Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - One From The Vault - Indistractable with Author Nir Ayal

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Welcome to One from the Vault Thursdays, where the Makes Sense Podcast Pulls the most classic Rise Up With Dragon podcast episodes from the past.   INDISTRACTABLE: Nir Eyal is an Israeli-born American author, lecturer and investor known for his bestselling books: HOOKED: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and INDISTRACTABLE: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.   Nir Ayal's Website: https://www.nirandfar.com Indistractable Book: https://amzn.to/3Q4MuLA    Sponsored By:  Makes Sense Academy - https://www.riseupwithdragon.com/makes-sense-academy    Connect With Dr. JC Doornick "Dragon" - https://zez.am/makessense  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Makes Sense. Welcome to One from the Vault Thursdays, where the Make Sense podcast pulls some of the most classic episodes of the past from the Rise Up with Dragon Show. Enjoy. So without further ado, I'm going to invite this amazing individual. Here, I just want to say you are a very special guy, very smart, very well accomplished. Jim says hello. And I just want you to know how grateful I am that you say came to the, uh, stalking and barrage of requests and came on the rise up with Dragon Show. So welcome. I wanted to thank you for your persistence and for all those kind words. I'm so glad we finally did connect and it's my pleasure to be here. So thank you so much. Awesome. And what you'll see is that

anybody that ends up running into the dragon runs into good things in life, you know, because like you, we spend our lives trying to help others. So a couple of things caught me right off the bat. I want to dive into this, and I'm just so grateful to have this conversation with you. And I wrote a book about your book. I took a lot of notes. One of the things that I do when I hear something captivating is I write it down so that I can explain it to myself. And then I find myself in my rise-ups and my podcast, taking little bits and pieces of what I learned from you and teaching it just so I can selfishly own it. That's a huge compliment, right? When someone can remix your work and make it better.

That's awesome. He's humble, too. Okay. So first and foremost, going back pre-hooked, just to set the stage, what prompted you first to take an interest in habit-forming technologies? I would say if I really wanted to go back far into my history, I think what started my fascination with what I call behavioral design, which is the application of consumer psychology and behavioral economics to change consumer behavior at large, I think what really got me

interested in this field was the fact that I was a clinically obese child. So for most of my childhood and up through early adulthood, I struggled with food. And I always was kind of fascinated by how it was that food somehow seemed to control me. I remember being really intrigued by all the tricks that the food manufacturers would use to get us to buy their products and how they would particularly market to children and all the tactics they used. And some of them were pretty sneaky. And I remember wanting to learn more. And at one point, I remember blaming the food companies for the fact that I was clinically obese. And I really struggle with this. You know, my parents took me to fat camp and I remember like the whole, you know, that whole experience and

going to the doctor's office and the doctor's saying, okay, you know, here's normal weight on a chart, you know, here's normal weight, here's overweight, and here's you. You're all the way over here in the obese category. And it was really something that I struggled with. You know, I grew up in central Florida and in my little condominia complex. We had one pool and, you know, a bunch of kids in the neighborhood would go into the pool every day after school. And I was the only kid who would keep their shirt on because I didn't want anyone to see my roles. So it was, it was a pretty defining experience. And it wasn't until, I kind of woke up from blaming and shaming and started to wake up to the fact that, you know,

you could pretty easily see these tricks. And once I understood why I was overeating, once I understood the real reason for why I was, I was harming myself with these destructive habits. And once I educated myself in terms of, you know, basic nutrition, and this is something, you know, every, you know, a teenager can quickly understand. a child can understand that you eat junk food, it's not good for you. If you don't move enough, you know, we all know how to lose weight, you exercise and you eat right, right? That's basically it. It's not rocket science. Of course, there's a million books a year that are published trying to come

up with some fat diet, but at the end of the day, it really is about a poor work deficit. But once I understood that, I regained control over my life when I started to understand the reason I was overeating, as is the case with most people who struggle with their weight. You know, I wasn't eating because I was hungry. I was eating because of my feelings. I was eating to escape. I was eating when I felt bored. I was eating when I felt lonely. I was eating when I felt guilt and shame over having overeaten. And it wasn't until I realized like these deeper reasons for why I was doing the things I was doing that I started to regain control over my life. And that was a pretty formative experience for me. And so I kind of kept that experience throughout life. And when I had the opportunity to go in depth into the study of how various products change behavior, that kind of was something that pulled me in. It just naturally attracted me. I wanted to dive deeper.

