Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How To Beat Distraction, Live Intentionally & Have No Regrets with Nir Eyal #685

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Why do we grab our phones the moment we feel bored, lonely or overwhelmed, even when we know it’s unlikely to help? Returning guest, Nir Eyal, breaks down the psychology behind distraction and reveals a surprisingly simple truth: the pull isn't coming from your phone. It's coming from inside you. Nir is a behavioural design expert who writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential. He’s a former Stanford lecturer and is the author of the international bestsellers Hooked and Indistractable, alongside his latest book, Beyond Belief. This is his third appearance on Feel Better, Live More. In this conversation, Nir explains the remarkable truth that only around 10 per cent of phone checks are triggered by an external notification. The other 90 per cent come from within, from stress, fatigue or discomfort we're trying to escape. We discuss why treating technology as inherently addictive lets us off the hook, and what to do instead: his easy, repeatable four-step framework for noticing your internal triggers before they take hold. Nir believes that the real opposite of distraction isn’t focus, it’s traction – a sense of being pulled towards the life you actually want, rather than away from it. And crucially, the same activity, whether reading a book, gaming or checking email, can be traction or distraction depending on whether it was planned. The answer to our scattered attention isn't to eliminate leisure and rest, he says, but to plan each day in advance around our values. We talk about children and screentime. Nir introduces the idea of psychological nutrients, the basic needs for competency, autonomy and connection that every child requires to thrive. When these needs aren't met in daily life, children look for them elsewhere, often in the digital world. Understanding this changes the conversation around kids and technology, moving it away from blame and towards something far more useful: giving children what they truly need. We also explore why to-do lists can make us feel like failures – and why scheduling your time (including your rest and leisure) is the antidote to distraction. Plus, Nir reveals why a small, low-effort commitment made in advance can be more powerful than willpower alone, when it comes to living intentionally. This is a powerful and reassuring conversation for anyone who’s ever questioned their ability to focus, worried about phone addiction, or who simply wants a more meaningful, values-led life.   The Thrive Tour: Transform Your Health and Happiness, a live show: Book Your Tickets https://drchatterjee.com/live   Thanks to our sponsors: https://boncharge.com/livemore https://drinkag1.com/livemore   Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/685   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

distraction is about escape from discomfort. So 90% of the time that you check your phone, it's not because of a ping-dinger ring, it's because of boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. We have to learn the source of the problem. Master internal triggers, or they become your master. Hey guys, how you doing? I hope you having a good week so far.

My name is Dr. Rongan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. Do you sometimes feel yourself getting pulled away from the life you ideally want to lead? Well, if so, today's returning guest, I'm pretty sure, will help you get back on track. Nehryal is a behaviour design expert who writes, consult and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential. He's a former Stanford lecturer and is the author of the International. bestsellers, hooked and indistractable, alongside his latest book, Beyond Belief. Now, the last time NIR appeared on my podcast earlier this year, we talked about how our beliefs

can hold us back without us realising. And one such belief might be the idea that modern life is keeping us distracted, stealing our attention away from valuable pursuits with its phones and notifications and algorithms. But as NIR sets out beautifully in this episode, we do have more control over our time and our minds than we might think. You see, Nair believes that the real opposite of distraction isn't focus, it's traction, a sense of being pulled towards the life you actually want, rather than away from it.

Nia has a wonderful way of presenting ideas about psychology and human behavior in a way that you can use immediately. In our conversation, he explains why it's not addictive technology that's distracting you, but your own internal triggers. You'll learn his four-set framework for becoming indestructible, his 10-minute rule to quash impulsivity, and why to-do lists can often sabotage your own. productivity and what to do instead.

We also talk about the difficulties many of us face raising children in a hyper-connected world, why kids turn to screens when they're missing psychological nutrients offline, and what that means for parents. NIR's central idea is that distraction is not a moral failing, but actually an impulse control problem instead. And by the time you finish listening, you're going to have a clearer sense of your own patterns around distraction. And some simple, practical tools for interrupting them. You have previously said that avoiding distraction is the key to not living with regrets.

Now, many people near as I get older start to feel a lot of regret about the things they have done or the things they haven't done. If avoiding distraction is the key to a regret-free life, how do we avoid distraction? And why should we avoid regret? What's so terrible about regret? That's kind of been my goal with my writing, is the deeper I go into thinking through these topics, that's what I'm working towards, is how can I look at the future with systems in place so that when I look back at my past, I don't say, oh, should have could avoid it. That's what I'm really trying to avoid. I don't want on my death pad to say I should have spent more time with friends. I should have invested more in my kids. I should have started that business. I should have done this or that.

I want to look back and say, I live my life the way I wanted to on my terms. That's really my goal. And so if that's your goal, it doesn't have to be everybody's goal, but that's my goal is to live a great life, then the way we make sure that we do that. What makes us more likely to live without regret is that we plan each day the way we want to spend it. And I think that so few people have experienced the bliss, the joy of even one single day spent the way they wanted to live their life. It's the best. Yeah, it's really interesting. First of all, who would not want to live intentionally, which I guess is what you're proposing for us?

And if I think about your three books hooked sort of teaching us about how do we get addicted to things, how to get addicted to things, how to companies get us hooked on things. Indistractable, which I want to talk about today, how do we control and focus our attention on what really matters? And I guess even your third book, Beyond Belief, which we spoke about a few months ago, this idea that it's limiting beliefs that hold us back from living the life that we want. There is kind of this unifying theory that I think sits above all of them, which is how do you live an intentional life? Yeah. Yeah. It's not necessarily the most freedom. I don't know about you, but the days where I have the most freedom, where I don't have any plans and you think, oh, that's, that's luxury, that's what I will

made it. When I retire, I'll be able to do what I want all day. I don't find those days to be very satisfying. You know, those are the days when I waste scrolling too much or, you know, I'll get to that later, or I putts around. I do all kinds of things that I didn't really want to do. So it's not as, it's not just saying I want freedom. That's not exactly right. It's living according to your values. So what are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become. Values are attributes of the person you want to become. And so the secret here is to turn your values into time.

And if you want to know what someone's values really are, if you ask them, they'll lie to you. Not because they're malicious, but because they don't know themselves. They'll say things like, oh, you know, it's very important to me to be a good father or to be a good friend or to take care of my health. Oh, nothing comes, nothing more important than how. health or to be learned, you know, to rebooks, to have more wisdom. But there's really two places

to look if you want to know someone's values. You look at how they spend their money and how they spend their time. The problem is that I think we have our relationship with those two things a little bit backwards. You know, we spend so much mindshare on saving money. We clip coupons, we split checks, we look for sales and deals. We spend so much effort to save a buck. But when it comes to our time, just give it away, right? Whatever stupid cat video, whatever silly thing in the news, it's got nothing to do with us, whatever gossip around the water cooler, yeah, take it, take it, take it, take my time. But it should be exactly backwards. We should be stingy with our time and generous with our money. Why? Because you can't make more time. You can always make more money. You can always make more money, right? You cannot make more time. I don't care

if you're Elon Musk or Bill Gates, you can't make more time. It is a finite resource. Once it's gone, it's gone. That's And so we need to be stingy with our time because we cannot make more of it. And so by thinking very carefully about how we are going to spend our time, now that requires a bit of thinking. But I think it's really important to understand what distraction is, you know, back to that quote around how that's the secret to not living with regret is to avoid distraction. Well, what is distraction? The best way to understand what distraction is to understand what distraction is not.

What's the opposite of distraction? Most people tell you that the opposite of distraction is focus. They want to be focused. Not true. That if you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is not focused. The opposite of distraction is traction. Makes perfect sense when you look at both words side by side. Traction, dis traction.

They're opposites. They both come from the same Latin root, Trajare, which means to pull. And they both end in action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. We like to blame our phones, our kids, you know, the beeps. the boobs, the buzzes, all the things outside of us. But these are actions that we take. Now, things that happen to us, actions we take. So by definition, traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do.

Things that move you closer to your values, help you become the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. The opposite, distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your goals, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become. Now, the important thing here, is that the dividing line between traction and distraction is not the behavior itself. It's not, oh, social media bad and reading books good. That's silly, right? Anything you want to do with your time and attention is fine as long as you do it on your schedule and according to your values, not someone

else's. I love this Dorothy Parker quote. She said, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time. So give us a break here. You want to go on YouTube? You want to listen to a podcast? You want to play video games, awesome, do it. There's nothing wrong with any of that. Stop vilifying that stuff. Rather, as long as you have planned for it, in advance, it's traction. Conversely, this is what used to get me, is that I would go into the office and I'd say, okay, I'm going to, I'm not going to get distracted, I've got that big project I need to work on, nothing's going to get in my way, I'm going to focus, let me just, you know, just do that thing on my to do list, let's get to work, I'm just going to do that. But first, let me check some email.

Let me scroll that Slack channel. Let me just see what's happening in the news. I have to do that stuff. That's part of my job. I have to check email. That's why I get paid. That's part of my job responsibility, right? But if it's not what you plan to do in advance,

it's just as much of a distraction. In fact, I would argue it's even worse than what we think of as distraction. Because if you're playing video games at work, if you're playing Candy Crush or something on the job, you know you're not supposed to be doing that. But when you check email, because that's a productive thing,

to do. Meanwhile, you've got this big project you said you were going to work on, that's even a worse distraction. It's the same thing. But one of them we think is okay and one, oh, you know, we know that that's, you know, in averse comma, bad. Right. It's kind of interesting. That quote, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time. It's peaceful. It makes me think of something I've just been sitting with for a couple of years now, this idea that there's no such thing as wasted time. Wrong and you spend time. And if you reflect and you realize that that wasn't the best use of your time, you can change that. But I guess where people would say that they've wasted time probably comes down to the fact that they weren't intentional. So that perception is that that was a

waste because it wasn't one I planned to. And I guess the other thought that comes to mind is so many people these days struggle to switch off at weekends. People often these days feel guilty for doing nothing. And I wonder if I look at it through your framework, I wonder if that's because they have this belief that they should always be doing something. And therefore, if they're just sitting in the sun, we've had a beautiful few weeks of weather in the UK, right? If you're just sitting in the garden, like I did last weekend, literally doing nothing, but baking in the sun, having a cup of tea, playing on my kids, or just sitting there going, How wonderful is this, right?

It's only a waste. It only feels as so you haven't done what you should be doing if you have this kind of background belief that that doesn't count. Right. I think that proves this point around why the differentiating word between traction and distraction is intent. That's the difference. Because if you spent the time the way you wanted to,

and we need to stop vilifying the technology, You know, the knee-jerk reaction is whatever distracted me, whatever caused the distraction, that must be to blame, right? It's my phone. It's what's on the news. It's my kids. It's my boss. It's all this stuff outside of me.

That's what caused the distraction. That's not true. That if you want to do those things, you know, if you want to spend time on social media on your schedule and according to your values, there's nothing wrong with that, right? But we jump to that conclusion because it's very satisfying in many ways. Right? If you think about it, the word addiction, when people say, I am addicted to technology. You know, I would love to spend time with my kids. I would love to, you know, work on that book. I would love to start the business. But, you know, these algorithms, these algorithms, they've got my brain. I'm addicted.

The word addiction comes from Latin addictio, which means slave. And so the part that you, the logical step that you took of I chose to do this. And if it didn't serve me, if I regret it, I can do something about it next time. That is the key. Most people, they say, well, what can I do? There's nothing to be done. And of course. You're a slave to that external thing. And you don't want to know the secret? The tech companies love it when you do that. They love it when you call technology addictive.

That, you know, we're all puppets on a string and they've got us by the brains and there's nothing we can do about it. Well, can I make it? I don't know what you're going to say next, but I wonder if I could make a guess based upon the kind of framework in Beyond Belize. is part of why they love it because then we are reinforcing a belief within ourselves that we are powerless. Exactly. Yeah.

