#130 How To Stay Focused, Beat Distraction, and Get Things Done | Nir Eyal

22:26Nir Eyal:It sounds like a setup of a joke, right? A rabbi and a mom, a priest, a swami, and a monk all walk into a bar. And I actually interviewed all five of them. And I said, how does one pray even if you have uncertainties about God? And so I took away these five lessons from them and I've adopted them in my life and found that, you know what? They're incredibly beneficial. So now for the first time in my life, I pray because beliefs are tools, not truths. I don't need to have perfect certainty. I used to say, well, I can't pray because I'm not sure if everything in that book is 100 % true. And if I can't prove it, I can't step into church.

23:00Nir Eyal:I can't go to synagogue. I can't step into a mosque. No, it's not true. I've relaxed that because you know what? Beliefs are tools, not truths. And so I can have this conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence because it serves me. It's improved my life. It's made me more patient. It's made me more calm. It's made me more at peace. And so I've stopped really asking, can I prove it's true? And rather asked, does it serve me? Does it improve my life and the life of those around me? The most successful people in the world know exactly what Nir Eyal is telling us, which is that success is not actually a discipline.

23:32It is a habit and it is a belief. And if we can build systems around our beliefs, then they become habits. And this is what I have found over and over again in my life is that I don't have to have more willpower. I don't have to be more disciplined. I just need a system that makes it so I get to be thoughtless, have no thought at all, which is why I'm obsessed with this company Beehive that helps us create systems around email and our newsletters. We don't have to come up with something wild and crazy to sell our audience. We can actually send out an email every single week from a third-party provider that already does all the monetization, all the design work, all of the ads inside of it, all of the data so we can see who we're sending to and when we're sending it.

24:16You know why most companies don't have a good email list or a newsletter anybody wants to read? Because they don't have a system that makes it easy as one, two, three, send in order to get one. That is why I'm obsessed with this company, Beehive, and with systems thinkers creating a way where newsletter reading, creating, and writing becomes so habitual. You do it no matter what. In fact, I asked Beehive for a code for you guys. So if you don't already have a newsletter, or if you do and you want a better one, go to beehive.com, B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com. Use code CODI30, and you get 30 % off your first three months.

24:58Because making money should be a system, not a discipline. What's interesting about this is we're talking here about beliefs, but your work kind of compounds, it seems like. Your first book was about how to get people obsessed with something in some ways, hooked, right? How to hook people to a product, which is near and dear to my heart. Your second book was about distraction, right? And how to not be distractible. and then this third book kind of gets to the core of it, which is like in order to not be distracted or get hooked, like what do you believe in your head? There's something deeper, right?

25:33So I want to go there too, but I also want to talk about your 10-minute rule and what it does to help with distraction in a world that is very distractible. Yeah, yeah. What is it? Can you talk to us about it?

25:47Nir Eyal:So the 10-minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction, but not right now. You're going to give into that distraction in 10 minutes. Now, why is this so powerful? Because we know that abstinence backfires, that sometimes abstinence can work. If you can remove what we call the external trigger, right, when people are trying to get off of some kind of addicted, something they're addicted to, if you can remove that substance and all the things associated with it, right, your peer group and all that stuff, the paraphernalia, yes, that can be very helpful. But how exactly do we do that for technology?

26:22Nir Eyal:You can't just stop using technology, nor would you want to. It's incredibly empowering. So that's not a good solution. So telling yourself no doesn't work. It releases what's called psychological reactance. Psychological reactance is when someone tells you what to do, your reaction will be, don't tell me what to do. F off. If your boss micromanages you, that reaction, don't tell me what to do. Or if your parent told you to put on a coat, don't tell me what to do. I know what to do. That's psychological reactance. Now, the crazy thing is that you can elicit psychological reactance even when you tell yourself what to do, right?

27:02Nir Eyal:That's how weird our psychology is. So a better way than no, don't do it, and I'm a bad person if I check social media too much, and I shouldn't do it, no, no, no, stop doing it, is not to say no, it's to say not yet. I will do it. I'm a grown-up, I can do whatever I want, but I choose to do it in 10 minutes. And if 10 minutes are too long, make it the five-minute rule, the two-minute rule. It doesn't really matter. So whether it's I'm trying to quit smoking, whether it's I'm trying not to give in to that chocolate cake, whether it's I'm trying to focus on an important project rather than checking email every three seconds.

27:34Nir Eyal:So if I tell myself I will do it but in 10 minutes. And then your job during those 10 minutes is to do what's called surf the urge because these emotions, we think that they're going to be there forever. We feel boredom. We think we're always going to be bored. lonely, tense, uncertain, stressed, anxious. We feel like it's always going to be there, but that's never the case. These sensations are like waves. They crest and then they subside. And so if you can ride out that sensation for just sometimes a few seconds, you can refocus your attention. Because again, what causes us to get distracted, we think it's the external triggers.

28:10Nir Eyal:We think it's the pings, the dings, the rings, all this technology. That's only 10 % of the cause. Studies have found 10 % of the time you check your phone, is it because of some kind of ping, ding, or ring? 90 % of the time, it's because of an internal trigger. Remember, time management is pain management. What is an internal trigger? Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. That is 90 % of the time you check your phone. It's because of a feeling. I don't know what to do right now. I got to do something. That's the cause of distraction 90 % of the time. So if you can just ride out that sensation like a surfer on a surfboard, what you will find is that the 10-minute rule becomes the 12-minute rule, becomes the 20-minute rule.