And so, you know, the modern equivalent of food that's designed to get you to eat it today is our technology that's designed to get you to use it. And so I went, you know, back a few years ago when the rise of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and WhatsApp and when I saw these companies really hitting their stride, I wanted to understand how they do it. I wanted to democratize their secrets so that the rest of us could use these techniques for good. so that it's not just the social media companies and the gaming companies that use the secret psychology. Why can't we use the same principles that make Facebook so habit-forming or Snapchat so engaging to build apps that help people exercise or learn a new language or connect with their loved ones? And that's exactly what my first book did. It came out of a class I taught at Stanford for several years. And that book cooked, How to Build Habit-forming Products, has sold over half a million copies, and it's been used by every concern.

conceivable industry from health tech to financial services to education products, all designed to get people hooked to healthy habits. So that's the first book. The second book, if hooked is about how to build good habits, indestructible is about the flip side. Indistractable is about how do we break the bad habits. And of course, it's different products, right? We can build good habits that help us exercise, eat right, connect with loved ones, learn new language. We want to use technology and help us build those good habits. But we also want to be aware as consumers, how we can break the bad habits to the frivolous technological distractions

that can so often take us off track and prevent us from becoming the kind of people we know we can become. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Makes Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, aka The Chicken, and The Dragon. The Make Sense Academy is a live interactive, community where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion, gather daily in a mastermind setting with both Chicken and Dragon, where they have access to premium content,

online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www.org.org.org.com. and check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make Sense podcast. I so resonate with the pool scene as a kid. My wife and I own an international coaching company. I was a doctor for about 17 years, which I saw was an impossible task to get in all the

bodies. If you're treating symptoms, you're not getting anywhere. You've got to go upstream. My distinction came, because when you experience, what it's like to be the little fat kid, or the kid that's a little bit self-conscious, it makes sense that you'd go on a tear to do everything possible to take that pain away from other people. And I recognize that as a kid, very, very much resonate with that. And it makes total sense why you went on to do all of these things that you've ended up doing. Here's my question.

When I've started reading your book, and I'm referring to indistractable right now, because, you know, it's like what you're basically saying is we forgive everyone for you know not what you do you know it's like we we beat ourselves up for all these downstream side effects and symptoms that we're experiencing but meanwhile when we look upstream you're like i didn't wake up and to say i'm going to be fat and lazy and upset like that wasn't a conscious decision i made so that gives rise to this idea of like well what's happening what's programming me to be this way so it seems like that was your fascination went But at the same time, there's a couple of things that I'm noticing in there. If we're teaching companies, and I know your intention was to teach companies how to use this technology to get people hooked on positive things.

But you got to admit somebody's going to use that reverse technology. I mean, I read an article one time way back when about Nabisco. And this just blew my mind about how Nabisco was testing whether or not Oreo cookies were ready for market. And what they did in the article is they noticed that they had this little kids room where the employees put their kids during the day. And they would put a bag of Oreos out there and watch the kids eat them. And they waited for the moment after all the chemistry was right for the kids to eat the whole freaking bag and fight and ask for the last one. And they knew it was ready for the market. So when I started learning about that stuff, I was like, Houston, we have a problem here, you know?

Well, yes and no. I hear where you're coming from, and it sounds super sinister when you tell it that way. And I don't know this particular story, right? I don't know exactly what happened. So I can't vouch for the validity of that particular technique. But I'm not saying Nabisco didn't read your book. Yeah, yeah, of course. My book wasn't out back then. But here's the thing. What's the alternative? Like Nabisco, can you please make cookies that aren't delicious? Apple, your phones are really engaged. and user-friendly. Can you please make them less user-friendly? Netflix. Your shows are really fun to watch. Please make worse shows. This isn't a problem. This is progress. We want products to be awesome. I want to live in a world with Nabisco cookies because Oreos are freaking awesome. I don't want to live in a world without Oreos if I can choose it. I want the choice to eat Oreos. So we have to stop blaming all this stuff around ourselves. Why? Because it's not going anywhere, right? They're not going to take Oreos off the market because they're too delicious. There will never be regulation that makes Facebook less fun to use. You can't regulate that. It's the point of the product. We want these things. And they're

going to keep making them. So we can't change that. We can't somehow travel back in time. We don't have such a such a ability. And in fact, people have been distracted since time. in Memorial, before the internet, before the iPhone, before Oreo cookies, Socrates was complaining about how distracting the world was and how all the kids these days are so distracted. People have been talking about this forever. There has never been a time where people haven't been complaining about one thing or another distracting them. So it's not, here's the kicker.