You're giving, so there's titles out there, you know, things like stolen focus, this book stolen. They didn't steal your focus. You gave it away. Now, it doesn't mean these products aren't built to be habit-forming. I wrote the book hooked. I know exactly how they get you hooked.

I know all their tricks. good. They're good. They're not that good. There's a sociality there, isn't there? They're not inherently addictive if not everyone is getting addicted to them. There's some, there has to be another factor. So addiction has a very special definition. An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms the user. There has to be harm. There has to be a consistent dependency. There's lots of things that we use that some people would meet that definition of overuse and abuse that most of us don't, right? So for some people it's addictive.

That's right. We have a glass of wine. We're not all alcoholics. We have sex. We're not all sex addicts. So clearly, it's not as simple as just saying it's the product. The product is the proximal cause. It's not the root cause.

Where we do have people who suffer from addiction is because addiction is a confluence of three things. You need the person, the problem, and the product. It's these three things at the same time. So if you have just the product, okay, let's. take alcohol. Some people can have a glass of wine. They don't get addicted. They have a glass or two, and that's that. But if you combine the product, let's say alcohol, with the person who has a predilection towards addiction, maybe they're, that's how they deal with their problems. And now

they're faced in an environment where that becomes the outlet to deal with these uncomfortable sensations. Now it can become an addiction. And so I think even if you're not addicted, this reveals something super important to all of us. You know, we talked about traction and distraction. What prompts us towards distraction? We've got two kinds of triggers. We have external triggers. These are the usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings, all these things in our outside environment. Those are external triggers.

That's what we tend to blame, right? We tend to blame the things outside of us. Studies have found, however, when we do these time tracking studies and we see how many times people use their phone and why they use their phone, only 10% of the time that you check your phone, 10% is it because of a ping-dinger ring. 10% an external trigger. So it's part of the problem. It's only 10% of the problem. What's the 90%?

Did you know that 90% of the time that you check your phone? And if you actually monitor your behavior, you'll see this is true. 90% of the time, it's not because of a ping-dinger ring. It's not because of an external trigger. It's because of an internal trigger.

Yeah. It's because of boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. It's about this uncomfortable emotional state. So distraction is about an escape from discomfort. it always. It's an emotion deregulation, dysregulation problem. So when it comes to

addiction, that's when it's really the extreme version. So most of us are not addicted. Turns out about 3 to 5% of the population is addicted to one thing or another. But the vast majority of us are not addicted. We are just distracted. So there's a big, big

difference between the two. So when we kind of use this language to say, well, there's nothing we can do. We're all addicted. These products are built to be addictive. And this reinforces the narrative that the tech companies want

because when you believe there's nothing to be done, guess what? You do nothing. Yeah. You give up. It's disempowering. Right. Whereas, you know, there's some very simple steps. There's four steps now.

So we talked about traction, distraction, internal triggers, external triggers. Now we just work around those four points. So these are the four steps that anyone can use, even neurodivergent people. I've been diagnosed with ADHD. It's very, it's pretty simple. It's not easy, but it's simple, right?

Everything worth having on life is on the other side of heart. So I'm not going to say it's super easy, you know, snap your fingers and it happens. It's going to take a little work, just like having a good relationship take work, takes work, having a great podcast takes work, raising a great family, starting a business. It's going to take a little work. But anyone can do it. Step number one, master internal triggers. If 90% of our distractions, whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much

Facebook, if 90% of the time that we get distracted and do something that we later regret is because we're trying to escape discomfort, we have to learn the source of the problem. So step number one, master internal triggers or they become your master. Step number two, make time for traction. We talked earlier about how you have to turn your values into time. I can't tell you how many people have told me before, you know, the world's so distracting these days and social media this, and I can't concentrate that and you see what's happening in the news. And I say, wow, that's really sounds terrible, you know, show me what you got distracted from. What did you plan to do that you got distracted from? Show me your calendar. They said, oh, my calendar? Well, yeah, here it is. And I look at

their calendar and they've got, like, maybe a dentist appointment, right? A couple meetings. The rest of their calendar's blank. Here's the thing. You can't say you got distracted if you don't know what you got distracted from. If your calendar is big open white space, everything is a distraction. So you have to start doing what's called TimeBox, which we can talk about. The third step is to hack back the external triggers, even though they only account for about 10% of our distractions. Very, very simple things that we can do,

make your phone indistractable. I only devoted one page in my book to how to make your phone and distractible. It's pretty darn simple. It takes a few minutes. That's the simple stuff. The more complicated stuff are the stupid meetings that are nothing but distractions.

The emails that pile up, you know, HBR study found that 50% of the emails that the average knowledge worker gets, and 50% of the emails the average knowledge worker sends, they did not have to get or send. So a huge amount of distraction with day-to-day email. And then fourth and final step is preventing distraction with PACT. And we can talk about that.

A Pact is when we have a firewall against distraction. So with those four steps, anyone can become indistractable. Yeah, I love that. I really like this framework, and I definitely want to go through it with practical tools to people. So let's just repeat it, to make sure I got it. So step one, master internal triggers.

Step number two, making time for traction. Perfect. Three, it's to do with the external environment. So, oh, hacking back the external triggers. And four is preventing distraction with pets. Beautiful. You're a quick study. Yeah, well, I've done my research as well. Okay, so it's not just in the moment.

It's impressive. I want you to go through tools, but I wonder if I could put something to you. Okay, so I love this idea that 90% of our triggers are internal. I agree with that. And I guess this would very much fit alongside a lot of kind of religious or philosophical or spiritual teachings about, you know, sitting with yourself,

experiencing uncomfortable emotions, not jumping to distract yourself from, sit with them, allow them to be. Meditation for some people can be a wonderful way of learning about themselves and learning what are they feeling and experiencing. Because of course, if people are constantly outside of themselves on devices,

maybe unintentionally, they're not paying attention, right, to what's going on. Let's look at us through the lens of sugar, for example, right? It's something that I have helped many patients with over the last couple of decades. For me, there are sort of two ways to look at it. One is what would be the desired and ultimate long-term goal and what's going to be practical, right, in the short term. So in the short term, there are certain things that we can do,

like don't bring things into your house that you don't want to eat. So that's almost like step three, isn't it? That is basically hacking back the external triggers. Right. Right. So you're saying, you know, I would often say, don't use up your willpower in the house, okay? But that's only one part of a four-part model, right?

And it's step three. And it's step three. Step one is more important. Agreed. And so I also had this little exercise called the three Fs that I would teach people that goes beyond sugar. But I'd love to sort of explain it to you and then look at it through the lens of your model,

because I think some of it will map. For sure. And the three Fs are feel, feed, fines. Okay, okay. So I would say to patients, okay, right? So you've eaten well all day, and it's 9 p.m. at night, and you're sat in front of Netflix, and you feel like having ice cream. Okay, right.

Let's supply the three Fs. Now, before you go to the kitchen and get the ice cream out, and before you know, the spoons in your gob, As you saw the first step, what am I really feeling? So you take a pause. Is this physical hunger or is this emotional hunger? Oh, okay. Actually, you know what?

I only ate half an hour ago. I'm not physically hungry. I'm just a bit irritated. I'm a little bit stressed, whatever it might be, okay? And then if you want to go and have it, have it. Sure. But at least you've started the process of identifying what's really going on, which I kind of feel is your number one.

I wouldn't say that's necessarily mastering internal triggers, but it's certainly becoming aware of your internal triggers. Step two is, which you can do at the same time, or the next time you are trying to avoid eating ice cream in front of Netflix, could be you go to that first F again, what am I really feeling? The second F is feed. How does food, or how does ice cream, feed that feeling?

So I'm feeling stressed. When I have the ice cream, at least temporarily, I feel less stressed. Okay, so now you were going, oh, you know what, that's why I can't stop it, because it's my way of managing stress. And then the third F is find, now that you know the feeling, let's say it's stress, now that you know how food or ice cream feeds that feeling, which is it helps you feel less stress in the moment, then the third of is can you find an alternative behavior to feed that feeling? So let's say you're feeling stressed. Instead of going to ice cream, what else could you do?

Well, maybe you could do some yoga if that's what you like. You know, five minutes of yoga can also help you alleviate stress. Maybe if you were feeling lonely and ice cream is your little treat to yourself, well, maybe you could pick up your phone and phone your friend, right? If you have not had any time to yourself all day and that's your little treat for you, maybe you can treat yourself by running a bath, right? So I found over the years this 3F framework really, really helpful for people to help understand the true cause of what was going on.

And I kind of feel that, well, I put it to you, what is your take on that? Because I think there are elements of your four-part model within that 3F framework. So under this first step of mastering internal triggers, there are lots of different tools. And so I advise folks... This episode is sponsored by Bon Charge.

Now, one of the most underappreciated aspects of health and well-being is recovery. Many of us, I think, can be quite good now at doing certain things that are good for us, like going for a run or working out in the gym. But I find that many people these days have forgotten to prioritise rest and relaxation, which is really important for things like our immune system, reducing stress levels, and to help promote better sleep. Now, I personally have been using Bond Charred Wellness Products in my house for around six years now, and they have a variety of options for you to help you prioritize your recovery whilst you are at home, depending, of course, on your specific needs, desires and budget. Over the years, I personally have enjoyed

using their infrared sauna blankets, which I often used after playing paddle to speed up my recovery, their P-E-M-F blankets, and also their red light therapy devices, which I really like. And I'm looking forward to trying out their brand-new red-lights blanket, which provides full-body red light therapy to help soothe tired muscles and support post-workout recovery. Boncharge are giving my audience 20% of all their products. All you have to do is go to boncharge.com and use code live more at checkout to save 20%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com and use code Live More to save 20%. So under this first step of mastering internal triggers, there are lots of

different tools. And so I advise folks, whatever works for you keep doing. And what's going to work for some people is not going to work for others. So, you know, as a former fat person, I used to be clinically obese, not just overweight, but clinically obese. I remember going to the doctor and the doctor saying, okay, here's the green zone, here's yellow, this is overweight, here's you, you're in the red, you're obese. And I think what changed my life was understanding why I ate. I wanted to believe, I would tell people that I overate and I was overweight because the food industry, you know, the food industrial complex and McDonald's is making me fat and that's why. Or, you know, it's really hard for a person who's overweight to get proper exercise and move like other people.

And, you know, I don't know about the factfulness of all that. I don't know what's true. What's not there? That's not really the point. The point is when I got to the real root of the problem and, And this is the part that your brain hates doing, right? The brain hates changing its mind. And when I was able to actually look at my behaviors clearly

of why was I overeating, I didn't overeat because food is delicious. I over ate because I was bored. I over ate when I was lonely. I would overeat the worst when I was ashamed about how much I had just overeaten. That was the cycle when the solution became the problem. The solution to that discomfort was eating

and then eating caused more of the problem. It's a classic cycle. So it wasn't until I acknowledge that truth, which is really hard to do. I know people right now who are listening and struggling with their weight, and just like I used to do, like, he just doesn't get it.

You know, who's a skinny guy telling us what to do? He doesn't understand. And I do, because I used to be there. And it's not easy. And nobody's saying it's easy. But I think that's part of the problem is that, you know, for the longest time, you know, today we didn't have this terminology,

but today with GLP-1s, We call it food chatter or food noise, right? I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it. And that's very real, right? If you struggle with your weight, you constantly hear it. I still hear it today. What changed is my beliefs around what that means. Like when I started hearing that food chatter,

I would instantly think, well, that's bad, right? I'm not supposed to be hungry. What if this feeling never goes away? And, you know, what if I'm hungry all night? And, you know, I'm getting frustrated. And it would create this anxiety spiral that the only solution was to escape with this relief valve. Yeah.