28:48Nir Eyal:And over time, you're proving to yourself, wait a minute, I'm not addicted to these things. I'm not addicted to distraction. I can wait for a minute. I have control over them. You're proving your self-efficacy and your agency. What's the flip side of that? Like you talk about something else I really liked, which is, so we're going to stop the distractions here, maybe with this 10-minute rule, plus a few other things I want to go into. Yeah, that's just like one teeny tiny technique. God, they're so good. We're going to go through all of them. But the next was like, you had a whole section about how to basically increase your luck surface area and about daily habits you can do to train your brain to see things that other people cannot.

29:23Nir Eyal:Right. Can you talk about what daily habits you put into place so you train your brain to find luck? Sure. So this is called entrepreneurial alertness, that you can literally create your own luck. And so there's a few things you can do. And these are traits common among entrepreneurs. And entrepreneurs, it's funny, don't understand why everybody doesn't do this, but they're very common traits. So one of them is stretching beyond your comfort zone. And we can do this in all kinds of small ways. I think one of the best is to talk to people, right? You spread your luck surface area when you just talk to folks.

29:52Nir Eyal:On the flight here, I just came from Barcelona, talk for an hour and a half in the galleyway of the flight, right? Where, you know, people by the restrooms where they give out drinks, talk to this lady for an hour and a half. Now we're friends and we're keeping in touch. But I don't know what's going to come out of that, But that's something that I think before doing this research, I would not have done. And now I'm very open to. So pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. Another thing we do is to express extreme amounts of gratitude. That you increase your entrepreneurial alertness when you become attuned to ways to thank people in your life.

30:29Nir Eyal:That even the small—Tina Selig taught me this at Stanford. She has a big old stack of these thank you cards that she just whips off. As soon as she can write, hey, thanks for that pleasant good morning greeting today, or I really appreciated your comment in class today, or whatever, thank you for doing that. Like she never, ever skips an opportunity to tell someone that they had a positive effect on her life. And of course what happens is that the more surface air you spread with gratitude is the more you are thought of when good opportunities arise. So if your thank you note is on someone's desk next to, hey, here's a business deal or here's an opportunity or here's something to talk about, well, maybe there's a connection there.

31:08Nir Eyal:So you're creating luck. You're provoking luck by showing more gratitude and entering into that daily habit. And then the third thing is to intentionally fail more. that if I were to tell you whatever it is that you're stuck doing, let's say you're trying to start a podcast or make your sales calls or whatever it is, find love, for example. And I told you, I took a time machine and I looked into the future and I found that all you have to do is to fail five more times. Go on five more dates and then you'll find love. Make five more sales calls and then you're going to close that big deal. If I told you that, would you then say, well, I don't want to do those failures anymore.

31:51Nir Eyal:No, you'd be like, come on, let's fail quick. Let's go. Come on, I want to fail five times so I can get to the sixth success. And so that's one of those daily habits is to relish the failures, to look forward to them, to teach your brain. Again, there's a difference between pain and suffering. Something can be difficult and yet meaningful. It doesn't have, you don't have to suffer from it. So if you can teach your brain through the power of beliefs to want to get through those failures and learn to relish those failures, that is a habit that will increase your luck surface area. Is there an actual science that shows that people who are successful don't remember the failures as much?

32:23Is that a thing? Like, do you train your brain where eventually you don't even mean to and you kind of can't remember all those failures?

32:29Nir Eyal:Yes. We see others by how we think of them, but we judge ourselves differently. That if somebody messes up, it's because they're incompetent. But when we mess up, we have a story, right? Like, you just don't understand. If somebody cuts you off in traffic, it's because they're being a jerk. But if you cut someone off in traffic, it's because I'm in a hurry and it's very important, right? So we look at our beliefs, even our memories, actually. We know that memory is incredibly vulnerable to revision, that every time you think of a memory, you are actually revising it in your brain. Actually, there's a friend of mine, Chris, that I was telling him about my research, and he says, you know what, there's a perfect example in my life.

33:07For years, I couldn't cry.

33:10Nir Eyal:I couldn't cry, and it really hurt my relationships with my girlfriends because they would say I wasn't emotionally available because we would have a difficult time and I just couldn't cry. And you know why I couldn't cry? It's because when I was a kid, I went to a funeral at six years old and it was really traumatizing. And ever since then, I can't cry. And he told his sister this story. Chris told his sister that, you know, this is another breakup, another reason. Here's why I'm not emotionally available. It's because I can't cry and I went to this funeral. And she says, Chris, you didn't go to that funeral.

33:43Nir Eyal:girl, mom and dad thought you were too young. You were at home with the babysitter. This is his older sister. She remembered it. And he had been living with this memory that never even happened. And we do this all the time. Memory is incredibly vulnerable to revision. That Elizabeth Loftus has these amazing studies where she implants memories of people going on a hot air balloon ride that never happened. And they'll describe the wind in their hair and the color of the balloon completely made up. And this is, where does this get back to? that based on those memories that we think are so true, you know, we think of memories as like a video camera.

34:19Nir Eyal:It's not a video camera at all. It's incredibly vulnerable. That, you know, people will take it two different ways. Some people will say, oh, this terrible thing happened to me. This person did this thing to me. And maybe it happened, but 100 % sure it didn't happen the way you think it did. You have revised it since, for sure. Second example is when people who have a positive outlook on life, They can look at the same exact events and you see because that happened, that's why I have to prove others wrong or that's why I succeed is because I had to show them. So same exact thing can happen. You can have post-traumatic stress, right?