You know, we always blame the stuff outside ourselves. And that's never the solution. Now, some people, they don't blame things outside themselves. they blame themselves, right? This is what I used to do. We call these people shammers. So you have the blamers and you have the shamers. The shamers, and this has become very popular today, they think that there's something wrong with them, right? I'm broken somehow. I need a diagnosis. I need some kind of medical practitioner to tell me that somehow my brain is broken. Therefore, I will have a reason for my behavior, right? And now, look, some people do actually have

dysfunction. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of population. The amount of people who think something's broken with them is many orders of magnitudes higher than the actual proportion of people who really do have something that needs to be treated. Or people say, well, this is just part of who I am. I have a short attention span. I have an addictive personality. I'm no good with time management. And of course, that makes things worse because shame is a very uncomfortable psychological state. And what do we do when we feel shame? We look to escape it with guess what? more distraction. So when I felt shame about overeating, I didn't think to myself, hmm, how can I cut back?

No, I ate my feelings. And that led to even more of the behavior I was trying to escape. And I gave myself an excuse. Well, I have a slow metabolism or some other BS, right? So we don't want to be blamers. We don't want to be shammers. We want to be what we call claimers. Claimers claim responsibility not for how they feel.

This is a really important point. You do not control your feelings. You only control how you respond to those feelings, hence the term responsibility. So it's almost like the urge or the feeling to sneeze. If you have the urge to sneeze, you can't control that urge. You already had the urge. You already had the feeling. You can't control that feeling.

All you can control is what you will do in response to that feeling. Are you going to sneeze all over everyone and get them sick? or are you going to do the responsible thing and cover your face when you have to sneeze, right? So it's about how we respond to those sensations. And the same goes for how we respond to all kinds of temptations, right? Do we give in because we feel that impulse, or do we learn to manage that impulse, that urge, in a healthy way that leads us towards what we really want to do as opposed to towards distraction? I'm in love with your perspective, man, because, and it's so rare, and it's just overall, it's solution focused rather than problem focused. And I think we come from the same tribe, you and I'm also very much into things like Buddhism

and Stoicism. And one of the primary practices of Stoicism is to evaluate what's in your control and what's not. Absolutely, right. And, you know, I can just see that most of the things that people are complaining about or feeling icky about or shaming themselves about are them trying to control uncontrollable things. To be said, look, these products are certainly designed to get you. No doubt about it, right?

I wrote the book hooked. I know all their tips and tricks. I know all their strategies. I wrote the book hooked, right? I know exactly how they get you hooked. And I will tell you that these techniques are good. They're very good, but they're not that good. We're not powerless. And if you listen to the media narrative today, we're told that we're all addicted to technology, that it's hijacking our brains. There's nothing we can do about it. And guess what? When we tell people this rubbish, they believe it. And what do people do when you tell them there's nothing that can be done? Guess what they do? Nothing. So the best compliment I can hear about my book is when someone says, wow, that was so empowering. Now I know I'm not powerless. I am in fact powerful. And so what we need

to do is to tell people that this narrative that we're getting addicted to technology, that there's nothing we can do. It's hijacking our brain is wrong. It is unscientific blabble. It is just not true. If you look at the literature, it is not true. Now, some people do really get addicted to technology. a very small proportion of population, just like some people get addicted to alcohol, right? About 3 to 5% of the population is addicted to alcohol. But not everybody who has a glass of wine with dinner is an alcoholic. Of course not. So why do we suddenly think that technology is addicting everyone ridiculous?

It's just not true. It's not an addiction. It's a distraction. I love where this is going and it's fear-based. And, you know, I was brought up in my wiring from my mother-father, teacher, preacher, believing that I had an addictive personality because of what I perceived. So I went on thinking that, but what I realized that even if you do buy into the idea that you have an addictive personality, you still can wake up after reading your book and realize you can put your hands back on

the control and choose your own addiction. You know, like I'm addicted to being happy now. These glasses, I don't even need them. I put them on because when I put them on, they remind me that I control my fantasy and all that stuff. So I love your perspective. And this is also, I just want to say, For everybody that watches this or hears this podcast and has read the book, you already know this. If you haven't, one of the reasons you want to read this book is it's not only going to teach you transactionally about distraction and how to overcome it, you're hearing Mears' perspective on things. He's not trying to fight the man.

