Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Nir Eyal on How to Become Indistractable | Human Behavior

Starting point is 00:00:00 Young and profitors, today we are going to be discussing how to master our habits and become indestructible. I am replaying my classic conversation with NIR AAL. If we want to talk about habit forming and being focused and limiting distractions, NIR is our guy. He spent years working in the video gaming and advertising industries. So his understanding of how to motivate and manipulate human behavior is next level. And so I'm super excited to share this conversation with you all. If you're not familiar with NIR, he's a leading expert in behavioral design, and he's also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable. He's wrote for Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, The Atlantic Psychology Today, and many more publications. And he's also

Starting point is 00:01:02 taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. So like I said in this episode, we're going to talk about why habits are good for business. We're going to go deep into Neer's four-step hook model to build habit-forming products. And we're also going to chat about why Neer believes that indestructibility is the ultimate secret weapon. And we'll learn all his strategies to become indestructible and lead a more productive life. If you want to master your habits and become indestructible, then keep on listening to my classic conversation with Near Aal. So from my understanding, you really invented this field. You're the father of behavioral design.

Starting point is 00:01:43 Can you provide more context into what this exactly is? Yeah, well, I don't know if I can say I'm the father of behavioral design, but I appreciate I appreciate the moniker. We decided that you're the father of behavioral design after researching. I've been dubbed. Yeah, there's a lot of people who have influenced the field. And so I appreciate that. But yeah, there's a lot of folks in the book that I credit their research as well.

Starting point is 00:02:01 I think what I've done is to take a lot of, you know, very old consumer psychology research that's, you know, 50, 60, 70 years old and applied it to a new field because what we've seen is now possible through these devices that we carry around with us every day in our pockets is that technology has become so persuasive in the same time that has become so pervasive. And so that means that, you know, this formula has resulted in the opportunity to change people's behavior and to change our own behavior. And so behavior, behavior, and so behavior, behavior Behavioral design is really understanding how to shape our behavior through our technology. How can technology facilitate behavior? Now, I wrote hooked for two reasons. I wrote hook, number one, because I wanted to help entrepreneurs. I've been a two-time entrepreneur. I'm not some academic that only does research studies. I've been in the field, started two companies.

Starting point is 00:02:50 I know how hard it is to get people to change their behavior and use a product like the ones that I'm sure many of your listeners are making that would truly benefit them if they only used it. Right? That's such a big problem. That's really what fascinates me so much about this field is, what if we could use technology to help people do the things they want to do, but for lack of good product design, don't do? Wouldn't it be great if we could design the kind of products that didn't depend upon spammy advertising and expensive marketing? What if people use the products because they wanted to, not because they had to, and they used them on their own, not because you were sending them more spammy messages. So that's really the goal of behavioral design is to help people do things they want to do, but for lack of good product design, they don't do.

Starting point is 00:03:33 Got it. And so just to recap for my listeners or to define it, it's really the intersection of technology, psychology, and business. So very interesting. And it's important. You mentioned a word that I just want to clarify. You know, the book I wrote, Hooked, How to Build Habit-forming Products, is not called How to Build Addictive Products. And so we never want to create addiction. Addiction is not the same thing as a habit. An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency the other behavior or substance that causes harm to the user. So we would never want to addict people. Addiction is unethical.

Starting point is 00:04:04 Now, it is also sometimes the unfortunate consequence, the unfortunate byproduct of any product that is an analgesic. Any product that solves pain will be addictive to somebody if it's used by a sufficiently large number of people, but that should never be our intent to addict people. That's an unfortunate byproduct. Our goal, as product designers, as behavioral designers, is really about helping people form healthy habits in their lives. Got it.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Okay, so let's start off with your hooked model. I think in order to provide some context to my listeners, can you first define what a habit exactly is? Yeah, so a habit is a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. It's about half of what you do every single day, day in and day out, is motivated through these habits. And this is very evolutionarily beneficial, right? The fact that our brain can switch onto autopilot and help us do so many things at the same time

Starting point is 00:04:56 or with little or no conscious thought, helps our brain think about other things and solve other problems while we're, you know, driving in traffic or walking to work or, you know, washing the dishes. We do these things habitually with little or no conscious thought. And so if we can use that power, right, if you can use the power of habit to help people shape their lives in ways that improve their lives and improve your bottom line, that's very good. Okay. So speaking of bottom line, why are habits good for business? Yeah, that's a great question.