34:53Nir Eyal:And that can cause people a lot of suffering. Or for some people, you have post-traumatic growth. It was because that terrible thing happened. That's why I'm so driven today. Do people ever push back on your research and they're like, you must have never been through anything very hard because how could you say I couldn't have PTSD instead of having, you know, PTG? D, D. Do you get that kind of pushback? I'm not saying that. I would never say to somebody that they're not in pain. All pain is real. All pain is real. The pushback I oftentimes hear is that, are you telling people to lie to themselves?

35:28Nir Eyal:Are you telling me that I should gaslight myself and make up a different truth because you're saying that beliefs are just tools, I can make up whatever I want? And my response is, guess what? You're already gaslighting yourself. you are already lying to yourself. You're just lying to yourself with a limiting belief. So you could choose a different belief. Now the whole point here, what is a limiting belief? What is a liberating belief? A limiting belief is a belief that saps motivation or causes suffering. A liberating belief is a belief that supplies motivation or eases suffering. And that's a choice.

36:02Nir Eyal:That's a choice. Even when it sounds crazy. So I never tell people to change their beliefs. I tell people to try on different beliefs. So what you're doing is just like you're trying a pair of glasses and you say, oh, it doesn't fit my face. I don't like it. This is weird. Okay. Let's try on a different pair of glasses. You're already running those glasses, that keyhole of attention, those 50 bits of information that's already there. You just didn't choose it. Your society chose it. Your background chose it. Your history chose it. All these other things chose it. You didn't choose it. It's kind of like your face that you can't see your face.

36:32Nir Eyal:We all have these limiting beliefs, but they're always hidden to us. and the ones you most defend are the ones you most need to examine. So when people hear this and say, that's crazy, you don't understand what happened to me, that's what needs some digging. That's what needs some examination if they want to stop suffering. Look, some people don't mind the suffering. They find their identity is the suffering and I'm not here to change anybody, right? I'm telling you what worked in my life. I found that I started living when I disconnected the pain from the suffering. The pain can still be there but just like Daniel Gisler that could use the power of his mind to not interpret the pain as suffering.

37:11Nir Eyal:And we can do that not just with surgery. I mean, if we can do it with surgery, we can certainly do it with our past experiences and with our challenges and tribulations. That's so good. Yeah. My husband and I always say to each other, do you want to be right or do you want to win? And it's true. Like, do you need to prove your point all the time or do you want to move forward in the world? And so, but I like this differentiation of liberating beliefs and limiting beliefs. Because if you do get to try on two hats, that just means you pick one. Right. And if that's true, and if we have all this research to suppose it, then why not?

37:42The other thing that I think is really interesting about this is, you know, you started your career by essentially figuring out how attention worked with tech products. And so if today we're feeling overwhelmed by a lot of the things in front of us from technology, I think we have a lot of reasons, excuses, you could use whatever word you want to say that it is not in my power to be undistracted or it is not in my power what I focus on. But you had this line from one of your, it was from, no, it was from your last book that was, there will be two types of people in the world. There will be those who are distracted and there will be those who are indistractable and the indistractable will win, to summarize your statement.

38:30What do you mean by that? And do you still believe that's true?

38:33Nir Eyal:More than ever, because the world is becoming an increasingly distractible place. That with the dawn of AI, we know where this is going. And it's not all bad. I'm quite the tech optimist. I have to be, because I know history. I know that the world is terrible and there's a lot of suffering. And also, it's better than it's ever been and it's getting better. And even that idea, I bet you right now, people are thinking this guy's crazy. And they're like, isn't he watching the news? Doesn't he see all the terrible things happening in the world today? Yeah, those things are happening and things are getting better.

39:11Nir Eyal:And I'm optimistic about the future because we can create the future unless we give up. So when you believe there's nothing to be done, What do you do? Nothing. And this is exactly the message that has been spreading in mainstream traditional media tells you technology is addictive and it's hijacking your brain. And they have documentaries, ironically, on Netflix telling you how technology is melting your brain. There's nothing you can do. It's exactly what the tech companies want you to think. They want you to think there's nothing you can do for your children. They're all addicted. It's hopeless because what are you going to do?

39:48Nir Eyal:Nothing. That is the message of passivity they are trying to default us into. That is our default, to do nothing. Because now I've absolved responsibility, right? It's not my fault. Zuckerberg is doing it to me. Maybe, that could be a truth, right? I don't know. Is that a fact or is it a belief? I choose to believe I can do something about it. Turns out it's actually not that hard. And there's a few steps anyone can take to become indistractable to themselves and to teach their kids to be indistractable. And if you don't teach your kids how to be indistractable, they will be part of this mass of people who can't control their attention because they don't want to and they don't learn the skills.

40:26Nir Eyal:I mean, we're not taught in school how to focus our attention. And I think those who do not learn how to be indistractable will be at the whim of whatever is happening, right? The gossip in the office or whatever's happening on Twitter or whatever's happening in the news or some war 3 ,000 miles away that's got nothing to do with me. But that's what I keep paying attention to as opposed to how can I make people's lives better? in my family, in my community? How can I affect change right now, right here? I'm paying attention to all this other stuff because frankly, the media wants me to, right?

40:57Nir Eyal:They make money. I don't care if people rag on social media. How exactly do you think the New York Times makes money or Fox News or CNN? They're all in the same business. They're monetizing your attention. So you better hold on to it carefully. It's such a good point. You know, I was thinking about, I heard a quote yesterday, and I can't remember who said it, but the summary was basically when, you know, David asked for a bigger life, a bigger challenge, you know, more, God didn't just give him easy, he gave him Goliath. And, you know, part of me, what your work makes me think about in some ways, if we want to go super optimistic, it's, well, what if, you know, this next level of what I would consider to be superhuman, which is I don't feel pain, which is I could 240X my ability to withstand treading water, aka, you know, what happened to the rats.