He's actually using the man's techniques for good, which I love. Solution focus rather than problem. So I want to go over this and then I want to move in. into proactive approaches because his book, and he gives away tons of free stuff on his indestructible.com website, go there now and you can just start downloading stuff for free. Before we get into proactive stuff,

when I read that moment, you were referring to the superpower scenario with your daughter, I remember as a kid, when I, so I was that kid. So I started the process of personal growth very young because of what I witnessed. I remember, I mean, love my, my father, and when I learned about where he came from, Papa, you're doing way better than your

father. So I love you and I appreciate you. But I used to walk up to him and I remember, I would say, Papa, you know, like we had had plans to play or something like that. And not only was my dad on the computer here, he had the ability to turn to me with glassed over eyes and talk to me while he was typing. And I remember soaking that in at a young age saying, he's not hear with you know. So if you could just share that that story, because that was a big catalyst for you recognizing the power of this, what happened with your daughter. If you could share that story. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So that was the moment I really had to reconsider my relationship with distraction was we had an afternoon open where my daughter and I just decided to spend some

quality time together, just some daddy daughter time. And we had this activity book of different things that dads and daughters could do together. One of them was to make an origami crate and another one was to do a sedoco puzzle together. And one of the activities in the book was to ask each other this question, that if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter said. Because in that moment, for whatever reason, I don't even remember why, I thought it was a good time to check my phone. And before I knew it, the time I looked up from my device, she was gone. She'd left the room because she had gotten the message loud and clear that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was.

And I realized that I had blown this perfect daddy daughter moment. And so that's the moment I realized, wow, I really have to figure this out. Because if I'm honest with you, it didn't just happen with her. It would happen when I said, I was definitely going to work out today. I was going to go to the gym and I didn't. Or I'm going to eat better, right? I'm going to going to eat more healthfully, and I wouldn't. It would happen when I would sit down on my desk at work, and I would say, I'm definitely going to work on that big project right now. And then 30, 45 minutes later, I was still checking email or doing whatever, not working on that big project I said I would. So that's when I decided that if I could have any superpower, I would want the power to be indistractable.

Because let's face it, this is the macro skill of the century, right? There are so many great books out there. You mentioned Jim Quick. He has fantastic work, you know, whether it's, you know, there's so much knowledge out there. But how many of us struggle to finish a book? How many of us struggle with going to the gym when we say we will? How many of us struggle with quitting smoking or working on that big project when we say we will or whatever the case might be? Fundamentally, if you can't do this, if you can't control your attention, you do not control your life. And look, folks, this is not turning around. This is not going backwards. This problem is only going to get more acute because the world is bifurcating into two kinds of people. People who allow their time

and attention to be manipulated and controlled by others and people who stand up and say, no, I control my time and attention. I am indistractable. And so that's why I embarked on this five-year journey to really figure out what is distraction and what can we do about it. Because if it's fundamentally what's preventing us from living out our goals and becoming the kind of people we want to be, this is the most important skill, right? Because there is no facet of your life, your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, your work output. All of these things fundamentally require you to be able to control your attention and your time. So first and foremost, this obviously, because of my story I resonate with,

I just want you to know that my wife and I are adopting a little girl from South Africa. because of this damn pandemic, we've been waiting an extra year. But she's 11 years old and she is watching the live right now. And her name is Alexi. So I just want to say to you, Alexi, Alexi, if you ever see me not paying attention to when you talk, just sock me in the face or step in my name. I don't want to miss a thing, my sweetie. Tell him, Daddy, you're not being indistractable.

There you go. There you go. And she's got the smarts to read the book. Here's a question I have for you, Neer, on this topic. And this is why I didn't understand, I think, innately as a kid receiving this. And this is why I try so hard to not impart this on other people. In your book, we talk about the nature of distraction, the catalyst or distraction, is the idea is to move away from some form of discomfort.