And what's interesting is it elicits what we call psychological reactants. This is an incredible phenomenon where when you are told what to do, okay, by someone, your natural instinct is to rebel. So if your mom ever told you to put on a coat, you said, don't tell them what to do, or a boss micromanaged you, that's reactance. That's that feeling of reactants. Now, the crazy thing is that your brain will elicit psychological reactants even when you tell yourself what to do.

So this is why abstinence doesn't work, typically. There's some kinds of abstinence that does work. So if you can completely remove the triggers, so this is why people say, you know, if you're struggling with a substance abuse disorder, one of the things you can do is to, you know, remove the paraphernalia, you know, if you can remove yourself from that neighborhood, from the places you used to get high, that can be very helpful because you're completely removing all the those external triggers. How do you do that with technology? How do you do that with food? You can't. We have to eat. We have to use technology. So just telling yourself, don't do it anymore and putting shame and blame on us for doing that kind of stuff doesn't work. So when we become

contemptuous rather than curious, we're losing the battle. So it shouldn't be stop doing that. That's bad for you. It's part of the reason I hate people talking about how terrible technology is. It's melting your brain. You know, there was an amazing study where they found that there's no correlation between adverse mental health issues and screen time. Do you know that? That for adults, there's a beautiful study done, no adverse correlation between how much time you spend on the device, and you know, you're a doctor, right, should be dose dependent. If you spend more time in your device and the device is what's causing you to have poor mental health, more screen time, worse mental health. No. You know what was the correlation? How people felt about their screen time.

If you believed that your use of a device was bad for you, you had more adverse psychological symptoms. Not the screen time itself, but your beliefs about the screen time. So it turns out the better way to do it is not, I shouldn't do that if I did it on bad. You know, no, no, no, don't do it. There's a much better way. And a much better way is called the 10-minute rule. The 10-minute rule acknowledges that you can give in to any distraction,

whether it's eating something you don't want to eat, whether it's scrolling TikTok when you want to do something else, whatever it is, whatever distraction you're struggling with, per that definition earlier of something that pulls you away from what you plan to do, you can give in. You're a big boy, can do whatever you want, right? However, you choose to do it in 10 minutes. Not right now.

You're just going to delay by 10 minutes. Why is that so powerful? You know, it's the same reason why we now believe that cigarettes are actually addictive. It's actually not the nicotine itself on its own. Of course, nicotine is a stimulant and causes certain physiological symptoms, but that's not actually what makes nicotine so addictive. I don't know if you've read Alan Carr's book on smoking.

It's incredible. He basically tells you, stop believing cigarettes are addictive. Stop believing you can't stop. And it's incredible. It's an amazing, amazing book. And so many people have benefited from it because what he's doing is kind of calling this bluff that happens when people say, I know I really want a cigarette,

but I shouldn't smoke. It's bad for me. I shouldn't smoke. I shouldn't do it. I shouldn't do it. I shouldn't do it. I want to do it. Okay, fine.

And what they're doing by creating this anxiety that now suddenly with a deep breath, finally, I'm so relaxed. Think about it. Why do people, you know why people say they smoke? Because it relaxes me. That makes no sense. Nicotine is a stimulant.

Yes or no? Yeah. Right? Why wouldn't a stimulate be relaxing? It's because I get to free myself of telling myself to not do it anymore. So this is why abstinence oftentimes backfires. It elicits psychological reactants.

When I tell myself not to do something, I want to do it more until I can't give in any. I can't stop anymore. I have to have it. So you're not going to tell yourself no. You're going to tell yourself not yet. Okay? Not no, not yet.

I can check my phone in 10 minutes. And if 10 minutes is too long, five minutes, two minutes doesn't really matter. And what you're going to do is to make that the increment of time so small that, of course, I can wait two minutes. Okay, I'll have the ice cream in two minutes. I'll smoke the cigarette in two minutes. I'll check my phone in 10 minutes, two minutes, whatever.

And what you're going to do is now prove to yourself that you have agency. Yeah. That's the breakthrough. Because if you can do two minutes, that's going to turn into five minutes, it's going to turn to 10 minutes, going to turn to 20 minutes. Wait, what did I not want to do anymore? That's the miracle. Yeah, you take on the belief that you can do something about it. How addictive is it, actually?

If I waited, 10, 20, 30, 40, 40, an hour, who cares? Well, because ultimately, if you take this model to its end point, what you're really offering people is the opportunity for self-mastery. Right? And I really mean that. It's a big part of it, yeah. Well, I kind of feel, you know, step one, mastering internal triggers. I feel it's reasonable to say if you are able to master your internal triggers, you're going to do pretty well in life.

Right? Because so much of what we struggle with in our life is because we're not aware of these internal triggers. We don't know when they're happening. We don't know what to do about them. Right? So I think about the three part model,

the three Fs that I shared with you, and I think I have my own theory why this has proven so powerful for people. I think one of the reasons is because it brings the hidden out into the light. They don't know why they're eating sugar and ice cream. It's like, suddenly it's like, oh, there is a cause beyond hunger, right?

Yeah. Secondly, it's what you said about psychological reactants. It's not me telling the patient, this is why you're eating. I very early on in my career learns that no patient does what you tell them to do in the long term. No human does, frankly, being a parent taught me that, right? It will only be long term when at some point it becomes the patient's plan. Right. Not my plan.

Right. I learned that very early on us. So everything I do is about empowering that patient. So the 3F is an empowerment tool because it's like, oh, once you start to be aware, that's what's driving your ice cream intake. Okay, you've learned something that I didn't need to tell you. You've learned it for yourself. And then I guess what I was saying before is about packing back the external triggers.

If the ice cream ain't in your house, you're putting a bit of friction between you and actually putting it in your mouth, right? For sure, yeah. I feel they rip. Yeah, but if you're like me, I would find whatever I have and stuff my face with it. Like, I would take, you know, potato chips and honey and like whatever left mayonnaise. I don't know, whatever. Because here's the thing.

If you don't start with step one, that's why mastering internal triggers is the most important step. Because if you don't figure out why you are looking to escape discomfort with this outside stimulus, you're always going to get distracted. Now, but it is very helpful, by the way. The hacking back the external triggers is very helpful after step one and two. Let's just interrogate that for a minute. Because we're talking about food, right? Well, we're talking about many things.

We're broadly talking about how do you live an intentional life, which leaves you with no regrets. That's broadly the umbrella we're trying to cover today. But this whole external environment piece, the external trigger piece, is really interesting to me because we know, for example, that there are hunter-gatherer tribes or traditional societies who have no obesity.

But as soon as their environment becomes urbanized, and there is a proliferation of ultra-tasty, ultra-process foods, calorie-dense foods around them, they also very quickly become overweight and obese. It's usually, by the way, also part and parcel when people leave these agrarian societies, they also leave something else. They leave the people who provide emotional support to them.

They separate families. They go off, you know, one person goes out to work to send money back to the rest of the family. So it's never in isolation. It's never just about the food. I have no doubt that, you know, metabolic syndrome is real and that our hyper-processed food is not good for you. But the thing is with every substance

that is potentially addictive, the vast majority of people, save some people who probably have something biologically going on, which is probably, you know, a small percentage of people, let's say three to five percent. The rest of us have this little circuit breaker that says, ah, too much, too much, right? You've drank in too much,

you've watched too much, you've scroll too much, you've done something too much, ugh, cut back. 95% of us have that very well-working little circuit breaker that goes off. Now there's some people who do get biologically addicted. Have you ever heard of the Rat Park experiment? I have heard of, I wanted this as the one that Yohan Hari told me about. Could be, yeah, I think it was in his book as well.

But I think that's a great demonstration. When you have community around you. Right, they took the rats. Yeah. They, when they get, you know, back in the 80s, they used to tell us, you know, when a rat takes cocaine, it wants nothing but cocaine until it dies, you know, don't do drugs. And it turns out that that's not at all what happened in this study, that in this study, one option was a rat in a tiny cage where it couldn't move around and all it could do was take cocaine. It's all it could do. Cocaine, food, water, that's it.

And so, of course, all it wanted was cocaine. Well, when they took rats and they put them in what they called rat park, where they could play, you know, rats are social species. when they had their group, they had their little families, and they could have a little wheel to exercise on, and they could have their little social communities. They didn't want cocaine anymore. They didn't need it. So when we overdo something,

when we have a consistent, compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that harms us, it's because there's something else going on. It's because present reality is so painful that we need some kind of escape. Yeah, and it sort of totally maps with this growing loneliness epidemic. because if you have your tribe around you, your family around you, your community around you,

actually they can help you manage a lot of the stress in life, right? So you're then having less of the boredom, the anxiety, the fatigue, the frustration that then leads to these behaviours that we're trying to avoid, right? It's like what you're saying with the rat experiments, a lot of people who talk about trauma will say that one of the biggest determinants as to whether an experience ends up being traumatic or not, depends on the level of support you had at that time. If you had support around you and a family, friends, people to talk to and process it,

it's less likely to become long-term trauma. And the story that you tell. You can have post-traumatic stress or post-traumatic growth. That also happens. Exactly. You have two people, you know, one says my father was an alcoholic and used to beat me,

and that's why I'm in such a miserable place in life. Another person says my father was an alcoholic and used to beat me, and that's why I'm such a success. I wanted to prove him wrong. Beyond belief. Exactly. That's what you write about. Based on these belief systems. There was actually a real world example of Rat Park during the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, American soldiers in Southeast Asia, something like a third of them were using heroin. And Nixon, actually the reason that the DEA was formed was because of this fear that when these soldiers would come back from war, that they would create this drug epidemic in America because, you know, such a high proportion of them were using heroin. Well, when they

came back, they stopped. You know, we think of heroin being so addictive. Why would they stop? And this is exactly what happened, because in the hellscape that was the Vietnam War, it was a way to self-medicate from this terrible situation to blow your mind, to get high, so you didn't have to suffer through that. Whereas when they came back to America and they had their family, they had a support system, they had meaning, they had jobs, they had a life, they didn't need the addiction anymore. Yeah, it reminds me of something Jonathan Haidt said to me about his book, The Anxious Generation. You know, he makes the case that technology is harming kids, and we can maybe get to that at some point. But it's not necessarily that you just take the technology off the kids

or reduce that access to some of the more harmful technologies. It's a two-part solution. You also need to get them playing more and being with their friends more and, you know, being allowed to explore their neighborhoods. And do you know what I mean? It's not. And so the more I think about your model and your work, the more I think about the way we live now, so many of us are living these isolated lives. We're living in lives where we are disembodied. We're on screens all the time. We're not interacting with other human beings. So how many of our internal triggers, which drive a lot of our problematic behaviors are actually a consequence

of the way modern life is set up. Or the stories we tell about modern life. Take, for example, loneliness. There's one way to talk about loneliness that will make you miserable. That every time, you know, if you're eating alone, are you a loser because nobody's around you? You have no friends.

You can also get into this anxiety spiral. Am I, am I, is this bad? Am I supposed to be around people all the time? But if you call loneliness solitude, It's amazing, right? There's something so beautiful about going to a movie by yourself, having dinner alone. It can be a very, reading a book on your own. Solitude can be amazing.

I think part of the problem is that there's so much money to be made off of freaking people out, right? Fear sells. I was a journalism co-major in school. If it leads, it leads. And so a great way to make a career is to freak everybody out about one thing or another, whether it's, you know, the latest social, the panic, the moral panic around social media, which I think is in full effect, which I called over a decade ago was going to evolve. Now everybody's having a moral panic about AI.

Loneliness. I mean, there's always something else for us to be miserable about. I want to be very clear. I'm not saying this stuff doesn't have negative consequences. See, the thing is the most scarce word right now that we need to bring back into our language is nuance. Yeah, for sure. We have totally forgotten nuance. It's complicated, folks.

Yeah, so when we say, you know, Paul Virulio had a wonderful quote. He said that when you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. And so what happened with ships? Did we stop sailing ships? No, we made ships safer. We made the better. We sailed more ships than ever before. So are ships good?