41:44If we wanted to become more superhuman, well, then we kind of need bigger challenges, which might just be this AI in front of us, this tech in front of us. And if you could see it instead, not as defeatist, but what if this is the opportunity? If, you know, whether you believe in God or not, but if God's like, all right, you're ready for the next level of the game. That is a real life hack.

42:01Nir Eyal:And I, I, I, that was not my natural. I was kind of highly anxious, kind of, you know, ran hot and was that kind of person who repeated, oh, why does this happen to me? And I mean, just today, right? Like I was preparing some food and it dropped on the floor. Okay. You're talking about like big AI challenges. I'm talking about like day to day as well. The food drops on the floor before I'd be like, God, why does that happen to me? I'm late. I've got this interview with Cody. Now I say, all right, I have an opportunity to practice patience. Right? Like I can find an opportunity here. Is it a fact?

42:37Nir Eyal:No, it's a belief. I choose to believe that there's something, and you can, I literally do this 10 times a day. Whenever something happens a little funny in my life that before would bring me down, and of course, it takes a toll. It drains that battery throughout the day. The more you tell yourself, there it is again, or there it is, I used to do this with my ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADHD. And I used to, every time I got a bit distracted, or I'd say, there's my ADHD again. And now, people my age, we start saying, all my peers, oh, that's what happens when you get old, right? Like it's inevitable, right?

43:11Nir Eyal:Oh, this hurts, that hurts. Like it's inevitable. That's what happens. And so when you're having that senior moment, what are you thinking about? Are you thinking about where your keys are? Are you thinking about what you just forgot or what the distractions? No, you're thinking about this label you've attached to yourself. And so in this way, your labels become your limits. And even more so, your beliefs become your biology. There's an amazing study done at Yale where they found that people who have positive views about aging at age 30 live seven and a half years longer. Now, to put that in perspective, Cody, seven and a half years longer, that is more than the effect of exercise.

43:52Nir Eyal:That's more than the effect of what you eat. That's more than the effect of smoking. Think about how much time and attention we hear about you should eat right, don't smoke, exercise. Who tells you the best thing you can do for your longevity and lifespan is to believe differently, is to have positive views about aging. Now, why is that happening? Are the beliefs magically changing the cells in your body? Nope, that's not how it works. What's happening is that two beliefs about the world can be equally true. So for example, a positive view of aging sounds like this. Growth is possible at any age.

44:26Nir Eyal:That's a positive view about aging. What's a negative view about aging? Aging involves inevitable decline, okay? Two perspectives. Which one is true, Cody? Both. Both, exactly. Which one is going to make me more active? The growth. Growth is possible at any age. So why do we tell ourselves this stupid stuff like, I'm not a morning person. I'm a Sagittarius. I have ADHD. That's why I can't this, this. These are all limiting beliefs. Now, sometimes they can be a map, right? So for example, an ADHD diagnosis can guide you to work on something that you weren't aware of, that there's a path to help you get some kind of guidance.

45:03Nir Eyal:But it cannot become your identity. Once it becomes your identity, it stops becoming the map. You become the map. And then it's useless because that becomes your default state, why you can't, why you can't. Rather, you need to reinforce why you can. That becomes the empowering belief that keeps you motivated and reduces suffering. God, this is so important because I could never put my finger on the point of why I got so annoyed many times in my career, but especially these last couple of years where people would say, well, you know, Latinas, I'm Latina, And Latinos and women, you know, they just aren't as successful as men overall.

45:35And Latina CEOs, you know, can't, oh, and, you know, female CEOs aren't paid this way. And don't you, wasn't it hard when you were in a male-dominated industry and, like, you can't progress very much? And I'd just be like, take your victim labels off me. This is not helpful to me at all. In fact, couldn't the opposite be true? Couldn't it be true that it could be really useful to be in a male-dominated field where it's Tom, Dick, and Larry every seven seconds? Everyone's wearing blue, black, or, you know, gray suits. and I stand out differently. That could be helpful too.

46:05Nir Eyal:Absolutely. I mean, that's, and that's, I can hear in your voice that that's motivating. Yeah. And you don't seem to be suffering. No, I like, but I do like the chip on my shoulder. You know, I like a little. But that's a belief. Yeah, which is interesting. And is it true? I don't know. Who cares? Who cares? Is it useful? Yeah. Yeah. You seem to be getting a lot of traction, a lot of motivation. You're not suffering. You're invigorated based on this belief that you chose. And what's crazy is that we know that even when you have every reason to objectively say the cards are stacked against me, it turns out that people who have an internal locus of control, internal locus of control are people who believe that their actions affect change in the world versus an external locus of control.

46:47Nir Eyal:An external locus of control is someone who believes that things happen to them, right? It's my environment, it's my upbringing, it's society, it's whatever's happening in the world. That's what affects my life. Turns out that all the good stuff happens to people with an internal locus of control. Okay, that's not that surprising, right? That like they make more money, they live longer, they contribute more to the community. All good things happen to people with internal locus of control because they have more agency in the world. What's fascinating is that even if you objectively have all the reasons to claim victimhood, it still serves you more to have an internal locus of control.

47:22Nir Eyal:You still will go farther and be happier, have less depression, less anxiety, all the good things come from having that agency. Now, what's interesting, it's important to have an internal locus of control about yourself, but to see others with a different perspective. That you have more peace when you think, you know what, if others aren't doing what I think they should do, it's because they have their own constraints. They're doing the best they can with the tools they have. But for me, I'm going to affect change. I believe that I have agency and control. You know, it's fascinating. Back in the day, we lived in D.C., and my husband's a former ex-Navy SEAL.