And I see that and I can feel it. If that's true, why would we distract ourselves from things. that matter most, like our family and our kids. I can't see what the discomfort is there. The only thing I see as the discomfort is my, like, silly idea that they're always going to be there and life is just omnipresent and it's never going to go away, right? I've learned to have a mortality mentality now. Or I'm just worried that this stupid email is going to disappear and I can't wait 10 minutes. What's that about? Yeah, so let's back up a quick second to talk about what triggers us towards distraction. So there are two types of triggers. We have external triggers and

internal triggers. External triggers, these are the usual suspects. It's the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment that can lead us towards distraction. But it turns out, even though that's what most people think about when they think about distraction, they think, oh, my phone was buzzing or I got called by my boss or my kids came in, like they think about the stuff outside themselves, it turns out that 90%, 90%, 90, 90, 90% of the times we get distracted. We don't get distracted by what happens outside of us. We get distracted by what happens inside of us. An internal triggers and studies have found this, they found that 90% of the time that you check your phone, you are checking your phone because of an internal trigger.

What is an internal trigger? An internal trigger is an uncomfortable emotional state that we seek to escape from. boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, stress, anxiety. We look for escape from these uncomfortable sensations. Distraction overwhelmingly begins from within. And we have to understand this point first, because look, whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, we will always get distracted by something unless we understand that deeper reason that we are looking for escape. because look, all human behavior, we used to think it was about carrots and sticks.

It's not true. All human behavior is about the desire to escape discomfort. Everything we do is about the desire to escape discomfort. This is called a homeostatic response. So, for example, if you're physically, if you go outside and it's cold, the brain says, ooh, that's not comfortable. You should put on a coat. But if you go back inside, now it's too hot.

The brain says, it's too hot. It's not comfortable anymore. It doesn't feel good. Take off your jacket. And so the same thing happens inside our heads, right, when we feel uncomfortable emotions. When you're lonely, check Facebook. When you're uncertain, you Google, when you're bored. Oh, lots of solutions to boredom, right?

We can go on Pinterest, check stock scores, prices, sports scores. Oh, the best one, let's check the news, right? So we can worry about somebody's problem thousands of miles away as opposed to having to deal with our own issues. right? We are always looking for escape from our discomfort. So why does this happen? This happens because of what's called temporal discounting. That we as a species, we have this cognitive quirk that we look for immediate gratification over the long-term rewards. So even though we know, hey, the right thing to do is to go exercise, is to eat right. We don't do it because right now we could stay home and watch Netflix and eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's. We don't spend time with our kids

because sometimes our kids are boring and annoying. We'd much rather just watch TV or check email to escape. And we see this in all sorts of domain. And something we didn't cover, it's not about the behavior itself. Okay, so I want to be the last person to vilify any particular technology. If you want to watch Facebook all day, play video games, that's great. There's no problem with that. Because any action can be traction or distraction.

traction. Traction or distraction. Traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you're going to do, things you do with intent, things that move you closer to your goals and help you become the kind of person you want to become, help you live out your values. So if you decide, you know what, I want to play video games for an hour. No problem. Do it. You want to go on Facebook. You want to pray, meditate, paint. Doesn't matter. As long as that's what you plan to do according to your schedule and your values, great, you should do it. But if it's not what you plan to do, it's by definition a distraction. And many times those distractions, the really dangerous ones, the most common ones, are the ones that we don't even realize are distracting us. Let me give you a

great example. For years, I would sit down on my desk and I would say, okay, I really have to work on that big project today. Okay, I really need to focus. I'm not going to let myself get distracted. no more procrastinating. I'm going to work on that project right now. Here I go. I'm going to get started. But first, let me check email. Let me just do those easy tasks on my to-do list. Because then I feel productive. I'm doing work, right? I'm doing work-related tasks. I got to check email sometime today. I got to check those boxes on my to-do list at some point. But if it's not what you plan to do with your time, it's still a distraction. And in fact, it's the most dangerous form of distraction because it's the kind of distraction that tricks you into prioritizing the easy

work and the urgent work at the expense of the hard and important work that is essential for moving your life and your career forward. So just because something is worky doesn't mean it's not a distraction. It's just as evil as Facebook and video games if it's not what you plan to do with your time. I see so many professionals running real fast in the wrong direction, right, because of busyness. not business, but busyness. It's this toxic culture that we live in that as long as I'm running real fast, then that's somehow morally superior. No, if you're doing the wrong stuff, you are just as distracting.

You might as well have gone and played video games. And this is the biggest problem I see. I do a lot of angel investing. I've invested in three billion dollar companies. I've made dozens of angel investments. And I see this all the time with entrepreneurs who do not understand that their number one, is to prioritize. If you can't prioritize in your business in your life, if you don't know how to properly prioritize and execute on what you say you are going to do, your business will fail,

your personal life is going to suffer, your psychological well-being is going to suffer, because we have got to live with personal integrity by becoming indistractable. Yeah, I'm wondering where I can start getting tips on where to put my investments. Yeah, let's do it. Using this technology. So I assume, because I remember, This was a pivotal moment when I was reading. This is what you mean by the idea of learning to be indistractable form of pain management. So I love that.

