The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E43: Nir Eyal - How to Become Indistractable

Episode Date: November 28, 2019

On this week's episode of The Diary of a CEO, I sit down with Nir Eyal, an Israeli-born American author, lecturer and investor. Nir released his first book in 2014 “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” and it became a Wall Street Journal Interna...

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to get it done. That presentation, that workout, that to-do list, that errand. But for some reason, a reason that feels somewhat subconscious, you keep getting distracted. You sit down to do it and five minutes later you find yourself on Instagram watching a cat chasing its own tail. How much of our lives are lost to distractions like this? Distractions that bring us no inherent value. Distractions that pull us away from what we want to do, where we want to go and who we want to be. Distractions that cost us the most precious asset we have, time. Research shows that the ability to

stay focused is a great competitive advantage, but not just in work, in life, in relationships, and in everything in between. All of you listening to this podcast today have ambitions, I know that for sure. And one of the biggest day-to-day risks to you achieving those ambitions is distraction. In an age of ever-increasing demands on our attention, in an age of notifications, flashing screens, social media addictions and emails, how do we get the best out of technology without letting it get the best of us? Imagine, imagine if we could learn to not be distracted. Imagine if we could be indistractable. On this week's episode of The Driver CEO, I had the privilege of speaking to a world-renowned author called Nir Eyal. Nir released his first book in 2014 called Hooked, How to Build Habit-Forming

Products. And I remember reading that book cover to cover in San Francisco when I was working in Silicon Valley. It changed my life. It changed what I did every single day while I was building products. And that book became a Wall Street Journal international bestseller with 200,000 copies sold worldwide. It shook the industry, to say the least. The book discusses something called the hook model, a four-phased approach which is embedded into all of the products we use, all of the social media platforms we use, and companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook all use these principles to make social media incredibly addictive. Now, five years later, Nir is back with his second book called Indistractable, how to control your attention and to choose your life.

It's about the science of distraction, explaining why we're constantly distracted by WhatsApp, email, Instagram notifications, why we can't get the things done we want to get done, and how we can break free of these addictions in order to be productive, in order to work towards the things that matter to us, and in order for our life to be filled with things that we value, not distractions that we don't. Of all the podcasts I've done, this podcast is the one where I walked away with key information that will stay with me for the rest of my life and that has immediately, immediately made me change the way that I behave. This is a must listen. Without further ado,

this is the Diary of a CEO, and I'm Stephen Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Yeah, so I think my area of expertise is, especially for your audience, is around how do we do what we say we're going to do? I think so much of what is told to people who want to start businesses, who want to be entrepreneurs, is about the hustle, it's about the vision board,

it's about the five-year plan. What about next week, right? What if we just show up for things on time? What if we do what we say we're going to do? That actually turns out to be just as revolutionary to our work life and to achieving our dreams as these big visions, which many people have not only a tough time actually accomplishing, but a tough time thinking about, right? So my idea is, look, we already know what to do. Who can't Google how to lose weight? We basically know how to do that stuff. Who doesn't know how to be better at their job, right? We have to show up and do the work. That's how we're better at our job. We have to have a better relationship. We have to

be fully present with people. So the problem isn't knowing what to do. The problem is why don't we do it? That's the problem. And so I didn't see any other books that addressed this issue. And it turns out it's not a new problem that Plato talked about 2,500 years ago. He called it a crassia. So it's something that has plagued mankind for at least the past 2,500 years. Our iPhones and Facebook didn't create distraction. Distraction has always been with us. And I think overcoming distraction, being the kind of person who lives with personal integrity, that is the skill of the century. And so writing a book requires tremendous personal investment. I'm in the process of it. And the daunting task of the months that it's going to cost me,

make me really reconsider. Like the month it's going to cost you? Like the months it's going to cost me. Oh, months. Multiple months. going to cost like the months it's going to cost a month a multiple months i was about to say if you write a book in a month you're no way yeah i mean i thought i could took me five years to write and distract well there you go so five years of your life you must really feel a need for this book to be in the world what was that need that like deep down true inspiration within yourself that meant that you had to write this book well first, first of all, it took me five years to write it because I kept getting distracted, frankly. I mean, that is really why it took me so long to write, because for the first three years, I felt like the lights were turned out and I was blind looking for answers. And I kept looking and looking for answers. And I read every book on this topic about technology

and distraction and addiction. And the advice out there didn't work. I mean, I did what all the books tell you to do. I took the 30-day digital detox. I got rid of my technology. I got myself a flip phone. I got myself a word processor on eBay that did nothing but type. You can't, no internet connections from the 1990s. They don't even make it anymore. And I would sit down to use these tools and say, okay, now I'm not going to get distracted. Now I'm going to write. Now I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do. You know what? I should probably just clean up my desk real quick or let me just take out the trash. And I kept getting distracted. And so this problem kept popping up. I mean, the seminal moment for me was really with my daughter. That was kind of the

moment that shook me up where we had this beautiful afternoon plan together. And we had this book of activities that daddies and daughters could do together. And one of the activities in the book was to ask each other questions. And one of the questions was, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember the question verbatim, but I don't remember what my daughter said. Because in that moment, I was just looking at this one thing real quick, as opposed to being fully present with her. Sure. And she got the idea that whatever was on my device was more important than she was. So she left the room and she played with some toy outside.

And by the time I looked up for my phone, she was gone. She left the room. And so that's when I realized that this was a problem. And if I'm really honest with you, that wasn't the only time it happened. I would get distracted when I was with her. I would get distracted when I was with friends, when I was with my wife, and when I was working. And ironically, what I found was that when I wrote my first book, it wasn't as much of a problem because not many people knew who I was.

So I wasn't getting invitations for speaking engagements. I wasn't getting a lot of the emails I started getting for consulting work and for all the things that later came out of a successful book. And ironically, what had made me successful was the writing and the researching was the one thing I couldn't find time to do because I kept getting distracted by all these opportunities. Writing and researching is what I do for a living and I wasn't able to do it because in a way the success was distracting. This is just a bit of a personal thing. For many years, I've said to myself that when I get distracted from

a particular goal that I have, I've always thought it was like life's way of telling me that I didn't actually want to do it. So sometimes as an entrepreneur, you'll know, I get tons of ideas. I'll think of a new business idea. I'll get super passionate about it. I'll get distracted. And I'll think, okay, well, that's life's way of telling me that. Maybe I wasn't that passionate about it. How do I know the distinction between being distracted and actually not being passionate about something? Yeah. It's easy to think with your heart.

It's hard to think with your head. You can't change how you feel. You can only change how you respond to how you feel. And this is a very common problem among entrepreneurs, among people who are very creative, who have lots of ideas, who can actually make those ideas come to fruition. The problem is that doesn't always serve us. That for many entrepreneurs that I see, and I'm one of them. I mean, look, I'm patient zero. I wrote this book for me.

So I've experienced exactly what you are talking about. And it is cancer. It is absolutely detrimental to a company. Your employees cannot stand a CEO who one week comes in with this amazing idea. And the next week it's that amazing idea. And I used to do this at my company. I've run two companies now. And we had a name for this. We called it shiny ponies. That my employees would make fun of me for saying, oh, okay, here's near shiny pony this week. It drives people absolutely crazy. And the reason you know this, if you actually look at what we do as entrepreneurs, and you look back at those shiny ponies, you realize how ridiculous it is. Because what seems so amazing right now, if you just put yourself into the perspective of asking yourself, what happened to that idea I was super excited about six months ago? Nine times out of 10, you realize, oh, that was actually not a very good idea.

I'm glad I didn't do it. And so I don't know if I agree with that idea that just because you have a feeling that that feeling is the universe trying to tell you something, it could most likely be what I call an internal trigger. An internal trigger is these uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from. And it turns out that that is the root cause of all distraction. In fact, that's the root cause of all human behavior. Boredom, uncertainty, fatigue, loneliness, anxiety, these uncomfortable sensations are what drives us to do everything that we do and so that's typically what what's going on and we can get into more

depth around how to deal with that but but that's that's usually the root cause the the fundamental question which i know everybody wants to have the answer to and you know your book is incredibly positively reviewed i checked everywhere and the reviews are, you know, astounding. So I'm presuming you're the guy that has the answer. The question is, and this is the fundamental question I guess you're addressing in the book is why don't we do the things that we want to do? And look, my life is full of things that I really, really want to do as is everybody's, whether it's calling my mom or like taking the trash out or buying that thing on Amazon I know I need in the house that's causing me great inconvenience. Or exercising or eating

right or whatever it might be. I just think, imagine the entrepreneur, the family member, the boyfriend I would be if I could just bloody do these things that I want to do. Amen. So how do I do it? Yeah. So it starts from understanding why we don't do these things. That fundamentally, the reason we procrastinate, the reason we get distracted, the reason we don't do what we say we're going to do, the reason we don't live with personal integrity is because of an impulse control problem. That's really what it is. It's not that we're bad people. It's not that we're broken. It's not that we're messed up in some way. It's that we are looking for the easiest way to get psychological relief.