47:54And he was one of the first people to try on the WHOOP, that little bracelet thing. And so they ran it through the teams back then, and they studied them. And so one day, one of the heads, I believe it was Kirsten Holmes, but one of the heads of WHOOP came to D.C. and wanted to meet with him. And he was like, this is incredible. I must be a specimen. She wants to meet with me because my stats, right? So he goes to me with her. They sit down for coffee. They sit down, they start talking, normal things. Then she goes, hey, I need to talk to you. He's like, great. What do you want to know? And he is fit, jacked and all the things.

48:31And she's like, well, I think you might have a heart attack. And he's like, excuse me, I have 7 % body fat. She's like, something is happening to you every day where you are off the charts with your stress levels or your HRV or some measurement that they were able to tell biologically, between 7.15 and 7.45 every morning. And I think you need to chill out your workouts. And that is too much. Your heart is not going to be able to sustain this. And she's like, so what are you doing from that time? What kind of level of workout is this? And he thinks about it. And he's like, I'm driving to work. Because he works out every morning at 6 a.m.

49:16Nir Eyal:Not the workout, the driving to work. Not just the drive. Wow, it was stressing him out. It was stressing him out. And he would have these stories to me every day that he would kind of like proliferate. Like, yeah, he cut me off and the driver's in D.C. and the terribly drivers. And it was sort of fascinating. And then he changed his perspective. For some reason, he was talking to her and he just said, I'm just going to assume everybody's pregnant and they're going to the hospital. And like, if they cut me off, they're either not going to make it, the baby's popping on the dashboard, like that's what's happening.

49:45And he was able to sort of drop his HRV. But, you know, it was a funny story then, but I think about it now. Because if it can literally raise your heart rate or lower your heart rate just based on his belief of what was happening with the same exact drivers every single morning to his commute, what else, again, can you do?

50:03Nir Eyal:Okay. I'll give you a similar one up here. There's a case of a guy by the name of Mr. A. He was anonymized. And Mr. A was in a study. This really happened. This is a real study. He was in a group that was trying a new antidepressant medication. He broke up with his girlfriend, bad breakup, and he decides he doesn't want to live anymore. He takes the entire pill jar. Pill jar? What's the word I'm looking for? Jar of pills. Jar of pills. Takes all his pills. Then after he swallows all these pills, he decides he does want to live. He rushes to the neighbor's house. He says, take me to the hospital.

50:37Nir Eyal:I need to go to the ER. I just swallowed all my pills. By the time he gets to the hospital, he falls on the floor. He manages to tell the nurse, I took all my pills, I took all my pills. They rush him into the ER. They start monitoring his heart rate. His heart rate is dangerously low. His blood pressure is falling. He passes out and they look on the pill jar and they can't figure out what he took because it doesn't say the name of the medication because he was in this clinical trial. All it has is a phone number. They call the phone number and they say, this guy took all these pills. What is this medicine?

51:09Nir Eyal:He said, give me one second. They look up on the computer, say, oh, okay. he was in the placebo group. Nothing in those pills could have caused this. It's completely inert. They tell Mr. A this. In 15 minutes, his heart rate is back to normal. His blood pressure is back to normal. Everything is physiologically exactly where it should be. He's revived. He walks out in 15 minutes. Talk about the power of the mind, right? He had this expectation. He anticipated something to happen and it did. And again, if that can happen physiologically, what happens when we keep telling ourselves the same limiting beliefs?

51:46Nir Eyal:I'm having a senior moment. I'm too old for this. I'm too young for this. The world sucks. The exercise is hard. People are annoying. Whatever the limiting belief that we keep telling ourselves again and again and again, it has a physiological effect on us just like Mr. A did. So what else do we do to not have this? You've given us a bunch of tools. Do you stick a little sticky note on the mirror? Does that work? Do you put it on your computer? or like what else can we do every single day to make sure that we are not inadvertently giving ourselves our own version of a heart attack? Well, I think one, we need to identify the beliefs.

52:15Nir Eyal:That's the hardest part is because we have that immunity to change. I mean, I'm sure if you were listening to us talking right now, there's gotta be at least one thing you're like, no, that won't work for me. Perk up, listen to that. If you are telling yourself, if anything we've said, that sounds ridiculous, won't work for me, pay attention to it. That's your psychological immune system saying, I don't wanna change my beliefs. I wanna resort to pessimism. So do you like write those down and then apply your turnarounds to them? Exactly, exactly. So write it down, come up with turnarounds. Think of the opposite, and it's always gonna sound ridiculous.

52:46Nir Eyal:If it doesn't sound ridiculous, you didn't do it right. It's always going to sound ridiculous. And then step number three, look for ways that it could be as true. So that's basically how we do this. Now, it sounds easy. I wrote this book for me. I have to constantly remind myself how to do this. And then there's all kinds of ways you can do that. But one of the things that really impacted me is I'm really working on disconnecting pain from suffering in all facets of my life. There's amazing research around how chronic pain, pain that doesn't have a physical cause that lasts for more than six months.

53:19Nir Eyal:So we're talking fibromyalgia. We're talking insomnia. We're talking chronic back pain. All these things. Turns out they are what we call neuroplastic pain.

