Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #241 BITESIZE | How to Control Your Attention and Choose the Life You Want to Live | Nir Eyal

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

We often get distracted from the things that we want to do. Our plans get sidetracked and our work never seems to get done. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart.  Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.   Today’s clip is from episode 120 of the podcast with former Stanford lecturer, and author of the book ‘Indistractable’, Nir Eyal.  In this clip he shares some actionable techniques that will help you design your time, realise your ambitions, and live the life you really want. Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com.   Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/120 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 120 of the podcast with Nir Eyal, 120 off the podcast with Nir Eyal, author of the book, Indistractable. In this clip, Nir shares some actionable techniques that will help you design your time, realize your ambitions, and live the life that you really want. Why is being indistractable so important?

Becoming indistractable means you are the kind of person who strives to do what they say they're going to do. You value personal integrity. You know, we all know how terrible it is to lie to someone else. We would never want to be accused of being a liar to our children, to our family, to our friends. And yet the fact of the matter is we lie to ourselves all the time. We say we're going to do one thing and we do something else. We say we're going to exercise. We don't. We say we're going to do that big project at work. We procrastinate. We say we're going to be fully present with our loved ones and we're not. And so this was a very personal challenge that I took on because I had this problem. I was patient zero where I found

that I was getting distracted from the things that I wanted to do with my time, my attention, and my life. And so that's really what started me down this journey. So the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what it is not. The opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. That In fact, both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull. And you'll notice that both words end in the same six letters, A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you want to do with your time, things that you do with intent. The opposite of traction is distraction, anything that pulls you away from what you plan to do with intent.

So this is important for a few reasons. One, I think it frees us from this ridiculous moral hierarchy that a lot of people have that what you do with your time, that's frivolous, right? Checking Facebook or Candy Crush or whatever, that's frivolous, right? Checking Facebook or Candy Crush or whatever, that's frivolous. But me spending three hours watching football, that's somehow okay. In my book, anything you do with intent, no matter what it is that you do, even checking social media, even doing those things that you choose to do, as long as you are doing them with intent, because you want to, as opposed to somebody else is influencing you to do those things, there's nothing wrong with it. It's still an act of traction. The other thing that I think is really

important about this is that we oftentimes trick ourselves into thinking that something is traction even when it's distraction. So, you know, this would happen to me all the time. I would sit down on my desk and I'd say, okay, now I'm going to do that big project. I'm going to do that thing I've been finally, you know, procrastinating on. I'm finally going to do that big project. I'm going to do that thing I've been finally procrastinating on. I'm finally going to do that thing right after I check email or do some research on Google. And I would still not do the thing that I had planned to do. And so that is just as much of a pernicious distraction. So we've got traction, we've got distraction. Now it's important to understand what influences us, what prods us to either traction or distraction is one of two things. We have our external triggers. These are the pings and dings and rings, these things in our what influences us, what prods us to either traction or distraction is one of two things.

We have our external triggers. These are the pings and dings and rings, these things in our environment that prompt us to either traction or distraction. And those are kind of the usual suspects. Everybody knows those things. And we love to blame those external triggers, our devices, our computers, all of these potential triggers towards traction or distraction. But it turns out that a much more common source of distraction is that while some distraction starts outside of us, turns out most distraction starts from within. And so it's not just the external triggers we need to think about, it's what we call the internal triggers. Internal triggers are these uncomfortable sensations that we seek to escape. One thing that we need to understand about distraction

is that it is not a new problem. And in fact, Plato talked about it 2,500 years ago. He called it akrasia, this tendency that we all have to do things against our better interest. And it's a fascinating question if we think about it. Why do we do things we know we shouldn't do? And why don't we do the things we know we want to do? Why do we do things against our better interests? But I think in order to answer Plato's question, we have to dig a layer deeper to understand why do we do anything and everything? What's the driver of all human behavior? What's the nature of motivation?

is about some version of carrots and sticks. This is called Freud's pleasure principle. And so Freud says that everything is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. That's kind of most people's conception of what drives human motivation. But it turns out that from a neurological perspective, it's not exactly right. Turns out that all behavior is spurred by one thing, and that is the desire to escape discomfort. Everything we do is about a desire to escape discomfort, even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations. We call this the homeostatic response. So we know this is true physiologically, that when we feel cold, for example, we go outside, we feel cold, we put on a jacket, right? We put on a coat because that's not comfortable to feel cold. And if we walk back inside, now we're too hot, we take it off.