Yes. Our ships bad? Yeah, sometimes there's a shipwreck. Is social media good? Yeah, it can connect people together. It's amazing. you know, you can learn so much information. Is social media bad?

Yeah, it can be. Every new technology, every new tool has goods and bads. Yeah. It's interesting. Just going back to that sugar example for a minute. I guess one thing I hinted up before was long term, I think through the lens of self-mastery, it would be wonderful to get to a point where we're so aware of what's going on inside of us

and in tune with our bodies that, we're able to not consume things we don't want to consume, even if they surround us. I do think some people are able to do that, where they can have a house full of sweets and sugar, and they're so self-aware and they've done the work of figuring out themselves and what their triggers are and all that kind of stuff, where they still will not go to that stuff, even if it's there. I guess that's quite an interesting thought, isn't it, where can you get to that level of self-mastery where you're not tempted by this stuff. And if you choose to have it one day,

you're like, yeah, you know what? I really want a really nice sweet now or a bar of chocolate now. So it's not that you're doing it to soothe loneliness or boredom or fatigue or because you've had a crap day. You haven't it because, you know what? I really want to enjoy this piece of chocolate now.

Two very different things, right? Right. That can also, I think, lead to regret. If you're not able to enjoy a piece of chocolate cake at your kid's birthday party once in a while, that would be personally something I would regret. So sometimes there is a place for sugar.

Sometimes there's a place for alcohol. Sometimes there's a place for binging on social media if that's what you want to do. That's why I think we have to stop vilifying the thing. It's not the thing that's... And frankly, here's a thing. More than any consideration, the train has left the station.

Okay? We should be so... Can you imagine if our grandparents listen to us complaining about this stuff? You live in a world where you have too much food, too much entertainment. This is what you're complaining about? Like our grandparents were starving, okay?

They were fighting wars. And this is the first generation of human history where there isn't large-scale famine somewhere on the earth. You know, for 200,000 years, there was famine always somewhere. This is the first generation where more people die

of diseases of excess than of shortage. Never happened before in 200,000 years of human history. We should be celebrating this. But you know what? The price of progress, the price for the fact that your kids aren't starving and looking for, to feed themselves and that we can have this much abundance,

the price of all that progress is that we have to learn some new skills. Yeah, right? It's like one of the other prices, I think, is that rates of anxiety and depression are much higher now from what we can tell, right? The way we measure them. That's also a whole other conversation. Sure, exactly.

But there is a school of thoughts that says, when you don't have real problems to deal with. So, you know, we're looking at the past. You know, you had to get it. You had stuff to do. You couldn't just set a home and deliveroo this and Uber eats that and literally stay in your pajamas all day and still work, earn money, have food, have drink. You couldn't do that, right?

Right. You're too busy. Yeah, you would have to go out and get food. You know, even when we were kids, you would have to go to, at least, you'd have to go to the supermarket, buy your food and get it home. You don't have to do that anymore, right? But there is a school of thought which says that when you don't have real things or real problems to occupy your time with, the brain will start to create problems that in some ways don't exist, right? So it's

kind of that has been, there has been an incredible human progress, but of course some of that has come at a cost. But I love the way you're framing it, which is very much about empowerment, which is we need to learn new skills for the world that exists today. And why? Because who's going to do it for us? Yeah. Like, are we going to say, hey, Netflix, can you please stop making good shows? Apple, you know, your devices are so user-friendly.

Please stop that. Stupid. Who wants to go back to an age where we don't have those devices? We love them. That's what they're supposed to do. Yes, I agree. It's difficult to stay on a diet. Believe me, I know.

I understand. But I don't want to go back to a day before, you know, those things were invented. When I go to Paris, I want some great quassons. I'm not going to tell the baker, stop making your quassons so delicious. I like them too much. It's up to me. So it's not my fault. I didn't invent social media.

I didn't invent the iPhone. I didn't invent quassons. But it's my responsibility. Because who else's responsibility is going to be. Yeah. Right? Let's just go out to social media for kids for just a moment. Because I think it's an interesting thing to discuss here, which is as a society,

we have made a decision that certain things like alcohol or gambling, right? Depending which country you live in the world, should wait until people are 80, for example. Totally. Yeah. So it's simply saying we as a society feel maybe we need to protect them whilst they're young until they are adults where they can make these decisions for themselves, right? one argument, well, first of all, understanding your model and understanding that the important thing is to mask your internal triggers and know, why are you on social media? What are you avoiding? What emotion are you trying to suppress or get away from? Yes, of course you can teach

children that. And maybe that would be a really good thing to teach children. And maybe that's what you did with your daughter. But as we record this conversation, there is a movement in the UK to limit social media in under 16s. Yeah. I personally support that. What's your take on that? I am really excited to share that I am bringing my Thrive Tour, Transform Your Health and Happiness, to Canada and Europe this September and November.

It's a live, interactive, uplifting show that over 20,000 people came to last year across the UK and Australia. I'll be sharing powerful stories, life-changing insights, and simple tools that will inspire you to feel better, think clearer, and live with more intention and joy. To get your tickets right now and see all of the dates and venues, go to Dr.chatterjee.com forward slash live. I really hope that you can join me. I totally agree that there should be some kind of number. In fact, there already is. The number is 13.

The social media companies will tell you. Well, that's the key thing. They will tell you, whereas the data I've seen is that if you look at how many nine-year-olds are on TikTok. Right. Yeah, I guess officially it may be 13 or how people at 9 and 10 do all their communication on WhatsApp groups. WhatsApp will tell you it's 13. Right. So clearly people are getting through this.

Yeah. And a lot of people. So first things first. Look, I'm not going to let my daughter walk into a bar and order a ginatonic. I'm not going to let her go into a casino and play blackjack. She's not ready for that. And why exactly would I let her use a product, whether the manufacturer is telling me she should not use if she's under a certain age?

I think parents, look, I know it's not popular to say. I know people don't like to hear it. But we do have power as parents. Who pays for the cell phone bill? We do. Who oftentimes is the one that buys the phone? We do. And it's gotten so much easy.

easier today than it used to be. You know, there are parental controls. The settings are there. You know, there are settings that will tell you, hey, you've had enough. Tell me what other device. Can you think of any other product that tells you built into the product how to use it less? It doesn't exist. Only technology built into it has tools that will help you use it less.

Google Wellbeing, Apple Screen Time. They have these tools built in. So one, we should have an age. I've always advocated for some kind of age. Now, whether it's 13 or whether it's 16, this is, this is nuance. Even if it's 16, we have to have parent involvement. We have to have responsibility for our children to some extent of saying, hey, if you're not going to let them drink below 21, this is yet another thing that we have to do to make sure

that a child is protected in some way. So no arguments there. I think there should be some age. Now, I would actually go further. I think we need regulation. And this is something I proposed for the past decade now, and I met with all the tech companies about this and they've done nothing. We should have regulation that says that companies need what I call a use and abuse policy. Because not only should we have a protected class around children,

they should be a protected class. I agree with you. Now, again, I don't know what age is the right age, but that's debatable. We should also have a protected class of people who are addicted. Now, that's never been done before. And I think we should take this very seriously. Because why do we protect children. Why do we say children shouldn't have alcohol under a certain age? Well, because we believe that children are people who cannot make a decision with sound body and mind. And so they need our protection. And I believe people who are pathologically addicted also deserve protection, because if you are pathologically addicted, you also cannot make rational decisions with sound body and mind. So I've been proposing this for decades that we need some kind of policy that says,

look, how many hours a week would trigger some kind of notification that says, hey, you've been using this product in a way that may indicate you're struggling with an addiction, can we help? Maybe you'd like to be put on a blacklist. Maybe you'd like us to restrict how many hours do use it. Maybe you'd like resources for addiction counseling. How can we help? Because unlike the alcohol companies who they don't know how much you're drinking, they have no idea, right? even though we know that they would not be in business without the people who abuse their products, right? It's a fathead industry. The people who consume way too much are the ones who keep that industry profitable.

But they could say, hey, look, plausible deniability, we don't know how much everybody is drinking. The 10 companies know. They have personally identifiable information about how much time you spend on their site. Now, it doesn't mean they should cut you off. But I think if you know someone is actually pathologically addicted, they're using your product to a way that may hurt them, it's our responsibility to tell them. Now, here's the thing. The reason this won't happen

is because the people who complain about this problem, new media, right? New media, the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, who's their competition? Their competition is social media. But nobody's saying,

hey, what about the news junkies? What about the people who are spending way too much time watching Fox News? Isn't that just as potentially addictive? You say, well, but they don't have algorithms. Bullshit, they don't have algorithms. They know exactly.

what pushes your buttons. The job of the media isn't to report the truth anymore. It's to keep you hooked just as hooked as you are to social media. Social media is their competition, but they want to compete

on a different plane. So I think all media where you know how much someone is using your product has an ethical responsibility to say, hey look, you may be struggling with an addiction.

How can we help? So not only do I support regulation for protective class of children, we need this new protected class. And also, the best thing you can do for your child

if you want to raise an indestructible kid is to follow these four steps with it. Yeah. Right? Because you can, there's a whole section in the book on how to raise indestructible kids. And it starts with this, this psychological concept that's been around for over 50 years that most people have never heard of, which completely explains why kids overuse technology today. And guess what?

It's not the phones. It's something else completely. Right. We're going to come to that. Let's just finish off a few things that just came up there. First of all, really interesting take. I really appreciate the clarity and the passion with which you spoke there. I think irrespective of anyone's views or opinions on this,

I think this stuff is not going away, right? Right. So we need to figure out ways that we can be more intentional with our usage of whatever it is, whether there's regulation or not. Because in terms of what's in our control and out of our control, that frankly is out of our control. We may want governments to act and do stuff or tech companies to act and do stuff.

But there's only so much that we can do to influence that. We can try. It's going to take a long time. And by the time they do something about it, the next thing will happen. So irrespective, it's important that we understand our own internal triggers. Now, a couple of things to be open about.

my children are currently 16 and 13, and they have never had social media. Okay? And the way my wife and I have handled that is by having open dialogue with them, explaining why we don't believe it's helpful for them. Okay. Now, it's not been as challenging as people would think, actually, because we've just had this open dialogue with them and explain. Now, you know, was this the right thing to do?

well, time will tell in a few years. Maybe, you know, who knows, right? But a lot of parents will say it's just too difficult. All of their friends are on it, right? And I really feel sympathy for that because I think the pressure can be quite profound as saying, mom, dad, everyone else in the class has got it, right? You know, everyone's got TikTok at 10. You know, I need to have TikTok. So, you know, because I just want to make sure. we've acknowledged that because I think... I acknowledge it. Yes, parenting is difficult.

Yeah. Good morning. Yeah. I mean, come on. Isn't this what our parents told us about, well, if all your friends do it, then are you just going to do it? Are you just going to run off a cliff?

If all your friends are going to run off a cliff? I mean, this is the same conversation we have with kids in drugs and drinking and all kinds of stuff. I mean, you know that there'll be some parents... It's nothing no. It's nothing. At the moment who we're not liking what you're saying. Of course, of course.

Because, look... Doesn't mean you shouldn't state your opinion. No, and look, parenting is, I'm... I just wrote a book about beliefs. Parenting is like a religion. It's not a belief. It's faith, right? We don't know how what we do today

will impact our kid in the future. We just need faith. We just have to believe that this is going to work out the way it's going to work out because that's how we were raised and that's what we think is the best. And parenting is hard work.

Parenting is definitely hard work. And we have to make the best decisions we can with the tools we have. And our kids will probably still have complaints about us in 20 years when they grow up. So what we have to do, I think, is think rationally here for a second.

The most important thing you said was that you could have the discussion with your kids. The fact that that's where you started changes everything. When you talk to the families who say, there's just nothing you can do, all their friends have it, they're begging me for it.