53:31Nir Eyal:All pain is real. All pain is real. but all pain is also in the brain, right? Pain isn't here, pain isn't here, pain is up here. And so it turns out that we can learn practices to quiet that signal. So just like Daniel Gisler quieted that signal when he had surgery, chronic pain, these symptoms are a hyper-focusing of attention. When I'm constantly thinking about what's wrong, what's causing me pain, I turn up the fear dial. And the more fear I feel, the more pain I feel, and it becomes this vicious cycle. So if you can detach that, if you can realize, one, you're safe, that's the most important thing, that I am safe right now, okay?

54:10Nir Eyal:And that can apply in a painful situation. If it's physical pain, it can also be stress, right? In a business situation. I used to have this with public speaking. I would go on stage and I'd get the sweaty armpits and I'd get the heart palpitations and I'd get the dry mouth and I still get that. I'm getting it right now talking to you, but I interpret it completely differently. So I used to say, well, you know, if my heart's beating and my mouth is dry, then I'm going to do a terrible job. And if I was a real public speaker, I wouldn't have these. Now I don't say that anymore. Now I say I have a different story.

54:37Nir Eyal:Now my story is that I tell myself, you see, the reason my heart is beating so fast is because my brain needs more oxygen so that I can deliver my best possible presentation. Is it true? Does it matter? It works. Maybe that is a psychological placebo that I'm using, but I've told myself a different story. So just like you can constantly remind yourself when you're stressed, when you're anxious, when you feel like, oh, I need an escape, I'm safe. I'm safe. Second, reduce the urgency. When we have a problem, whether it's, you know, I used to struggle with insomnia, anxiety, ADHD, all kinds of things.

55:11Nir Eyal:I wanted to fix it right away. Why isn't this fixed? Right? Give me a pill. Give me a solution right now. There needs to be an urgent solution. That increases the fear cycle. Why? Because if I can't find an urgent solution, am I going to have this forever? Right? Then I start getting into this rumination loop of like, when is it ever going to go away? And what causes many of these problems, again, it's that pain, fear, pain cycle. The more I fear something, the more pain is caused, the more I fear in the future. So reduce the urgency. And then look for examples of how your safety is validated, right?

55:43Nir Eyal:Bring, for example, you can bring humor to the situation, bring levity to the situation, or repeat the situation. So I used to have back pain. And the standard advice is if you have some kind of pain, ice it, heat it, don't move, Immobilize, rest, right? Don't stress it. Turns out that's not always the best advice. Now, if there is an actual physiological cause, different story. But if it's chronic pain that lasts for more than six months without a physical cause, that's not the right idea. So what do I now do? I still get that back pain, right? I'm 48. I'm going to get it from time to time. Now I don't immobilize and say, oh my God, I'm going to be in pain.

56:18Nir Eyal:No, I do the same movement 10 times. I literally, if I'm, I just felt it as I was sitting down here. Okay, then that means I need to do it 10 times to teach my brain, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe. And so I use it in the example of chronic pain, but we can do that for all our limiting beliefs, to constantly remind ourselves again and again. So for example, when I'm writing, writing is really hard. I've written three books now, thousands of articles. I've been to the New York Times, I've been to the Atlanta, I've been in a lot of places. It's always fricking hard work. So the mantra I've developed, the secular prayer, if you will, that I develop, that I tell myself, is when it's difficult, when I'm in pain and I want to reduce my suffering, I disconnect the two by telling myself this mantra.

56:57You can steal it.

56:58Nir Eyal:You can make up your own. My mantra is this is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better. Just remind that simple mantra. I can say it a couple times a day. And now I'm relishing that feeling. Oh, it's painful. Good. That means I'm getting better. If it didn't feel painful, everybody could do it. But I'm developing this superpower, right? Just like you were saying that because I'm Latina, because I'm a woman, I have an opportunity here. I'm N of one. I've got something special here. So I'm leaning into that discomfort as opposed to trying to run away from it by scrolling it away or clicking it away or emailing it away.

57:32Nir Eyal:Good. That's a positive now versus something I should run away from. I recently thought that willpower was a depleting asset. Like I've heard that recently. I didn't know that that was one way or another. And then now that I have that as a belief, I've thought, oh, okay, well, that means that I need to make less decisions in this certain way. I need to do X or Y or Z. In your research, have you found that willpower is a depleting asset? Do we only have so much of it in a day? We used to think that there was this research, it was called ego depletion, that your willpower runs out, like gas in a gas tank or battery charging your phone, that the more you use up your willpower, you're done with it.

58:10Nir Eyal:And I used to totally believe this and I would come home from work and I'd say, oh, I'm spent. I'm going to go on the couch and have a jar of ice cream and watch TV because I've got no more willpower. It's spent. It's gone, right? You use it up. Well, it turns out it's not true. That when we try and replicate those studies, and this happens in the social science, this is how science works. Science doesn't say anything. Science is the process of doing repeated experiments and seeing if they replicate, and then we can draw conclusions based on evidence. But the evidence doesn't show that ego depletion exists.

58:40Nir Eyal:You do not run out of willpower like you run out of charge on your phone unless there's one group of people who really do run out of willpower. Those group of people are only people who believe that willpower is a limited resource. God, that's such a mindfuck. I know. What? We have to be so careful about what we let in here. So true. Because if you believe I'm spent, guess what? You are. But if you don't let that enter your mind, that willpower is not a resource, it's a feeling. But you don't say to yourself, oh, I'm always going to be happy or I'm always going to be sad or I'm, no, it's just a feeling and it comes and goes.