One of the things that I pulled from what you just said that I just find, I see this every day. As a matter of fact, it's happening right now as somebody's listening to this podcast or maybe watching the video or the live. We have this practice of doing what you said of busyness, right, which I refer to as fake work, right? the illusion that we're busy and that actually suffices us at the end of the day we go oh boy what a day right but meanwhile we didn't do anything to move us forward so i heard you say this or i read it the idea that learning itself is actually a form of distraction in the absence of action so when i when i heard that i said because i mean that's probably one of the biggest things that i see in personal growth is people go to these big seminars

and all this stuff. I mean, I went, I won't mention any names, but I went to one of the rock stars of personal growth, and you come out of those things just like, riding high, you can shoot lightning out of your hands. And meanwhile, during the break, I see people eating cheeseburgers, getting high, smoking cigarettes and stuff. And it's just this illusion of this fake work. So I loved, I want to thank you, because I share this with so many people in our coaching, in our teams, this idea that when I give a talk, when I give a lecture, it's intended to put into play, not to just let it stay there. So I always give a disclaimer. This lesson, this hour, just like this podcast, is a waste of your time if you have no intention

of doing something with it. Yeah, it's so true. And I see it all the time that you absolutely, positively, can use personal productivity advice as just another escape. If I think that, oh, just the next book, the next seminar, the next workshop, that's going to give me the magic answer. And you keep pursuing that at the expense of actually doing

what you want to do and need to do to live out your values and become the kind of person you want to be. If you're escaping the discomfort of doing by tricking yourself into thinking that you need to do something else, it's just as much of a distraction. And so that's why it's so important.

step, I'll walk through some of the steps to becoming indistractable. Step number one is mastering the internal triggers. You have got to figure out how you can deal with that discomfort in a way that leads you towards traction rather than distraction. There's over a dozen techniques I talk about. It's not just, you know, a lot of self-help people. They kind of just make up stuff. No, everything in the book is backed by peer-reviewed studies.

Is this the stuff that you're talking about? I believe it was Bricker's work? Yes, exactly. Jonathan Brickers' work. So this comes from acceptance and commitment therapy. So he's one expert I cite. And in the book, there's over 30 pages of citations to these peer-reviewed studies. So this isn't just stuff that works for me.

It's been validated with published articles in scientific journals. So there's many, many techniques that we can use. What I want to do is arm you with arrows in your quiver that you can pull out whenever you feel one of these internal triggers that might take you off track, whether it's anxiety, stress, fatigue, loneliness. You need to have a plan in place to know what you are going to. going to do when you feel that discomfort. So that's step number one, mastering the internal triggers. Step number two, and this is a big part of the antidote to making sure that you don't get distracted by something as positive as learning, you can get distracted by too much self-help as well. The only antidote to that is to turn your values into time. Turning your values into time.

What do I mean by that? If you don't know what it is you wanted to do with your time, you have no right to say you got distracted. Because how can you say you got distracted if you don't know what you got distracted from? Let me say that again. You cannot say you got distracted if you don't know what you got distracted from most people, the vast majority, 99% of the people out there do not keep a time boxed calendar. This is no longer optional or just don't complain. Okay? Just suck it up and admit that your life is being manipulated by other people and you're okay with that. Because if you don't decide in advance how you want to spend your time, and I mean down to the minute, you are letting other people commercial interests, your boss, your kids, your spouse, whoever, dictate that time for you. So you have got to stop once a week for 15 minutes. This is how long the practice takes. I do this every single week on Sunday nights. It's in my calendar. I sit down and I ask myself,

how can I live out my values by turning my values into time? Now, what are values? Values are defined as the attributes of the person you want to become. So once a week I ask myself, how would the person I want to become spend their time? Now, the answer is not going to be, I want to be the kind of person who spends six hours a day on social media. or consuming Tony Robbins videos or whatever in excess. Now, a little bit of that is fine, right? Yeah, some self-have education is fantastic. You know, going and playing video games or doing whatever you want to do with your time, wonderful.

