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00:01:34.640 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:43.160 | your life, money, and travel all while spending less and saving more.

00:01:47.040 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you on my journey.

00:01:50.120 | Today's conversation is all about distraction, something that impacts all

00:01:54.760 | of us, and I know because it definitely takes a toll on me almost every day.

00:01:59.240 | So I'm talking with Nir Eyal about becoming what he calls indistractable.

00:02:05.000 | Almost sounds like a superpower, right?

00:02:06.840 | Now, Nir has quite the impressive background.

00:02:09.360 | He's previously taught at the Stanford Graduate School of

00:02:11.920 | Business and their design school.

00:02:13.600 | He's co-founded and sold two tech companies.

00:02:15.920 | He's an active angel investor.

00:02:17.560 | But perhaps most relevant to today, he's the author of two best-selling books.

00:02:22.720 | First, "Hooked - How to Build Habit-Forming Products."

00:02:26.400 | And second, "Indistractable - How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your

00:02:30.320 | Life," which has received critical acclaim, winning the Outstanding Works

00:02:34.320 | of Literature award, as well as being named one of the best business and

00:02:37.920 | leadership books of the year by Amazon.

00:02:40.120 | In our conversation, we discuss the hidden psychology that drives us to

00:02:44.600 | distraction and what so many people get wrong about overcoming it.

00:02:48.120 | Nir also shares his four-step research-backed model for becoming

00:02:53.040 | indistractable and how to use it to take back control of your time and

00:02:56.960 | start making traction on the things that matter to you in your life.

00:03:00.160 | This episode is so chocked full of actionable advice, so let's jump in.

00:03:04.920 | Nir, thanks for being here.

00:03:07.880 | Great to be here, Chris.

00:03:09.240 | Thanks.

00:03:09.680 | Yeah, so I went into reading your latest book and I was thinking that if I could

00:03:14.640 | become indistractable, I could just avoid my notifications.

00:03:17.360 | And I quickly realized it is a whole lot more than that.

00:03:21.000 | And so I thought a good way to just kick off is how do you

00:03:23.880 | actually define distraction?

00:03:25.600 | Absolutely.

00:03:26.160 | Yeah.

00:03:26.360 | So this is a great question because it's a term that I think I thought I

00:03:29.920 | understood, but really didn't once I started diving into this research around

00:03:33.240 | the psychology of why we get distracted.

00:03:35.000 | So the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand

00:03:38.360 | what distraction is not.

00:03:39.520 | So what is the opposite of distraction?

00:03:41.640 | Most people will say, "Well, it's obviously, right?

00:03:43.560 | It's focus."

00:03:44.240 | Well, not true.

00:03:45.280 | The opposite of distraction is not focus.

00:03:47.360 | If you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction.

00:03:51.680 | That by definition, traction is any action that pulls you towards what you

00:03:59.760 | say you're going to do.

00:04:00.640 | Things that move you closer to your goals, closer to your values, help you

00:04:03.680 | become the kind of person you want to become.

00:04:05.040 | The opposite of traction, distraction.

00:04:07.920 | Distraction is any action that pulls you further away from your goals, further

00:04:11.760 | away from what you said you were going to do, further away from your values and

00:04:13.880 | further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become.

00:04:16.200 | So this isn't just semantics.

00:04:17.680 | This is super important because I would argue any action, by the way, you notice

00:04:22.440 | that both traction and distraction end in the same six letters, A-C-T-I-O-N, that

00:04:26.320 | spells action.

00:04:27.200 | So I would argue that any action that you do with intent, anything that it uses for

00:04:33.280 | thought is traction, right?

00:04:35.640 | It's what you plan to do.

00:04:36.800 | Anything that is not that is distraction.

00:04:39.120 | So let me give you an example.

00:04:39.960 | So driving home, you know, for years I would go to my desk and I'd say, "Okay,

00:04:43.840 | I'm going to get to work right now.

00:04:45.480 | I got my cup of coffee.

00:04:46.840 | I got everything set.

00:04:47.760 | I'm going to focus.

00:04:49.400 | I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do.

00:04:50.400 | I got my list of to-do's."

00:04:52.040 | By the way, we can talk about why to-do's are one of the worst things you can do for

00:04:54.320 | your productivity.

00:04:54.840 | We can get to that later.

00:04:55.560 | "Now I'm going to get started.

00:04:56.960 | Here I go.

00:04:57.600 | Right now, nothing's going to get in my way.

00:04:59.520 | I'm not going to procrastinate, but first let me check email real quick."

00:05:03.880 | Right?

00:05:04.360 | That's a work-related task.

00:05:05.680 | I'm being productive.

00:05:06.600 | I'm doing email.

00:05:07.200 | I got to do that at some point.

00:05:08.080 | Or let me do that thing on my to-do list.

00:05:09.760 | It's maybe not the top of my to-do list.

00:05:11.120 | The most important thing, let me just get some stuff done just to get some momentum

00:05:14.720 | going.

00:05:14.960 | Right?

00:05:15.160 | I'm still being productive.

00:05:16.040 | And what I didn't realize is that that is the most dangerous, pernicious form of

00:05:19.920 | distraction.

00:05:20.520 | The distraction that tricks you into prioritizing the urgent and easy work at

00:05:26.680 | the expense of the hard and important work that we have to do to move our lives

00:05:30.160 | and our businesses forward.

00:05:31.320 | So just because something is a work-related task doesn't mean it's not a

00:05:34.040 | distraction.

00:05:34.560 | That is the worst kind of distraction because you don't even realize it's

00:05:37.280 | happening to you.

00:05:37.960 | If it's not what you said you were going to do, it's a distraction.

00:05:41.000 | Conversely, everything can be traction as long as you plan for it.

00:05:44.200 | So don't believe these chicken little tech critics that tell you, "Oh,

00:05:48.520 | technology is hijacking your brain and social media is bad for you."

00:05:51.600 | It's all rubbish.

00:05:53.000 | It's ridiculous.

00:05:53.720 | There's nothing wrong with going on Facebook or YouTube or Reddit or whatever

00:05:57.400 | you want to do with your time.

00:05:58.320 | Video games.

00:05:59.440 | Great.

00:05:59.760 | Do it.

00:06:00.160 | But do it on your schedule, not someone else's, not on the tech company's

00:06:04.560 | schedule.

00:06:04.880 | Do it according to your values and your schedule.

00:06:08.120 | Then it becomes traction because as Dorothy Parker said, "The time you plan

00:06:12.880 | to waste is not wasted time."

00:06:14.840 | So as long as it's what you do with intent, with forethought, planned ahead,

00:06:18.280 | you can enjoy it guilt-free.

00:06:19.960 | As opposed to everything else that's not what you said you were going to do, that

00:06:23.760 | is a distraction.

00:06:24.480 | So I want to dig into the root cause of this distraction.

00:06:28.200 | But before, most people who write nonfiction books, their second book is

00:06:33.360 | kind of the sequel of their first book.

00:06:35.160 | And I'd love to understand how your journey came from writing a book about

00:06:38.800 | building habits for products to helping people avoid the distractions that maybe

00:06:44.160 | and sometimes are those products that maybe built habits through some of the

00:06:47.680 | tactics in your first book.

00:06:48.840 | In fact, when I pitched the book to my agent, she said, "Oh, okay.

00:06:52.840 | So now you're going to write unhooked."

00:06:53.960 | I said, "No, no, no, no, no.

00:06:54.840 | That's not the idea at all."

00:06:56.000 | Because I still stand behind everything I wrote in Hooked, that we can build

00:06:59.960 | products that create healthy habits in users' lives.

00:07:02.440 | And that's exactly what's happened since I've written Hooked.

00:07:04.800 | You know, companies in every conceivable industry, Fitbot uses the Hooked model

00:07:09.120 | to get people hooked on exercise.

00:07:10.720 | Kahoot uses the Hooked model to get kids hooked on to education.

00:07:14.760 | We can use the Hooked model.

00:07:16.680 | We can use the same techniques that the social media companies and the gaming

00:07:20.440 | companies use.

00:07:21.080 | We can use those techniques to build healthy habits in our users' lives, no

00:07:24.800 | matter the industry, right?

00:07:25.800 | If it's enterprise software, banking, healthcare, there's all kinds of

00:07:28.840 | industries that apply the Hooked model for good.

00:07:31.320 | So if Hooked is about building good habits, Indistractable is about how do

00:07:34.800 | we break bad habits.

00:07:36.080 | But we can have our cake and eat it too, right?

00:07:38.560 | We want a language app to teach us the language, but we also don't want to

00:07:42.720 | overuse and distract ourselves with social media, and we want to use it

00:07:46.920 | responsibly.

00:07:47.560 | So that's really where I'm coming from.

00:07:49.520 | Hooked is about building good habits, Indistractable is about breaking bad

00:07:52.640 | habits.

00:07:52.880 | They don't necessarily negate each other.

00:07:54.320 | And was there a moment in time where you thought, "Okay, I have to write this

00:07:58.680 | book"?

00:07:59.760 | Yeah, so for me, it was shortly after I wrote Hooked, and I was getting some

00:08:03.680 | notoriety.

00:08:04.240 | I was getting a bunch of five-star reviews on Amazon, and I was doing

00:08:06.760 | speaking gigs and consulting engagements.

00:08:08.480 | And I had this afternoon planned with my daughter.

00:08:11.360 | Just some quality daddy-daughter time.

00:08:13.800 | And I remember I had this book of activities that we could play together,

00:08:17.760 | you know, like do a Sudoku puzzle or a paper airplane contest, you know, things

00:08:21.600 | like that.

00:08:21.920 | And one of the questions in the book that we were supposed to ask each other was,

00:08:27.960 | "If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want?"

00:08:31.560 | And I remember that question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter

00:08:35.600 | said.

00:08:35.920 | Because in that instance, for whatever reason, I started checking my phone.

00:08:39.600 | And when I looked up for my device, I realized that she was gone.

00:08:43.480 | She got the message I was sending, which was that my phone was more important

00:08:47.720 | than she was.