Starting point is 00:05:22 So there are many reasons that habits are good for business. So one of them is that habits increase customer lifetime value. The longer someone uses a product, the more frequently they use a product, the more valuable each and every customer becomes to the company. Another reason is that habits supercharge growth, that when you think about, you know, what makes a product go viral, it's not good enough that a product is just spread from one person to the next because if that doesn't happen quickly, if you don't have what's called a short viral cycle time, meaning the amount of time that elapses between the transmission of one

Starting point is 00:05:53 person telling another about the product. If that doesn't happen frequently, then you're never going to have viral growth because you're constantly churning customers as well, right? People are also stopping the use of your product. And so in order to get that escape velocity and get exponential growth, you need the product to be transmitted frequently enough, which means that only the kind of products that are used habitually, these kind of daily use type products, those are the kind of products that ever have a hope of spreading and growing virally. And then third, and perhaps most importantly, habits are a barrier to competition. That it's a huge competitive advantage to have a habit around a product.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Now, your business needs to have some kind of barrier or some kind of moat. Because if you don't, what happens is you're constantly competing on price and features and price and features and you're beating up the competition on these two factors. But when a product has some kind of sustainable competitive advantage, in this case a habit, that's no longer the case because people will use a product or service out of habit and they won't even consider the competition. I'll give you an example. Many times when I give a presentation in front of a large audience, I will ask the crowd to raise their hands if they search with Google in the past 24 hours. And 99% of the rooms hands will go up.

Starting point is 00:07:07 Raise your hand for me if you search with Bing, the number two search engine, who searched with Bing in the past 24 hours? And maybe one hand will go up, typically a Microsoft employee's hand will go up. if they happen to be in the room. And so why is that? It's because those geniuses in Mountain View have such better technology. The algorithm is so much better. Nobody can replicate it. No, it's purely a habit.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Because when we Google something, we don't sit and ask ourselves, hmm, I wonder if Google makes the best search engine. No, we don't even give the competition a chance. We just use the product with little or no conscious thought. So if you form a habit with the product, it's very difficult to get you to switch because you don't even consider the alternatives. You don't consider the competitors. And so that becomes a huge, huge competitive advantage.

Starting point is 00:07:49 Thank you. That was so well broken down and so interesting. Previously mentioned in your book, you describe a four-step hook model. The components are trigger action, variable reward, and investment. Can you describe the hook model at a super high level, and maybe we can dig deeper into each step after that? Absolutely, yeah. So the four steps, I'll walk through it really quick at a high level here. And this is basically the outline of hook.

Starting point is 00:08:16 is working through these four steps of the hook model for any business, frankly, any business that's used with sufficient frequency. That is a prerequisite that I should mention. So if you sell some kind of server software that nobody knows exists unless, you know, servers on fire or something, then you don't need a habit. That's at one time. The customer doesn't need to use it to benefit from it. Or like a fancy vacation, right? Right. So yeah, exactly. So shopping for a vacation, when you're in market can become a habit. Lots of people will, you know, check travel deals every day habitually when they're in market. But yeah, going on the vacation doesn't occur with sufficient frequency. So assuming you have a product that is used with sufficient frequency, now, by the way, we can also talk about

Starting point is 00:08:53 what do you do if your product is not used with sufficient frequency. What do you do then? Well, you can bolt on habit-forming experiences. You can bolt on a content consumption habit, right? You can bolt on a community habit into a product that is not used with sufficient frequency. But we can get more into that later on. But just to outline the four steps of the hook model, the first step is a trigger. A trigger is some kind of cue that tells us what to do next. And these triggers come in two forms, external triggers and internal triggers. External triggers are things in our environment that tell us what to do next. The pings, the dings, the rings, anything in your environment that tells you what to do. The next type of trigger is called an internal trigger. An internal trigger

Starting point is 00:09:36 is where the information is stored as a memory or an association inside the user's head. And this typically takes the form of an uncomfortable emotional state. So all human behavior is motivated by the desire to escape discomfort. All human behavior. We used to think that it's about pleasure and pain. It's actually not. It's just pain all the way down. That all behavior, whether it's using your product, whether it's getting a snack, whether it's putting on a coat, whatever it might be is motivated by the desire to escape discomfort. It's called the homeostatic response. So that means that all products and services, in order to be used habitually, they have to attach themselves to that uncomfortable sensation. So when you're lonely, you check Facebook. When you're uncertain, you Google. When you're

Starting point is 00:10:22 bored, you check YouTube, stock prices, sports scores, Reddit, lots of different products and services cater to boredom. So that's probably one of the most important things that you can do. If you're building a habit forming products, probably the first step is to understand what internal trigger you're going to attach your products used to. The next step of the hook, is the action phase. And the action phase is defined as the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward. So it's the simplest thing the user can do to get relief from that psychological discomfort. A scroll on Pinterest, pushing the play button on YouTube, a quick search on Google, all of these things are very simple actions done in anticipation of an immediate reward.