And that is what our brains are designed to do. That, in fact, if you think about what is the root of all human behavior, why do we do everything we do? There's this theory that many people are aware of that everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This is called Freud's pleasure principle. That is all about carrots and sticks. We've all heard this before. That is not what is going on in the brain. That, in fact, to get us to do everything that we do, everything that we do, the brain utilizes one thing, and that is discomfort.

Everything we do is about the desire to escape an uncomfortable sensation. It's called a homeostatic response. If you think about this physiologically, right, if you go outside and it's cold, that's not comfortable. You put on a jacket. If you come back inside, now it's too hot, you take it off. If you feel hungry, you feel hunger pangs. That's not comfortable. So you eat.

What about sex? Sex is a great one, actually. So this is a terrific point. You think, okay, well, doesn't the species perpetuate itself through pleasure, through orgasm? But think about this for a minute. In fact, the brain has two neural circuits. One is called the liking system, and one is called the wanting system, two separate systems. The liking system, the point of the liking system in the brain is to encode memories, right? Memories of what feels good. The point of the wanting system is to remind you of that with a painful prod. So let's take sex. The act of sex, the act of lovemaking or orgasm is fleeting, right? It's very, it doesn't take that long. Tell me about it. Right,

tell you about it. But getting up to that, that takes a lot of work, right? The wooing and the pursuit. And if you think about what's involved, you know, there's a very good reason why we say love hurts. Because wanting, craving, lust, desire, those are psychologically destabilizing states. And that is what gets us to have sex, is the discomfort of wanting someone, craving them, being obsessed with them. That stuff drives us crazy. I mean, literally, love does hurt, neurologically speaking.

Because remember, the brain doesn't get us to do things because they feel good. The brain gets us to do things because they felt good. It's the memory of that feeling that gets us, that prods us to go get it. But it does that through discomfort. So the reason this is so important is because if all human behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort, that means that time management is pain management. That fundamentally if you don't do what you say you're going to do, if you procrastinate, if you delay, if you get distracted, it's because your brain has told you that the easiest way to find relief from psychological discomfort is with some kind of distraction. So we talked about it

physiologically, how we do this biologically, but when our body feels uncomfortable, psychologically, it's the same exact thing. When we feel lonely, where do we go? We check Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, right? When we feel uncertain, we Google. When we feel bored, stock prices, sports scores, the news, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest. The options are limitless. We do these things because we feel discomfort and we want to escape that feeling as quickly and easily as possible. So the idea here is how do you train

your brain to no longer get relief from this uncomfortable state through distraction, but rather through acts of traction. That's what this is all about. And you say acts of traction. Yeah. So to understand what distraction is, we have to understand what it is not. What is the opposite of distraction? So the opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. That in fact, both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull. And they both end, you'll notice in the same six letters, A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you plan to do with intent, things that move you forward in life. The opposite of traction is distraction,

anything that pulls you away from what you plan to do. So this is why this is super important. There's two reasons why this is very important. Number one, anything can be a distraction. And this gets entrepreneurs all the time. I used to sit down at my desk and I'd say, okay, now I'm gonna work on that big project. I'm gonna do that thing that I've been procrastinating on.

I'm finally gonna do that hard task. Here I go. Right after I check email. Right? Right after I do that other thing that I need to do right now real quick. That thing that feels productive, it feels worky, right? It feels like that's something I had to do anyway, but that's what I call pseudo work. Because if we give in to that distraction of email, which feels worky, right? Those are the more sinister distractions. It's really easy to say, oh, you're reading the newspaper when you're supposed to be reading, or you're supposed to be working, or you're watching YouTube when you're supposed to be working. That's obvious. The more pernicious distractions are the ones that are hidden, that we think are productive, but really are a

distraction. Why are they so dangerous? Because when we do that, we are giving into the urgent and paying the price of not doing what is important. Why do we do that? When we've got that big project in front of us, which we know has a deadline of tomorrow, why do we do everything? You know, the procrastination, at least that's how people think of it in society. Why do I choose to do everything other than the big projects? Because you're looking to escape discomfort. And the big project to me you're looking to escape discomfort. And the big project to me, neurologically and psychologically is discomfort.

And the bigger the project, the more things on your to-do list, we can talk about why I hate to-do lists in a minute. The more your to-do list, ironically, you would think, oh, the more I have to do, the more I should want to do it, right? But you know, it's the exact opposite. The more you have on the to-do list,

the more you say, ah, screw it, I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna go watch some videos or I'm gonna go hang out with my buddies. I'm gonna escape because it feels horrible. And so you don't want to do it because it feels bad. And especially when there are other things in our world that can relieve that discomfort, right? Go to the pub, hang out with some friends, watch a YouTube video, go on Facebook. Those things relieve that discomfort by distracting us. One of the things you said, which was really resonated, which I've never really noticed before, is I will replace the big project with something that feels working.

Like I won't go from big project to like playing video games. I'll like do a work task, which is less, you know, which is more enjoyable. Answer 30 emails. Look what I did, right? But of course, that's just the urgent at the expense of the important, because then you'll never get to that big task that requires some heavy lifting. So just as we talked about how everything can be a distraction, anything can be traction. So this is one of the secrets to overcoming distraction, becoming indistractable, is to make time for the things that previously distracted you. So there's a lot of people out there who have this technophobic, technopanic ideology that technology is at fault, right? That technology is to blame.

And so there's a few different categories of people when it comes to how people deal with distraction. One group I call the blamers. The blamers say, oh, it's the technology doing it to me. It's the iPhone. It's email. It's Slack. It's these tools that are doing it to me. Those are the blamers. Then you've got what we call the shamers. This is technology doing it to me. It's the iPhone. It's email. It's Slack. It's these tools that are doing it to me. Those are the blamers. Then you've got what we call the shamers. This

is what I used to do. The shamers say, oh, there's something, maybe there's something wrong with me. I'm not, maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I'm, I'm lazy. I'm dysfunctional in some ways. I'm broken somehow. Those are the shamers. That doesn't work either because of course, the more shame we inflict upon ourselves, the worse we feel. And back to what I said earlier about how all behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort. So the more uncomfortable you feel about yourself through shame, shame doesn't feel good. Shame feels horrible. The more likely you are to get distracted. So that doesn't work either. So we don't want to be blamers. We don't want to be shamers. We want to be claimers.

Claimers claim responsibility. Claimers realize that this stuff isn blamers. We don't want to be shamers. We want to be claimers. Claimers claim responsibility. Claimers realize that this stuff isn't your fault. You didn't invent Facebook. You didn't invent all these distractions. You didn't invent these things that can take you off track. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. So it's up to us to claim that responsibility. And part of how we can claim responsibility is to agree that anything can be traction,

that if we plan time for it, there's nothing wrong with it. If we make time to go on Facebook or to watch a YouTube video or to watch Netflix or to check email, whatever it is we want to do, we can turn that distraction into traction by making time for it in our day, by planning ahead for it. How do we do what we say we're going to do? How do we live with personal integrity to become indistractable? The first step is to master our internal triggers, that we need tools in our toolkit, that when we feel this emotional discomfort, how do we deal with it in a way that leads us towards traction rather than distraction? So there's all kinds of tools we can use that I describe in the book. The goal of this book, I wanted to write a book

that is not only very practical, so everything in the book you can actually utilize, it's not pie in the sky type stuff, very practical tactics, but is also based on sound science. So I used 30, 40 year old research to back up everything in the book. There's 30 pages of citations. It's not, oh, take a cold shower every morning at 4 a.m. It's stuff that has been in scientific journals. And so some of the techniques I draw upon come from acceptance and commitment therapy. There's also a lot of work in terms of identity. There's a lot of reimagining three things is kind of the core for how we become indistractable when it comes to mastering these internal triggers.