00:08:48.320 | And she left the room to play with some toy outside.

00:08:51.240 | And that's when I knew I had to figure this out.

00:08:54.280 | Because look, I know these techniques and tricks from the inside, right?

00:08:57.360 | I wrote the book Hooked.

00:08:58.120 | I know exactly how they get you hooked.

00:08:59.320 | And here I was getting distracted from one of the most important people in my

00:09:03.280 | life.

00:09:03.600 | And so that was the turning point.

00:09:06.160 | I said, "I got to figure this out for myself."

00:09:07.800 | And of course, it wasn't just with her.

00:09:10.320 | It was when I would tell myself, "Oh, I'm definitely going to exercise today."

00:09:13.840 | Right?

00:09:14.200 | How many times have we told ourself that?

00:09:15.480 | And then we skip.

00:09:16.320 | Or, "Oh, I'm certainly going to eat right."

00:09:18.400 | Right?

00:09:18.720 | "Today's the day I'm going to eat healthfully."

00:09:20.120 | And I would.

00:09:20.800 | Or, "I'm definitely going to go to bed on time."

00:09:22.520 | Or, "I'm definitely going to work on that big project today."

00:09:24.480 | And somehow we don't do what we say we're going to do.

00:09:27.040 | So what I originally did, and I think a lot of people do, is I blamed the

00:09:30.200 | technology.

00:09:30.760 | I thought, "Okay, maybe the technology is the problem."

00:09:33.000 | Right?

00:09:33.360 | Like that we just can't stop.

00:09:34.840 | And so I took the, because that's what all the other books tell you to do.

00:09:38.280 | Right?

00:09:38.560 | Like the, the digital detoxing and all that.

00:09:41.160 | And I kind of bought into that.

00:09:42.880 | That was my knee-jerk reaction of, "Oh, the technology, it's evil.

00:09:45.360 | They have a profit motive to capture your attention.

00:09:47.880 | So I'll just stop using the technology."

00:09:49.960 | And I got myself a flip phone from Alibaba.

00:09:54.080 | This 1990s looking phone that doesn't have, didn't have any apps, no internet

00:09:57.560 | connection, certainly no social media.

00:09:59.600 | I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I could write with no internet

00:10:04.000 | connection.

00:10:04.480 | And I said, "Okay, great.

00:10:06.000 | Now I'm off the technology, right?

00:10:07.960 | No internet connection.

00:10:09.080 | I'm going to get started on my work.

00:10:10.640 | Nothing's going to distract me.

00:10:11.800 | Except, uh, you see there's that book on the bookcase that I've been meaning to

00:10:16.400 | read.

00:10:16.600 | Let me, let me just, let me just check that out real quick.

00:10:18.240 | There's one chapter I wanted to read real quick.

00:10:19.600 | Or, "Oh man, my desk is such a mess right now.

00:10:22.040 | Let me just clean up my desk or the trash needs to be taken."

00:10:24.280 | And I kept getting distracted because here's the thing.

00:10:28.640 | My revelation was it's not the technology, right?

00:10:32.080 | That you don't need the tech tools.

00:10:34.200 | That's just the proximal cause.

00:10:36.240 | It's not the root cause of the problem.

00:10:37.680 | That in fact, when I started researching this topic, I found that Plato, the Greek

00:10:42.840 | philosopher, was struggling with distraction 2,500 years before the internet.

00:10:46.680 | People have always complained about distraction.

00:10:49.360 | It was the television and the radio and the comic book and literally every

00:10:53.880 | technology.

00:10:54.560 | People freak out.

00:10:55.320 | They have a moral panic around and they blame the proximal cause as opposed to

00:10:58.520 | getting to the root cause.

00:10:59.600 | And so I, it didn't work for me to just get rid of the technology.

00:11:02.920 | Not only that, it's really easy for some professor in an ivory tower to say, stop

00:11:06.720 | using social media, but my livelihood depends on it.

00:11:09.280 | And like, I can't do that.

00:11:10.760 | It's really easy to say, stop checking email.

00:11:12.760 | Well, thanks, stupid.

00:11:13.880 | I'm going to get fired.

00:11:14.560 | So that, that wasn't a good solution.

00:11:17.120 | So I really wanted to figure out how we can enjoy these technologies, get the best

00:11:20.440 | out of them without letting them get the best of us.

00:11:22.480 | Yeah.

00:11:23.320 | I mean, I, we've all heard that technology is the problem, but what is the root

00:11:27.200 | cause?

00:11:27.720 | So the root cause is, uh, it's, it's a great question.

00:11:32.200 | Cause you think about it, like, wait a minute, if we know what to do, why don't

00:11:36.320 | we just do it?

00:11:36.880 | Especially in this day and age, right?

00:11:38.560 | Who doesn't know how to lose weight?

00:11:40.560 | Come on, find me a person who doesn't know that chocolate cake is not as healthy

00:11:44.800 | as a healthful salad.

00:11:46.640 | We know you eat right.

00:11:47.760 | You exercise.

00:11:48.400 | Who doesn't know that to have better relationships, you have to spend quality

00:11:52.760 | time with the people you love without distraction.

00:11:54.440 | We know this.

00:11:54.960 | Who doesn't know that if you want to be better at your job, you have to do the

00:11:57.360 | freaking work, right?

00:11:58.440 | Especially the hard stuff that other people don't want to do.

00:12:00.200 | We know.

00:12:01.320 | And if you don't know, Google it, what's your excuse?

00:12:04.000 | It's all there.

00:12:05.440 | So the problem is not that we don't know.

00:12:07.280 | We know.

00:12:08.040 | The problem is we don't know how to stop getting in our own way.

00:12:10.640 | We don't know how to stop getting distracted.

00:12:12.240 | And so to answer that question of why don't we do, we say we're going to do

00:12:16.120 | despite knowing what to do, we have to ask an even deeper question, which is why

00:12:20.920 | do we do everything?

00:12:21.640 | What's the nature of human motivation?

00:12:23.880 | And this is something that I think most people, I certainly didn't understand

00:12:27.880 | fully that most of us have a messed up conception of what motivation is all

00:12:33.000 | about.

00:12:33.280 | If you ask the average person, how do you get others or yourself to do something?

00:12:38.000 | What's the nature of human motivation?

00:12:39.560 | They're going to tell you what Sigmund Freud said, what Jeremy Bentham said,

00:12:43.040 | which is the pleasure principle that everything we do is about the pursuit of

00:12:46.400 | pleasure and the avoidance of pain, right?

00:12:48.360 | Maybe they won't use that terminology.

00:12:50.080 | They'll tell you carrots and sticks.

00:12:51.320 | Basically, that's, that's what we've all been told.

00:12:53.080 | Neurologically speaking, this is not true.

00:12:55.600 | That motivation is not about carrots and sticks.

00:12:59.320 | It's not about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

00:13:01.360 | But actually, it's just one of those things that everything you do, everything

00:13:05.600 | you do is about the desire to escape discomfort.

00:13:08.320 | That's it.

00:13:09.360 | The desire to escape discomfort, all human motivation.

00:13:13.040 | It's called the homeostatic response that if you think about this

00:13:15.760 | physiologically, that if you go outside and you're cold, then the brain says,

00:13:21.280 | Ooh, this doesn't feel good.

00:13:22.200 | This is uncomfortable.

00:13:22.920 | You should put on a coat.

00:13:23.640 | If you walk back in, now you get too hot.

00:13:26.680 | The brain says that doesn't feel good.

00:13:27.880 | Take it off.

00:13:28.440 | If you're hungry, you feel hunger pangs.

00:13:30.480 | So you eat, and if you eat too much, oh, you feel stuffed.

00:13:32.920 | The brain says, stop.

00:13:33.720 | That doesn't feel good either.

00:13:34.560 | So physiologically, this is common sense.

00:13:36.880 | The same holds true psychologically.

00:13:39.200 | That if you feel lonely, check Facebook.

00:13:42.160 | If you are uncertain, Google it before you scan your brain to see if you know

00:13:46.680 | the answer, you're automatically Googling it.

00:13:48.440 | If you're feeling bored, lots of solutions for boredom, right?

00:13:51.920 | You can check stock prices, sports scores.

00:13:54.080 | Oh, let's worry about somebody's problems 3,000 miles away by tuning

00:13:58.240 | into the news so that we don't have to think about what's going on in our own head.

00:14:01.120 | And do you think people know that they have this pain all the time or

00:14:05.280 | is sometimes this discomfort unknown?

00:14:07.120 | No, no, no.

00:14:08.360 | We almost never realize that that's what's driving our behavior, even though it is.

00:14:12.080 | That that desire to escape discomfort is what gets us to do everything we do.

00:14:16.320 | Even people are probably saying, well, yeah, but what about the pursuit of pleasure?

00:14:18.800 | What about feeling good?

00:14:19.680 | Well, even the desire to feel good, what drives us to get that pleasure is desire,

00:14:26.760 | craving, lusting, which is itself psychologically destabilizing.

00:14:31.080 | So even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations, the brain spurs us to action

00:14:35.680 | by making us feel bad enough to go get that thing we want to acquire or feel.

00:14:40.880 | Right.

00:14:41.720 | So all human behavior stems from a desire to escape discomfort.

00:14:44.680 | And once you understand that, what that therefore must mean is that

00:14:48.560 | time management is pain management.

00:14:51.160 | Let me say it again.

00:14:52.720 | Time management is pain management.

00:14:54.480 | So none of the tips and tricks and techniques.

00:14:57.320 | Look, I spent five years researching and writing this book, and I've looked

00:15:01.560 | at all the literature virtually, right?

00:15:03.280 | I've read all the books on time management.

00:15:04.640 | And I will tell you, none of the techniques work, none of the tips and

00:15:07.320 | tricks and gurus and life hacks, none of that stuff works if you don't first

00:15:11.280 | understand what is the discomfort driving you to distraction, that distraction,

00:15:17.920 | procrastination, it's not a character flaw.

00:15:20.440 | There's nothing wrong with you, right?