Starting point is 00:11:04 So your goal as a product designer is to figure out how to reduce the friction, reduce the steps to get the reward, which leads us to the third step of the hook, which is the reward phase. The reward phase is where the itch is scratch, where the user gets what they came for. And not only is this a reward where we give the user where they came for, the reward tends to take the form of a variable reward. So some type of mystery, some type of uncertainty, some type of variability keeps us checking, keeps us engaged, keeps us wanting more. So some products want to insert variability, right? If you think about, why people use a product that caters to boredom. Well, it's because it introduces uncertainty. When you

Starting point is 00:11:44 watch a good movie, you read a good book, see a good video on YouTube, scroll your feed. There's uncertainty around that experience, and it's really good at catering to the internal trigger of boredom. Other products want to take inherently variable situations and give the user agency and control. So, for example, with Uber or Lyft, the fact that you can check the interface while you're waiting for your cab, and it tells you how far way that Uber cab is gives you greater agency and control over something that's already variable. There's already uncertainty around, you know, can you get to where you're going on time? Are you going to make your flight at the airport based on when your Uber driver arrives? So some products want to insert variability, other products operate in conditions of uncertainty

Starting point is 00:12:27 and want to give the user greater agency and control. But all of these products have at their core, the engine is this variable reward, this uncertainty that scratches the user's itch, but leaves them wanting more. And finally, the last step of the hook, and maybe the most overlooked, is the investment phase. The investment phase is where the user put something into the product in anticipation of some kind of future benefit, some kind of future reward. It can take the form of data, content, the acquisition of a skill, reputation, followers, anything I put into the product that makes it better and better with use. And this is really an amazing property, because what's the first of the product. this means is that for the first time in the history of business, a product, the more it is used,

Starting point is 00:13:12 the more it appreciates in value. That's a really big deal. If you think about it, everything in the physical world depreciates with wear and tear, right? The more you use it, right, your desk, your clothing, your car, the more you use it, the less valuable it becomes. But habit forming products do the opposite, right? The more data, the more content, the more followers, the more reputation, the more we use a product, the more we accrue these elements, and the product becomes more and more valuable, the more we use it. That's revolutionary. So that's the point of the investment phase, is that it improves the product with use through

Starting point is 00:13:47 stored value. The other thing it does, the investment phase increases the likelihood of the next pass through the hook by loading the next trigger. So something that the user does to bring themselves back. So, for example, when I send someone a message on Slack or WhatsApp or any number of other messaging platforms. When I send someone that message, there's no immediate reward, right? Nothing really happens that second. What I'm doing is I'm investing in the platform because I'm likely to get a reply. And that reply comes coupled with an external trigger in the

Starting point is 00:14:20 form of a notification that brings me through the hook once again, trigger action, reward, investment. So that's why there's this loop that through these four steps, this is how customer preferences are formed, how our taste are shaped, and how these habits take hold. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

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Starting point is 00:19:13 Yeah. So the biggest difference is that the traditional three-part habit loop is really about behavioral habits in our day-to-day lives. But there's a great deal of difference between a habit loop that's applied to your life versus one that's applied to your user's life. So the hooked model is really made for product design. It's not about personal behavior change. It's for product designers. And so there's a lot of aspects that you have to consider in terms of how would you design a habit for someone else as opposed to for yourself. For example, considering people's internal triggers. And that's nowhere in Charles's book.

Starting point is 00:19:52 By the way, Charles is a journalist. Both he and I have to get credit to the academics who actually did this research. So, you know, neither of us came up with these steps. we're reporting and popularizing the hard work of many, many academics. So external triggers. How do you send a notification, for example, that will be acted upon? Well, there's some real insights there about how do you appropriately send a notification to make sure it's acted upon and it feels like it's magic versus something that feels like

Starting point is 00:20:18 spam. And so that takes an understanding of the internal triggers in order to send the external triggers the minute the user feels their pain point, their itch, their internal trigger. When it comes to the action phase, you know, the insight, around making the action as easy as possible, designing your user interface in a way that saves the user as much friction and effort as possible will increase the likelihood of them doing the behavior. Variable rewards are nowhere in anybody else's habit loop. But of course, when we see products that we use every day, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Slack,

Starting point is 00:20:49 they're full of these slot machine-like variable rewards. I mean, every single one of them has this element of mystery, variability, this Scenarian mechanic of bringing us back through operant conditioning. And then finally, the investment phase also that doesn't appear in anybody else's habit model, that is, this idea of putting something into the product to make it better and better with use. You know, this is where big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning really becomes very valuable for this exact reason, because for the first time, products of all sorts can get better with use, right? Even companies that were traditionally not thought of as tech companies today are. Every company is a tech company today. Because if you're collecting user information,

Starting point is 00:21:27 If you're customizing the experience, which you should be, everybody should be doing this, if you're customizing the experience in some way, then you are using this piece of the hook model to improve the product with use. Got it. And so in addition to internal and external triggers, I know you also talk about paid and earned triggers. Could you just break that down for our listeners? Sure. So there's many different types of external triggers.