What am I supposed to do? I bet you, at least in my experience, what I've seen, those are the families who can't sit down and have a calm, rational conversation. Or it's a very, families I've seen again and again. I've been telling my kids, they need to get off that TikTok, right?

TikTok's terrible. All their friends are using it. Meanwhile, the mom's telling me this as she's checking email or Facebook or whatever. If you want to raise indestructible kids, you have to be an indestructible parent. 100%. You see, children come born with these invisible antennae. Yeah. It's called the hypocrisy detection device.

And our kids are constantly scanning for where we screw up. And they're looking for where we are being hypocrites. So you cannot tell your kid, you're not ready for social media, get off social media. Meanwhile, you're checking it all day. You can't tell yourself, you shouldn't drink. And meanwhile, you're downing gin and tonics every night. We have to set that example. Obviously, we do.

It's not about their friends. We are who they look to. And if we say, you know, just like a family who has particular religious convictions, right? Is it so hard, I'm going to wear a hijab because that's my faith and I'm going to go to school where nobody else does. Yeah, that happens, right? Or I'm going to wear a cross and nobody else. If it's part of what's important to you, if it's part of your values, If it's part of your conviction, you'll find a way.

Well, it comes back to intentionality, right? Right. Which we mentioned right at the start. I certainly would say my wife and I have always been very intentional with how we raise our kids. I would probably say how we bring up our kids is the most important thing to us. You know? What else is there? Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there's anything more important to us.

So I do feel that we, right or wrong, we've always made. intentional decisions that we hope are in their best interests. And as you say, some of this is faith, because they're not adults yet. So I don't know what the implications of this are going to be. But we certainly done our best. Right. Now, some people are going to say, I promise you,

they will say, well, that's really nice for him. He's affluent. He has resources. He has time. He has a loving relationship. What about everybody else? And even then, I would say, first of all, you know, nothing that's in this book.

You know, it would take you what, like an hour and a half to read in distractible. Anybody can use it. and, you know, the tech, I just gave you the basics. It's not that hard, right? Anybody can do this. It's not a socioeconomic thing.

But even then, if you can say, yeah, but, you know, I think it's very demeaning to say that somehow poor people can't go to their library and check out this book and read it, but some people will tell me nonsense like that. To which I respond, look,

you know, this stuff does not exist in a vacuum. That when you think about the causes of teen mortality, right, what killed kids a generation ago, two generations ago, When you look at all the factors, except one, there's one exception, everything that killed kids is at record lows. Do you know that? Teen murder rates record lows. Drunk driving record lows. Even things like truancy record lows. Pregnancy, absolute record lows. All the things that used to hurt kids except for suicide, which has gone up from history, used to be at historic low. It's gone up. Now it's going back down. More recently, it looks like it's going back down. So it could just be reversion to the mean. all the things that used to hurt kids are at record lows. Whoever talks about that.

We never hear that. Why? If we're going to say, hey, technology caused all these problems since about 2008, since the iPhone came out, what about all these crazy trends of things happening the right way? Why? So let me ask you, if you wanted to create a device to keep kids safe at home off the streets, maybe one of these devices isn't such a bad idea. I think if you would have brought the technology we have today

back to my generation when I was in high school, parents would have said, oh my goodness, we can keep kids from drunk driving, and they can stay home and play games together. That's amazing. They can be safe indoors during this very risky period of their life.

So I'm not saying tech doesn't have negative consequences. But I see your point. And I think it's also important to acknowledge it. Yes. And that has also come at a consequence, right? Of course. Where kids are socializing. less and having less free play and less independence.

So this is that 50-year study that I wanted to bring up earlier. So, okay, let's work to these four steps of how do we raise indestructible kids with these four steps, starting with mastering internal triggers. Now, internal triggers are a little bit more interesting and sophisticated in children than in adults. Because as an adult, you can do this for yourself. You can figure out, wait, why am I overdoing this or that? You can be introspective about it. For kids, we have to understand what this generation is. going through. And it's amazing. A lot of people read

the anxious generation and they just take away from you, they read the cover and they don't read through the book. And Haid has actually two really big arguments. One, he talks about how it's something that's happening in terms of how kids spend their time in the real world and then the other half is about how do the kids spend their time in the online world?

But most people only take the online world lesson and they say that's enough. Okay, we have to ban social media. That's not the whole argument. What's happening with kids is that they are deficient in what I call psychological nutrients. So you know how we have macroninutrients? So you know how we have macronutrients for the body, we have fat protein carbohydrates.

There are three nutrients, psychological nutrient, that every human being on the face of the earth needs to flourish. And those three nutrients, and we've known this for over 50 years, it's called self-determination theory, tells us that every single human being, children, adults, everyone, needs competency, autonomy, and relatedness. But when you think about the dosage that kids get of those three things, they are psychologically deficient.

So what happens is, it's called the needs displacement hypothesis, that if you don't get what you need in the real world, you are looking for it in the online world. And here's how it works. The first one is competency. We know per self-determination theory, every psychologist on the face of the earth, no self-determination theory.

It's the most well-validated, most well-studied theory of human flourishing and well-being. And what the research tells us is that when you don't have enough of these three things, psychologically a lot of bad things happen. You have more anxiety, depression, all kinds of disorders. So let's take competency. You know, one of the things that was on the rise around the same time of around 2008

when we got the Apple App Store was this rise in obsessive testing, at least in the United States, and now it's gone worldwide. Children are test to a ridiculous degree. All year long, testing, testing, testing. So there's a subset of the population that is constantly told you are not competent.

all the time. I think it was in Philadelphia where they test first grader something like eight or nine times a year with these standardized tests because that's how they now pay teachers. So with all that testing, if you're constantly reinforced,

you're not good enough, you're not competent, you're not mastering the subject, and you're hearing that in the real world, you're going to look for it somewhere else. Well, where do you find it online? Right? When you play Roblox or Minecraft,

you feel like a god. You feel competent. you master the game. So your psychological nutrient number one is fulfilled. The second one, autonomy. You know, we talked earlier about psychological reactants and the importance of having that sense of autonomy. We hate being told what to do.

And the work of Peter Gray, he's shown how this is the most over-regulated generation in history. You know, there's only two places in society where you can tell people where to go, what to think, how to dress, who to be friends with, what to eat, and that's school and prison. and if you put people in cages, they behave like animals.

And that is exactly what we are doing with our children. We are telling them what to do all day long. You know, the average American child today has twice as many restrictions as an enrolled service member. Someone who's in the Marines or the Army, twice as many rules. Because we are constantly telling them what to do. And so if you are constantly told what to do, you have no autonomy, one of your three psychological nutrients. And if you don't have it in the real world, you look for the in the online world. And when you play one of these games online, you can do whatever you want.

You feel like a god. You feel autonomous. That's what they're looking for because they're not getting it offline. Finally, relatedness. Relatedness is this psychological need that we all have to be understood by others and to understand others as well. We know that this generation is starved of free play. Free play is when children are allowed to play

without the watchful eye of coaches and teachers and parents, just allowing them to be kids. Because today, at least in the United States, I'm not as familiar outside the United States. You know, when I was a kid, our neighborhood sang with the song of children playing. Yeah. And today you don't see it anymore.

You don't hear it. Why? Because if you have the means, well, now your kid is going to test prep and Chinese lessons and swimming and ballet. They're so over-scheduled. They have no time for free play. And if you don't have the means,

well, you take it. tell your kid, go home and sit in front of your computer or your phone or the TV. Why are kids kept indoors? Because of this myth of stranger danger. The media freaked us all out thinking that our kids are going to get abducted. Turns out this is the safest time to be a child ever. And yet parents, at least in the United States, some parents have gotten arrested for letting their kids walk a mile to the local park.

They were thought of as negligent parents because they let their kid on their own go play at the park. So we have so over-scheduled children that they have no time for free play. If you want to raise psychologically healthy children, the best thing you can do for them is to schedule time for them to free play without coaches and teachers and parents. Just let them play. Now, why is that so important?

Because when you play with your peers, this is where you learn your place in the world. You know, if you are a jerk to your friends, they won't want to play with you, right? They'll tell you, hey, when you act like that, it's not fun. I don't want to do that anymore. And so this is where we learn social interaction skills.

And guess what? If we don't get it offline, we're going to get it online. That's where the kids go. And so one of the things I encourage parents to do is when they complain to me about, oh, my kid's always playing Minecraft or Roblox or whatever, you know, the latest fear-mongering moral panic game is. Have you ever played it? You know, it's amazing how few parents complain about what their kids are doing

and they have no idea what their kids are doing. You know, when kids are playing these games, it's not the game. It's who they're doing it with. It's just like when we were kids, we used to be on the phone for hours on end because we were separated from our friends. And so we wanted to communicate with them. That's what these kids are doing on these online games. They're socializing. So without mastery, autonomy, and relatedness in the offline world, the kids are desperate for these psychological nutrients.

And where are they getting them? Of course, the tech companies are very happy to give them what they want. I love the way you put that across. And I guess it really fits with this idea that we're both passionate about, which is what is the root course? Let's not necessarily deal with downstream symptoms in my language and my worlds. But let's get to the root, right? So I guess one of the things you're saying is if we give, frankly, adults as well,

but let's say children, if we give them competency, autonomy and relatedness, if they have those three core psychological needs met, even if they were being exposed to lots of technology, less of them would have the harmful effects from them because they wouldn't be seeking those things from the technologies. That's exactly right. And as you were talking about, it reminded me of the case of a patient I had a few years ago,

which I think I wrote about him in my fifth book, Happy Mind, Happy Life. I'm pretty sure I wrote about him, which is this sort of young adult. I think this around 18 from recollection. And I always remember it really well because he came into see me and he wouldn't look at me.

He wouldn't make eye contact. He was so, so ashamed. But Neer essentially, what he had to tell me was that he was addicted to online pornography. Right? And he just couldn't stop looking. And he didn't know what to do, right? And as, you know, I'll shorten the story,

but effectively, as I got to know him and understand what was going on with him, it was very clear that he had nothing else in his life. Right. Right. Nothing. He didn't have friends. He didn't have a hobby for a variety of different reasons.

And so I was trying to figure out, well, how could I help him? Because for me, the online pornography wasn't actually the problem. It was a downstream symptom. The symptom, exactly. And the way it helps him was we went through various options of stuff that he could do in his neighborhood, right? A lot of the options he wouldn't go for, but there was something about boxing that appealed to him.

I helped this guy join a local boxing club, and that changed his life. And what's really interesting is that I very much felt that once he had that connection, once he had learned a new skill, he found other people around him who, I remember he said to me, you know, in a boxing gym, five press ups means five press ups, right?

It's not optional, right? If they say drop it for 10, you drop it for 10. He didn't have that, right? Outside. But I can look at what happened with him through the lens of those three needs that you just brought up, right? Compensicing and mastery.

Yeah. He was learning that new skill and developing that. There was autonomy there. There was relatedness. He had a tribe around him, but other people like him. Once he got those stuff, within months,

he didn't use online pornography anymore. And that was quite a few years ago now, right? I didn't know that theory, but I felt just quite intuitively that this is not the problem. Right. Now, it doesn't mean that, as we've said, it doesn't mean that these technologies are not built to be addictive. Right. I think we've acknowledged that. And also the nuance, the context.