00:15:22.240 | People love to moralize and medicalize this topic.

00:15:24.440 | The vast majority of people, there's nothing wrong with you.

00:15:27.160 | It's simply that we haven't learned how to deal with discomfort.

00:15:30.920 | And so once you learn that, once you do what I call master the internal

00:15:34.920 | triggers, they no longer become your master.

00:15:37.240 | So that's the first step to becoming indistractable is

00:15:40.000 | mastering the internal triggers.

00:15:41.360 | The second step is about making time for traction.

00:15:43.880 | We talked about that earlier.

00:15:44.760 | Traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do.

00:15:47.640 | So, you know, there's some very simple things that all of us can do to make

00:15:51.360 | sure we make time for traction in our day.

00:15:52.800 | The third step is to hack back what we call the external triggers.

00:15:55.960 | The external triggers, this is what people tend to blame.

00:15:59.360 | It's the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in your outside

00:16:01.560 | environment, like you said, that that can move you towards distraction.

00:16:04.360 | Studies find, however, that that's only 10% of the time that we get distracted.

00:16:08.840 | Is it because of something in our external environment?

00:16:10.800 | So the other 90% of the time, 90% is not about what's happening outside of us.

00:16:16.280 | It's about what's happening inside of us.

00:16:17.800 | But there are still things we can do to hack back those external triggers.

00:16:20.880 | So that's step three, step four.

00:16:22.600 | And the final step is to prevent distraction with pacts.

00:16:25.760 | And so it's when we use these four steps in concert, this is how

00:16:29.520 | anyone can become indistractable.

00:16:31.160 | So I'd love to dig in on the four steps.

00:16:33.640 | When I read the book this week, and it was fantastic, by the way, to anyone

00:16:36.680 | listening, definitely pick up a copy.

00:16:38.400 | But I had a few questions that I'd love to talk about.

00:16:40.960 | So I'll start with step one, mastering the internal triggers.

00:16:44.040 | When you feel an urge to be distracted, you talk about pausing

00:16:46.800 | to explore that distraction.

00:16:48.400 | But what's the end goal of better understanding that feeling when

00:16:52.080 | you're about to get distracted?

00:16:54.160 | It's about having arrows in your quiver ready, so that when you feel that

00:16:58.560 | discomfort, it's not, you know, oh, meditate about it, right?

00:17:01.480 | Sometimes you need to get off your butt and stop meditating and take action.

00:17:04.680 | And so what I advise people is to have tools ready at their disposal so

00:17:09.120 | that when they feel that discomfort, they know in advance what

00:17:12.480 | they are going to do with it.

00:17:13.560 | You know, there's this myth around visualization.

00:17:16.000 | We've all heard that if you want to achieve your dreams, you have

00:17:18.400 | to visualize your goals, right?

00:17:20.440 | If you want to get in shape, you want to visualize yourself with a beach body.

00:17:24.400 | If you want to be wealthy, you have to visualize yourself in a Lamborghini or

00:17:28.520 | some other materialistic crap, right?

00:17:30.000 | Turns out that stuff doesn't work.

00:17:31.360 | That visualization of end goals actually backfires.

00:17:35.320 | It makes it less likely for you to achieve your goal because you're giving

00:17:38.520 | yourself the pleasure of having it without actually doing anything for it.

00:17:41.920 | In your mind.

00:17:42.960 | So that kind of visualization doesn't work.

00:17:44.960 | What does work is, and this has been shown in studies, that visualizing what

00:17:49.680 | you will do when you are tempted, when you are tempted to go off track.

00:17:54.880 | So if you have an aspiration to lose weight, for example, don't

00:17:59.360 | visualize the beach body, visualize what you will do when someone offers

00:18:03.800 | you chocolate cake at a dinner party and you want to refuse, what are you going to say?

00:18:08.080 | What preparation will you take now so that you know what to do tomorrow?

00:18:11.880 | So one of the most important lessons of the book is this mantra that I repeat to

00:18:16.320 | myself every day, which is that the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.

00:18:22.440 | Let me say it again.

00:18:23.360 | The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.

00:18:26.280 | So distraction, procrastination is all about impulsiveness, right?

00:18:30.800 | It's that we know what to do long-term, but in the moment, we don't do it, right?

00:18:35.200 | We do something else.

00:18:36.000 | So the antidote is forethought.

00:18:37.920 | So that if you can plan today for what you will do tomorrow, there is no

00:18:42.000 | distraction that you can't overcome because if you wait to the last minute,

00:18:45.560 | right, if you wait till the chocolate cake is on its way to your mouth, you're

00:18:48.400 | going to eat it.

00:18:48.880 | If you wait till the cigarette is in your hand, you're going to smoke it.

00:18:52.040 | If you sleep next to your cell phone every night, of course, you're going to

00:18:55.080 | pick it up first thing in the morning before you even say hello to your loved

00:18:57.240 | ones because it's too late.

00:18:58.840 | You've lost.

00:18:59.520 | They're going to get you.

00:19:00.400 | You have to plan ahead.

00:19:01.840 | So when it comes to these internal triggers, the strategy is to know what

00:19:05.560 | you will do when you feel boredom, loneliness, uncertainty, stress, anxiety,

00:19:10.960 | fatigue, what are you going to do?

00:19:12.120 | Are you going to do what most people do, which is trying to escape that

00:19:14.800 | discomfort with too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much

00:19:18.560 | Facebook.

00:19:18.960 | There's 100 different ways to distract your attention away from what you said

00:19:23.240 | you were going to do, or are you going to use that discomfort as rocket fuel to

00:19:28.600 | propel you towards traction as opposed to succumbing to distraction?

00:19:32.120 | And there's all kinds of different tools.

00:19:33.840 | There's all kinds of different arrows in your quiver that you can use so that

00:19:36.520 | when you feel that discomfort, you will know what to do with it.

00:19:38.520 | Yeah.

00:19:39.480 | So it's funny, my wife and I have a challenge, which is she has a lot of

00:19:43.600 | self-control over kind of urges, especially around health things, right?

00:19:47.560 | If she bakes, you know, two dozen cookies, she has no problem just leaving

00:19:51.000 | them on the counter.

00:19:51.680 | Ugh, I can't stand those people.

00:19:53.960 | I know, I know.

00:19:55.040 | My solution is I'm really good at the grocery store saying, let's just not buy

00:19:58.800 | cookies.

00:19:59.280 | Like, let's not buy the ingredients for you to bake.

00:20:01.280 | And she's like, well, baking's therapy, so I want to bake.

00:20:03.320 | And I'm like, well, could you just bake one cookie?

00:20:05.160 | She's like, well, if I'm going to go through all this effort, I might as well

00:20:07.360 | bake two dozen cookies.

00:20:08.320 | And so one of the things I tried this week was, you know, you mentioned the

00:20:12.560 | surfing the urge, which I just wanted to share, like, for people out there in my

00:20:16.400 | situation, I said, you know what, anytime I see this cookie on the counter, now

00:20:19.720 | that it's baked, I lose all self-control.

00:20:21.720 | But so I told myself, okay, every time I want a cookie, I can have one if I just

00:20:25.520 | wait 10 minutes.

00:20:26.280 | And you know, you said earlier, it's hard to wait till the last minute.

00:20:29.880 | But even in the last minute, I found a few tactics that were very effective,

00:20:34.120 | obviously way more effective for me to just not have the cookies in the house.

00:20:37.840 | But that tactic of waiting for 10 minutes made me realize, oh, I have control over

00:20:43.120 | not eating this cookie.

00:20:44.080 | Now after 10 minutes, I don't want it.

00:20:45.640 | And that was fantastic.

00:20:46.440 | Right.

00:20:46.720 | So so yeah, so not having the cookie in the house would be an example of hacking

00:20:51.720 | back the external trigger, which is great.

00:20:53.320 | But the world is full of external triggers, right?

00:20:56.200 | So you can't swear off technology, the trigger will be there.

00:20:59.160 | Now there's some things you can do to remove some external triggers, right?

00:21:01.720 | You can remove certain apps from your phone, you can turn off notifications,

00:21:05.080 | things like that, okay, fine, but there will always be certain temptations.

00:21:08.040 | So what do you do in the moment, what you did, actually, you use forethought, you

00:21:11.760 | said, next time that I have this urge, I'm going to use the 10 minute rule.

00:21:16.240 | And so the 10 minute rule is one of dozens of different techniques we can use.

00:21:19.760 | And so the 10 minute rule basically says that I can give into that distraction,

00:21:23.200 | whether it's eating the cookie or smoking a cigarette or scrolling the internet,

00:21:25.720 | whatever the case might be, but not right now, in 10 minutes, right?

00:21:29.920 | So what you're doing is you're building self efficacy, you're showing yourself,

00:21:33.160 | wait a minute, I can wait a few minutes, just 10 minutes, you're not telling

00:21:35.840 | yourself no, because in fact, we know that abstinence can oftentimes backfire,

00:21:40.040 | that telling yourself don't do something only makes you want it more with with

00:21:44.360 | many behaviors, instead of saying no, you're telling yourself not yet.

00:21:48.440 | And so then the 10 minute rule becomes the 11 minute rule, the 12 minute rule,

00:21:51.960 | the 15 minute rule.

00:21:52.680 | And so you're able to build that self efficacy to not get distracted later on.

00:21:56.720 | But there is no magic bullet, people always want, tell me the one thing I need

00:22:00.800 | to do.

00:22:01.200 | And it's and when you look at the research literature, it's not just about

00:22:04.640 | one thing.

00:22:04.960 | It's these four things in concert, right?

00:22:06.880 | It's knowing, okay, what am I going to do that internal trigger?

00:22:09.240 | How do I make time for traction?

00:22:10.880 | When is it okay for me to eat that cookie, right?

00:22:12.720 | Maybe there's a time when it and a place where it is okay.

00:22:14.680 | And you have that planned ahead, removing the external triggers, hacking back the

00:22:18.160 | external triggers, and then preventing distraction with packs.