Starting point is 00:21:52 Remember, external triggers are these things that tell us what to do next. some piece of information that prompts the next action. And so when you think about earned triggers versus paid triggers, an earned trigger is something that you yourself own. So if you have earned the customer's trust in a way that they want to hear from you in the future, for example, if you make an app that reminds people to exercise or meditate or save money or learn a new language, and the user welcomes that notification, that ping, that ding, that ring that tells them what to do next, well, you have earned.

Starting point is 00:22:26 that right. And so you essentially own that trigger in the customer's mind. Now, as opposed to a paid trigger, if you buy the notification from somebody else, right, if you have to go through Facebook or Google or an advertiser platform to send an external trigger, well, you're basically renting that user's attention. You don't own the user's attention. You haven't earned the right to message them. You're basically renting it from someone else. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just happens to be really great when you don't have to pay someone else to access your customer. So the idea is that we want to take those paid triggers and quickly convert them into no longer requiring us to send these external triggers by creating our own habit, by creating a product that people want to use on their own without needing these notifications, certainly not the ones that we have to buy from someone else. And in regards to the action step, why is it important to make sure that the product is really easy to use? Right. So one principle that we've known for decades now, it's called Lewin's equation, is that behavior is a function of a person in their environment. And so this goes back over 100 years. And it's pretty much common sense, right? That what you do is a function of the environment around you. If you see a donut on the kitchen counter when you go into your kitchen for breakfast, whereas if you have the healthier option, the eggs in the fridge, but the donut's right there ready for you. And it's easy to go ahead and eat the donut. And you're in a rush, so you're super motivated to eat the donut quickly as opposed to having to fry up an end.

Starting point is 00:23:54 egg, you're going to eat the donut because it's easier to do that behavior. So the environment shapes our behavior. And we see this all over the place, right? The environment is a huge, huge factor in people's behavior. We like to think that we are fully in control of our behavior. And it's not that we can't take steps to control our behavior, but without forethought, we are very much at the whim of our environment. So that means that if you are designing a product that is helping people do something that they themselves want to do, but they're not doing it. it, then it's only because of one of three reasons. And this comes out of the work of B.J. Fogg at Stanford, who says that behavior is a function of motivation, ability, and a trigger. So we talked about those

Starting point is 00:24:35 triggers earlier. Motivation is the energy for action, how much we want to do something. And ability is how easy it is to do that behavior, right? The capacity to do that behavior, because the easier something is to do, the more likely we are to do it. So whether it's because something is easy because it is physically easier to do or because it's mentally easier to do or because it's less costly. Any of these factors of ability make a behavior more or less likely to occur based on how easy or difficult the behavior is. And so even minute changes, right, seconds of load time in your app, a website that's too crowded with too many triggers and confuses the user, not building enough trust and causing the user to have to think and second guess whether they want to do business with you. All of these factors

Starting point is 00:25:22 decrease the user's ability and therefore make it less likely that the user will do what they and you want them to do. And when you were talking about rewards, you mentioned the fact that they really need an element of mystery or a degree of novelty.

Starting point is 00:25:38 And in your book, you also talk about how rewards come in three different types, tribe, hunt, and self, I believe. That's right. Can you... Very good. Thank you. You're an app pupil there.

Starting point is 00:25:48 That's great. Can you unpack that? just describe these different types of rewards because I thought this was one of the most fascinating parts of your book. Sure, sure. So I talk about variable rewards as this engine of the hook model. I'll tell you the story of how this was kind of discovered, so to speak. So B.F. Skinner was a psychologist, the father of behaviorism. He was the father of operand conditioning. And he did some really fascinating experiments back in the 1950s and 60s where he took these pigeons and he put them in a little box and he gave them a disc to peck at. And every time they pecked at the disc, they

Starting point is 00:26:22 would get a little food reward, the little food pellet. And so very quickly he could train these pigeons to peck at the disc whenever they were hungry. Now, mind you, he wasn't creating automaton's, right? He wasn't creating little puppets. He could only get the pigeons to peck at the disc if they were hungry, meaning there had to be an internal trigger of hunger in order for the pigeon to be motivated to peck at the disc. Just like with us, people aren't puppets on a string. We can't make people do something they don't want to do. They have to have some kind of internal trigger, some kind of need, some kind of itch in order to do that behavior. Okay.