So that's physiologically how this homeostatic response works. The same is true psychologically, that when we feel an uncomfortable emotional state, we also turn to some kind of emotional pacification device to help us cope with that discomfort. So when we're feeling lonely, where do we go? We go to Facebook. When we're feeling uncertain about something, we Google it. When we're bored, we check sports, news, Reddit, Pinterest, all of these products and services cater to these uncomfortable emotional sensations. So this means that fundamentally, if all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort, that means that time management is pain management. That doesn't matter what kind of life hacks or the latest guru's techniques around how to manage your time in your life.

Fundamentally, if we don't face the fact that everything we do is about a desire to escape discomfort, we will always become distracted by something. I love this thing about internal triggers and this whole idea that we are using distraction to escape discomfort. I think it's very profound. Yes, it's about putting in strategies into our daily lives that actually can help reduce distraction, but ultimately, at its core, it's not like human behavior. What is it that makes us human? As many people say, being alive is pain. Life is suffering. And actually, you're making the case very beautifully that everything we do in life on some level is to alleviate suffering. If there is that deep level of discomfort that we're trying to hide from with spending too much time on Facebook,

spending too much time on Netflix, constantly checking email, eating sugar at every opportunity. You know, it's all actually, many of these behaviors are rooted in the same, same way. And I appreciate you saying that because at least I was looking for solutions, particularly for this tech problem. But you're absolutely right. I mean, distraction comes in all shapes and forms. There are things that we can do to get control over these internal triggers. You know, you can't control how you feel per se,

but you can control how you respond to those feelings. And instead of these feelings leading to automatic distraction, we can actually channel these uncomfortable sensations like stress, like anxiety, like uncertainty for good. We can channel that disquietude towards traction. So how do we do that? There's three big techniques. towards traction. So how do we do that? There's three big techniques. And the three big techniques are to first reimagine the trigger, reimagine the task, and reimagine our temperament. So reimagining the trigger is about responding to discomfort in a new way. Start by noting the sensation. We use what's called a distraction tracker. And what we want

to do is to identify the preceding emotion to that distraction. What were you feeling before you reached for your phone, before you ate that chocolate cake, before you procrastinated? What was the preceding sensation that prompted you to want to get distracted? Just writing that down has been shown to be incredibly empowering. Just writing that down has been shown to be incredibly empowering. The next step is to explore that sensation with curiosity rather than contempt. And then what we want to do is to surf the urge. Surfing the urge is this idea, again, from acceptance and commitment therapy, that recognizes that when we experience an emotion in the moment,

it feels like it's going to last forever. When we're upset, we feel like we're always going to be upset. When we're happy, we feel like we're always going to be happy. But of course, that's never true. That emotions crest and subside like a wave. And we can ride that wave like a surfer on a surfboard. One technique I use almost every day is called the 10-minute rule. The 10-minute rule tells us that we can have anything we want. We can give in to that temptation in 10 minutes. And this technique has been shown to be much more effective than strict abstinence. Strict abstinence says, nope, I can't have it. And of course, this oftentimes backfires, particularly with something that you can't completely abstain from, right? It's one thing to abstain from hard drugs and

you can remove yourself from the environment, for example, but how do you abstain completely from technology? It's very difficult. How do you abstain completely from food? We need it to survive, right? So instead of strict abstinence, which oftentimes backfires, when we feel the temptation to give into distraction, we can give into it in 10 minutes of surfing the urge and we have a choice to make. We can either get back to the task at hand or spend those 10 minutes getting curious about that sensation. So sometimes I'll pick up my phone. I'll say, set a timer for 10 minutes. I'll put my phone down and I'll just be with that sensation. And the goal is to reimagine that sensation in a way that serves us as opposed to hurts us. So what we find is that self-compassion is a very effective technique that when many people berate themselves, as I used to do,

I would tell myself how I'm, you know, this blaming mantra of, oh, I'm not good enough, and maybe I'm not cut out for this, and oh, nobody's going to like this. And, you know, that shaming cycle that we go through, instead we try and talk to ourselves the way we would talk to a good friend, right? We would ask ourselves, well, maybe I'm feeling discomfort. Maybe I'm feeling bored, anxious, stressed, whatever it might be, because this is the process of getting better, right? Getting better at something is effortful. It's part of the process.

Becoming indistractable does not mean we never get distracted. That's impossible. Becoming indistractable means we are the type of people who strive to do what we say we're going to do. And the idea is that we learn from when we get distracted. There's this saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So many of us, myself included,

I mean, I wrote this book for me more than anyone, I would constantly get distracted day in and day out by the same thing. Well, that doesn't happen anymore. Now, when I get distracted, I know why. And I can do something about it in the future. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Have a wonderful weekend.

And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.