00:22:20.440 | What many people do is that they exert some kind of contract with themselves or

00:22:24.040 | with somebody else to make sure they don't go off track.

00:22:26.320 | So these four techniques in concert is really what's essential.

00:22:30.000 | Yeah, you started with saying earlier that to do lists are kind of the worst.

00:22:34.040 | And I'm curious, you know, making time for traction and being kind of

00:22:37.680 | intentional is great.

00:22:39.040 | To do lists, my understanding from the book, you know, it's just a list of

00:22:42.640 | things, but there's no kind of firm commitment.

00:22:44.480 | Is it the to do list that you hate?

00:22:47.360 | Or is it the fact that most to do lists don't actually have timing when and where

00:22:52.600 | and how in it?

00:22:53.600 | And if a to do list did have all those things, and, and you kind of archived

00:22:57.120 | everything that didn't have that filled out, would you like to do this again?

00:23:00.200 | Yeah, so there's nothing wrong with writing things down, right, getting things

00:23:03.520 | out of your head and putting them on a piece of paper or, or an app.

00:23:06.600 | That's a great idea.

00:23:07.560 | What most people do, however, is that they run their life on a to do list, they wake

00:23:12.520 | up in the morning, and they say, What am I supposed to do today?

00:23:14.360 | Oh, let me look at my to do list.

00:23:15.560 | And they start ticking off little cute boxes.

00:23:17.240 | That's terrible.

00:23:18.720 | Because if you wake up in the morning, and you look at your to do list, before you

00:23:21.560 | look at your calendar, you have already lost, you made a big mistake.

00:23:24.680 | Principally, the big problem with to do list is that there's no constraints, you

00:23:27.960 | can always add more to a to do list, right?

00:23:30.080 | It's never ending.

00:23:30.800 | Whereas with a calendar with a timebox calendar, which is what I'm a big

00:23:34.360 | proponent of and what the studies find are turned out to tell people be much more

00:23:38.160 | productive and effective in their days and do what they say they're going to do.

00:23:40.680 | There is a constraint, the same 24 hours that we all have in a day.

00:23:44.520 | So it's not a coincidence when you think about how we use the same language with

00:23:48.480 | time as we do with money, right?

00:23:50.320 | You pay attention, you make money just like you make time.

00:23:54.280 | So there's lots of terminology that's the same.

00:23:55.920 | And yet we're so cheap with our money, right?

00:23:59.160 | We scrimp and save and people won't pay 99 cents for an app.

00:24:01.960 | And we split our checks with our friends when we go out to lunch, like we're so

00:24:04.880 | cheap with money.

00:24:05.680 | But we give our time to whoever wants it.

00:24:08.880 | And it should be exactly the opposite, right?

00:24:10.760 | That we you can always make more money.

00:24:12.640 | So you should be generous with your money.

00:24:14.320 | You should be stingy with your time, because you can't make more time, we all

00:24:17.640 | get the same 24 hours in the day.

00:24:18.920 | So by having a constraint on your time by deciding in advance, okay, I only have

00:24:24.200 | this much time in my day, how am I going to spend it according to my values?

00:24:28.160 | How can I turn my values into time?

00:24:30.520 | Now we impose those constraints, we force that decision.

00:24:33.880 | And so that helps us decide for the first time in many people's life, what is

00:24:38.920 | traction?

00:24:39.440 | You know, I meet with so many people who tell me how distracted they are.

00:24:43.520 | And I say, well, well, what did you get distracted from?

00:24:46.080 | Show me your schedule.

00:24:47.760 | And there's a bunch of white space.

00:24:49.760 | Well, wait a minute, how can you say you got distracted from something if you

00:24:53.560 | didn't know what you got distracted from?

00:24:56.200 | Right?

00:24:57.120 | If you can't see in your calendar, what is traction, you can't define

00:25:00.200 | distraction.

00:25:01.160 | So that's why it's one of the reasons that that timebox calendars are so much

00:25:05.360 | more effective than to do list.

00:25:06.920 | Another big reason this is probably even the more important reason is that to do

00:25:11.960 | list reinforce a negative self identity, meaning, you know, this happened to me

00:25:16.520 | all the time, I call this the tyranny of the to do list, I would come home from

00:25:19.480 | work, and it'd be a hard day, I'd feel exhausted.

00:25:22.320 | And so man, I'm so busy today.

00:25:23.960 | And then I look at my to do list and see, you know, what I still didn't finish.

00:25:27.200 | And there were still 100 things on that to do list that I didn't do.

00:25:29.680 | And so day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, I was

00:25:34.040 | reinforcing that I wasn't doing what I said I was going to do, loser.

00:25:38.560 | And so over time, you begin to believe this, this stupid narrative that, oh, I

00:25:43.440 | must not be very good with time management.

00:25:45.280 | Right?

00:25:46.200 | Maybe I have an attention problem, maybe there's something wrong with me that I

00:25:49.320 | can't finish this stuff.

00:25:50.760 | And for the vast majority of people, there's nothing wrong with them.

00:25:52.920 | It's just that they haven't learned the proper techniques to make sure that they

00:25:56.080 | follow through on what they say they're going to do.

00:25:57.600 | So that's why calendars beat to do lists by far.

00:26:00.960 | And it's funny, you know, whenever I used to tell the story, somebody would say,

00:26:03.320 | well, what about Mark Andreessen?

00:26:04.320 | Mark Andreessen wrote a famous story, you know, Mark, well, yeah, you know, he

00:26:08.360 | wrote a famous blog post about how he he leaves his days open, right?

00:26:11.880 | He wants to be spontaneous.

00:26:13.120 | And then I just saw a couple months ago, that he changed his mind.

00:26:17.480 | But now he shared an interview, his time box calendar.

00:26:21.280 | And I yes, I was so happy to see that.

00:26:23.360 | You won him over.

00:26:24.560 | Yeah, well, I don't know if I did, but he changed his ways, which is fantastic.

00:26:28.560 | And does that mean that if I, you know, if you shared your calendar, it would be

00:26:32.280 | fully scheduled, you know, including sleeping 24/7 the whole week?

00:26:36.120 | Yep, absolutely.

00:26:37.960 | Yeah, no space for distraction, you know, or I guess you can have intentional

00:26:42.960 | distraction, but you can have diversion.

00:26:45.360 | Yeah, exactly.

00:26:46.520 | So there's so distraction is never good.

00:26:48.240 | Okay, distraction is always when you don't do what you said you're going to do.

00:26:51.160 | Now, you can get diverted.

00:26:53.120 | A diversion is very different from a distraction.

00:26:55.080 | A diversion is a refocusing of attention.

00:26:56.760 | So last night, I went to go see Dune, right?

00:26:59.720 | I went to go see a movie with with my friend and with my daughter.

00:27:02.360 | And that was a diversion of attention.

00:27:05.040 | I paid to go to a movie theater and have my attention diverted from real life into

00:27:09.120 | this fictional world.

00:27:10.080 | It's fun.

00:27:10.640 | It's great.

00:27:11.160 | Nothing wrong with it.

00:27:12.080 | But guess what?

00:27:13.120 | That time was in my calendar.

00:27:14.280 | I knew that that's what I was gonna do.

00:27:16.560 | So you can to have time for prayer for meditation for spontaneity, right?

00:27:20.920 | It sounds like an oxymoron.

00:27:22.080 | I have planned spontaneity in my calendar.

00:27:24.280 | So every Saturday afternoon, I spend time with my daughter.

00:27:27.040 | We call it that time plan spontaneity.

00:27:29.280 | Why?

00:27:29.880 | Because I don't know what we're gonna do.

00:27:31.080 | We might go to the park, we might go get ice cream, we might go take a walk, we

00:27:34.120 | don't know what we're gonna do.

00:27:34.840 | But I know what I will not do at that time.

00:27:37.600 | And that's why I booked that time in advance.

00:27:39.120 | I will not be checking my phone, I will not be taking work calls, I will not be on

00:27:42.360 | social media, because I have planned ahead that my daughter is the person who I will

00:27:47.080 | devote that time to.

00:27:48.000 | Yeah, that's fantastic.

00:27:49.640 | And do you ever just change plans?

00:27:52.160 | Is that is that okay in this kind of world of, I was supposed to do this thing, and I

00:27:55.960 | just had a really long day, and I don't want to do it anymore.

00:27:58.640 | But I'm choosing not to do it.

00:28:00.160 | Not in the moment.

00:28:01.920 | Okay, so that if you give it in the moment, then that's an impulsivity problem.

00:28:06.200 | But you can reset the day for the day ahead.

00:28:10.040 | Okay, once you set that schedule, stick with it, right?

00:28:12.840 | Even if you go off track, you don't have to think about what should I do next, you

00:28:16.040 | just go to the next thing on your calendar, you follow the plan once you make that

00:28:18.840 | plan.

00:28:19.160 | Right?

00:28:19.760 | So as much as possible, you don't divert from it.

00:28:21.560 | Now, do we make mistakes?

00:28:22.600 | Of course, I still get distracted from time to time.

00:28:24.680 | The difference is that an indistractable person knows why they made that mistake,

00:28:30.480 | why they got distracted, they do something about it.

00:28:32.520 | So Paolo Coelho has a wonderful quote, he said, a mistake repeated more than once is

00:28:36.440 | a decision.

00:28:37.640 | How many times do we get distracted by the same frickin things before we say, Wait a

00:28:41.000 | minute, wait a minute, okay, how many times can we blame social media?

00:28:43.640 | How many times can we blame email?

00:28:45.080 | How many times can we blame the news?

00:28:46.520 | How many times can we blame Netflix before we say, stop?

00:28:49.320 | Okay, you're I get what you're doing to me, of course, they want your attention.

00:28:53.080 | Are you going to just let them keep taking your attention or your time?

00:28:55.480 | Are you going to do something about it?

00:28:57.160 | So a distractible person through their actions is deciding to be distractible because they

00:29:01.800 | keep getting distracted by the same thing again and again and again.

00:29:04.360 | Unless, you know, little asterisks, if there's some kind of medical disorder, which about

00:29:07.560 | one to 3% of the population has ADHD.