They don't have to addict you. Right. You can also give yourself these psychological nutrients. Psychological nutrients to make it less likely. It's super interesting. I think it's a great framework to look through. And I think part of the problem, we're back to how we believe,

what we believe about these deficiencies. You know, Kierkegaard has a beautiful quote. He said, Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. That part of the reason we live in such an anxious age is because we have more freedom. I mean, the fact that this guy had time

to watch pornography all day. And then instead he filled it with something else, filled it with boxing. That's a luxurious. age, back to what our grandparents were struggling with. It's a whole other world. I mean, thank God this is the biggest problem we deal with that. We have so much excess time that we're complaining about using TikTok and pornography too much. That's amazing, right? Many, most people on earth don't have that luxury. They're still living hand and mouth. So, so recognizing that

this is an opportunity, it's just about how we shape it for ourselves. Okay, so hypothetical question for you. If I was, not that I'm planning to anytime soon, but I will have the conversation with my children, but let's say one of them was to start using social media. Okay? What would you advise me as a parent to do to ensure that they use the tool rather than have the tool use them? Yeah. So first step is setting that example. Be an indistractable parent. Learn this methodology. It's not that hard. It'll take you maybe a couple hours to learn it and start applying it to your life. And be vulnerable with your kids about the challenge. So when I was writing a distractible, actually my daughter was the inspiration to start writing the book in the first place

because I was ignoring her checking my phone and I hated that example I was setting for her. So, you know, many parents feel like if they're vulnerable is something that they're struggling with with their kids, then their kid is going to not look up to them anymore. And it's actually exactly the opposite. That when we wanted to do this together, that I told her, you know, I'm struggling with this. You know, these devices are designed to get us hooked. I know better than anyone about why that's true. And so how can we use them responsibly? How can we get the best out of them without letting them get the best of us? So setting a good example, being vulnerable with your kid, that's setting the stage. Now we walk through these four steps. Step number one,

mastering your internal triggers. Making sure that they have time for free play, right? We tackle competency, autonomy, and relatedness. Again, you get all three when you get that opportunity to let kids schedule time for free play. So finding a few other family, in your neighborhood. And just like you would schedule the swimming lessons or the test prep, schedule time for free play. You don't need that many families in your neighborhood to do this. Make it a priority. It's an investment in your child's psychological future. And here's what you find. I have never found that when a child has the opportunity, I don't care how good the video game is or how good the social media is, if they've got friends doing something that they're interested in

as well, you would be amazed how quickly they toss the phone and they want to play. We just don't give them the opportunity to do it. So that's the first thing. Understand your kid's psychological nutrients, competency, autonomy, relatedness, are they getting enough? Okay? The next step is making time for traction.

This is going to sound crazy, but one of the best things you can do to help your kid use technology responsibly is to schedule time for it. Schedule time for it. Why? Because in their brain, if there's something they enjoy doing,

they're going to think about it, as all of us do, right? If you like watching football, if you like reading the news, if you like watching YouTube videos, you're going to think about, hey, when do I have time to do that? So what happens with kids,

they're scheduled all day long. They get home from school, and they're going to start thinking about it. Immediately they might jump onto it. But if you sit down with them, this is what we did with my daughter, when she was just six years old, she's 17 now.

But when she was just six years old, we sat down with her, and we noticed that she was using her iPad a bit too much. And so we asked her, we said, hey, Jasmine, how much time do you want to spend on your device? because the cost of using your device as much, we didn't want to freak her out

and tell her it's melting her brain, that's silly. Like, it's melting my brain but not your brain? That doesn't make any sense. We have to be rational about it. And, you know, the jobs of the future require our kids

to be conversing with technology. So we don't want to freak them out. Rather, what we want to say is the cost of using this technology too much is what else you could do with your time. So when you're on your iPad, you're not playing with your friends.

We're not going to the pool together. We're not hanging out. We're not cooking a meal. We're not doing things together. So how much time would you like to spend on your device? And I thought she was going to say all day, right? But that's not what she said. You know what she said? She said two episodes, right? In her mind, that's what she, you know, what she was doing on the iPad was watching Netflix shows, you know,

that were age appropriate. And when I looked into the research, did you know that three hours or less of age appropriate screen time, of course, has to be age appropriate, three hours or less, no dilaterious consequences? There has not been even one. One study that shows that three hours or less of age-appropriate content has any negative effects. The negative effects start at four, five, six hours. That's when you start having some problems. There were some people who would disagree with you on that, though.

That's not what the studies show. Yeah. That three hours, as long as it's age-appropriate, lots of inappropriate stuff that will cause harm. But let's say you've got the proper internet filters on your devices. Three hours or less, no, there's no studies that show there's any dilettorous consequences. Okay. So I was fine with three hours or less. She only said two episodes.

Two episodes is 45 minutes. So I said, fine, okay. You can watch your two episodes, but here's a thing. I don't want to tell you when to stop. Okay? I don't want to tell you. I'm not going to be the police officer.

Because remember, our job as parents, we're not raising kids. Our job as parents is to raise future adults. So if I'm the police officer and I have to tell you, get off the device, give me that device. Not only is she going to resent me and hate me, what happens when she goes off to college?

Right? She has, I'm stealing from her. this skill of self-regulation. What am I doing? She has to learn that skill. So I said, you can watch her two episodes, no problem. But let me ask you, Jasmine, how will you know it's time to stop? She thought for a minute.

And she said, well, you know that microwave that you and mommy will time things on? Because we used to have this microwave that was below the countertop. And sometimes when we needed a timer in the kitchen, we would use it as a timer. And she saw us doing that, six years old. And she says, well, why don't I put in the time I have? And when it beeps, I'll stop. And that's what she did. We let her have that responsibility.

She scheduled it in her calendar. So she didn't have to constantly obsess of when can I watch, when can I watch. She knew when she could watch. It was on her schedule. And she knew how much time she said was good for her. So back to autonomy. I gave her the keys to the kingdom and she didn't disappoint. Yeah.

I mean, I just got to acknowledge that teaching your daughter this kind of skill from the age of six, I think it's wonderful. Because of course, hopefully, and again, I, I don't want to share anything about your personal life or your family that you don't want to. But I imagine that having that awareness taught to her and just brought to her awareness at the age of six is going to yield dividends for the rest of her life. Versus, give me that. Stop using your device. Yeah. What is that? I mean, if you did that to an adult, you'd get punched in the face.

Yeah. Why do we think our kids are going to be, oh, thank you, mommy and dad. for taking my device away from me. No, let's have a conversation. What's the cost? What's the pros? Having that, and being vulnerable yourself and see, look, I struggle with this too.

It's amazing. Yeah, I love that you've been teaching your six-year-old. Well, you're then six-year-old, the skill of self-reflection and understanding, right? So we're currently trying to figure out how can someone teach their child to be, you know, indistractable? And you're saying the first thing there is to understand their, Internal triggers. To make time for traction. So she said, I want two episodes.

So when does that happen in the day? So it's going to be 8 o'clock. I get to watch a couple before whatever, bedtime or whatever. And for how long? And I'm going to tell myself when it's enough time. So that's step number two, making time for traction. The third step is hacking back the external triggers. And this is incredibly important.

Because for all the news we hear about psychological symptoms increasing since the use of the cell phone, I am pretty convinced if you actually dig down and look at the data, it's not what they're doing on the device per se, although of course there's bad stuff out there

and it's gotten better and better in terms of the filtering, but it's not perfect. It's not what they're doing with their device. It's what they're doing instead. Meaning, there is an unbelievable correlation

between the amount of sleep that children are getting today versus what they got 10, 20, 30 years ago and these psychological symptoms. Sleep goes down, psychological symptoms go up. I think that's actually much more part of the equation

and we never talk about it. How much sleep your kid is getting is incredibly important. Not only, of course, for them, how much sleep you're getting is important. So we have to hack back the external triggers. So anything that beeps, buzzes, or boops should not be in the bedroom. Okay, I'm talking about a radio,

whether it's a laptop, whether it's their iPhone. Nothing that could interrupt sleep. Should be in the bedroom. TV, definitely not. Nothing that could interrupt sleep. Also, I think setting a good example as parents, right? There's no reason to have a TV in the bedroom. Have a TV in the living room.

We don't want anything that has, emits light or noise of any kind to interrupt their sleep. And just like step two, how we talk about turning our values into time, along with scheduling time for watching videos or going on, or whatever it is they like to do with their device, playing video games, there's also a discreet bedtime. I remember I would tell my daughter, it's time for your bedtime. You have to go to bed. She said, Daddy, when's your bedtime? Once again, I was being a hypocrite. I didn't have a bedtime. She was absolutely right. Now I have a bedtime. So I can I can walk the log, not just talk to talk of yeah, you know what? Sleep is important for our psychological well-being.

Remove those external triggers from anything that could possibly interrupt it. Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, I did a channel four documentary on this course Swiped. We did a 21-day experiment with year-rate. So in this country, this is there, about 12-year-olds. And it was, I think, the first of its kind experiments that was on with York University Webster. for 21 days, the kids came off all like computers, laptops, games and smartphones for 21 days just to see what happens. Now, that's just the first part, right? That's not necessarily the solution. That's just to demonstrate a point. And there was many things that we discovered. But on average, every child slept for one hour extra. Which is huge.

Huge because, you know, we can talk about sleep in terms of, we all know when we haven't to set well, you know, our mood's a bit off. We got much energy. our concentration isn't there. But a lot of people don't realize that there are really good studies showing that your ability to resist temptation goes down. Because you feel groggy, you feel crappy.

Yeah, exactly. So when you start to put it all together... It creates the internal trigger. When you haven't gotten enough sleep and you feel groggy and you're also telling yourself I didn't get enough sleep, you have a new internal trigger

to escape from. Yeah, I know I scroll more when I haven't slept well. Yeah, yeah. You just, you don't bother. You just fatigued. It's just a distraction from your low energy

States, right? Because you're taken away from it. But look at this, right? It's so much more comforting. And I'm not apologizing for the tech industry. I don't make money from Facebook. I don't care. I'm telling people, use it less, okay? Use TikTok less. Use Facebook less. Absolutely. But also, it's irrational how much attention we give the last thing in our hands versus this long upstream consequence that we never think of. Who is ever talking about the crash in amount of time that kids spend playing and sleeping? Those two things are enough to take. explain the phenomenon. Yeah. I guess we also should acknowledge that, again, now is this a societal belief or I'm intrigued as to what you're going to say here, but I think it's important to

acknowledge, or certainly I feel it is, that, you know, life is getting really quite hard for a lot of people, right? And, you know, some people are working multiple jobs to try and pay their bills. They're chronically stressed, right? Maybe it's a single-parent family. and therefore a lot of these things get a lot harder. I agree with you. We should tomorrow ban all Netflix, all social media. No, no, let's take us very seriously. Make it all go away tomorrow.

And what changes? Are people going to read Chaucer and Shakespeare in their spare time? And is that even a good thing? Maybe. Plato talked about this problem 2,500 years ago. Yeah. He called it a crassia, the tendency to do things against our... better interest. Distraction has always been here. Always, and it always will be here. It's nothing new. And in fact,

in many ways, these tools are a gift to people who are on the lower stride of the socioeconomic pyramid. Because for the first time, they have the ability. I mean, you go on YouTube, you can learn almost anything, right? You can upscale, as opposed to in past generations. You have to go to the library, to check out a book, to read through it. Now you've got at your fingertips, the world's information. Well, the price of that, I would call that progress. I would, in the fact that if you want to learn a new skill, you could access pretty much anything for free. That's amazing.

What would you say to people who would say agreed, and these algorithms are so powerful, and they are designed for the weak spot of human psychology, and they will, to use the term in your first book, hooked, they will hook you. These algorithms are too powerful, okay? and only a small percentage of people are going to ever be able to develop

and cultivate the skills necessary to deal with them. What would you say to that line of arguments? I couldn't agree more. I think that there will be a gap between people who allow their time and attention to be controlled by others and manipulated by others

and people who stand up and say, no, I am indistractable. I decide how I will control my time and attention. So almost, like a revolutionary act to be indistrattable. But the difference, okay, I'm not, just to be very clear, I want us to stand up and take back our time and attention. That's why I wrote an distractible. I wrote it for me more than anybody else. I needed this, right? I saw how powerful the algorithms are. I also saw to be fair

that even when I did an experiment and I bought on eBay this flip phone, like we used to use in the 90s with no apps, and I got myself a word processor with no screen, just had like this tiny LCD thing that all you could do was type on. And I was absolutely convinced that now that I have, you know, no apps, no internet. I would get so much done, I'll write so much. You're laughing, right? Because you know what happened? I would sit down on my desk and I would say,

oh, you know what, my desk is so messy. I really should reorganize and I should probably take out the trash. You know, that needs to be. And you know what, that book on the shelf, I've been meaning to read. And I kept getting distracted. You know why? Because it's not the algorithms. It's up here.