We reimagine the trigger itself. We reimagine our response to that uncomfortable state and deal with it in a healthier fashion. We reimagine the trigger itself. We reimagine our response to that uncomfortable state and deal with it in a healthier fashion. We reimagine the task. And I teach you how to do what's called play anything, how to see the task differently so that it's not so difficult, so it's not so burdensome. And we don't do it in the Mary Poppins way of putting a spoonful of sugar on things. That doesn't work. That's actually been shown to backfire. And then the third thing we can do when it comes to mastering these internal triggers is to reimagine our temperament. And this is very, very important. I'll touch on this for just a minute. Another myth, I mean, this book is full of myths that

I overturn. I love overturning apple carts when it comes to psychology research. One of the most pervasive bits of folk psychology that a lot of people believe, which is not true, is this idea that willpower is a depletable resource. You see this all the time, right? Do what you're going to do first thing in the morning when your energy is high, or don't manage your time, manage your mood, et cetera. It turns out that these studies, it's called ego depletion, this idea that willpower runs out like gas in a gas tank isn't so. That a few years ago got a lot of credibility, and there was a study that showed that willpower has these magical traits

that if you give people lemonade sweetened with sugar, that somehow their willpower is restored. But then a bunch of other psychologists started to say, this sounds a little fishy. They tried to replicate these studies and they couldn't replicate them. So it turns out ego depletion doesn't exist, except for one group of people.

There is one group of people that Carol Dweck at Stanford found do actually exhibit ego depletion. They do actually run out of willpower like gas in a gas tank. And by the way, to show you what this would look like, I used to do this all the time. As I said, this book, I wrote this book for me. I was patient zero here more than anyone. So I would come home from work and say, oh, I've had a really rough day.

I'm spent, right? I got nothing left. Give me that Ben and Jerry's. I'm going to sit in front of the couch and eat my Ben and Jerry's while I watch Netflix for two hours. All right. That I have no more willpower left. I can't anymore. Turns out that that doesn't exist unless, unless you are the kind of person who believes in ego depletion. That's the only people who actually are affected by ego depletion. So this is what Carol Dweck found at Stanford. She's the author of Mindset. I'm sure you've heard of her.

She's wonderful. And so this is really, really important. It goes back to this idea of an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control that when we believe we are powerless, when we believe there's nothing we can do, we make it so. So there's other tactics as well that we can use to master internal triggers, but that's the very, very first step is to learn how to master these internal triggers so that they lead us towards traction rather than distraction. Okay, so that's step number one. Step number two is to make time for traction, okay? this, this point is a little controversial. Some people don't, don't like this point. And that the idea here is that you can't call something a distraction

unless you know what it distracted you from. Would you agree? Right. If you, if, you know, I talked to so many people over the past five years. If there wasn't something scheduled for me to be doing. Exactly. Right. It's, oh my God, I'm so distracted. I can't get anything done. You know, this happened on Twitter and my boss wants this and my kids want that. And I said, wow, that's really tough. What did you plan to do today? Can I see your calendar? What was it that you got distracted from? Oh, actually nothing. There's nothing on my calendar. I want to be spontaneous. I don't like routines. I want to just, you know, do whatever feels right. It sounds good in practice., doesn't actually work.

There's this wonderful quote by Kierkegaard who said that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. That in fact, when we have too much white space, too much opportunity, and of course, the age we live in is one where we have endless potential distractions. You can watch endless videos on YouTube, participate in endless forums online, do so many interesting

things right here in the palm of your hand, that the fact is it's anxiety producing, all these options, all of these opportunities, all this freedom. Now that's a good thing, I would argue. I don't want to live in an age where I'm a serf on some farm and I have to do what someone tells me to do all day. We want that freedom. I mean, thank goodness that we live in an age with this much freedom. But it can be dizzying.

And so the solution to that is to plan our day. And so I advise people to use what I call time boxing, this technique where, and this has been shown, this isn't a pet project. I didn't invent this technique. Thousands of studies have found that by making what's called an implementation intention, this is just a fancy way of saying, planning out what you're going to do

and when you're going to do it, has been shown to be a very, very effective way to do what you say you're going to do. And so when I interviewed, I interviewed dozens of CEOs and C-level executives. Every single one of them already did this. They are carried around a little piece of paper or they had it on their phones exactly down to the minute where they were

supposed to be. Now, many people say, oh, that's so rigid. I don't like routines. I need spontaneity. It's going to kill my creativity. Bullshit. In fact, quite the opposite. That if you've ever had one of these days in your life where you say, oh my goodness, I have no meetings today, nothing to do today. I'll get everything done, right? It's a blank white space. You know those are the least productive days, not the most productive days. Why? Because you don't have constraints. And in fact, studies find that constraints are the birthplace of creativity. We need some kind of constraint. As a writer, the worst part of writing is that blank page. As an artist, the worst part of being an artist is that blank canvas. You need some kind of constraints. So I'm not saying only do work all day. No. If you want time to do whatever is

according to your values, I want you to turn those values into time, right? So I talk about these three life domains, you, your relationships, and your work. So most of us start backwards. We start with work, and then life kind of fills in the details, right? Whatever gaps are left. And I think that's the wrong order. First, we start with ourselves. Do you have time in your schedule for adequate sleep? Do you have time in your schedule for proper nutrition, for proper exercise? If that's one of your values, I'm not saying it should be, but if that's one of your values, do you have time for those things? Exercise is not going to just happen, right? Proper rest is not going to just happen. It has to be in your schedule. Do

you have time for meditation, for prayer, whatever it is that you want to do for yourself, put that time in your calendar. Then we've got the relationship domain. My wife and I met in college and we took a class together. We took an economics class and we learned this term called residual beneficiary. Have you heard this term? Hopefully you haven't. So a residual, yeah. So a residual beneficiary

is the chump who gets whatever's left over when a company is liquidated. So when a company goes out of business, after the debt holders have been paid, the equity holders, after everybody else has been paid, the residual beneficiary gets whatever's left over.

And so a few years ago, my wife looked at me and she said, you know, Nir, you have made me into the residual beneficiary. Work comes first. All this other stuff comes first. And I get whatever's left over. And she was absolutely right. I was doing this to her. And this is terrible.

So if my relationship with my wife is important to me, if one of my values is to be a loving husband, that time has to be my schedule, as it does for to me, if one of my values is to be a loving husband, that time has to be in my schedule, as it does for my daughter, as it does for my friends. Right, the reason we have this loneliness epidemic is that we don't make time for those people. It just seems, you know, I think what people will be, will feel, and this is what I always feel

when I've read about scheduling time for your loved ones, is that that in and of itself is quite sad. Right, it feels rigid. It feels horrible to treat, you know, this is, you know, and this is, I guess my rebuttal to that is it feels sad and, you know, almost like you're treating your family like a business. You need to get over that. And here's, here's how. Plan spontaneity. Sounds like an oxymoron will change your life. So for example, this weekend, I have a three-hour block with my wife and my daughter. Three hours.

That time is scheduled for planned spontaneity with them. Right? Big old block of time. You can make that time, you can make it the whole Saturday for all you want, right? Whatever's according to your values. Why is this so important? We don't know what we're going to do.

We might go to the park. We might, you know, go to a restaurant. We might go to a museum. I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to the park. We might go to a restaurant. We might go to a museum. I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to be spontaneous in the moment. But we have that time blocked out. Why? So that I know what we will not be doing with that time.

I will not be on my cell phone. I will not be making work phone calls. I know that that time is reserved for them. Sure. You mentioned then this loneliness epidemic. And it's a topic, you know, as a CEO of a social media company, that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I also know that I spend about 14 hours a day on my phone, which is disgusting. When I say that to people, I feel like, you know,

dirty or something. But loneliness is a very real thing. And I had Johanna Hari on this podcast, and he talks a lot about, you know, the fact that we're less human than ever before in the sense of, you know, if we take it back 10,000 years when we were living in tribes and we were hunting and we were out in nature, we're the antithesis of that these days. We live between four white walls. You know, we talk to our friends on glass screens. What role has loneliness played in technology and how do we, how does someone like me that is by all definitions

lonely like you would if you looked at it on paper i'm definitely lonely on paper the only thing that the only distinction i make is i don't feel lonely yeah i feel like i've got loads of people around me but when you look at my behavior 14 hours a day on my phone i love being on my own right what role has technology played in that? And also how does someone like me that is so glued to my phone and to my career or whatever overcome that? Yeah. So I think you're tiptoeing into blame and shame. And I don't know if it's serving you. I would argue that whatever helps you live according to your values, do it.

There's nothing wrong with being on your phone for 14 hours a day because you're not playing video games on the phone. You're running a goddamn company here. You're changing the world. You're doing great stuff. You're giving people gainful employment. You're serving your clients. It's not a waste of time. So even the way we have been conditioned to think, oh, using technology, evil, bad, that's something to feel shame about is

incorrect. No, you're doing great stuff, right? No one tells a writer, oh my gosh, you're spending 14 hours a day on paper. Look at you. We don't think of that as shameful. This is the medium of our generation, and it's wonderful. It helps you do so much. So that's one thing. Free yourself of that guilt. But then also ask yourself, how do you want to spend your time to live according to your values? If it's not a problem for you, if you're not feeling loneliness, if it's not something that is right now important to you to have that part of your life expressed through connecting with other people, maybe it's not the right time for you.