00:29:09.400 | Okay, fine, there's an exception there, perhaps.

00:29:11.400 | For the vast majority of us, 97, 99% of the population, we are deciding to be distractible.

00:29:16.360 | Whereas an indistractable person says, Okay, I see what you did there.

00:29:20.360 | Now I'm going to do something about it.

00:29:21.560 | I'm going to figure out what internal trigger prompted me to get distracted.

00:29:24.920 | I'm going to make time for traction.

00:29:26.040 | I'm going to hack back the external triggers and I'm going to prevent distraction with

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00:32:37.200 | Yeah, and that next section that we didn't really talk much, while it falls so in line

00:32:43.040 | with the show, right, where all the hacks, like that is what people, you know, come here

00:32:46.240 | to hear.

00:32:47.040 | There's eight chapters that talk all about different triggers, external triggers, like

00:32:51.840 | email and group chat.

00:32:53.040 | I don't want to just run through the list because there's literally a book where you

00:32:55.840 | could buy it and run through that list.

00:32:57.840 | My favorite was something I tried doing today, which was I started sending all my emails

00:33:03.280 | up until like four or five o'clock.

00:33:05.360 | I just scheduled to send it five o'clock so that I wasn't getting all the replies during

00:33:09.040 | the day.

00:33:09.440 | I wasn't distracted.

00:33:10.320 | It was kind of planning ahead.

00:33:11.520 | I didn't know if there was one in that list that you want to flag as something you thought

00:33:16.160 | was kind of unique or something most people don't know about and you'd share.

00:33:18.960 | Sure.

00:33:20.240 | So that's the most kind of nuts and bolts chapter of the book, where we actually go

00:33:23.600 | through all the potential external triggers that people encounter.

00:33:26.960 | So we talk about how simple stuff like your phone, you know, two-thirds of people with

00:33:30.640 | a smartphone never change their notification settings.

00:33:32.640 | That's, come on, that's kindergarten stuff.

00:33:34.160 | Of course, you change your notification settings.

00:33:35.600 | Can we really complain that phones are addicting us and hijacking our brains if we haven't

00:33:39.920 | changed the stupid notification settings?

00:33:42.000 | That's, that's easy stuff.

00:33:43.360 | But the stuff that people don't think about, it's the stuff like meetings.

00:33:47.040 | How many meetings do we go to that are a complete distraction from what we really need to be

00:33:50.720 | doing with our time and our attention?

00:33:52.000 | Group chat, right?

00:33:54.160 | People struggle with Slack or other group messaging services.

00:33:57.280 | Email.

00:33:57.760 | Oh my God, email.

00:33:58.960 | The email was, was when we did surveys, the number one distraction that the average knowledge

00:34:04.320 | worker faced, by the way, number one before COVID was other people.

00:34:08.080 | That was the number one distraction in the workplace.

00:34:10.160 | That was number one.

00:34:11.120 | Number two was email.

00:34:12.560 | And so there's all kinds of things we can do to hack back email that using these techniques

00:34:16.480 | of folks that reported saving 90% up to 90% of the time they spent on email, they no longer

00:34:21.520 | spend.

00:34:22.080 | And there's all kinds of things we can do.

00:34:23.360 | I'll give you, I'll give you one quick hack for this.

00:34:26.160 | So the idea here, what we find in terms of, of when you look at where people waste time

00:34:31.280 | on email, it's not the replying.

00:34:33.920 | It's the checking and specifically the rechecking.

00:34:37.600 | That's where we waste time on email.

00:34:38.880 | What does that look like?

00:34:39.600 | Well, you get an email, you know, you get this notification on your phone, you open

00:34:42.880 | the email, you read it, you put it away, you open the next email, you read it, you put

00:34:45.840 | it away.

00:34:46.320 | Then you say, wait, what was that in that email again?

00:34:48.160 | So like 20 minutes later, you check it again.

00:34:50.080 | And then, uh, you know, six hours later you check it again, but you're not taking action

00:34:54.080 | on it.

00:34:54.480 | So that's where people tend to waste the most time on email is the checking and the

00:34:57.680 | rechecking.

00:34:58.560 | So what you want to do from now on is you want to label emails.

00:35:02.080 | And if you don't know how to label emails, just Google it.

00:35:04.000 | Every email service provider will let you do this.

00:35:06.080 | You want to label emails, not by topic.

00:35:07.920 | Most people use labels by topic.

00:35:09.440 | That's the wrong way to use labels.

00:35:10.800 | What you want to do is to label emails by the most important factor from a time management

00:35:15.120 | perspective, which is when does it need a reply?

00:35:17.680 | When does it need a reply?

00:35:19.520 | So if an email, uh, is, oh my God, your house is on fire.

00:35:24.160 | You have to reply right now.

00:35:25.680 | It's about less than 1% of emails are actually super urgent, right?

00:35:30.000 | Because if your house is on fire, somebody's not going to email you.

00:35:32.160 | They're going to call you or do, you know, find or reach you, trying to reach you another

00:35:35.360 | way.

00:35:36.000 | If it is absolutely super urgent, 1% of emails, okay, you can respond in the moment.

00:35:39.920 | But everything else, 99% of other emails do not respond in the email.

00:35:43.440 | You know, some people think, okay, if something takes less than two minutes, just do it.

00:35:46.880 | That's a bad rule.

00:35:47.840 | And that was, that's an antiquated rule because look, most emails take less than two minutes.

00:35:51.920 | But when you get a hundred emails per day, well, that's a lot of time if each one takes

00:35:55.920 | two minutes.

00:35:56.800 | So the rest of your emails tend to fall into a few different categories.

00:36:00.560 | The first is if it's something that never needs a reply, okay, a spam or whatever.

00:36:04.800 | Well, that's easy.

00:36:05.760 | Just archive it or delete it.

00:36:07.360 | The rest of your emails fall into two categories, things that you need to reply to today and

00:36:12.160 | things that you can reply to sometime this week.

00:36:14.640 | So everything needs a reply to today.

00:36:16.320 | When you first check that email, you label it as today.

00:36:19.680 | Okay.

00:36:19.920 | And then you put it away.

00:36:20.880 | Okay.

00:36:21.120 | Just label us today.

00:36:21.840 | Put it away.

00:36:22.320 | The emails that you need to reply to sometime this week, same thing.

00:36:25.600 | You label it as this week and you put it away.

00:36:28.720 | Now, the goal is that every email you touch, you only touch twice.

00:36:32.080 | Once when you label, the second time when you return, when you reply.

00:36:34.800 | Then you go back to your time box calendar and you have time in your day to reply to

00:36:41.680 | only urgent emails, only the emails they need to reply to today.

00:36:44.960 | Statistically, it's about 20% of your emails.

00:36:47.120 | The rest of your emails, the other 80% are emails that don't need to reply today.

00:36:51.680 | They need to reply sometime this week and you schedule time in your calendar for that.

00:36:54.960 | So for me, it's message Mondays.

00:36:56.800 | Every Monday, I have a three-hour block of time when I run through all those emails that

00:37:00.960 | can wait.

00:37:01.440 | Now, you say, "Well, where is the time saving?"

00:37:03.600 | Right?

00:37:03.840 | Where am I saving time here?

00:37:04.800 | Here's the thing.

00:37:05.280 | Most people play email ping pong.

00:37:08.960 | Email ping pong is when you get an email, you send an email.

00:37:11.040 | You get an email, you send an email.

00:37:12.160 | It goes back and forth and back and forth.

00:37:13.760 | And they do this without necessarily prioritizing what's urgent and what can wait.

00:37:18.000 | And there's a magical thing that happens when you let emails simmer.

00:37:22.400 | About half of those 80% of your emails that need to reply sometime this week, half of

00:37:27.920 | them will no longer need to reply.

00:37:30.480 | Why?

00:37:30.800 | How does that happen?

00:37:31.360 | What's this magic?

00:37:32.080 | Turns out people figure out their own stuff, right?

00:37:36.000 | Something that was urgent earlier is no longer urgent because it got crushed under the weight

00:37:39.840 | of some other priority.

00:37:41.040 | So when you let the emails that don't need to reply today just simmer for a little bit,

00:37:44.480 | just let people figure it out on their own for a little bit and don't reply impulsively

00:37:48.000 | based on what's at the top of your to-do list or what's at the top of your email inbox

00:37:51.280 | or what's easiest to reply to.

00:37:52.880 | And just let them simmer.

00:37:53.840 | What you will find is that you'll get a dramatic reduction in the number of emails that actually

00:37:57.600 | even need a reply in the first place.

00:37:59.440 | Furthermore, you won't be checking email all day long anymore.

00:38:02.960 | What many people don't realize is that they do what's called context switching.

00:38:05.600 | They work on a big project and then they check email and they work on something else and

00:38:08.320 | they check email and they're constantly checking email all day long because they're worried

00:38:11.120 | there might actually be something urgent.

00:38:12.960 | As opposed to saying, look, I check my email twice a day.

00:38:16.880 | Okay, check in the morning, check in the evening.

00:38:18.560 | That's it.

00:38:19.120 | That's it.

00:38:19.840 | So the rest of the day, I can work without distraction.

00:38:22.720 | I can be indistractable knowing, okay, I'm going to look back at my email inbox at another

00:38:27.280 | time.

00:38:27.440 | By the way, it doesn't have to be twice a day.

00:38:28.480 | It can be three times a day, four times a day, but plan it ahead.

00:38:31.120 | Put it in your calendar so you're not doing it, which is how most people check email when

00:38:35.680 | they feel uncertainty, right?

00:38:37.520 | They feel that internal trigger of what am I supposed to do?

00:38:39.520 | I don't know.

00:38:39.840 | Let me go check my email inbox.

00:38:41.360 | So my email inbox will tell me what to do.

00:38:43.120 | Well, that's a terrible way to run your life.

00:38:44.640 | Yeah.

00:38:45.440 | And there's a side benefit, which is a lot of times we all run to our inbox, refresh,

00:38:49.120 | see what's there.