Starting point is 00:26:54 But then Skinner found something very interesting happened when he ran out of the food pellets. So one day he literally ran out of them. He didn't have enough food pellets. And so he couldn't afford to give the food pellet every time the pigeon pecked at the disc. He could only afford to give it to the pigeon once in a while. And that meant that if the pigeon pegged at the disc, sometimes they would get a reward. But then if the pigeon pecked at the disc again, they wouldn't receive a reward. And to Skinner's amazement, he saw the pigeons in the pigeon.

Starting point is 00:27:20 increase the rate of response, they would peck at the disc more often when the reward was given on a variable schedule of reinforcement. And so it turns out that in all sorts of experiences that you find most habit-forming, most engaging, the things that capture our attention and won't let go, you will find this element of mysteries, this variable reward. And these variable rewards come in three types. Rewards of the tribe, rewards of the hunt, and rewards of the self. Rewards of the hunt are things that feel good, that have this element of mystery, and come from other people. So cooperation, partnership, competition, all of these things, feel good, come from other people, and have this element of mystery. It's what makes social

Starting point is 00:28:01 media so engaging. Stack Overflow, if you've ever used that for any engineers listening, right? It's this social Q&A site, Quora. A lot of companies use this social reward. You see that all over the place. The next type of variable reward is called Rewards of the Hunt. And this is about the search for material possessions or information. So when you think about what makes the news so habit-forming, right? Why do people read the news every day? Nobody wants yesterday's news, right? That's old news. That's not fun. The first three letters of news is N-E-W, new. It has to be what we don't know, the uncertainty, the search for information. That's what the rewards of the hunt is all about. It can also be, of course, the search for money. When you think about variable rewards, you think

Starting point is 00:28:42 of gambling, slot machines, right? What makes a slot machine so engaging? Why can nobody, stop watching a spinning roulette wheel because there's uncertainty around what's going to happen. And so that same psychology is what keeps us scrolling and scrolling on the internet as well. And then finally, rewards of the self. Rewards of the self are about the search for these variable rewards that feel good, but don't come from other people and aren't about these material or information rewards. These things feel good in and of themselves. They're what's called intrinsically pleasurable.

Starting point is 00:29:12 The search for mastery, consistency, competency, control. Best example online is gameplay, right? When you play Candy Crush or Angry Burrs or any number of these other games, you're not winning anything in terms of material possessions at least. You're not even playing with other people, many of these games. But there's something fun about getting to the next level, the next accomplishment, the next achievement. So when you think about checking email, right, email is probably the mother of habit-forming technology. It uses all three types of variable rewards. It comes from other people, so you have rewards at the tribe.

Starting point is 00:29:43 It's about rewards at the hunt, right? what's the in each email? Is it good news? Is it bad news? And then there's this element of finishing checking your inbox, right? So looking at each one of those unread messages, opening it, clearing them away, these are examples of rewards of the self, a sense of mastery, control, competency. That's very interesting. So to recap this section of the interview, can you just describe some of the questions that we should use when we're thinking about developing a product that forms habits? Absolutely. So if you're building the kind of product that needs to build a habit. If your business model depends upon bringing people back on their own,

Starting point is 00:30:19 then you have to ask yourself these five fundamental questions. Number one, what's the internal trigger? What's the user's itch that your product is addressing? And does it occur with sufficient frequency to bring them back and form a habit? Second, what's your external trigger? What's the information in their environment that prompts them to action? The third question is, in the action phase of the hook, what's the simplest thing the user can do to get relief from their psychological discomfort with your product? Fourth, what's the variable reward? Does the product scratch the user's itch and yet leave them wanting more? And then finally, the investment phase, what's the bit of work the user does to increase the likelihood of the next pass through the hook?

Starting point is 00:31:02 Awesome. Let's shift gears to your new book. This is namely on distraction. It's called Indistractions. So first, help us understand the breadth of this distraction problem. Why are people so distracted? Why did you decide to write this book? Yeah, so, you know, this book kind of came out of my own personal struggle with distraction. You know, I noticed that after I had written hooked, I was finding myself with some bad habits that I didn't like. I remember one particular occasion I was with my daughter, and she's an only child, and so, you know, she's the love of our life. we had this book of activities that daddies and daughters could do together. And one of the activities

Starting point is 00:31:42 was to ask each other this question. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I wish I could tell you what she said, but I can't because I was busy on my phone when she was answering that question. And the next thing I knew, I looked up and she was gone. She had gotten the message that she was less important than whatever I was looking at on my phone. And so I'm embarrassed to tell you that, but that's what happened. And I decided to look, you know, I need to figure this out because if I understand how these products hook us, right? I wrote the book on it and I'm struggling. Well, then I'm guessing lots of people out there are struggling. And so at first I wanted to write a book about technology distraction, right?