But if you say to yourself, you know what, actually, I do miss the connection of real in-person interaction, then the solution is to make time for it. I think the cause of this loneliness epidemic that we feel these days, which, by the way, I think social media is a wonderful supplement. It's not a replacement. But of course, the more lonely people have become over the years, that creates a greater opportunity because they feel these internal triggers to find connection online. Now, I actually would argue things are better today than they used to be. Because remember, this problem of loneliness actually started decades ago. Robert Putnam wrote about this in Bowling Alone when I was in college. So this was around like 97, 98, I think his book came out. This is a long-term trend. This wasn't caused by social media.

It's exacerbated, I think, perhaps by social media. And in fact, people think that social media is a replacement for it. I don't think it is. It's a supplement. The reason I think this has happened by and large is because social institutions have decayed. That, you know, I consider myself a secular person. I don't attend church, but I'm very jealous of people who do attend religious institutions because they have built in connection. Why? It's in their calendar. Every Sunday you go to church and there will be people there who care about you and who you care about. So the solution is not, I'm not telling people go, you know, join a church necessarily, that might be something you do. There's other civic groups, you know, which we've seen the decline of, by the way, that, you know, this long-term trend of Kiwanis Club and Rotary Club,

I mean, all these clubs that people used to get together to interact have declined. We've seen some of that made up for, you know, if you think of meetups and there's new technologies for the new generations. Exactly. SoulCycle. We need to find ways to understand others and to be understood ourselves. So I would argue that SoulCycle is nice if you meet that person and then go out to lunch with them and have a connection with them afterwards. But what do we do if you can't find that, right?

And again, only if it's in accordance with your values, if you need that. So this was me. I found that I was missing this in my life. I really wanted some kind of connection. So going to a religious institution didn't So this was me. I found that I was missing this in my life. I really wanted some kind of connection. So, you know, going to a religious institution didn't really fit for me. So here's what I did. I replicated the best aspects. And one of the best aspects of having a civic group or a religious group in terms of feeding our need for connection is the regularity

of meeting with people who we care about, who care about us. And so what we did, I got together with some of my closest friends, four couples total, and we started what we call the kibbutz. Now kibbutz means gathering in Hebrew. There's no religious connotation, just happens to be a word that we came up with because it was kind of a cute word. And here's how a kibbutz works. Every two weeks, same time, same place, four couples get together, always the same time and same place. It's on our calendars. And then we go around. And so of these eight adults, one person is assigned that week. And so it's almost like a, like a Ted talk mixed with a church group kind of thing. You come with a topic you want to talk about. So one week somebody talked about, um, should we force our

kids to do things they don't want to do? like practice piano. Another time somebody came up with, they wanted to talk about the struggles they were having in the workplace and they wanted to share about that and get our reactions. And so that regularity is very, very important. It's on our calendars. We've made time to live out our values of connection. And here's a very important point.

One of the distractions we noticed, right, was not our phones. Everybody of course puts away their phones so that we can actually be fully present with each other. But funny enough, our kids became the distraction. Because remember I said how anything can be a distraction? Kids are a distraction many times. Like if we want to have an adult conversation and a toddler comes in and needs something, that's very distracting.

So you're allowed to bring your kids. Everybody has kids in this group. But here's the rule. All the kids know that you are not to interrupt us unless someone's bleeding. That's the bar. Because we want to have this adult conversation for two reasons.

One, we need it to feed our own wellbeing. We need this for our psychological wellbeing. But also I think it's very important to model to your kids what an adult friendship looks like. We wanna show them what that should look like. And so you're welcome to bring your kids. Your kids can even listen, but they can't interrupt unless someone's bleeding. And that regularity has been life-changing. I'm going to steal that for sure. Go for it.

I really want to get back to the central point here. So if I'm doing my project at my desk, and I'm visualizing myself at my desk in Williamsburg in New York, and I'm being distracted, I've implemented the first step of your advice, which was to schedule time. So now I have to- No, that's the second step. The first step is to master the internal trigger so that when you feel that discomfort, you know what to do with it. Sure. So I've mastered the internal triggers. The second step was scheduling the time. I'm guessing there's a third step. Yes, there is. There's actually four steps. So the third step is to hack back the external triggers. So I touched on this a little bit

with the kibbutz that if a child comes in, right, that used to constantly interrupt us, that we would say, oh, what do you need, honey? Okay, let me help you. And then the whole conversation would get derailed. We hacked back the external trigger by leaving, you know, juice boxes and everything that the kids might need in the other room so they can go play. And so we can have an adult conversation. So I'll give you an example here.

Yeah. I work at, so this office that you're in now is significantly smaller than our headquarters in other countries in Germany, in the UK. And in the UK, there's about 250 people in this this office space. And whenever I work in the office, as you can imagine, I get zero done, zero done, especially when I've been away, which is all the time. I come back in and I'm there, I get zero done. Yes, I totally understand. And this is such, I'm so glad you brought this up because it's such a great example of how distraction oftentimes has nothing to do with technology, right? It's these open floor plan offices, which save us a ton of money in terms of real estate space, but are hotbeds of distraction. So what do we do? There's

a case study I talk about in the book of these nurses who got together and wanted to tackle this problem of prescription mistakes. It turns out that 200,000 people in the United States of America are harmed every year because nurse practitioners give them the wrong medication, right? 200,000 people every year. Why was this occurring? Because these nurses were getting distracted. A colleague would come over and tap them on the shoulder while they were dosing on medication, and they would make a mistake. And these mistakes sometimes had life-threatening consequences. The tragedy here, and the metaphor for knowledge workers, is that these nurses didn't understand

that these problems were occurring in the moment. They thought they were doing a great job. Just as we as knowledge workers, we think we're doing a great job, but we don't realize how much better we could do our jobs if we stopped getting distracted. So here's what they did. These nurses came up with a solution that reduced prescription mistakes by 88%. They almost eliminated the problem. Here's what they did.

They put on plastic vests, right? They put on these sleeveless jackets made out of plastic. They cost pennies per vest. Bright red that said, drug rounds in progress do not disturb. And so how can we use this same principle where I'm not telling you to wear plastic vests over your work clothes, but every copy of Indistractable comes with this piece of cardstock in the middle of the book. You tear it out. You fold it into thirds. It's bright red. And you put it on your computer monitor.

And that's called a screen sign. And that screen sign says, I'm indistractable. Please come back later. And so you're sending an explicit message to your colleagues, just like those nurses did, to say, look, for this time, I'm not saying use this all day, but for this time in my calendar, I need to focus. I need to concentrate right now. And so that's how, you know, open floor plan offices are not going away, but we can hack back the environment so that these external triggers are not constantly distracting us.

My PA, Sophie, she's actually got me saved in her phone as Steve do not disturb Bartlett, because the amount of times in a day she disturbs me I'm actually going to read you the conversation that I had with her yesterday Soph please can you put this all into a document and ask these questions at once I'm in the middle of a board meeting call and I can't even think because you're messaging me every five minutes with a new question and obviously I have a very important job to do here and I think you're probably over messaging me and then I and then she started talking we started chatting I said doesn't it still say as my name saved in your phone don't message steve because that's what she put in her but was this over email or chat or whatsapp oh over whatsapp okay we were like really good friends this is the context like she's like my my friend right like so that's

probably important because the nature of the messages but i'm just saying to her like please stop messaging me so what i've told my manager and her to do is get all of your questions put them in a document and send them to me via email or whatsapp you can do that but just send them like once a day or once a week if you can okay so i think there's two things here one i think actually you're putting the onus on the wrong place because we can't teach the world how we want to be catered to it's very hard What we can do is change how we respond to all of these external triggers. You need these messages, right? But how do you do that? So one thing is, I know you might be averse to this, but when you schedule your day,

in step two of making time for traction, one of the techniques that I really want people to try because it's life-changing is to do what's called a schedule sync. So whether that's with your assistant or with your manager, right? If you work for someone, sitting down together and having this calendar and saying, look, here's what I have time for. Here's what I don't have time for. Help me reprioritize. Game changer, right? We can also do this at home. I do this with my wife once a week. Saved my marriage. I mean, absolutely saved my marriage because there was so many things around the house I wasn't doing. We would constantly get into these fights of, why aren't you doing the laundry? Why aren't you taking out the trash? I said, just tell me, honey. Just tell me what to

do. But of course, me doing that was asking her to take on another job of being my babysitter. So that's not fair. But sitting down, now we have time in our schedule, 15 minutes. We sit down together. We look at each other's time box schedule. Because we use this amazing tool of a time box schedule, we don't have this problem anymore because we know exactly when things are going to get done. So I think that's the most important step here is to make sure you have that time box schedule, you share it with your colleagues. And then in terms of hacking back those external triggers, WhatsApp should be off during your board meeting. So even if Sophie does send you 10 messages, you should have one medium, probably a phone call, right? If the office is on fire and she needs you right now, she's going to call you. Okay, leave that external

trigger on. But WhatsApp is an external trigger. If you're in a board meeting, very few things should take precedent over being fully present in that board meeting. So that's where we hack back these external triggers by making sure we turn off the triggers that don't serve us. Yeah, very, very good point. Because, you know, why the fuck was I on bloody WhatsApp? By the way, you're not alone. Two thirds of people with a smartphone, get this, two thirds of people with a smartphone never change any notification settings.