59:20Nir Eyal:So yeah, sometimes we have more willpower. Sometimes we have less. It's not a resource unless you believe that you're, you're, you're going to run out of it. This is just so good. I mean, I already told you this, but I was like walking through all my notes this morning. I was on the treadmill. I was on a run and, uh, and I just was picturing everybody I was going to send this to. I was literally picturing and yeah, I mean, and starting with myself and then starting with everybody else that I want to have this tool in their life because it's very seldom. We hear shit like this. I live in Austin.

59:48Everybody's into crystals, you know, fucking astrology, whatever else we've got going on. But it's very seldom that you hear this stuff in such a clinical way and without so many shoulds in it. A lot of, hey, this is what I'm doing. Here's what the science says. But you're very particular. Like I've tried to get you a few times to say, will you do X, Y, and Z? You're like, no, I'm not telling them. I'm saying this is what we do. And I think it's really powerful. I also want to uncover one other thing that I found interesting from your research. I hadn't ever heard the term before hedonic adaptation.

1:00:20Can you tell me what is hedonic adaptation and how could it ruin your focus?

1:00:24Nir Eyal:So hedonic adaptation is when our circumstances improve to a point where we no longer appreciate them. And so we need more and more and more and more. If you think about, for example, how today the middle class doesn't feel particularly well off, right? But if you compare the middle class today, the assets that they have, the color television, the iPhone, all the plumbing, if you look back two generations, certainly three generations, the kings of France didn't have indoor plumbing, right? The kings of France didn't have antibiotics. They constantly had tooth decay and syphilis and all kinds of terrible things that even though they had all the money in the world, they didn't have the luxuries that we have today through modern medicine and all these things.

1:01:14Nir Eyal:But we have adapted. So we have so much more, but we don't feel any happier because of it. And so that's something to watch out for. Now, the antidote to that is, again, beliefs. And beliefs powered through gratitude. And so taking that pause to realize that I'm alive. Like I can breathe today. Like that we keep thinking we need more to be happy. These things have to happen. But if we actually put things in perspective, and it's very difficult to do because we are so inundated with how terrible things are all the time. All the news, the news doesn't tell you all the great things that happened today.

1:01:52Nir Eyal:I went to journalism school. The first rule of journalism is if it bleeds, it leads. It's not to inform you. The news media is not there to inform you. The news media is there to make money. And it's not a political issue. It's a business issue. Now there's anything wrong with that, right? It's okay to consume the news. It's all right to be informed. If that's how you want to spend your time, that's fine. But when it becomes something you have to do, when you become enthralled in that story and you have to keep up with the latest everything that's going on, everybody else is suffering, you become distracted from what really matters in your life.

1:02:23Nir Eyal:And so it's very important to refocus, to actually bring perspective back to what really matters and be very careful with that media diet that is designed in a way to constantly keep you unhappy, to constantly keep you unsatisfied. Yeah, it's fascinating. In YouTube, we know that if you have a negative versus a positive thumbnail and title, you have a 23 % higher click-through rate. If it's negative versus positive. Correct. Yeah, and also sort of the scarier it looks often, and scary is the right way. I can't remember how they actually determine that one, but dark colors. I believe it's like very dark or very red.

1:03:01And those two things have some sort of signal to us and those thumbnails outperform as well. And so, you know, if you go to some, you know, creator's account and you look at their YouTube, you'll find often that the ones that are really viral are like warning, disaster, you know, world ending. It's over. And it's because they have a higher click-through rate.

1:03:24Nir Eyal:Because we have what's called a negativity bias. Again, our default is passivity. We like the negativity. Why? From an evolutionary basis, good things are nice, right? Good things are nice. Bad things will kill you. So what are you going to pay attention to? What's going to be led through that keyhole of attention? The good news? Well, that's nice. What do I do with that? Bad news? Oh, my gosh. There's terrible things happening. I have to do something. Warning, warning, right? Danger. That's what gets our attention. You had a line that was really helpful to me about tactics versus strategy and how if we only apply the tactics but we don't understand the strategy of why we're using them and our deeper why, we probably won't internalize them and actually do it.

1:03:58But you did have one tactic I kind of liked. Well, you have a lot. But one in particular was about intimacy time and your wife and cell phones. And I just, you know, I was— Oh, you went way back. That's great. I was trying—I was, you know, I was looking at the YouTube comments and seeing what people ask about on this podcast. and one of the things I keep seeing pop up is this desire for like a deep, intimate love. And I don't know, I'm not a relationship coach. I have no idea. Like if you want to help, I can look at your EBITDA numbers. We can try to raise them. Like that's what I got. But you had at least one tactic that I really liked and I wonder if you would share this tactic and it's pretty simple and I think anybody could use it today.

1:04:43Nir Eyal:Yeah, so this was a long, this was when I first kind of started writing in public and I wrote an article called The Strange Sex Habits of Silicon Valley. And it was basically about this phenomenon that at the time was kind of novel. The Apple App Store was three years old at the time, right? So it was brand new. And I started seeing that every night. My wife was fondling her iPad and I was caressing my iPhone and we weren't being intimate with each other. And that had some negative consequences on our relationship. And, you know, we've been married now for 25 years. And I learned, one of the things I learned was the power of what's called a pre-commitment device.

1:05:17Nir Eyal:And this is a very old technique. In fact, it's in the Odyssey written by Homer. It's a very, very old technique where you make a pre-commitment. So you remember the story of the Odyssey? Ulysses, this Greek hero, has to sail his ship home and he has to sail by the island of the Sirens. And he knows that there's this temptation. He knows that there's this distraction of any sailor who hears a Sirens song crashes their ship onto the shore of the Sirens island and dies. So he knows this is gonna happen. So what does he do? he enters into a pre-commitment. He tells his crew to tie him to the mast of the ship, and he tells them, no matter what I do, no matter what I say, don't let me go.