Starting point is 00:32:21 Why technology is the problem. And I originally thought I was going to call the book unhooked. But then the more I dove into the problem, I realized that it wasn't technology that was the real problem, that technology is what's called the proximate cause. It's the surface level cause. The real cause, the root cause, was much more complex and much more fascinating. That it turns out, I intended to write a book about technology distraction. It turns out I ended up writing about the psychology of distraction is really the topic of the book.

Starting point is 00:32:51 What I learned was is that it's not just about the technology. Technology is the tool. But it turns out there's so much more going on in terms of the deeper psychology. And so when it comes to indistractable, I have another four-part model. I'm very fond of four-part models. And it kind of uses many of the same psychology that I learned writing hooked to try and help us put technology in its place. And so the idea here, you know, every book I read on the topic when I did research about this problem of why don't we do what we say we're going to do, every book basically said the same thing. Like just get rid of the technology.

Starting point is 00:33:22 The technology is the problem. So, you know, go on a digital detox or 30-day plan or whatever. And it doesn't work. And I'll tell you why it doesn't work. I did all this stuff, but, you know, I should have known it wouldn't work because I used to be clinically obese. one point in my life. And I remember when I was obese, I would go on all these fad diets, right? No fast food for a whole month. Well, guess what happened on day 31, right? I'd eat like crazy. I'd make up for lost time because I wasn't getting to the root of why I was overeating.

Starting point is 00:33:51 And as anybody who has struggled with overeating knows, it's not about hunger, right? It's not about the food itself. It's about the emotional need. And it's an icky, sticky truth we don't like to talk about. We like to blame the tech companies for addicting us. And I wanted to do that too. And I wanted to warn people about like, look, I know from the inside that this stuff is addictive. And it turns out, I can't say that because the science doesn't support it. The science tells us that we use and overuse and sometimes abuse these products because we're filling emotional needs. It's back to these internal triggers that we talked about earlier.

Starting point is 00:34:26 Let me tell you, if you can't sit with your daughter without looking at your phone, it's not the phone. That's the problem. There was stuff going on inside me that I didn't want to face, that I didn't want to look at, that I was trying to escape and I didn't have the tools

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Starting point is 00:38:51 problem and how like, you know, 2,500 years ago, Socrates and Plato were talking about this concept. Can you just explain the history behind some of this? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is one of the things that fascinating. I mean, we think that Facebook invented distraction, and it is not a new problem. I mean, literally, 2,500 years ago, Socrates and Plato are talking about Acrosia, this tendency that we have to do things against our better interest. I mean, it is part of the human condition. And it's part of being an adult is that, you know, we live in a world today that has so many

Starting point is 00:39:21 good, interesting, fascinating things vying for our attention. And that's a good thing, right? Do we want Netflix to make more boring shows, right? should we call up Netflix, say, hey, can you stop making your show so entertaining? That would be great because they're distracting me. No, I mean, part of being a grown-up is learning how to put this stuff in its place. And I think what disturbed me about the popular narrative that I bought into at one point is that we sluff off responsibility and we expect it to be fixed for us. Well, I got news for you. This stuff ain't going away. It's always been a part of the human condition and it always will be

Starting point is 00:39:53 part of the human condition. If anything, technology is only going to make things more distracting, not less. And so if we don't learn how to become indistractable now, if we don't teach our kids how to become indistractable, then I really do think the world is going to bifurcate into people who know how to manage their behavior, who know how to manage their attention and do what they say they're going to do, and people who just get tugged around by other interests. Because the fact is, you know, I can tell you from the inside, if you don't take steps to become indistractable, these companies are going to get you. They're too sophisticated, they're too good that if you don't take steps to put this stuff in its place. Not only, you know, the frivolous social media or

Starting point is 00:40:32 gaming companies, I'm talking about the workplace technologies, Slack and email, your phone, it's going to get you unless you understand how to put it in its place. And so half the book is about things that you yourself can do, right, this four-part indistractable model. The other half of the book realizes that you operate in an environment, right, that your behavior is dictated, many parts, by other people. So the second half of the book is about how do we have an indistractable workplace, right? How do we create a culture that doesn't make people desperate for distraction? It turns out that what I learned in this, and we can talk about this more, but I learned that distraction at work is not about the technology. It's about a dysfunctional company culture.