Put that time in your calendar. You should have time for entertainment, education, whatever it is that you find fun and fulfilling. But do it with intent. Don't do it to escape a bad feeling because procrastination and distraction is not a moral failing. It's not a character flaw. It's simply your inability to deal with that discomfort in a healthy way that leads to traction rather than distractions. So if you plan out in advance, okay, I want to spend this much time with my, you know, exercising, I want to spend this much time with my friends. I need to spend this much time doing focus work at work. I need to spend this much

time being available to my colleagues. I need to spend this much time doing email, whatever the case might be. By having that structure in place, that is the only way to know the difference between traction and distraction in your life. I love that when I got to that part. And I just want to say to everybody listening, if you've read the book, great, if you haven't read it. But I recommend, you know,

I talk to Jim quick who teaches speed reading. We always talk about, and his book was like this too. There's certain books that are tough to speed read because I often make notes so often. So reading, because I know a lot of people are into audible and things like that, I read his book and listened to it

with his voice, which you get a little bit of his humor and satire in that as well. And it was the second run through that really, really prepared me, helped me take ownership of that. So we're coming to the end of this session, and I just want to state a couple of things that you're also going to get from the book. He talks in the book about some amazing tools. You know, he uncovers all this stuff, but then gives you easy, like he said, arrows from the quiver.

I love that announcement. He gives you concepts like hacking things back, like hacking back your desktop, things like that. And he also teaches you about making packs. Could you just talk a little bit briefly before we end on making packs? I love that idea. And I know that there's some research behind it as well. I know, so by the way, my beginning of my story, my BD before Dragon Stories, I lost 80 pounds. And one of the things that I did, yeah, it was 14 years ago.

That started my whole journey to help other people. But one of the things that I did is I made a pact with the two most important people in my life, my two boys. And I looked, because I always said, I'll die for my children, but I never lived for them. So I said to my boys, I said, I want you to look me in the eye. Daddy is going to do this and you just watch me. I'll never let them down. There was a lot of pressure put on myself, but I saw that as a whole pact.

Tell us a little bit about pact. Sure. So just to recap, so step number one is mastering internal triggers. Step number two is making time for traction, turning your values into time. Step number three is hacking back all those external triggers. The fourth and final step is called preventing distraction with PACs. Now PACs are these pre-commitment devices. This is when we decide in advance what we will do when these temptations, these urges, these distractions rear their ugly head. So this is what we do last. Okay, don't do what I am about. to tell you before you have done the other three techniques because this will backfire. Okay, this is the fail safe. This is the firewall, the last line of defense, but you have to do the other three steps first. Now, when you were ready to use these packs, here's what you do. There are three types of pact. We have what we call an effort pact, a price pact, and an identity pact. An effort packed is when we put some bit of friction in between us and the behavior we do not

want to do. Okay. So when all the other techniques fail as a last line of defense, there's some effort, some friction that prevents you from doing something you didn't want to do. So let me give you an example in my own life. So I feel like we bonded here, Dragon, during this conversation. So I'm going to get a little personal, okay? Is that, is that right with you? Well, can I? You probably know the story. I'm going to tell you. Can I officially tell people that you're my friend now? I mean, absolutely. With pride. Okay. So, okay, we're going to talk sex. Okay. So I've been married for over 20 years now. And a few years ago, while I was writing this book, my wife and I were having problems with our sex life.

Namely, that every night when we went to bed, my wife was fondling her iPhone and I was caressing my iPad at the expense of us being intimate. And so this had to change, right? We had no sex life. Our sleep was suffering. We were getting to bed later and later because we were on our devices as opposed to being intimate and being together. And I think a lot of couples experience this. So what do we do? We went through those three steps of the indistractable model. And then when we came to the last line of defense, we used an effort pack. Now, remember, an effort pack is when we put some bit of friction in between us and something we don't want to do, the distraction, the thing that takes us off track.

