why? Because I do the frickin exercise.

Clint Murphy  1:01:32

I’ll just do the questions right there. 

Nir Eyal 1:01:34

I’ll go into why. Because for me, that’s what’s called a price pact. Right. And I oftentimes, you know, I talk to people who say, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The world is so distracting, right? These authors are telling me that the world is stealing my attention and hijacking my brain. It’s impossible can’t be done, right. Like, what are you talking about? And then I say, let me ask you something. What’s the thing you get distracted by? Oh, you know, I can’t seem to finish this presentation or I can’t seem to go to the gym. I keep getting distracted because of all these things. It’s okay. Well, let me ask you something. If I said, if you don’t finish this presentation, what’s your due date and the month okay, if you don’t finish this presentation by the end of the month, you’re gonna have to pay me $100,000 You’re gonna finish that presentation? Of course I am. Right? I talked about this in the book. This is how I actually finished in distractible, I made a bet with my buddy mark. For this exact thing. We bet $10,000 That I would finish the book. So not only did I keep by $10,000 I also finished my book. So we established you can do this, right? If you think about that hard goal that you’re just not able to do if you make the price high enough. You will prove to yourself that you can do it. Yes. And now. Now we’re just negotiating the price. Right? It’s all a matter of kids no matter of what the price. So using these price packs last okay, this is super important. Don’t jump into Oh, that’s a good idea near I’m gonna go do this burn and burn technique and get in shape. No, no, no, you first have to master internal triggers make time for traction hack back external triggers. As the last line of defense. Then you use these pacts.

Clint Murphy  1:03:01

 I love it. And that’s a beautiful spot to end on the book near it. We went pretty deep. We went pretty wide. Is there anything we didn’t hit that you want to make sure the listener gets?

Nir Eyal  1:03:11

I think if you were to summarize, my work on this book in the last few years is that the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. That’s really the message here. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought, that it doesn’t matter how persuasive the technology is, it doesn’t matter how fun the distraction is. Fundamentally, there’s no distraction we can’t overcome. If we plan today, we will make sure we are in distractible tomorrow.

Clint Murphy  1:03:33

And what are the best ways for the listeners to find you? 

Nir Eyal 1:03:37

Sure, thanks. So if you go to my blog, nirandfar.com, it’s spelt like my first name, NIR. So that’s nirandfar.com. And if you go to indistractible.com, that’s the title of the book. If you go to that website, there’s actually an 80 page workbook that we couldn’t fit into the final edition of the book it got too long. So we decided to give it away for free if you want that to get you started that Indistractible. It’s spelt I,N, the word ‘distract’ A, B, L, E so indistractible.com

Clint Murphy  1:04:01

And Nir, I’m gonna throw one Rapid Fire question at you to benefit the listeners, the show’s about growth. So I always love to hear from authors. What is one habit, behavior change or even mindset shift did has had an oversized impact on your life? 

Nir Eyal 1:04:23

That’s not a rapid fire question. That’s a tough one. But I will say for me talking about this a bit in the book about ego depletion. Do we have time for me to talk about that?

Clint Murphy  1:04:34

Yeah, for sure. It was on my list of questions. Oh, good. Yeah.

Nir Eyal 1:04:38

Yeah. So I used to have this idea that now I know. It’s called ego depletion. But at the time, I didn’t know it’s called that ego depletion. This idea that we run out of willpower kind of like you run out of charge of battery on your phone that you you spend it up, you spend up willpower. And even though I didn’t know that it was called ego depletion, I acted as if I was depleted. So I would come home from work after a long day and I look in the fridge for Have some ice cream and I’d sit on the couch. I’m spent, right? I don’t know if anybody else says that to those eyes. And it’s always all I used to send it to myself all the time spent. And I would say like, how could I possibly, you know, not eat some ice cream and go on social media because I’ve had such a hard day I’m spent. And that concept actually got some scientific backing when there was one researcher who did research that actually showed that we do run out of willpower, like gas and a gas tank or battery charge on your phone. And it got a lot of traction, people started using this term ego depletion to explain why we seem to run out of willpower until you know what we do in the social sciences. When a study sounds too good to be true. We run it again, we replicate the study. And it turns out that as far as we know, ego depletion is a myth doesn’t exist, that there is no such thing as this concept. That willpower is a depletable resource, except in one group of people. So Carol Dweck, who you might know from her book, mindset, she’s one of my research heroes. And she did this wonderful study where she found that actually, ego depletion does exist, it really is a phenomenon in one group of people. And that group of people are people who believe that willpower is a limited resource. So if you believe that you are spent you are and so that’s why I am on this crusade against this actively harmful mindset of these ideas like ego depletion, tech addiction, it’s the same thing. If you believe your kids are addicted to tech, if you believe your attention is being hijacked, if you believe your focus is being stolen, you act as if it is. And if there’s one message the big companies would love you to believe is that you’re powerless. Why even try? Right? I would love you know, I bet you you I don’t know if you saw this movie on Netflix, the social dilemma, they interviewed me for that movie, I’m in the credits, you can see my name in the credits, they interviewed me for three hours, I talked to them for three hours. And I literally gave them all my research. I was like, You know what, this is super important. A lot of you are going to see this movie. Here’s the solution. Okay, much of what I said today, of course, we did it for three hours as opposed to one, I gave them everything, every solution. And they didn’t put any of it in the movie, not even a second of what I told them was in the movie, and I’m not bitter about it, I don’t really care. But somebody in the movie should have offered a solution to any solution. It’s as if you go to the doctor, and the doctor says you have a terrible life threatening disease. And I have the cure, but I’m not gonna give it to you. That’s malpractice. And it’s almost as if the social dilemma was working for the social media companies. Because what that movie propagated and what people saying things like the tech companies are hijacking your brain are propagating is what’s called learned helplessness, learned helplessness. And this is done by this research is decades old, is that when people believe there’s nothing to be done, they don’t do anything. They’re powerless. Why even try? And you can train people into submission. When you say this, this ridiculous stuff like you’re powerless, like you’re addicted, like your brain is being hijacked. And so when you ask what’s changed most profoundly in me, it’s this realization, that our mindset that our self perception about our agency, really, really matters. It’s just like Henry Ford said, Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right. We have way much more power than we think.

Clint Murphy  1:08:16

And correct me if I’m wrong, ego depletion. Was that not one of the key concepts in Thinking Fast and Slow?

Nir Eyal 1:08:22

 I don’t remember if it was it was research done by Roy Baumeister, I think at FSU. I don’t know if Kahneman talked about it. 

Clint Murphy  1:08:28

I feel like it might have been in might have had the idea that that you take a little bit of sugar and it comes back. But it might not have been willpower per se, the example in Thinking Fast and Slow had to do with parole hearings. And if your case was heard, right before lunch, or towards the end of the day, you were more likely to not get parole. It was really, really sad. Yeah. And there’s that study,

Nir Eyal 1:08:51

Unfortunately, that book has not aged well. A lot. So that turns out that as well. It’s called priming that a lot of the priming research has not done well in the social sciences at all. Because it turns out, a lot of that is not so much the priming effects. It’s more the underlying belief effects that you might have going into it. 

Clint Murphy  1:09:10

Alright, well let that go with that. Thank you so much for joining me today. That was a pleasure.

Nir Eyal  1:09:15

Thank you so much.