Starting point is 00:41:11 Then I also talk about how to raise indistractable kids. And finally, I talk about how to have an indestructible relationship. What do you do when you sit around the table and some of your friends decide it's a good time to take out their phone when you were hoping you would have, you know, quality time together, or what do you do if your spouse or your significant other is on their device instead of coming to bed? What do you do in those circumstances? So I really try and look at these many different facets of this problem of distraction and give a holistic and yet tech positive and empowering solution. I'm not one of these chicken little alarmist that tells you technology is melting your brain. I love technology. It's great. I mean, I couldn't have written my books. I couldn't

Starting point is 00:41:48 have benefited so many ways in my life had it not been for the amazing power of technology. I mean, look at us talking right now with these amazing technologies. Let us do all these things we do. And so it's a tech positive book, and it's also an empowering book that helps people get the best out of technology without letting it get the best of us. Yeah, and I think it's a perfect time for something like this, because as you said, companies are only getting more sophisticated. And I don't think people realize how complex it is behind the scenes and how much they're targeted.

Starting point is 00:42:18 Yeah. And we can use it for good. I still believe that, you know, by and large, you know, I don't want to live. in a world without what you're building. I think it's great that you have the option to have great products that engage us. I mean, we want the products we use to be engaging. That's not a problem. That's progress, right? We want awesome products that help us. I think it's going to be up to us, though. Unless you are a child, I think children deserve special protection. I think the people who are pathologically addicted deserve special protection. But for the rest of us,

Starting point is 00:42:46 it's up to us. It's going to be our responsibility to learn how to deal with these things healthfully. You have called indestructibility a superpower. Why do you think that that is the ultimate secret weapon of today? Because one could argue that creativity or emotional intelligence or being able to adapt is more important today. I would argue that all the creativity in the world, all the adaptability, all the leadership skills don't get you very far if you don't execute on your dreams. And so you can't execute on your dreams unless you do the work. And so it's not good enough just to have desire and aspirations.

Starting point is 00:43:31 If you want to make a difference in the world, you have to get your butt in the chair and do the work. And that's hard. It's hard. And it's not comfortable. And we haven't been taught how to focus, how to stay on task and and do what we say we're going to do. Not only that, it's so much more difficult these days

Starting point is 00:43:52 when we have so many good things to distract us, right? Like, oh, I just want to watch YouTube for a minute. Or let me just Google something. Or even the most insidious things are, you know, those tasks that feel like work, we call it pseudo work, right? Like, I'll just check email for a minute because that's kind of something I need to be doing. It kind of feels productive.

Starting point is 00:44:09 And this is why we had this explosion of messaging today, not because people need to send these messages. A Harvard Business Review found that 25% of the emails that the average office worker receives, they should not have received. And about 25% of the emails they send, they should not have sent. The reason we have this deluge of emails is because people are using technology to fulfill their voids, to fulfill these uncomfortable emotional sensations of having to do the work. The solution is, it's two big solutions, the solution is do pseudo-work or call a meeting. That's what we do. When at the end of the day, to really

Starting point is 00:44:46 move our life and the world forward, we have to do focused work. We have to come up with novel solutions to hard problems. Well, guess what? You can't do that unless you have focused time. But we don't have any focused time in our days anymore. We're constantly reacting and we have no time to reflect. And so that's what I want to change is I want to give us the skill set to put our ideas into action. The reason I call it a superpower is imagine for a second what your life would be like. If everything you said you would do, you did. Imagine in the domain of your life, right, when it comes to taking care of your body, your health, getting enough sleep, reading books that can improve your life,

Starting point is 00:45:28 think about in the domain of your relationships. How much closer would you be with your significant other, your kids, your friends, if you were there for them and you were fully present, you made time for these people? In your work, how much more effective would you be at work if you actually finished everything on your to do-do list every day, every day, instead of moving it to the next day and the next day and the next day? Right. How unbelievably different would our life be if everything we said we would do, we actually did? That's why I think it's a superpower. Yeah, that is powerful. How can we stop being distracted? What are your top tips for that? Yeah, so it's not so much tips and tactics as it is a strategy. I mean, I do give a lot of tactics, a lot of things that you can do today, like, you know, very quick hit tips. But that's not the most important aspect of the book. The thing I want you to remember are these four parts of the indistractable model, because if I give you the strategy and that is seared into your brain, you'll come up with the tactics for yourself. The strategy here is to understand that all action is either traction or distraction, right? You notice both those words end in the same word. They both end.