So what did I do? I went to the hardware store and I bought us a $5 outlet timer. Now, this outlet timer turns on or off at any time of day or night that you program. whatever you plug into it. What do we plug into it? Our internet router. So every night in our household at 10 p.m., the internet shuts off automatically. We don't have to think about it. Why? Because we have made a pre-commitment. We have made a pact that at 10 p.m. we need to shut down for the night, start brushing up, get ready for bed so that we can be together, get rest, and maybe more. right so what's interesting about this is that you know i could turn the internet back on i could go and

you know fiddle with it and unplug and replug i could of course i could but the point is that it added some friction it added a moment a moment of mindfulness when i asked myself wait a minute do i really need to be on the internet here is this really what i said i was going to do with my time am i lying to myself am i cheating to myself here and my relationship with my wife or it's okay i can i can check those emails tomorrow i can check social media later i can finish that Netflix movie later on because this is what I said I'm going to do. I said from 10 o'clock, that's when I'm going to have some quality time with my wife, that's when I'm going to get some rest, and that's what I'm going to do. So as a last line of defense, I put that effort

packed in place to make sure I did what I said I'm going to do. The interesting thing is that now we don't even need that router. We've habituated to the fact that everybody in my household knows, okay, 10 o'clock, the internet's going to shut off. So that means you've got to wrap up real quick because, you know, like it or not, there's not going to be an internet access. And now we don't even really need it, to be honest. But it was very, very effective. I love that. And I know that, so everybody calls me Dragon and they call my wife Chicken. And Chicken is in love with this concept. I love that. You know, we actually practice something similar. We call it Twilight Hour. And Twilight Hour is at 10 p.m. We don't go that far. Maybe we just didn't want to spring for the five bucks. But we just

we just turn off technology. And we made an effort packed around that. And you know what? If I'm being 100% honest, it's not perfect. But what it does is it sets the ground rules. So at least one of us, we just need one person to be conscious of it and say, hey, hello, 10 p.m. So it's dramatically changed our lives as well. And by the way, you don't have to do everything all at once.

Okay. Like even just bringing awareness to, wait a minute, I said I was going to. to go to bed at 10 p.m. And look, everybody gets distracted from time and time. Even I get distracted from time and time. That's okay. The definition of indestructible is not someone who never gets distracted. It's someone who understands why they got distracted and they do something about it. There's an awesome quote, Poelho Coelho said, a mistake repeated more than once is a decision. A mistake repeated more than once is a decision. So if distraction gets you once, okay, it happens, right? A distractible person lets the same distraction happen again.

And again, and again, they make the decision to be distractible. How many times can we complain about technology distracting us before we freaking do something about it? So an indistractable person says, ah, okay, you got me once distraction. It's not going to happen again. I'm going to take steps right now by following these four steps. What is it, right? Was it the internal trigger? Do I need to figure out how to deal with that sensation of, ooh, I just got a check?

I got to check. Is it making time for traction? Do I not plan my day accordingly? Can I hack back the external triggers by removing all those? beeps and buzzes in my environment. And finally, did I put a pact in place to prevent me from getting distracted in the future? So it's really holistic about looking at these four steps and then making small tweaks. I still adjust from time of time because life changes, right? Things happen. So again, it's about understanding why you got distracted and making those adjustments so it doesn't

continue to distract you in the future. I love this, man. You know, one of the things that I became conscious of is the power of becoming conscious. And I love the idea. Yeah, because you just brought this to light that the idea is never, it's not to, being indistractable doesn't mean that you're never going to be distracted. Being indistractable means being mindful of it happening. Eckhart Tolle is just an amazing mind. And he said something one time that it comes to mind now. He says, the first step to end suffering is the acknowledgement that you are. So the first step to becoming indistractable needs to be the acknowledgement of the distraction.

what it's distracting you from and such. Neer really, really appreciate this. On behalf of everybody that's going to listen to this, lots and lots of people are going to listen to this and then watch this. I really appreciate you taking the time. First of all, I'm distracted by the yellow color of the book, but it ended up being a good thing because I pick it up very often. So very, very smart there.

Get the book, Indistractable. You can go to the indistractable.com website or learn more about NIR and all the stuff that he's doing at near and far.com. If you want to stalk him like I did, you can find him on Instagram and all the channels. And one of the things that a lot of us look to do to make change is find what they call 1,000 true followers. So I just want you to know that I'm one of them.

So anytime you say jump, we're going to just say how high. Oh, you're awesome. I really appreciate that. Thank you. So you know what? The best thing for an author is to see that someone took the time to read my work, to apply to their life, to share it with others. You've done me a huge favor by doing all the above.

So thank you so much. Well, my book is going to be coming out this year, and I'm definitely going to be quoting you on a couple of things. So I'll be sure to send you a copy. Yes, I'd love to read it. As soon as the skies open up, Chicken and I are coming out to Singapore, and we're going to take you out for some chili crab. That sounds awesome. I can't wait.

All right, my friend, have a wonderful, wonderful day. Once again, thank you so much for being here. Makes sense.