00:38:50.160 | The longer you wait between refreshes, the higher the likelihood that some email that

00:38:53.840 | you're actually excited about, that's actually important to your life is sitting there.

00:38:57.520 | And so I've actually found the less I check my email, the more I feel good getting to

00:39:01.680 | my email versus going there for just one email.

00:39:04.640 | It's just not worth it.

00:39:05.840 | And then I know we both worked in tech.

00:39:08.080 | I'm sure you know the concept of rubber duck debugging, but it reminded me of what you

00:39:12.240 | just said, which is, you know, engineers would have a rubber duck that you could talk to

00:39:17.280 | to try to solve an engineering problem.

00:39:18.880 | And so at my last startup, I gave everyone this little small duck to put on their desk

00:39:23.440 | and I didn't actually expect them to speak out loud to solve their problem with the duck.

00:39:27.440 | But it was more of a signal of, "Hey, you could probably think about this and maybe

00:39:32.080 | solve it."

00:39:32.560 | And I didn't do any quantitative measurements, but I want to say at least 10% of pings and

00:39:38.640 | questions and things went down because it was just a symbol of, "Hey, could you solve

00:39:42.560 | this if you just thought about it for a few minutes?"

00:39:44.320 | Oh my gosh.

00:39:45.520 | And so what you're doing by saying, "Look, I don't check email every 30 seconds.

00:39:50.080 | I actually plan my time to check email."

00:39:52.720 | What you're doing is training your colleagues to think for themselves, right?

00:39:56.400 | You're actually, that's part of the company culture that you're changing.

00:39:58.560 | You know, there's a whole section in the book on how to build an indistractable workplace.

00:40:02.880 | And so one of the things that we can do, certainly if you're in a position of leadership,

00:40:06.320 | but all of us, you know, by exemplifying what it means to be indistractable, we're actually

00:40:11.440 | promoting this culture of helping people work without distraction.

00:40:14.400 | So doing things like that, right?

00:40:15.840 | Telling people, "Look, this is when I'm available."

00:40:18.240 | Then they are prompted to think for themselves as opposed to, it's just so easy to be like,

00:40:21.840 | "Hey, answer this stupid question for me so I don't have to think."

00:40:24.240 | You know, people are cognitive misers, all of us.

00:40:26.640 | We don't like to expend energy thinking.

00:40:28.640 | So when you add a bit of friction to contacting you,

00:40:31.360 | you get people to actually think for themselves and planning that time to think.

00:40:34.320 | This is super important for yourself as well.

00:40:36.480 | I mean, for all of us.

00:40:37.360 | There are two kinds of work.

00:40:39.360 | There is what we call reactive work and reflective work.

00:40:42.560 | Reactive work is reacting to the emails, reacting to notifications,

00:40:46.160 | having some kind of external factor tell us what to do with our time.

00:40:49.440 | And most people live their entire life that way.

00:40:51.840 | Certainly their work life.

00:40:53.120 | They love being told what to do because thinking is hard work.

00:40:55.840 | They just do reactive work all day long.

00:40:57.760 | Those tend to be low performers.

00:41:00.400 | High performers make time in their day to think.

00:41:03.760 | They do what we call reflective work.

00:41:05.520 | Reflective work is the kind of work that can only be done without distraction.

00:41:09.440 | Thinking, strategizing, planning can only be done when you are focused.

00:41:14.320 | So you have to plan at least some time in your day.

00:41:16.880 | It doesn't have to be your whole day, but 20 minutes, 30 minutes,

00:41:19.600 | an hour of your day has to be set aside for working without distraction,

00:41:23.280 | doing that reflective work.

00:41:24.640 | If you don't, you're going to run real fast in the wrong direction.

00:41:28.080 | Yeah.

00:41:29.540 | It's hard to block time in your calendar for just thinking.

00:41:32.800 | It seems so counterintuitive to productivity.

00:41:34.880 | But when I was running my last company, it was like, you just have to do it.

00:41:37.600 | Otherwise, you just will never, you'll never make time for that.

00:41:40.400 | I have, I have what I'll call a burning question.

00:41:42.480 | It'll make sense in a moment on this last category of preventing distraction with packs.

00:41:46.720 | So I was reading through it.

00:41:48.560 | And the thing that really hit me was this burn or burn calendar you have.

00:41:52.880 | And so for anyone listening, you create a calendar of things you want to do.

00:41:57.440 | In your case, it was exercise.

00:41:59.040 | And you taped a $100 bill and said, "If I don't do this thing that I said,

00:42:02.000 | I'm going to light... I have to light the $100 bill on fire."

00:42:04.320 | And for so long, I've heard all these price-based packs where you...

00:42:10.480 | Gym packed and you have to pay $1 if you don't go to the gym.

00:42:13.120 | And none of them felt as visceral as lighting $100 bill on fire.

00:42:17.440 | But it also seemed so, you know, of course, I can commit to working out.

00:42:21.120 | So I would do this and if I could hold myself to it.

00:42:23.200 | So I'm curious, did you ever have to burn the $100 bill?

00:42:26.720 | - So the reason this technique is so effective,

00:42:30.320 | and by the way, this isn't something I just made up out of thin air.

00:42:33.040 | This is actually, it comes from the most effective smoking cessation study in history, right?

00:42:37.520 | So the most effective study ever conducted on how to get people to stop smoking

00:42:41.920 | was one where people had to put in $150 at stake,

00:42:46.400 | that if they didn't smoke for six months as verified by urinalysis,

00:42:50.080 | they got the $150 back.

00:42:52.320 | That turned out to be more effective than patches and gums and therapy

00:42:56.240 | and all the other smoking cessation programs for this thing that we think,

00:42:59.440 | "Oh my God, cigarettes are so addictive."

00:43:00.880 | Well, it turns out you can buy breaking that addiction with as little as $150.

00:43:04.720 | How crazy is that?

00:43:05.760 | And so that's where this idea came from for this burn or burn technique.

00:43:09.040 | I want to say as a disclaimer real quick,

00:43:11.360 | you have to do this last, okay?

00:43:13.680 | You have to do this last.

00:43:14.640 | If you jump to do this, it oftentimes will backfire

00:43:18.800 | because if you haven't prepared yourself for how to master the internal triggers,

00:43:22.800 | making time for traction, hacking back the external triggers,

00:43:24.880 | and you fall off the horse, it becomes really, really tough to get back on it, okay?

00:43:29.600 | So this is where you can, I can't emphasize this enough,

00:43:32.720 | you have to do this after you've done the other three techniques first.

00:43:36.000 | But once you've done that, it can be an incredibly effective technique.

00:43:39.280 | So there's different kinds of packs, effort packs, price packs, and identity packs.

00:43:43.280 | What you're mentioning is a price pack.

00:43:45.200 | And yeah, for me, I knew I needed to exercise.

00:43:47.840 | I didn't really like it, but I just needed to do it, right?

00:43:50.720 | So what I did was I took this calendar, I taped it to my wall.

00:43:54.160 | And every day, there's a $100 bill taped to it.

00:43:56.320 | And I've been using this technique for, what, three and a half, four years now.

00:43:59.920 | I'm 43 years old.

00:44:01.200 | I'm in the best shape of my life.

00:44:03.040 | I used to be clinically obese.

00:44:04.720 | Today, I'm not saying this to brag because I don't think I have any good genes or anything.

00:44:08.640 | It's just that I do this because I intentionally do what I say I'm going to do.

00:44:12.480 | If I say I'm going to exercise, I want to actually do it.

00:44:15.200 | And so by having that $100 bill that I stare at every day,

00:44:17.680 | and knowing if, hey, if I don't do some kind of physical exercise,

00:44:21.120 | and you know, what you do is up to you.

00:44:23.120 | For me, it's do 20 push-ups, go on a quick run, take a walk around the block,

00:44:27.040 | do something physical every single day.

00:44:28.880 | If I don't do it, I burn the money.

00:44:30.320 | And I'm happy to report to you that after, what, three and a half, four years now,

00:44:33.440 | I've never had to burn the money.

00:44:34.560 | Why?

00:44:35.200 | Because when I look at it, I say, oh, okay, fine.

00:44:38.080 | Let me just do some push-ups real quick.

00:44:40.000 | Let me just go take a quick walk.

00:44:41.520 | And so it's that pact that I made with myself.

00:44:43.840 | And of course, could I cheat?

00:44:44.880 | Yeah, of course I could cheat.

00:44:46.080 | But what's my integrity worth to myself, right?

00:44:48.320 | Could I look at myself in the mirror knowing I cheated?

00:44:50.720 | No, that's why that pact works.

00:44:53.600 | But again, you have to do this after you've done the other three steps first.

00:44:57.200 | - Yeah, definitely.

00:44:58.400 | For me, I did one once where it was donate to charity.

00:45:01.520 | And it was like, for any day you didn't go to the gym,

00:45:03.360 | you had to donate $5 to charity.

00:45:05.360 | And I was like, you know what?

00:45:06.320 | Donating $5 to charity is not that big of a deal.

00:45:08.480 | - That's right, that's why that doesn't work.

00:45:10.160 | - And then I thought about what it would take to burn a $100 bill.

00:45:12.960 | And I was like, I mean, this has to work.

00:45:14.560 | 'Cause I would never, I couldn't possibly do that.

00:45:16.320 | It would drive me crazy.

00:45:17.360 | - Exactly, exactly.

00:45:18.640 | So yeah, having that visceral reaction of, ah, it's right there.

00:45:21.680 | Can't you just go do some push-ups, silly?

00:45:23.680 | Just do it.

00:45:25.040 | It makes it much more likely that you'll follow through.

00:45:27.360 | Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact.

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00:46:38.400 | Do you all remember episode 122

00:46:42.640 | when I spoke to chef David Chang

00:46:44.640 | about leveling up your cooking at home?

00:46:46.800 | If not, definitely go back and give it a listen.

00:46:49.120 | But one of his top hacks was using the microwave more.