If we haven't dealt with the internal trigger, it's going to be watching too much football. It's going to be drinking too much. It's going to be whatever. we're going to find the distraction, because people have always found distraction. Yeah, and as you say, there's four parts, right? So you're saying part three is hacking back the external triggers. So you're not against that.

No, no, definitely. That is a part of it, but let's not pretend. Because that's what you did with that phone experiment, right? Right. You hacked back the external triggers. But you didn't do step one, mastering the internal triggers. But I found something else. Just like the potato chips with honey and mayonnaise when I was obese.

Like, I'd find something. Yeah. So in terms of just finishing off then, with raising indistractable kids, I think we've got through the first three, preventing distraction with packs, which is the final step, is that something that's applicable to children?

Yes, very much so. So this is, to explain a pact, there's three kinds of pact. There's a price pact, an effort pack, an identity pact. These pact are the last line of defense. It's like a firewall against distraction. So basically what you're doing

is you're making a pre-commitment so that when all else fails, If you find yourself distracted, there's a way to get yourself back on track. And again, this is the fourth step. Don't jump to this. This comes after you've done the first three. One example of this is called an effort packed. And I'll give you a couple of different examples.

So, for example, in my household, I went to a hardware store and I bought us this outlet timer. And it's like $5. Anything you plug into it will turn off at whatever time you program. So in my household, every night, 10 p.m., the end. internet shuts off. Okay. Now, I could turn it back on, of course. Like, I could go fiddle with it. I'd go under my desk. I'd plug it in, unplug it, right? reset it. I could find a way to turn the internet back on. Or, you know, we could use it on our phones or whatever. But knowing that the internet's going to shut off at 10 p.m., our screens also turn off because of this, is that timer to remind me,

this is something that's more important. That getting to bed is more important than puts around on the internet or answering emails past the time I say I want to start getting ready for bed. So that would be an example of an effort pact. Another effort packed, specifically for kids, there are so many apps today, most of them are absolutely free, that will help you make these packs. One of my favorites is called Forest. Have you tried Forest? It's wonderful. My daughter uses it. I've been using it. Basically, it's super simple. You set how much time you want to do focused work for. So let's say you want to, you know, a kid wants to do homework for 45 minutes. You take out this app, you dial in how much time, let's say 45 minutes, and then as soon as you hit go, this cute little virtual tree

is planted on the screen. Now, if you pick up your phone and do anything with it, the virtual tree gets cut down. So it's enough of a reminder to tell you, oh, that's not what you want to do. You made a promise to yourself before that you're only going to not focus on. You're only going to work on what's not on your phone right now. So it's enough of that reminder. Very gentle, right? Could you bypass it?

Of course you could. But it's that bit of friction. in between you and the thing you don't want to do. Yeah. So that's one type of pact. Yeah, I love that. And the idea being that we want to see that tree grow fully. Yeah, you don't want to kill this cute little tree.

And you get points and rewards and badges if the tree grows over time. So it becomes like its own incentive. But it's silly. It's made up. But it's enough of a reminder, don't kill the tree. Don't be a tree murderer. And so it just reminds you made a promise to yourself. Yeah, you're just breaking that default.

And I guess... And there's 100 tools like this, by the way. Almost all of them are free, and it's just that bit of friction, that bit of effort between you and the thing you don't want to do. I think one of the things I like about your Wi-Fi automatically going off is that it turns your desired behavior into the default behavior. Right, right. And now, frankly, we don't even need it because we all know over time, hey, internet shuts off at 10, okay, we're wrapped up. So you use it as a tool to get you to, and then after a while, you have a new norm. Which is why it's not the first thing to do. Some people jump to this and it doesn't work, right? because if the internal trigger is super strong

and you haven't dealt with it, you'll find out. Exactly, you're going to find a way. But it's enough of that speed bump to say, oh, think about that twice. But that's only one of three efforts, I'm sorry, packs that you can make. Yeah, no, I really like that.

Before we leave this sort of idea of being indistractable, I don't want to ask you, because again, the framing here is that why do we want to become indistractable so that we can spend, our life doing the things that we want to do. You know, so we are prioritizing our attention. We're not letting someone else decide our attention for us.

It's effectively what we're trying to do. And, you know, step two, which we have already spoken about, is making time for traction. So once you've done step one, mastering your internal trigger, step two is making time for traction, which is basically trying to decide what it is you want to spend your time doing. Yeah.

A few years ago, you would talk about your planning that you would do on Sunday night. Do you still do that? Yeah, I do. Every Sunday, 8 p.m. It's in my calendar. And is this step two, making time of attraction? Is this where it fits?

Yeah. So this is essential. This will change your life. How do you do this? Remember, we talked about values. Values are the attributes of the person you want to become. So this is why this technique is so much better than what most people do, which is to-do lists. To-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity.

There's many reasons to-do lists are terrible. one of them is that there's no constraint. So when you wake up in the morning, and I'm not against taking things out of your brain and putting them on a piece of paper or an app, that's a great idea. Running your day on a to-do list is terrible. You will lose.

You'll be a basket case. And here's why. Because to-do lists have no constraints, the list of things you want to have done, okay? Here's what happens. Here's what happened to me. I would come home from work, and I would look at this to-do list

of all these things I still hadn't done. and all these promises I had broken to myself. And if you do that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you start believing that you're no good at time management. Here's all these things I said I would do, and I didn't do, loser. And so we start blaming ourselves thinking we must be bad somehow. We must have some kind of undiagnosed condition. Maybe we're not cut out for this.

We don't have enough self-discipline. There's nothing wrong with you. It's this stupid to-do list technique, right? because if you are not translating or transferring, I should say, the things on your to-do list to your calendar, you've made a big mistake. Why is timeboxing so much better than to-do list? Because time boxing has a constraint. The constraint is the same 24 hours in a day. So here's how time boxing works. You look at your calendar for the week ahead. Okay, this doesn't take that long, but it's important to do. You take a look at your calendar in the week ahead. And then you look at

what I call the three life domains. The three life domains. The three life domains at the center is you. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people, you can't make the world a better place. So ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend their time this week taking care of themselves? Okay. How would I spend my time taking care of myself according to my values? The person I want to become, well, the person I want to become would spend some time reading. Is that one of my values, right? That I want to be well read. Okay. Put time to read every day. Would the person I want to become, take care of themselves, you know, grooming, hygiene, yeah, that's part of it too.

Would they go to the gym? Yep, put time for that too. So I'm filling up my calendar with things in the you domain, everything I want to do for myself, including I like to play video games. Great, put it in your calendar. I want to check social media. I want to watch something on Netflix. Awesome.

Put it in your calendar. The next life domain, relationships. Okay. So many of our relationships in life, we're like ships in the night. My wife and I used to do this all the time, right? Because we didn't plan that time together. My wife is incredibly important to me. We've been married now for 25 years.

She's my best friend. And a few years ago, we kind of became strangers in our own house. We didn't really, we weren't connected anymore. Now, that's not the case. We have put time in our schedule. We have a date night every Friday. We have a walk every Sunday morning. It's in our schedules.

So no matter what, we've got that time planned for. I do this with my siblings. I do this with my best friends, right? Male relationship, we talk about the loneliness epidemic. You know why it's happening? Because we're not planning the time. Yeah. Right?

We used to have church or synagogue or mosque, these institutions where we would go to see our community members. Well, you know, with the decline, the secularization of society, many of us don't have that anymore. We don't have the bowling league or the Kiowanas Club. Put it in your schedule. So my best friends, they have a dedicated time when I'm going to talk to them in my schedule, okay?

Those are your relationships. Finally, the last life domain is work, which is where most people, if they schedule, that's what they schedule. First, it actually should come last. And work can be subdivided into two kinds of work. We have what we call reactive work and reflective work. Reactive work is how most people spend most of their day.

Reacting to emails, reacting to meetings, reacting to notifications, reacting all day long. Why? Because it's easy. I don't have to think about what I do. Let me just see what my email inbox tells me to do. So that's fine. Email is part of many of our jobs. reactive work has to get done, totally fine. Plan time for it.

How much time would the person you want to become professionally spend on reactive work? Emails, meetings, notifications, have that time in your schedule. No problem. But if you don't plan time for the other kind of work, it's called reflective work, planning, strategizing, thinking for God's sakes, if you don't plan time for reflective work, I promise you, you're going to run real fast in the wrong direction. if you want to leg up on everybody else in your industry, plan time to think because no one else is doing it.

Put it in your schedule. Now here's what's going to happen. After you do you, your relationships, and your work, you're going to have a schedule that is too full. 100% of the time. When you do this, you're going to have more than you want to get done than can be accommodated in a 24-hour day. That's the point.

Because now what you're going to do is you're going to start making trade-offs. Yeah. One of the reasons to do lists are terrible. for personal productivity. There's no trade-off. Just more and more and more. You don't have to prioritize. Right.

And here's the secret. You can do it all. You can do it all. Just not all at once. You can do it all, just not all at once. So when you see, hey, I want to do all this stuff, but I don't have the time. Now you're forced to make some trade-offs.

Okay, if I want to spend some more time in the office, that might mean less time with my kids or less time in the gym or less time to read or less time, whatever, I'm going to have to make those trade-offs. And whatever you choose is fine. It's not up to me or anyone else. If you want to play video games all day, do it. Yeah.

That's your life. But when you had that time box calendar, now the goal, and this is a big one, is not to finish anything. Do you hear me? I said the goal is not to finish anything. This blows people's minds. We have been so inculcated to think

that the way you manage your time is to check off cute little boxes that that's what we expect. That's how we measure our personal self-worth is how many cute boxes I check off. I'm embarrassed to tell you this. I used to do a task. Remember, it wasn't on my to-do list.

Go back and write it down so I can have the joy of checking it off. How stupid is that? I've done that. Right? That's how we measure our stuff worse. I think I did that last week actually. I had already done it. I'd already done it.

I went back into my notes app. I put it in with a little circle and I ticked it. And I was like, yeah, I've got that. Which is ridiculous on one level, isn't it? Totally ridiculous. Okay. So now here's the better way. instead of checking off Q.

This is where people say time boxing doesn't work. This is why, because they don't understand how to work time boxing. The goal is not to finish anything. What do I mean by that? The goal with time boxing

is not to finish the task. It's to have a feedback loop on how long things take you. So the biggest problem with to-do lists is someone says, okay, I've got to do this thing on my to-do list, right? I have to prepare that presentation.

I have to make those sales calls. I have to finish my email inbox. How long does that take? It doesn't say in the, to-do list. So here's what I do. Okay, I got to work on that big presentation. Let me work on this presentation. Oh, this is getting kind of boring. Let me check email for a few minutes. Probably something important there. Okay, let me, you know what? I could really use some coffee. Hey, Janet, how you doing, Janet? It's so good to see. Wait, what was I working on again?

That's what people do. We call it time confetti. That's what some people call it. That our day is, you know, these little bursts of activity. And that's what makes you so unproductive throughout the day and why you feel, you feel like you've been working hard and nothing got done. Rather, the goal of timeboxing is to do whatever you said you were going to do for as long as you said you would without distraction. Not to finish to work on whatever it is you said you were going to do for as long as you said you would without distraction. Why? Because now you have a feedback loop. We know that the average knowledge worker takes three times longer to finish a task than they estimate, three times longer.