1:05:56Nir Eyal:And he tells everyone in his crew to put beeswax in their ears so they can't hear the siren song. And it works. And today we call this a Ulysses pact. So what we have to do is, as the last resort, there's four steps to becoming indistractable, but as the last line of defense, the fourth step, the firewall against distraction, is we make a pact. that when distraction rears its ugly head and the first three techniques, for whatever reason, didn't work, there's a fail safe. There's a last line of defense. So what did I do? In order to stop going to bed too late and restore intimacy with my wife, we went to the hardware store and we bought this$5 outlet timer, okay?

1:06:35And this outlet timer will turn on or off

1:06:38Nir Eyal:whatever you plug into it at a set time of day or night. And so what do we do? At 10 o 'clock at night, Every night, the internet router shuts off, okay? Now, today, this was many years ago. Today, we actually don't even need it because we've been trained now. It's become a habit. 10 o 'clock, all right, internet's shutting off. Now, could I turn it back on? Of course I could turn it back on, right? Like I could tether to my cell phone. I could go under my desk and pull out the timer and replug it in, but now there's effort. Now there's friction. So what I've done is to take a mindless behavior and add some mindfulness.

1:07:13Nir Eyal:Now I have to think about, wait a minute, is this really worth it? Do I really need to check more email or social media or whatever? Or should I go to bed, right? So adding that bit of friction as a pact, as a pre-commitment device in advance, and this is the key, that if you leave it to the last minute, you will fail. If you're on a diet, but the chocolate cake is on the fork, you're going to eat it. If you're trying to quit smoking, but the cigarette's in your hand, it's too late. You're going to smoke it. If you sleep next to your cell phone every night, it's the first thing you pick up in the morning, right?

1:07:41Nir Eyal:But if you plan ahead, there's no distraction you can't overcome because the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. These problems with distraction, it's not a character flaw. It's not a moral failing. There's nothing broken about you. It's just that you haven't learned how to control these uncomfortable impulses. It's just pain management. So if you plan ahead, there's no distraction you can't overcome if you plan ahead for it. Is it true that like a lot of times you can't actually see the opportunities in front of you because of the way you view reality? Or is there something else going on?

1:08:16Nir Eyal:So you remember this optical illusion? Yeah. I'll give you an example of how I can demonstrate how you don't see reality and you can't see even the possibilities that are ahead of you with a riddle. Do you like riddles? Yeah. I'm nervous though. Okay. Here's a riddle. If you know the answer, if you've heard it before, don't say it. Okay. Deal. there's a father and son and they're riding in their car late at night there are absolutely no lights on the highway all of a sudden a deer jumps in front of the car they have a horrible accident the father is instantly killed the boy is in critical condition he's rushed to the hospital when he gets to the hospital he's wheeled into the operating room the surgeon barges through the door, takes one look at the boy and says, I can't operate on this boy.

1:09:05Nir Eyal:He's my son. How could that be? Now, have you heard this before? No. 87 % of people who hear this riddle can't get the answer. Okay. So do you have a, do you have a guess? No. How could that be? Do you want me to say it again? Yeah. I don't know. He has two fathers. They're gay. Okay. That's one possible answer. That's not the answer. That is one possible answer. Can you think of another one? No. You're going to hate the answer. Oh, no. The answer is the surgeon was his mom. Oh, my God. That's terrible. You never said it was a man? I never said it was a man. Oh, my God. Now, why did that happen?

1:09:44Because I'm a misogynist.

1:09:45Nir Eyal:No, no. In fact, even self-identified feminists don't get this. Again, 87 % of people don't get this riddle. Why? because they can't see the reality. Their brain doesn't let them see based on their prior beliefs, even though 20 % of surgeons are female, 80 % are male. And so your priors dictate that you can only see reality a certain way. Now, if I can do that with a simple riddle that you kick yourself over, is it any surprise that when you're trying to convince somebody to start a business for themselves and they go, ah, that wouldn't work for me and here's why and I can't because of this situation, they can't see it, Cody.

1:10:23Nir Eyal:They can't see the possibility. Just like you couldn't see until I told you the answer. By the way, if anybody ever tells you this riddle, again, you'll know exactly the answer, right? It's so obvious. Yeah, it was part of the 13%. Right, but the fact that all these people, they can't get the riddle because of these prior beliefs. And so this is why we have to be so, so careful about the beliefs we let in and how we need to consciously, actively test ourselves and look for this portfolio of perspectives so we can look at other points of view. It's so useful because actually, it's almost a little bit like a magic trick.

1:10:55Like how when you see somebody do a magic trick, then it makes you question your own capability. And until then, you almost can't pattern and interrupt enough where somebody could go, oh, I can actually read this book and get it deeply inside. But hopefully we gave everybody enough pause and they had the same thought that I did. And then they're out of their mind to not listen back to this and say, how can I do this differently? God, that was good. I'm glad it worked and also so ashamed that it worked. There's nothing to be ashamed of.

1:11:22Nir Eyal:Seriously, it doesn't mean you're massaging it. Oh, no, I don't actually care. No, I actually have really nice things that I say about myself in my head. So that has no bearing on it. Nia, this is incredible. I love your new book, as evidenced by the fact that I keep talking about it. And like in case they haven't seen here, there's a lot of bookmarks. There's a lot of tabs in here. So Beyond Belief, incredible. Will be out for sale by the time we do this. And I just want to say thank you for writing it because it's not an easy path. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. You chose the hard path.

1:11:55Thanks, sir.

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