Yeah, I have notifications off, but I go there. So all my notifications are off. And I learned that lesson a long time ago. And it changed my life, by the way, turning my notifications off. But it's the habits. So what were you feeling when somebody was talking about something that wasn't interesting? Exactly. And it changed my life, by the way, turning my notifications off. But it's the habits. So what were you feeling when somebody was talking about something

that wasn't interesting? Boredom. Exactly, exactly. So that's the internal trigger. And understanding that that is the real source was what was coming in from within you is always the first step. That's what mastering the internal trigger is all about.

So when you feel boredom, what's the tool in your toolkit that gets you to do something that is an act of traction rather than distraction? So it comes down to defining, well, what do I want to do? Do I want to be checking WhatsApp during a board meeting? Or is there something more productive I could be doing? If you decide, actually, you know what?

The most productive thing I could do right now is that in advance, as long as that's done in a cold state as opposed to an emotional hot state when you're feeling boredom, that's fine. But what we don't want is to use WhatsApp when you can't think of anything else better to do, when you just feel this discomfort and you're looking for escape. And what's step four then? So step four is about preventing distraction with pacts. And this is the backstop. This is the fail safe. This is what we do last. Many people jump to this technique first and it actually can backfire. So it's something we do after we've mastered the internal triggers, after we've made time for traction, after we've hacked back the external triggers.

The last step is to prevent distraction with pacts. And the way we do this is by making what's called a pre-commitment. A pre-commitment has been shown in many psychology studies for decades now to be a very effective way to do what we say we're going to do to prevent going off track. And so there's three types of pre-commitments. We have what's called an effort pact, a price pact, and an identity pact. An effort pact is when we have a bit of work in between us and something we don't wanna do. So for example, after you have ways

to deal with these sensations, after you've made time for that task, after you've hacked back the external triggers, maybe you have some way to keep you in that task so you don't get distracted and do something you don't want to do. So for example, in my household, one thing that we noticed was that night after night,

we were going to bed later and later. And so this had an impact on our sleep. It had an impact on my wife and I's sex life because we kept fondling our phones as opposed to being fully present with each other. So I went to the hardware store and we bought a $10 outlet timer. And this outlet timer, we plugged in our internet router so that every night at 10 p.m., the internet automatically shuts off. Could I turn it back on? Of course I could, but I'd have to go fiddle with it and pull it out and put it back in.

So I've put a bit of effort in between me and something I don't want to do, some kind of distraction. So that effort pact helps me stay on task. Now, actually, you can buy routers with this built right in. You actually don't have to go get that outlet timer. So that's an example of an effort pact. Or we can also use price pacts. For example, I sat down with my buddy Mark. He's a fellow author. And I made him a bet. And I said, look, I'd done four years of research. I knew what I had to write. And I just had to get down to it and write the darn book. And I said, look, Mark, if I don't deliver this book, the manuscript, if I don't finish this manuscript, by January 1st, I will give you $10,000. Now, that amount of money had to hurt, right? And you say, oh, my God, that's terrible. Of course it is, because it works, right?

It actually, there's no way I was gonna lose that $10,000. So that kicked my butt into gear to say, no, I have to do this project. That's an example of a price pact, of if I don't do what I say I'm going to do, there's some kind of financial consequence. Now, again, you have to do that last, do the three other steps first,

because it can backfire if you jump straight to that. But as a backstop, it's very, very effective, right? If you make a wager big enough, you know you're going to get that project done. Many people don't enter into those price packs because now it's suddenly scary, right? Oh my God, now I have to actually do the work. But so that's why we need those other three tools in place first. And then the last part of making these packs, which is really important, is making an identity pact.

An identity pact is when we have some kind of moniker that we call ourselves, a way we see our identity, and that has been shown to be a very effective way to keep us from falling off track. So for example, this comes from the psychology of religion, that when someone calls themselves a Christian or a Muslim or even a vegetarian, there are certain behaviors that they do and do not do

that don't require any self-control because it's just who they are. So a vegetarian doesn't wake up every morning and say, hmm, I wonder if I'll have a hamburger today. No, they know that vegetarians don't eat meat. It is who they are. So we can use this very same principle to help us become indistractable. And would I be right in thinking the number one factor that makes a procrastinator procrastinate is their belief that they're a procrastinator? That is certainly part of it. That is certainly part of it, right.

So these stories that we tell ourselves that, oh, I have a short attention span, that I'm a procrastinator, that, you know, these myths we tell ourselves oftentimes don't serve us because we will become whatever we tell ourselves we are. And so this is why I'm trying to start this movement around people calling themselves proudly. I am indistractable. That is who I am. I don't respond to every WhatsApp message in 30 seconds.

Yeah, I do some strange things like put this screen sign on my computer monitor. Is that any more strange than someone who has an unusual diet or who wears unusual religious garb? No, but they do those things because it helps them stay on track. I remember actually in the 1980s, so I grew up in the 80s. Those are some of my first memories. And one thing I remember is in my household in the 1980s,

we had ashtrays all over our house. Because back in the 1980s, back when many more people smoked, today about 14% of the US population smokes. Back then it was much, much higher. Back then when someone walked into your living room, they just expected to be able to smoke a cigarette. And I remember my mom, I remember the first time she told one of her friends, we're non-smokers, right? She had an identity of we're non-smokers. We don't smoke

in this house. Please smoke outside. Today, that's commonplace. I mean, if somebody smoked in your house, that would be incredibly rude. But back then, she lost friends because she told them, please smoke outside. People thought that was incredibly rude of her to ask. And that's what we're going through right now. So what I'm looking for and what I hope I can spark this movement around is people saying, look, this is how I behave. I am indistractable. This is how I live my life. I live with personal integrity, which also means that there might be a bit of discomfort around, you know, you're at the dinner table and your friends are checking their devices. You know, maybe there are some new rules, some new norms. And I tell you how to do, how to confront those kinds of problems as well. Fascinating. You've touched on one of the big issues I have with implementing the

indistractable philosophy in terms of indicating to the people around me that I don't want to be distracted, which is feeling like I'm being an asshole. And it happens a lot in my life that someone will come over to me and ask me something when I'm right in the middle of something. And I'll just go, give me one second, please. And even saying that I feel like an asshole. So that's really interesting. By the way, you won't feel like an asshole if they realize, oh, he's indistractable. That's the kind of person he is. And even better, they are indistractable themselves because we all feel this. all know this is a problem i thought headphones would do it you would think so right but here's the problem people think you're watching youtube when you wear headphones because they can't see what's on your screen and you know what's getting even harder these bloody

new airpod pros yeah they can't even see them i was so honestly that my my first reaction when the new airpods came out maybe a week and a half ago i love the headphones but now everybody's going to distract me because you can't see that i'm right i'm tuned out right people come over they start talking to me they'll think i'm you know being whatever you know yeah well that's why the solution is to make an explicit message like when you have this screen sign on your computer monitor that's bright red even if they come over and say hey can i talk to you for a quick second you point to you know, they're only gonna do that one time. The other thing that I've been struggling with, and I know your first book, Hooked, which I read,

but then when I was in San Francisco in Silicon Valley, working in the tech scene there, I also read it there, was about habit forming products, but really habits more broadly in the psychology of habits. At this moment in time, I am desperately trying to get more organized in my life. I think because of the way I was raised in a fairly unorganized household, I've brought these habits into my adult life with me. And, you know, relevant to a lot of things you've said today,

I've told myself for years that I'm not an organized person. And having a PA and an assistant and a manager and a co-manager and all this has given me no reason to fix this problem right so this week really sat in Sunday I decided that I was going to become an organized person right I decided that I was gonna fucking I was gonna confront this did you put it on your to-do list but I just started with the I'll give you a really simple example yeah I've got this duffel bag that i've been using for maybe the last year or two for work the problem with the duffel bag is there's no

pockets so if i get business cards from people that i meet or if i have jewelry or phones or laptops or wires and i have every wire and every adapter for every country in the world and then when i need something i have to root through. That's like, that example exemplifies my whole life. I mean, it's been a mess. It's been some organization. So you said you're going to get organized this weekend and that was what you were going to do or you said I'm going to get organized in general?