Because there's no feedback loop. Here's how you build a feedback loop. you say 30 minutes. I have a big presentation coming up, 30 minutes. It's all I'm going to spend, no more, no less. And in those 30 minutes, I'm going to work with zero distraction. I'm not going to get up from the table, even if I have to go to the bathroom, even if somebody taps me on the shoulder. Nope, I'm going to put a sign up.

It says, do not disturb. I'm only going to work on this task for 30 minutes. Then at the end of 30 minutes, I can see how far I got. And I can say, okay, in 30 minutes, I finish three slides. Well, the whole presentation needs to be 30 slides. So that means I need nine more time boxes to finish the task. So you're training yourself, you're sort of constantly iterating and learning. That's right.

That's right. No other technique can do that for you. By the way, I didn't make up time boxing. It is the most well-studied productivity technique in history. To-do lists, very little productivity advice, very little actual academic research on it. Implementation, I should say, making a time box calendar, there is tons of great academic research about why that's a much, much better technique. Yeah, there's so many beautiful elements of it, because you can eat.

even plan in time for, you know, going back to the start of this conversation, what some people might call wasted time, right? Yes, I want you to. Yeah, but you're planning it. And I was telling you before we just started that I interviewed Esther Perel yesterday at South by Southwest in London. And I've been reading her bookmates in captivity, the 20th year anniversary edition. And one of the things she writes about there is the purposelessness associated with

play is really hard to reconcile with our modern culture of high efficiency and constant accountability. And so the case I think she's making is, you know, play is really important for our relationships, particularly our intimate relationships. And, you know, it's just something that we should do for the inherent pleasure of it without a goal or an outcome from it, just because it's a good, thing to do. But it kind of fits alongside TimeBots and because you can actually box off the time to do that. That's right. And it's amazing how, you know, this is what they call the happiness paradox. The happiness paradox shows us that the more we pursue happiness, why am I not happy? I need to be happy. Everything that's not making me happy is a problem. The more we, we obsess about happiness,

the less happy we become. And it's the same in relationships. When we become hyperfixated in a relationship or in any part of our life on what's not there, we become less. likely to get it. So in a way the to-do list trains us to constantly obsess over all the things I need to get done. Yeah. If you were sort of describing time boxing, my mind was brought to paddle, okay? Now, I brought up paddle a few times over the past few months because it has literally had such a profound impact on me for a variety of different reasons, okay, which I've spoken about before. I play for fun primarily. And there are beautiful. physical and mental well-being side effects,

but that's not why I play, right? I play because I love it. But one of the reasons I think that it is blowing up, and it's the fastest growing sport in the world, right, at the moment, there's a few themes within Paddle that I think relate to this conversation. We spoke to about loneliness before, right? And why if we don't get these kind of core needs, right?

You were saying this through the lens of children, but I think it kind of applies to adults as well. We need competency, autonomy, relatedness, that community. Paddle gives us that, for sure. Sociality is built into Paddle, okay? You can technically play singles, but nobody does, right? Or very few people. It's a game of doubles.

But, and this is where it relates to time boxing, it's not quite time boxing, but one of the things you do to book it is you go on the app. There are a few apps. Playtomac, paddlemates, whatever app your club uses, right? And you go on it and you, and this is one of the beautiful things about it, you don't need to know anyone else who plays. You can just join a match, right? Once four or a full, the match is there, right? It's done. And within 24 hours, you can't cancel. Okay? So if you don't show up, you're letting someone else down. You've got three other people who are turning up. Pre-commitment.

Yeah. But when I'm working from home, and if there's a bit of flexibility in my schedule for the day, I will sometimes take a look in the morning, are there any games around? I don't get to choose what time it is if I'm looking to join a game. Sometimes I'll see a game and I'll be like, yeah, you know what? I reckon I can do that 60 minute game at lunch. I kind of think I can get my work done and that. you commit, you book, the game's locked, right? Yes, you've made that pre-commitment, but B, it's kind of gone into your calendar.

Yeah. So instead of at lunchtime, assuming I was breaking for lunch, think about, oh, have I got motivation to have a workout? Have I got motivation to go for a walk? Which, you know, I often do. But a lot of people struggle with that. You know you're playing paddle because you said you would. Yes.

And that's if you book in the morning. You might book five days before, but it, it, it, goes in the schedules that I think that's why so many people who have struggled to get fit, struggles to move their bodies. It's not like even a sport like, you know, nothing wrong with tennis. Great sport. I love playing tennis. But because you don't have this app booking, right? You have to find people. You have to get people together. Are you free? This is so easy. You just join a game. Do you know what I mean? I think what you've hit on here is is such an important concept. and it's really why

This is technology helping us. Yes, one, that's a great point. Yeah, that it's a habit-forming technology, right? That has its own internal triggers when you've got, oh, you know, you've got its own hook model built right in, which is amazing. But also, I think it demonstrates

what we're all capable of, right? That what is it, what does it mean to be indistractable? An indistractable person doesn't mean you never get distracted. I made up the word so I can define any way I want. Yeah. So indistractable people are people who strive to do what they say they're going to do. And what's amazing is when you become indistractable,

it's incredible how many ancillary benefits you get. So just being the kind of person who commits the way you say, right? People want to play with those who do what they say they're going to do, that people want to date people who do what they say they're going to do. It is the skill of the century. And this pre-commendment, one thing it brings up for me is sometimes I'll, you know, I'll talk to people who are struggling with making those commitments to themselves. And I'll say, imagine you've got one of your heroes.

Maybe it's, I don't know, David Beckham or Oprah Winfrey or whoever, whoever you really admire. And they call you up and say, hey, I heard you were a big fan. I would love to have lunch with you. Are you going to make that lunch happen? Absolutely. You're going to move, you know, hell and high water. You're going to be there no matter what. Traffic, whatever.

You're going to be there. I flew back from my family holiday early to interview John Bon Jovi last year. John Bon Jova, really? My boyhood idol. I thought, I'm not, I'm not, I'm just not going to not do this. There you go. There you go. Exactly, exactly.

Like, think about all the effort you would go through if one of your heroes made time for you. Who is the most important person in your world? It's not John Bon Jovi. It's not David Beckham. It's not Oprah Winfrey. It's you. Right? You are the most important person in your world.

If you're not happy and thriving, nobody around you is either. You can't help others if you can't help yourself. And yet when it comes to appointments with ourselves, going to the gym, making time to read, whatever it is, I'll do it tomorrow. You wouldn't skip out on John Bon Jovi. You wouldn't skip out on your heroes. And yet we skip out on ourselves, the most important person in our life, all the time. So making those pre-commitments, deciding in advance,

that's why every Sunday, now it only takes me 15 minutes, by the way, because 90% of my calendar is exactly the same week to week. That's the beauty of a timebox calendar. You put it in Google Calendar. That's the only technology I really use for this. And more or less, you know, things kind of stay the same. Once you've figured out your rhythm, the idea here is that every Sunday, I'm looking for ways to make my calendar easier to follow.

Easier to follow. And I can change it. You can change whatever you want in the future. You can't change it in the day. Once the day starts, that's it. It's locked and loaded. Then you can't divert from it. What's beautiful about it is you always know when you're distracted.

You always know, as opposed to letting your bridge. Because you didn't do it. Because you're not doing what's on your counter. So if you're checking email and saying, oh, let me just check email for a minute. What a beautiful mirror to your life. That's right. It's literally showing you there and then. You can't get distracted unless you know what you got distracted from.

So by saying, this is what I plan to do. Even if I plan to scroll social media, everything else is a distraction. Yeah, love it. Now, I want to make something clear that I didn't make clear before. I flew back with my wife and kids for this. I didn't just leave them on a family holiday and they supported it. And they came with me to the interview. I would do that too.

I just wanted to make that point clear. I just had a thought also in my head, no, which I think it's worth covering, which is when you were describing time boxing, it felt to me that that could work very well for an entrepreneur or someone who has a lot of independence, which of course it can. In my head I went to, well, what if there's a nurse or a teacher listening who was saying, hey, listen, when I get to work, there are things I have to do, right? Let's say a nurse gets to shift.

For that 12 hours, I am doing my job, right? What would you say to that person? So typically, to be honest, they don't have this problem. If you're a nurse, you know exactly what you need to be doing for every second of your day. You're not scrolling TikTok. That's the point. They don't have that problem. Who has the problem are people who are knowledge workers.

They're at a desk. They're working on their own. They're working remotely. Nobody's over their shoulder. And they have, remember we said anxieties, the dizziness of freedom, this Kirkagard quote, that's who has the problem, right? It's this anxiety of what am I supposed to be doing today? If you're a nurse, you know what you're supposed to be doing

every second of the day, you don't have this problem. Now, when you get home, you might have the problem, but when you don't have this dizziness of freedom, you also don't have the internal trigger. Yeah, I've got to say, I just freaking love chatting to you. Thanks, buddy. Me too. That's great. We're just scratching the surface.

Literally, I prep this yesterday. I don't think we're 20% in to the things I thought we were going to talk about. But I feel it's been such an enjoyable conversation, just trying to really explore these concepts together that you've been writing about, I've been writing about, we've both been thinking about for many years. It's just been great. I want to go more, but I think this is a really good part three conversation. Maybe there's going to be more coming in the future. I suspect there will be. for that person who has been listening there and has recognized throughout this conversation that they are anything but indistractable and that there are forces around them

that they think are taking them away from living the life that they want and living a life of no regrets. Less regrets. You're always going to have some kind of regrets, less regrets. What would you find a word for them be? A word for them. So the most important thing I can leave you with is this.

The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. So everything we're talking about, distraction is an impulse control problem. It's not a moral failing. It's not a character flaw. There's nothing broken about you. It's just that you haven't learned to deal

with these impulse issues, that you've got these emotions that right now have been attached to satisfying them with some kind of distraction. But this is malleable. We can change this. Remind yourself, the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought, that when we think ahead, that's the key. So if you wait until the chocolate cake is on the fork to your mouth, it's too late. You're going to lose. If you wait until the cigarettes in your hand, you're going to smoke it. If you sleep next to your cell phone every night, it's going to be

the first thing you reach for before you say hello to your loved one. So if you leave it to the last minute, you're going to fail. They're going to get you every time. But if you plan ahead, The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. If you take steps today, there is no distraction you can't overcome tomorrow. Yeah, absolutely love it. Guys, the book we have been talking about today, all the themes within it, is indistractable. If you heard my chat with Nir just a few months ago, which, again, if you haven't, I'd highly highly recommend you listen to you. We were discussing his very latest book, Beyond Belief.

And whilst on the surface, they may seem like different books, they're actually not. They are they? There's different content in there, but there is something that soes them together, right? For sure. Actually, the reason I wrote Beyond Believe was because there's still things unresolved that I needed to go deeper on about what was, I would actually, it's funny, I would recommend reading my books in reverse order. Start with Beyond Believe. That, I think, is the most important book to read before you do any other self-help is understand that no good advice works without the lattice work of the right beliefs. That's the first place. Then let's go into the tactics in Indistractable. Yeah, I completely agree. Like, that's where my whole thinking has gone over the last few years.

It all comes down to beliefs. Like, so much of our life is downstream from those beliefs. And as you beautifully say in your book and you beautifully told me a few months ago, you get to choose your beliefs. That's right. These are tools, not truths. Yeah, you can intentionally choose your beliefs so that they help you rather than enslave you. That's right.

Neer, thank you so much for flying in to the show again. Appreciate you coming to the studio. I'd appreciate everything you do. Of course. Thank you for having me. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else.

Remember when you teach someone, it not only helps them. It also helps you learn and return. the information. Now before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I'd be consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively

look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign it for free at Dr.chatsgeat.com forward slash Friday 5. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, e-books, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave

a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please notes that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it, because when you feel better, you live more.