00:46:52.640 | I'll admit I was a skeptic at first,

00:46:54.960 | but after getting a full set of microwave cookware from AnyDay,

00:46:58.560 | I'm a total convert

00:47:00.000 | and I'm excited to partner with them for this episode.

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00:47:05.040 | to make delicious food from scratch in the microwave.

00:47:08.240 | And honestly, using it feels like a kitchen cheat code

00:47:11.440 | because it speeds up and simplifies the process so much.

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00:47:52.560 | (air whooshing)

00:47:53.440 | I just want to thank you, Quick,

00:47:54.800 | for listening to and supporting the show.

00:47:57.120 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:47:59.920 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals,

00:48:02.640 | and discounts from our partners,

00:48:04.400 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals.

00:48:08.000 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:48:11.200 | Yeah, so there's some other great packs in there.

00:48:13.440 | So definitely check it out.

00:48:14.400 | I want to ask a little bit about relationships.

00:48:17.120 | And if you have a partner

00:48:19.040 | and you want to kind of bring this to light

00:48:21.200 | and you want to start talking about this,

00:48:23.120 | do you have to do it together?

00:48:24.320 | Is it something that can be a problem

00:48:26.400 | if one person is like,

00:48:27.440 | "I really want to be indistractable."

00:48:29.520 | And the other person's like,

00:48:30.560 | "You know what? I'm not that big of a...

00:48:32.480 | It's fine. I'm fine without doing this."

00:48:34.240 | Yeah, so I'm not a big proponent

00:48:37.120 | of intentionally seeking to change people.

00:48:39.920 | That there's a psychological quirk

00:48:41.520 | that we all have called reactance.

00:48:43.200 | And reactance says that when we are told what to do,

00:48:45.840 | we tend to rebel.

00:48:47.520 | And we all feel this to some degree.

00:48:49.440 | That if your mom ever told you

00:48:51.600 | to take your umbrella because it's going to rain,

00:48:53.760 | "Don't tell me what to do. I'll figure it out."

00:48:55.200 | Or if your boss micromanages you.

00:48:57.360 | Nobody likes that.

00:48:58.080 | We hate being told what to do.

00:48:59.600 | So intentionally going and saying,

00:49:01.040 | "Hey, honey, guess what?

00:49:02.080 | We're going to become indistractable now."

00:49:03.920 | Right? That won't work.

00:49:06.400 | The best thing to do is to lead by example.

00:49:08.400 | That most of us,

00:49:09.520 | whether it's with helping our kids be indistractable,

00:49:12.320 | helping our spouses,

00:49:13.520 | or helping our colleagues at work be indistractable,

00:49:16.000 | the best thing you can do is to be indistractable yourself.

00:49:18.960 | Especially when it comes to our kids.

00:49:20.400 | Because kids come installed

00:49:22.400 | with what I call hypocrisy detection devices.

00:49:25.760 | I talk to parents all the time and say,

00:49:27.680 | "Oh, my kid won't stop playing Fortnite."

00:49:29.360 | Or they're always on social media.

00:49:30.960 | And while they're telling me this,

00:49:32.240 | they're checking email on their phone.

00:49:33.840 | So we can't be hypocrites.

00:49:35.360 | We have to be able to be indistractable ourselves.

00:49:37.600 | So that's the best thing you can do.

00:49:39.120 | And then talking about some of these techniques

00:49:40.800 | and asking them if not to join you on the journey

00:49:44.000 | to help just to understand

00:49:45.440 | that you are on this journey to become indistractable.

00:49:47.440 | And knowing that for yourself as well,

00:49:49.360 | we all will get distracted from time to time

00:49:51.440 | on the road to becoming indistractable.

00:49:52.880 | Being indistractable doesn't mean you never get distracted.

00:49:55.920 | It means that you're the kind of person

00:49:58.080 | who strives to do what they say they're going to do.

00:49:59.920 | So you're learning from this process.

00:50:01.440 | You're iterating.

00:50:02.320 | You're a scientist, not a drill sergeant.

00:50:04.000 | A scientist makes hypotheses.

00:50:06.080 | You test them.

00:50:07.040 | And then you see what works.

00:50:07.920 | And then you run the experiments again

00:50:09.520 | to make it better and better over time.

00:50:11.440 | And so understanding this process

00:50:13.280 | is not a one and done type thing.

00:50:15.360 | That it is a journey,

00:50:16.560 | is a great way to help yourself become indistractable.

00:50:18.960 | And it tends to be a little infectious, right?

00:50:21.200 | And especially if there's something

00:50:22.720 | where there's something in it for them too.

00:50:24.400 | So let me give you an example.

00:50:25.520 | So let's get a little personal here.

00:50:27.280 | We've been talking for almost an hour.

00:50:28.480 | So I'll default a little bit here.

00:50:30.160 | You know, I've been married.

00:50:30.880 | I just celebrated my 20th anniversary.

00:50:32.800 | I'm actually the same woman.

00:50:34.000 | Congratulations.

00:50:35.120 | Thank you. Appreciate it.

00:50:36.160 | A few years ago, our sex life was suffering

00:50:38.560 | because, you know, every night we would go to bed

00:50:41.280 | and she would caress her iPhone

00:50:42.880 | and I would fondle my computer.

00:50:44.640 | And we weren't being together.

00:50:46.640 | We weren't being intimate.

00:50:47.520 | We were going to bed later and later,

00:50:48.960 | you know, maybe watching Netflix or checking email

00:50:51.280 | or doing whatever in bed.

00:50:52.160 | And we would collapse exhausted

00:50:54.160 | and we didn't have time to be intimate.

00:50:56.400 | So we follow these steps in the book

00:50:58.720 | to regain our love life.

00:51:00.080 | And so we went through step by step.

00:51:01.760 | Okay, what are the internal triggers?

00:51:02.960 | Why are we doing this?

00:51:03.760 | We made time for traction.

00:51:05.600 | We started scheduling a bedtime.

00:51:07.200 | We hacked back the external triggers.

00:51:09.120 | We don't sleep with any devices in our bedroom.

00:51:11.520 | All that stuff is outside.

00:51:12.880 | And then finally we made a pact.

00:51:14.560 | And so how do we make this pact?

00:51:16.000 | This is called an effort pact.

00:51:17.600 | I went to the hardware store

00:51:18.960 | and I bought a $5 outlet timer.

00:51:21.920 | And this outlet timer, anything you plug into it

00:51:24.560 | will turn off at a certain time of day or night

00:51:27.120 | based on what you set.

00:51:28.480 | And so in our household, every night at 10 p.m,

00:51:31.760 | the internet shuts off automatically, right?

00:51:34.880 | This is called what we, this is an effort pact.

00:51:37.120 | Could I turn the internet back on?

00:51:38.400 | Of course I could, but I'd have to go under my desk,

00:51:40.880 | unplug the router, replug it in.

00:51:42.560 | And this timer thingy, and only then can I get online.

00:51:45.840 | So I could do it, of course, but it takes effort, right?

00:51:49.200 | So by making that, adding some friction

00:51:51.120 | to something I don't wanna do with this internet timer,

00:51:53.600 | we all kind of know that,

00:51:55.600 | hey, the internet's gonna shut off at 10 p.m, right?

00:51:58.080 | Like quick finish what you're doing

00:51:59.360 | so that we can have traction as opposed to distraction

00:52:02.320 | doing what we said we're going to do.

00:52:03.920 | Getting to bed on time means we get more sleep.

00:52:06.320 | And now we have a sex life again.

00:52:08.240 | - That's fantastic for you.

00:52:10.560 | Congratulations.

00:52:11.360 | - Thank you, thank you.

00:52:12.480 | - So a debate that I often have with my wife

00:52:16.960 | is whether we as kind of humans,

00:52:19.520 | and she would argue women better than men,

00:52:21.600 | can be good multitaskers,

00:52:23.280 | or is that just a massive form of distraction?

00:52:26.160 | - So yeah, so this is one of those productivity orthodoxies

00:52:30.320 | that I want to kill the sacred cow

00:52:32.320 | that it is not true that you can't multitask.

00:52:34.080 | Of course you can multitask.

00:52:35.520 | We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

00:52:36.960 | The question is how do we multitask?

00:52:40.400 | So what you cannot do is you can't have sensory input

00:52:45.120 | on the same channel at the same time.

00:52:46.720 | You can't listen to a podcast in each ear

00:52:48.640 | and figure out what's going on.

00:52:49.680 | You can't watch two television shows at the same time.

00:52:52.080 | You can't do two math problems at the same time.

00:52:53.920 | But you absolutely can have

00:52:55.440 | what I call multi-channel multitasking.

00:52:58.000 | So you can definitely listen to a podcast

00:53:01.040 | while you're exercising.

00:53:02.240 | So this is a technique that's called temptation bundling

00:53:04.560 | that Katie Milkman researched this technique.

00:53:06.720 | What it basically involves is using a reward

00:53:10.240 | from one area of your life to help incentivize you

00:53:12.320 | to do something in another area of your life

00:53:13.680 | that maybe you don't want to do as much.

00:53:15.120 | So for me, I never read articles on the web.

00:53:18.640 | So when I'm on my desktop, I never read articles

00:53:21.200 | because I know that the New York Times and CNN

00:53:23.760 | and whatever media company,

00:53:26.480 | they designed their product to get me hooked, right?

00:53:29.360 | To keep me reading and reading and reading

00:53:31.440 | with their clickbait headlines.

00:53:32.800 | I don't want to do that.

00:53:33.840 | So when I see an article online I want to read,

00:53:36.560 | I save it to an app called Pocket.

00:53:38.960 | And then I only consume those articles

00:53:42.640 | while I'm doing something else,

00:53:43.840 | like while I'm exercising, okay?

00:53:45.360 | Or while I'm taking a walk.

00:53:46.320 | It's the only time I can consume those articles.

00:53:48.080 | How does that happen?

00:53:49.200 | It comes with a text-to-speech feature

00:53:50.800 | that will read to you those articles, right?

00:53:53.040 | Just like a podcast.

00:53:54.320 | So that's fantastic, right?