I wanted to get organized in general. I want to stop like, I have a cleaner as well. So if I put something, leave something on the floor, I know when I come back, it's not going to be there. Okay, I have to jump in here. Sure, please. Because there's so many things that, so many opportunities, let's say.

So the reason I ask facetiously is, did you put that on your to-do list? Because you might as well have, because you had basically a to-do. Get organized. And the reason that that doesn't work and why to-do lists in general, you know, we've kind of been sold this myth that, oh, just put things on a to-do list

and magically they're going to happen. No, they don't just magically happen. And the reason they don't magically happen is because when those tasks are so big, you know, get organized. Oh my God, that's so big. If we don't put time on our calendar for that task, it's certainly not going to happen, but also how we put time in our calendar. So we have to differentiate between outputs and inputs. An output, you know, if you go to a baker, you say, I need 100 loaves of bread. That's the output.

The baker will then say, okay, where's the flour? Where's the yeast? Where's the water? Where's the salt? I need all the input to make the output. But as knowledge workers, we only think about the output. I want to do this task, this task, this task. We put all that stuff on a to-do list, maybe.

And then we just expect it to magically occur without planning for the input. So instead of saying, get organized, I want you instead to say, organize bag for one hour. No output, only input. You see the difference? Not even finish organizing my bag. No, no, no. I want you to put whatever, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is on your schedule, work on that for 30 minutes or an hour. That's it. Yeah. Not the output, just the input.

That would have been much better. Exactly, right? That's how you get that momentum. Because when we have these big aspirations, by the way, this applies to everything in our life. When people say, you know, lose 10 pounds. No, bad goal, right? Or finish my book.

No, bad goal. It should be exercise in the gym for 45 minutes. Work on my book without distraction for 45 minutes. That's it. Only plan the input and the output will follow. That's life-changing in and of itself. And I'll definitely rethink that process. Because what you need is to-

Yeah, that would really help. Because I spent fucking hours bumbling around, just waltzing around, picking up one thing, moving it, then going back to the bag, and then picking up another thing. I was multitasking, but really in an efficient way. around, just waltzing around, picking up one thing, moving it, then going back to the bag and then picking up another thing. And I was multitasking, but really in a really inefficient way. And you're reinforcing at the end of that.

Oh, you see, I am a disorganized person. You're reinforcing that identity as opposed to, well, you know what? I organized that bag for 30 minutes without distraction. That's a new identity, right? That's a new moniker. You can tell yourself you're showing yourself that you have agency, that you are effective at doing what you said you're going to do. Let's say I've got other bad habits. Let's say my girlfriend, one of the bad habits she has is eating chocolate, copious amounts of chocolate.

She's going to give me shit for saying that. And I think in some ways it's an emotional thing. What advice would you give to someone that has emotional habits like eating or addiction or drugs or whatever? Well, okay. So first of all, let's differentiate between what is the pathology of addiction, which is a disease. It's not just, I like it a lot. It's, I can't stop despite repeated attempts to stop. So it's a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior substance that actually harms the user. So it's not, oh, I like social media or,

oh, I like chocolate. It's, no, these obsessive thoughts control my life. That's an addiction. So it's a different category. Some people are pathologically addicted, about 1% to 5% of the population. Very, very few people. The vast majority of us are not addicted. We are distracted. So one of the techniques, so I used to be clinically obese. And I can tell you that I did not eat because I was hungry. I ate because I was feeling something I didn't want to feel. And I used food as a distraction to take my mind off of what I was feeling. And it's a very common response, right? Eating your feelings. And so one of the techniques that I use almost every single day, and I still have to watch myself because, you know, all of us, I think, have these tendencies, especially someone who previously struggled with their weight. I have this tendency. I know that

I can go overboard very easily. One of the techniques I use every day under this category of mastering internal triggers, the first step is called the 10-minute rule. So the 10-minute rule is really effective for helping us not get distracted by things that we can't avoid completely because we know that strict abstinence doesn't work. Strict abstinence doesn't work because if you think about a rubber band, right? If you pull back a rubber band, you pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. At one point, you can't pull anymore, and you have to let it go. And it doesn't just stop where you started, right, where you started to pull it. It ricochets even farther.

And that's exactly what happens in the brain, that when we tell ourselves, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, okay, fine, I'll do it. That is not only registered as the relief of discomfort, it's actually registered as pleasure. Because remember, all behavior is spurred by desire to escape discomfort. So we're training our brains to say, oh, the only source of relief is to give in, to smoke that cigarette, to have that chocolate, to do the thing we don't need to do that distracts us. That is the only way according to what our brain is encoding. So instead of strict abstinence, instead of telling yourself no, no, no, no, what you want to do instead is say, yes, I can give into that distraction in 10 minutes. I can have that chocolate cake. I can Google that thing. I can watch that YouTube video. Whatever it is

that you don't want to do necessarily, whatever that distraction is, I can give into it in just 10 minutes of doing what psychologists call surfing the urge. So in that 10 minutes, many times I'll take out my phone. I do this almost every day. I'll take out my phone. I'll say, set a timer for 10 minutes. I'll put the phone down. And my job is to just be present with that sensation. What am I feeling right now? Uncertainty, fatigue that sensation. What am I feeling right now? Uncertainty, fatigue, anxiety, what's going on right now? And I explore that sensation with curiosity rather than contempt, right? Am I feeling anxious right now because I'm not sure if anybody's going to like my writing?

Am I eating because I'm stressed? What is it that I'm feeling right now? Not to beat yourself up, to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend experiencing that sensation. And in the span of those 10 minutes, you can either surf the urge as a psychologist, college, just experience that sensation until it subsides or get back to the task at hand. And what you will find nine times out of 10 with this 10 minute rule, that the emotion, the sensation, the urge will crest and then subside. And by the time the 10 minutes are up, you're ready to get back to the thing that you were doing previously.

It makes perfect sense. Specifically on the point of the, in the case of chocolate, what I tend to see from my girlfriend, but also from myself as it relates to my own eating is the more I abstain, the more I binge at some point in the future. And I'm really just prolonging a binge. And that's also part of the issue I binge right at some point in the you know in the future and I'm really just prolonging a binge and that's also part of the issue I've had with the gym because I'll go to

the gym dedicated for six months too dedicated I mean every day and I'll really you know only lettuce for those six months and then at the end of that period when summer's ended all the goals been accomplished the elastic band pulls back and I binge and get fat again. And through winter till like, you know, February, I'm fat. And then it's this like cyclical thing, which isn't healthy. And it shows, demonstrates like a lack of discipline. Can I correct that last part? That was beautiful what you said.

And I've been on that same joy ride or hell ride many, many times. It's not a lack of discipline. It's a lack of a system. True. It's not. I hate self discipline, right? So when I was obese, my family constantly said, oh, you have more discipline, stop eating so much. That wasn't helpful. Eating myself up with guilt and shame didn't work. It

made things worse. So it's not about self discipline. There's nothing wrong with you. You just don't have a system in place. That's all. A way to deal with that discomfort in a healthier manner. That's all. How do I find with that discomfort in a healthier manner. That's all. How do I find a system? Where do I get my system? Nice to meet you. It's really these four steps, right? So understanding first and foremost, what is that discomfort that you're escaping from? One, when you go obsessively to the gym, what are you escaping from? And also when you don't want to go to the gym, what are you escaping from? And how can you channel that sensation in a healthier manner? So I hated exercise. As I mentioned, I was clinically obese, hated exercise, didn't understand why anybody

would want to do it. You're in unbelievable shape, by the way. Now I am. It's taken a long time. Now I'm in decent shape. But it's using these four systems together, right? It's about having a system in place when I feel discomfort. It's about making time for it in my schedule. I have gym time in my schedule. It's about hacking back those external triggers. It's about having a pact to make sure that I do what I say I'm going to do. So one technique that I used is called the burn or burn technique. And this is going to sound crazy to some people, but hear me out.

It's very effective. Every morning when I wake up, I go into my closet and there's a calendar there. And taped to today's date is a fresh, crisp $100 bill. And above this calendar is a lighter. And every day I have two choices to make. I can either burn the $100 bill or burn some calories in the gym, right? So six days a week, not every day, six days a week, I have to do something, some kind of physical activity. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the gym. I can go for a long walk. I can go on a run. I can do 20 pushups, just do something physical every day.