Starting point is 00:46:31 in the word action. Traction is any action that you do that moves you towards what you want in life. It's things that you do with intent. The opposite of that, the opposite of traction, is distraction. Traction is any action that you do that moves you off track. So think about a number line. To the right is traction. To the left is distraction. Okay. Now, what spurs action? What makes us do something that is either traction or distraction? Think about two arrows pointing towards the center of that number line. Those two arrows represent either internal triggers or external triggers. And of course we talked all about this when we talked about hooked,

Starting point is 00:47:10 how all our behaviors are spurred by either internal triggers or external triggers. So now we have four parts. We have internal triggers, external triggers, traction, and distraction. So all we have to do to become indistractable is work on these four basic elements. First, we have to master these internal triggers. understand the discomfort that drives us to seek escape through distraction as opposed to traction. And so there's really only two things we can do about mastering our internal triggers.

Starting point is 00:47:39 We can either fix the source of the problems, figure out why we feel bad, why we are looking for escape in this manner, or if we can't fix the source of the problem, we have to learn ways to cope with that discomfort. And so I give many different ways to do exactly those two things. How do you either fix the problem or learn tactics to cope with that? that discomfort. There's a lot of myths out there in folk psychology that need to be overturned, like the ego depletion myth, this horrible myth that people run out of willpower, that it's like a gas tank. Turns out that's totally not true, unless you believe it's true. And so it's really

Starting point is 00:48:16 harmful. I do a lot of turning over of apple cards in this book because there's a lot of untruths out there that people need to know or not true because these untrues are really hurting them, like this idea that you run out of willpower. It's not true at all unless you believe it is. So that's the first step. We have to master these internal triggers. Next, we have to make time for traction. We talked about traction versus distraction. We have to make time for traction. That means we have to make time on our calendars for the things that we need to do. So many people, they don't even know the difference between traction and distraction because they didn't plan what they wanted to do. So here's the thing I want your listeners to remember is that you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you, You can't complain about all these things distracting you, the television, the radio, the YouTube, whatever, Facebook, unless you know what it is you wanted to do in that time. So this comes down to putting on our calendars what we want to do. And then more importantly, so that's kind of basic.

Starting point is 00:49:13 You've heard that advice before. What people don't do is that they don't synchronize their schedules with the various stakeholders in their life. You know, a lot of us, we talk a good game. We say we value certain things. But if I can't see your values on your schedule in terms of how you spend your time, it's just vaporware, right? It's just talk. So to walk the walk, we need to actually make time for our values on our calendars, turn our values into time. The third thing we do is that we need to hack back these external triggers.

Starting point is 00:49:44 So external triggers are these things in our environment that either lead to traction or distraction. So we have to ask ourselves this critical question. This is kind of my version of the Marie Kondo, you know, doesn't bring you joy question. The question that I want people to ask is for every external trigger in your life, is this trigger serving you or are you serving it? If it's serving you, terrific, that's great. Like if you have a notification that tells you, hey, it's time to go to the gym or it's time for this meeting and that's what you plan to do with your time, terrific. But if that external trigger is leading you to distraction, you have to figure out how to hack back, how to remove it from your life. Not just in your technology, but I also give you insights on how to do this during me.

Starting point is 00:50:23 meetings, how to do this in the workplace as well. You know, one of the greatest sources of workplace distraction more than our technology is other people, right? In open floor plant offices, you have people stopping by your desk and say, hey, how's it going? Want to chat? Well, yeah, I do, but not right now. So actually, I have in the center of Indistractable, there's a cardstock insert that you can rip out and fold to put on your screen that's a big red sign that says, I'm indistractable right? now, please come back later. That tells your coworkers that you are indistractable. Please don't bother

Starting point is 00:50:58 me right now, right? In a polite way. So there's all these tactics that you can use. But what I really want you to understand is this large strategy of, is the trigger serving me or am I serving it? And then finally, the last step of the indistractable model is to prevent distraction with pact. And packs are these ancient technique. I mean, we have the Ulysses pact is probably the oldest example of Ulysses in the Odyssey, written by Homer 2,500 years ago. He used. He used to you. He uses this pre-commitment. He binds himself to the mast of his ship to make sure that he's not tempted to do something he doesn't want to do.

Starting point is 00:51:33 And so we can use these same type of packs. We have three types, price packs, effort packs, and identity packs to help us prevent us from doing something we don't want to do, something we'll later regret. And so I give you all kinds of techniques for how to do that as well. And so those are the four steps to becoming a distractible. Master internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back external triggers, and finally prevent distraction with packs. So this is kind of the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more to say about it, but I want to kind of give you at least the four parts. Fabulous. And where can our listeners go to

Starting point is 00:52:02 find out more about you and everything that you do? Yeah, thank you. So my website is called near and far.com. And near is spelled like my first name. So it's nir and far.com. My first book is hooked, how to build habit forming products. And for the second book, you can go to indestructible.com. Great. Well, Neer, you have a brilliant mind and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. Thank you.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Nir Eyal on How to Become Indistractable | Human Behavior

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