00:53:55.520 | So I've taken something that I don't want to do,

00:53:57.600 | which is get distracted while I'm on the internet.

00:54:00.080 | And I've used it as a reward in another area of my life

00:54:03.280 | by using multi-channel multitasking.

00:54:05.120 | So you absolutely can multi-channel multitask.

00:54:06.880 | You can take a phone call or a Zoom meeting

00:54:09.040 | while you're taking a walk, for example.

00:54:10.400 | You can definitely do it on different sensory channels.

00:54:12.640 | And it's a great way to get more out of your day.

00:54:14.240 | - Yeah, okay.

00:54:15.920 | So we're pretty much at time,

00:54:17.280 | but I have to believe

00:54:18.640 | that if you spent years writing a book

00:54:20.560 | to solve this problem in your life,

00:54:21.920 | you're the kind of person that thinks carefully

00:54:24.080 | about other ways to make life better,

00:54:25.680 | happier, healthier.

00:54:26.880 | So I'll end asking if you have any favorite

00:54:29.360 | kind of optimizations, life hacks,

00:54:31.520 | things that you do that might not be obvious to everyone

00:54:34.000 | or normal for everyone.

00:54:35.280 | - That might not be normal for...

00:54:38.000 | A lot of what I do is not normal, right?

00:54:40.960 | A lot of people think,

00:54:41.760 | "Oh, it's crazy to time box your day.

00:54:43.360 | That's too rigid."

00:54:44.080 | A lot of people think that,

00:54:45.040 | "Oh, here's something that if you have..."

00:54:47.440 | Many of us before the pandemic

00:54:50.160 | found that colleagues were interrupting us.

00:54:52.400 | Now, many of us are working at home

00:54:54.160 | and now it's our kids, it's our spouses,

00:54:56.160 | it's our roommates

00:54:56.720 | that are the sources of distraction.

00:54:58.320 | So one thing that we do in our household with my daughter

00:55:01.120 | is when she was only six years old,

00:55:03.440 | we started using what we call the concentration crown.

00:55:07.200 | The concentration crown is this headpiece

00:55:09.520 | that we got on Amazon for like $5.

00:55:11.280 | It has these little LED lights.

00:55:13.040 | And when my wife wears a concentration crown,

00:55:16.080 | you can't miss it when she's wearing,

00:55:17.440 | it literally lights up.

00:55:18.480 | When she is wearing that concentration crown,

00:55:21.200 | we told my daughter,

00:55:21.840 | "Look, when mommy's wearing the concentration crown,

00:55:23.440 | that means that she can't be interrupted

00:55:25.280 | and she will be with you within a half an hour, right?

00:55:28.080 | All her time boxes are half an hour or less."

00:55:30.720 | And so this works like a charm

00:55:33.200 | because look, your kids, give them a break.

00:55:35.200 | They don't know if you're on your computer,

00:55:36.960 | if you're doing something

00:55:37.680 | that requires focus and concentration

00:55:39.600 | or whether you're watching YouTube videos or something

00:55:41.760 | and you can be interrupted.

00:55:43.040 | So by putting on the concentration crown,

00:55:44.560 | what you're doing is interrupting the interruption.

00:55:46.800 | It works incredibly well with kids.

00:55:48.960 | It also works really well with spouses.

00:55:50.880 | So when I want to interrupt my wife,

00:55:52.480 | but I see she's wearing the concentration crown,

00:55:54.080 | I also leave her alone.

00:55:55.280 | And I also have a concentration crown.

00:55:56.800 | It's not as pretty as hers.

00:55:58.000 | I just wear a silly hat.

00:55:59.360 | Anybody can do this.

00:56:00.080 | Just look for a crazy looking hat around your house.

00:56:02.560 | Tell your kids what it's for

00:56:03.920 | or your spouse or your roommate what it's for

00:56:05.840 | and it works like a charm.

00:56:06.800 | - That's fantastic.

00:56:08.240 | And the last thing I didn't see in the book,

00:56:10.480 | you have a whole chapter about raising kids

00:56:12.640 | to be indistractable.

00:56:14.000 | How early do you think that actually starts?

00:56:16.080 | And I ask as the father of a 14 month old.

00:56:19.120 | - Yeah, I would say when they're that young, of course,

00:56:22.560 | all the screen time is up to you.

00:56:24.560 | I would say it's about the same rule

00:56:25.920 | as when a kid is ready to go swimming, right?

00:56:28.400 | Pools are incredibly dangerous, right?

00:56:30.560 | Thousands of children die every year

00:56:32.000 | because they drown in a pool.

00:56:32.960 | But as a responsible parent,

00:56:34.640 | you're not gonna say pools are deadly.

00:56:36.480 | I'm not gonna let my kid ever learn to swim.

00:56:37.840 | No, you're gonna teach them how to swim.

00:56:39.680 | And so it's the same rule with, I think, digital technology

00:56:42.160 | and specifically how to control their attention.

00:56:44.160 | So I would say around five or six,

00:56:46.000 | this is a conversation you can have with your kid

00:56:47.680 | on how to help them learn to become indistractable.

00:56:50.240 | And look, if you think the world is distracting now,

00:56:52.640 | just wait a few years, right?

00:56:55.360 | The world that our kids inhabit

00:56:56.720 | is only going to become more distracting.

00:56:58.560 | So it's absolutely essential

00:56:59.920 | that they learn how to control their attention

00:57:01.440 | because it truly will be how they choose their life.

00:57:03.680 | - Awesome.

00:57:04.800 | So I got a few years to practice.

00:57:06.320 | Before we go, where should people find you online?

00:57:08.880 | What are you working on right now

00:57:10.000 | that people should check out?

00:57:11.040 | - Yeah, so my website is nearandfar.com.

00:57:14.560 | Near is spelled like my first name.

00:57:15.600 | So that's N-I-R-andfar.com.

00:57:18.160 | There's actually a free 80 page indistractable workbook.

00:57:21.360 | We couldn't fit it into the final edition of the book.

00:57:22.880 | So it's yours for free.

00:57:23.920 | It's complimentary.

00:57:24.880 | And you can download that at Near and Far.

00:57:26.320 | And the book is called "Indistractable,

00:57:27.920 | "How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life."

00:57:29.840 | And that's available wherever books are sold.

00:57:31.600 | - Yeah, links to everything in the show notes.

00:57:33.760 | Near, thank you so much for being here.

00:57:35.360 | - Oh, my pleasure, Chris.

00:57:36.800 | Thanks so much.

00:57:37.360 | (upbeat music)

00:57:43.600 | - Wow.

00:57:44.160 | I hope you enjoyed that one as much as I did.

00:57:46.240 | I already know it's gonna be one of the episodes

00:57:48.160 | I need to go back to and listen myself

00:57:50.160 | so I can take notes.

00:57:51.440 | And that's coming from someone

00:57:52.480 | who just read Near's book also.

00:57:55.280 | Okay, so to all the listeners out there

00:57:57.360 | who've been writing in with questions

00:57:58.720 | and sharing your hacks, thank you so much.

00:58:01.040 | Please keep them coming,

00:58:02.160 | especially anything you wanna know about Points and Miles

00:58:05.360 | because I'll be interviewing Brian Kelly,

00:58:07.120 | aka The Points Guy, next week.

00:58:09.680 | And I'd love to include some of your questions.

00:58:12.080 | I'm also gonna be sharing some of your hacks

00:58:14.080 | and wins in the newsletter,

00:58:15.360 | which should be coming out this week or next.

00:58:17.360 | So keep those coming too.

00:58:18.560 | And if you're not subscribed to the newsletter,

00:58:20.960 | you definitely want to

00:58:22.000 | 'cause there are a few other cool things

00:58:23.360 | I'll be sharing in there.

00:58:24.560 | Like top new hacks I'm finding

00:58:26.480 | and info about some live episodes I might do

00:58:28.640 | on a new platform called Fireside

00:58:30.640 | where you can jump in

00:58:31.520 | and ask your own questions and participate.

00:58:33.440 | You can get signed up at allthehacks.com/email.

00:58:37.200 | I'm also considering setting up a Facebook group,

00:58:40.480 | Discord or private Slack channel

00:58:42.080 | for listeners to be able to ask me

00:58:44.000 | maybe other listeners questions

00:58:45.520 | and get more real-time feedback.

00:58:47.360 | If that's something you're interested in,

00:58:49.040 | please reach out and let me know.

00:58:50.960 | As always, you can find me at chris@allthehacks.com.

00:58:54.320 | That's a lot for this week.

00:58:56.640 | Good luck becoming indistractable

00:58:58.560 | and see you next week.

00:58:59.360 | I wanna tell you about another podcast I love

00:59:13.920 | that goes deep on all things money.

00:59:16.240 | That means everything from money hacks

00:59:17.920 | to wealth building to early retirement.

00:59:20.080 | It's called the Personal Finance Podcast

00:59:22.320 | and it's much more about building generational wealth

00:59:25.200 | and spending your money on the things you value

00:59:27.360 | than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar.

00:59:30.320 | It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew,

00:59:32.240 | who truly believes that everyone in this world

00:59:34.480 | can build wealth and his passion and excitement

00:59:37.120 | are what make this show so entertaining.

00:59:39.600 | I know because I was a guest on the show

00:59:41.600 | in December, 2022,

00:59:43.440 | but recently I listened to an episode

00:59:45.440 | where Andrew shared 16 money stats

00:59:47.680 | that will blow your mind

00:59:49.040 | and it was so crazy to learn things

00:59:50.880 | like 35% of millennials are not participating

00:59:53.840 | in their employer's retirement plan.

00:59:55.760 | And that's just one of the many fascinating stats he shared.

00:59:59.440 | The Personal Finance Podcast

01:00:00.720 | has something for everyone.

01:00:02.080 | It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks

01:00:04.720 | to help you get better with your money

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01:00:07.600 | So I highly recommend you check it out.

01:00:09.680 | Just search for the Personal Finance Podcast

01:00:12.000 | on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

01:00:13.680 | or wherever you listen to podcasts and enjoy.