Now it's been three and a half years and I've never burned the $100 bill. Never have to. Why? Because in that moment, if I say, oh my gosh, I haven't, I haven't done it yet. Okay. Crank out a few pushups or go on a quick walk. But I've done the other three steps first, right? Today, actually, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't even need that calendar anymore. I don't need this technique because now I've taken care of this system that I don't need that as a final backstop. So using that as an example, I downloaded an app called Streak. Are you familiar with the app? Yeah. So basic premise of the app is every day, if I complete the thing I want to do going to the gym,

I press and hold the button and it continues my streak. So I get like 17 days in to going to the gym every day. And of course, I don't want to lose my 17 days. So it makes me go for an 18th day. The problem I have is I got 18 days in, 19 days in, 20 days in to going to the gym. And then I lost my streak. And it was demoralizing to say the least. And the lack of, I guess, compassion I had for myself in that moment made me blame myself and

not want to do it again. And it's crazy because the app was working so well for me. The one day that I failed myself, I burnt the $100 bill in your case, I stopped. Right. And this is incredibly common, which is why what that is, that's a pact, right? You've made a pre-commitment with yourself to go to the gym every single day. And so you have the streak and the cost is breaking the chain. Very, very well-known technique. The problem is if you haven't prepared yourself with those other three steps, if you don't know how to master those internal triggers, if you haven't planned time in your day, if you haven't hacked back the external triggers first, when you fall off the wagon

and fail, you don't have the systems in place to help you get back up. And so you mentioned a very important word, compassion, because it turns out that some people, when they jump straight to this technique of making a streak or making a pact, and this is why it has to come last, it's the fourth step, not the first step, some people beat themselves up. And more so, there's actually a known phenomenon called the what the hell effect. That's really what it's called. The what the hell effect says, I already broke the streak. I already broke my diet. What the hell? And then you're already off the plan, so who cares? We see this a lot with dieting, where, okay, I ate one bad thing. I had one cookie. Therefore, I can eat whatever I want for the rest of the day. And it's very,

very counterproductive. And the way to counteract that is the word you mentioned, compassion. Studies have found that people who are more self-compassionate are much more likely to achieve their long-term goals. And so that's part of mastering those internal triggers as well. And the way we become self-compassionate is to talk to ourselves the way we would talk to a good friend, right? So that if you could tell yourself what you would tell to a good friend, as opposed to what I used to do when I failed, when I fell off the wagon, you suck, you know, you're miserable, you're lazy. You see, this is who you really are. And I would tell myself these things that if I told to a friend, they would punch me in the face, right? And so that is a

big part of cultivating self-compassion in order to be indistractable. But again, if you jump to that technique, it's going to fail. You have to do the other three first. It's super hard to talk to yourself like that. I've talked about this before as it relates to overthinking, this idea of like the best friend experiment, where in essence, you send yourself a text message

and you write out what you would say to your best friend in that case because cognitively it's like it's quite a challenge to speak to yourself like that when there's a contradictory voice in the room which is yourself telling you another thing so the writing it out or sending it as a note or sending it as a message and because when you send yourself a message on text you get the same message back um has proven to really help. It's a great technique. It's a great technique. I wanted to go off piste completely. Sure.

This podcast is about being honest. And that's why it's called The Driver CEO. In a world where everybody talks about, you know, the fluff, there doesn't seem to be enough people really telling it as it is. And you talked a little bit about being clinically obese and those kinds of things. For people listening to this podcast, you will appear to have a lot of answers because you do, right? Now I do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course, because you've studied this for years and years. It's been your life's work. But I want to

know, what is it that you struggle with? What are the things that from a behavioral perspective, you just haven't got a handle of yet and that you want to improve on? So I struggle with distraction every day. So the definition, so I made up the word indistractable and the beauty of making up a word is that you can define it any way you want. And so the definition of being indistractable doesn't mean you never get distracted. It means that you strive to live with personal integrity. You strive to do what you say you're going to do. There's this great Paulo Coelho quote that he says that a mistake repeated more than once is a decision. So the idea here is that I made the same mistake

day after day after day. I kept getting distracted by the same things over and over and over again. So the idea here is that now when I do get distracted, I know why I get distracted and I do something about it. As opposed to constantly letting these things take me off track, now I know why and and I do something about it. Right. As opposed to constantly letting these things take me off track. Now I know why and I can do something about it. Do you ever feel a pressure when you're on your own and you get distracted because you wrote the bloody book on this topic?

Do you ever feel a sense of imposter syndrome if you get distracted or pressure to be perfect because you've studied this topic and you understand it so well? I don't feel a pressure to be perfect because the idea, what I really care about is living with personal integrity. And again, when I do fall off track, you know, stuff happens, right? Like I was working on a project and I was writing and now I have to go pee. Well, you know, that's a distraction. I can't really help that. Maybe I could have gone, you know, to the bathroom beforehand or something. And you can do things like that. But sometimes stuff happens. But the idea is that to do everything you can to prevent those kind of distractions from happening again and again. I think if anything, what I struggle with, if it is a struggle, is being misunderstood, right? That's, I think, much harder, right? So

sometimes when folks haven't read the book, they think, oh, so now you think we shouldn't use technology. And no, that's quite the opposite. Like if you see me on the street and I pause for a minute and I'm checking my phone, I don't want people to say, oh, you're looking at your phone and you said don't check your phone. No, that's not what I said at all. I said that as long as you do it according to your values and according to your schedule and it's serving you, technology is wonderful. There's nothing wrong with it. If I'm checking GPS to figure out how to get to my next meeting or taking a break and replying, if that's what I wanted to do with my time, it's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it.

It's all about intent, right? It's all about intent. It's all about using these tools in a way that serves us as opposed to us serving them. And what are the things that you're scared of in a personal context? What are you scared of? What are the things you're fearful of? What keeps me up at night is simple answers. I'm really fearful of people coming up with simple understandings of the world that don't express nuance. And I think I've definitely felt that in my career. So when I wrote Hooked, I wrote Hooked to help people build habit-forming products, to help them build healthy habits.

And Indistractable is about how to break bad habits. But what I see today is this total lack of nuance around technology, these simple answers that, oh, because technology has bad aspects, it's all bad. And simple answers have gotten our species into all sorts of trouble, whether it's simple answers around, oh, that ethnic group is the source of all our problems, or that political party is a source of all our problems,

or that big business is a source of all of our problems. And we see this happening time and time again throughout history. And that keeps me up at night. That makes me fearful because, again, I know how the brain loves simple solutions, whether it's through our behavior to take care of these uncomfortable emotional states or these conflicts in our mind of wanting an answer. And we constantly grasp towards a simple solution as opposed to what I want to bring back is nuance. Are there problems with technology?

Of course there are problems with technology, right? Paul Virilio said when you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. So of course, there are going to be all kinds of problems, particularly when we think about what's happening with social media today. But I think that we jumped to this conclusion of moving from skepticism, which I think is a healthy trait. We want to be skeptical of the new technology. We want to identify the potential problems. So I think now the pendulum is swinging towards cynicism, where these companies can do nothing right. And I think that actually is a problem because there's so much opportunity there. I mean, the source of what will improve our species has to be technological innovation. Can I ask you on that point,

why do you think there's such cynicism towards technology and why has it been it almost feels like it's compounding now in terms of the negative a negative news story about facebook is it feels like that's what the world wants today and you just will not hear a positive story about facebook that no one would write it no one would share it no one would click it and so it's compounding in the sense that the more negative stories we have out there, the more we want more negative stories. As someone that works inside the beast, I think, I'm on a panel at Facebook, I know the team at Facebook in both New York and London. And I know the platforms really well. I've done this for the last nine years. When I read the sentiment online, I feel almost outraged and really quite sad, I think, at the

narrative that's coming from the media. I'm going to tell you my very, very quite controversial opinion. I think a lot of it, and again, there's nuance, of course, I think a lot of it is driven by the fact that Facebook and Google, to some respect, has destroyed a lot of people's business models. The duopoly account for about 70% of online advertising. This has completely killed journalism's business model in a digital sense. And so of course they would want to take a couple of shots. And in fact, their shots have resulted in Facebook

now launching a news tab. So they've got their own dedicated, you know, and that's for me is. I've come to the same conclusion. And in fact, I've heard journalists say this, that it threatens their business model. So not only does it threaten their business model, they can use the same hacks. You know, I've never worked for Facebook. I have worked for the New York Times. I help people get hooked to the New York Times app. They hired me to teach them how to do this.

And so maybe if there's a client I regret, that might be one of them. Why? Because they're using the same tactics that Facebook uses because they're in the same exact business. So they write these click-baity headlines that people love to engage with. They think they're morally right to do that in a way that I would argue is not necessarily bad. There's nothing wrong with making interesting content.

But I think when you skew the content and tell the side of the story that you describe in such a way, I mean, look, the first rule of journalism is if it bleeds, it leads. So they know that if they tell a story without nuance and they make it good guys versus bad guys, black and white, then that is the kind of story that ironically people will share and click on and engage more with without the moral clarity of realizing they are in the exact same business as Facebook. So they're throwing stones in a glass house, right? Your first book, Hooked, educated a lot of people on how to build habit-forming products.

Do you worry about the hands that book might have got into and the products that might have been built from guilt? It just came to mind then because of what you were saying. Yeah, it's a really common question. It's kind of usually people's first question, not their last question. Yeah. And I think it's pretty clear. So Hooked is about how to build healthy habits. And so the people who use Hooked are companies like Kahoot that use the Hooked model to get kids hooked in classroom learning. Fitbod got people hooked to exercising in the gym.

The New York Times gets people hooked to reading the newspaper every day on their app. So that, I think, is a positive application of this psychology. And so the idea was to steal from Facebook, to steal from YouTube these techniques that they use so that all sorts of products can get people hooked to healthy habits in their lives. So no, I mean, I think the people who pioneer these techniques have known them for decades. You know, Hooked came out in 2014. Google and Facebook were started years and years before. To answer your question earlier of, you know, why are these negative stories getting so

much more traction than the positive ones? I think partially is because, look, the social media companies have messed up. There are a lot of, I'm not a tech apologist. There are lots of things that I think they could do better when it comes to election interference, data collection, monopoly status, lots of things that I think that they should receive scrutiny for. But I think this one specific point that in a way is kind of the base of, you know, many people's arguments against tech is that, well, we can't stop, that there's nothing we can do about it that's hijacking your brain. That is scientifically not true. And it's harmful, that in fact, that when we propagate this message, it makes it true. We are doing exactly what the

tech companies want us to do by letting people think that there's nothing that they're able to do about it. Because when we think we're powerless, it becomes so. I want to ask you another question, and then I'm just going to ask you to round up with some reasons why people should buy this book. But my closing question before that one is, you're at a dinner party. There's six seats. I'm in one of them because it's my house. You're in the other. There's four seats left. Who do you invite to that dinner party and why? Dead or alive. The first people who spring to mind, I'd really love to meet Mark Zuckerberg in person. Why?

I think I've only seen him, you know, in his public face. And it's very difficult to, of course, understand a person filtered by the media because, of course, the media will spin things one way or the other. I'd really love to meet him in person because I think he has a moral challenge that I think nobody else on earth has these days. I mean, he has so much power. And I think he's really conflicted. I think this is a really tough choice he has to make in so many issues.

I mean, what I study, I have one swim lane around, you know, habit-forming products and engagement and how we can get the best out of these technologies. He has so many issues he's dealing with right now. And so I'd be really curious to kind of get a sense of the personal side of how he thinks about these things. So I think that is somebody who we will hear about for the rest of our lives, at least given, given how young Mark is. Uh, so that would be someone very interesting to talk to. Um, so that's one seat, three left. Oh man, don't have to answer this question. This is a really tough question.

Um, and there's so many people that I feel like I've had the equivalent of having dinner with over the years, like people I really admire. So Paul Graham is an author and investor who, you know, I read his book Hackers and Painters years ago. And I remember reading that book and it really blew my mind because it's an essay form. And it was such an inspiration to me about how I could start reading one of his essays and think one way. And by the end of the essay, I'd have this mind-blowing epiphany of, wow, you know, the way I looked at the world is totally different from how I did before I started reading this essay. And so that was really inspirational. I'd love to. But then again, you know, the reason this question is such a struggle for me is because

There's that saying don't meet your heroes Right that when you meet somebody in real life versus how you've constructed them in your head Yeah, and Paul Graham has always been a hero to me in terms of his writing is just We can't expect that much of people, right? He's really great at one thing. Does that mean he also has to be great at everything? No.

I think part of the value you attribute to these people is the mystique and the mysteriousness around them that you haven't met them. Right. And they've worked

on their body of work for years and years and years, right? He's refined every word. I know how long it takes me to write something. If I were just to ask a question right now,

I probably wouldn't sound very articulate or smart, but give me five years and maybe I can produce something that sounds interesting. So Paul Graham would be really interesting. I never I don't remember

my paternal grandfather. I was three years old when he passed away, so I think I'd really love to have him. He was a Holocaust survivor. He lost two daughters and a wife in the holocaust and remarried to my grandmother my paternal grandmother so I'd really love to just see what he was like never had that opportunity

who else? who would you want to have dinner with? I went for this fairly cliche the first one which is Martin Luther King and the only reason why is because I'm convinced he knew he was going to die and he's the closest I've ever come to believing in religion was his last speech on stage where he says to this audience,

I don't get there with you, but you will get there. I've been to the mountaintop and I don't get there, but you do. And he's talking as if he knew the future so, so clearly. And then the next day or that week he gets shot dead. And it was the last speech he ever gave. And it was when you have the context of what happened the day after and what he was saying that it gives you goosebumps because you knew i just first of all i thought he fucking knew something yeah um so him as well and the other reason for him and people like him at my dinner table is because

the people that i consider to be really great often are those that were willing to put a cause above themselves in their life and he's one of those people that was consider to be really great often are those that were willing to put a cause above themselves in their life. And he's one of those people that was willing to die for something he believed in. And that's a level of, I don't know, like nobleness and greatness that I just, you know, blows my mind. People like Elon Musk, Ruth Bader Ginsburg out here. And then probably like my grandparents as well. I never met my grandparents. I need one more from you. Yeah. So I wonder who would be a good contrarian,

maybe Socrates, wasn't it Socrates that was forced to drink hemlock, right? Because at the time he was a heretic. I think that would be really interesting, you know, because obviously I hope they don't kill me for this, but I like having contrarian ideas, not for the point of being a contrarian, but having a well-researched, well-thought-out idea, despite the fact that it's unpopular, is important. We need that in society. We need that diversity. I think, in a way, this is what social media also gives us.

I don't think we would have Black Lives Matter and Me Too without also having a forum for people to congregate and talk about weird ideas, right? There's a reason that these ideas are now coming to the forum, because there's a forum to do that. But that also gives us, you know, anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, because they also have a place to congregate. But I think that that's okay. We need these forums for people to talk about what seems like a weird, crazy idea, because that's how we as a society progress. We need the wackos and the weirdos in order to also get to the truth. Last point then. So Indistractable, why should

the listeners of this podcast get this book? I know we've just spent the last hour giving reasons as to why, but in a nutshell, who is this book for? This book is for everyone who struggles with not doing what they say they're going to do, right? So one of the things I would hate to be called is a liar. I can't think of a worse put down than someone saying I'm a liar, right? We would never want to lie to our kids, to our family, to our co-workers. That would be a terrible thing to do.

And yet I found that I was lying to myself, right? I'd say I'd do one thing. Oh, I'm definitely going to go work out. I'm definitely going to work on that big project. I'm definitely going to be fully present with my kid. And I wouldn't do those things. And I would lie to myself. And that feels horrible.

So what I want to give people is this amazing feeling that I, for the first time in my life, experience regularly of living a day having done what I said I was going to do. And this is part of the problem, I think, with the current productivity mindset of, well, keep a big, long to-do list and just do that stuff, right? Make sure you write it down and you'll do that stuff. The problem is if you have 100 things on your to-do list and you have a great day, super productive,

and you did five things on the to-do list, you look at it at the end of the day and you still have 95 more things you didn't do. And so you go to bed feeling like you never did enough. As opposed to when you use these techniques, you end your day with time for watching Netflix and not feeling guilty about it, because that's exactly what you plan to do with your time or going out with your mates. And it feels fantastic because that is what you planned to do without guilt. That's such an amazing feeling.

And so if there's one mantra, if there's one takeaway from this book, whether you read it or not, that mantra would be that the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. That if there's one thing that our species has that makes us truly an amazing race is that our species has this ability to see the future with higher fidelity than any other creature on the face of the earth. That the human race can predict what is going to happen better than any other animal. And we should use that power. Because look, the fact is, if the chocolate cake is on the fork on its way to your mouth, you're going to eat it. If the cigarette is lit in your hand, you're going to smoke it.

If you sleep next to your cell phone every night, as close as you do to your lover, you're going to pick it up first thing in the morning. It's too late. You're going to lose. But the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. We can plan ahead with these techniques. And if we do that, there is no distraction we can't overcome. I'm not religious, but amen. Thank you.

Thank you, Neil. It's been an absolute pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you.