How To Be Less Distracted at Work – and in Life | HBR IdeaCast

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0:51Welcome to the HPR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.

1:02When you come to work each day, it's usually with the best of intentions. You're going to fix that code, write that client proposal, finish those performance reviews, flesh out those strategy goals. But then you get an email notification or a Slack message or a call from a colleague, and suddenly you've lost 30 minutes or an hour dealing with something that was much less important than the work you'd planned to do. You've been distracted. This happens to so many of us so many times a day. And our guest is an expert on this problem. Five years ago, he wrote a book telling companies how to build habit-forming products, that is, how to addict and distract us.

1:41In the years since, he's been studying how people can break those bad habits, not just with the devices we use, but also in our own minds. He's here today to offer advice for both individuals who want to be more focused and managers who want to create less distracted workplaces. Nir Eyal is the author of the book Indistractable, How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Nir, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Allison.

2:14So you literally did write the book on how companies can develop phones and apps and websites that capture our attention, sometimes in unproductive ways. Now you're telling us how to avoid getting distracted by them. Why the about face? Well, it's not really an about face as much as is a insight that I have into both questions. Addiction is a very different thing from a habit, because whereas addictions are always bad, habits can be very good. And so what we want to do is to get the best of both worlds. We want to learn how to use habit forming technology to make our lives better. And we also want to be aware of how these tools are built to make sure that we don't go overboard.

2:57So getting distracted by those products that are designed to take us away from the most important tasks of the day and to something that's more like entertainment or pleasure, that's a habit we can break? Yeah, and I would actually say that those are the easy ones to break. Okay. It's pretty obvious if you're putzing around on YouTube or checking social media in the middle of your workday, that's probably not what most knowledge workers should be doing with their time. I think the much more pernicious distractions are the ones that we don't even realize we are falling prey to. For example, this would happen to me all the time.

3:33I'd sit down at my desk and I'd say, okay, now I'm going to do that big project, that thing I've been procrastinating, that thing that I have been putting off day after day, I'm finally going to sit down and do that project right after I check email. And email feels worky, right? Isn't email productive? That's kind of a work type thing to do that you got to get done anyway, right? Well, not really, because if we only do the things that are urgent and we don't get to the things that are just as important, but may require some longer term planning, the things that we keep putting off day after day, we don't get the most important tasks done.

4:03And so my goal with writing Indistractable was to help people turn their values into time. Most people will tell you the opposite of distraction is focus. It is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. So both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull, and both end in the same six-letter word, A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you want to do with your time, things that you are doing with intent. So distraction is tricky, right? Distraction in the moment feels like something we should be doing, even if it is not something we planned.

5:10zero sugar and vitamins propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self what propels you propel with gatorade electrolytes do in advance and so that's what i want to help people do whatever it is you say you want to do whatever it is that's consistent with your values that's what i want to help you get done so it really all starts with planning well that's a big part of it i actually would go a step further so let's go you know there's this question by the way of why do we do things against our better interest. Why do we get distracted?

5:40This is an age-old question. Socrates and Aristotle called it akrasia, this tendency that we have to do things against our better interest. So literally 2 ,500 years ago, people were saying, gosh, isn't the world such a distracting place these days? And the seat of human motivation, if you ask most people, why do we do what we do? What defines human motivation? You'll usually get some version of carrots and sticks, right? This is called Freud's pleasure principle, that everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Turns out, neurologically speaking, that's not true.

6:13That in fact, everything we do is not motivated by the desire to pursue pleasure and the avoidance of pain, but in fact, it's pain all the way down. This is called the homeostatic response, that anytime that we feel some kind of discomfort, that's how the brain prompts us to act, to do something to fix that uncomfortable sensation. So physiologically, we know this is true. So if you go outside and it's cold, you put on a jacket. If you go back inside and now it's too hot, you take it off. And psychologically, that's also true that when we're lonely, we check Facebook. When we're uncertain, we Google.

6:49When we're bored, we check the news, stock prices, sports scores, you name it. All of these tools fundamentally cater to an uncomfortable sensation. It's called an internal trigger. So that actually is the very first step because if we acknowledge that all human behavior is driven by a desire to escape discomfort. What that means is that time management is pain management. What's changed, what's different in the past several decades is that if it is distraction that you seek, distraction you will find. It has become easier than ever to satisfy, to pacify those uncomfortable sensations because of the persuasive and pervasive nature of technology.

7:31You talked about the idea of really understanding what you want to do and what you want to get accomplished. But I can know that the most important thing for me to do today is edit an article, but also really not be able to handle that boredom and also have five emails to respond to. And that's a way of ticking five things off my checklist. How do I manage all of those struggles? How do I force myself to do the right thing? There are four big pillars, four things that we can do to become indistractable. The first step has to be mastering those internal triggers. And we can talk about how do we master those internal triggers.

8:10The second step is to make time for traction. The third step is to hack back the external triggers. And finally, the fourth step is to prevent distraction with pacts. Most people fall into these two camps. I call them blamers and shamers. The shamers tend to say, oh, it's the technology doing it to me. I'm being manipulated. My brain is being hijacked and they blame the companies. The shamers think it's them. They say, oh, you see, I'm lazy. I have an addictive personality. I have a short attention span and they shame themselves telling themselves there's something wrong with them. And it turns out neither of those are correct, that these are simply behaviors and behaviors can change if we implement these four tactics.

8:50How do we start to control those triggers. Yeah. Yeah. So we start by recognizing that these sensations are completely normal. In a workplace setting, you know, half the book is about things that you as an individual can do. But if you work in an environment where your boss demands that you respond to every beck and call nights and weekends, well, you have to do that or you lose your livelihood. And so what we want to do is to learn how to cope with those uncomfortable sensations in a way that... This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

9:29It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes.

10:03It leads us towards traction as opposed to distraction. So there are three big tactics, reimagining the trigger, reimagining the task, and reimagining our temperament. And so one technique that I learned from acceptance and commitment therapy starts by simply acknowledging the sensation. If you can capture the preceding emotion before the distraction, did you check your phone because you're feeling anxious, fearful, uncertain, fatigued, lonely? What was that underlying sensation that you were turning to your device or some kind of distraction for emotional pacification? And what I want you to do is to just write it down.

10:42Without judgment, just acknowledge that sensation. Then the next step is to feel that sensation with curiosity instead of contempt. If you're anything like I was, I would beat myself up whenever I got distracted. And many of us do this. We beat ourselves up. And that is not helpful. In fact, studies have shown that this actually perpetuates the problem through rumination. What we want to do instead is to get curious instead of contemptuous with that feeling. But playing this out in a workplace context, I'm not focusing on the most important thing I need to do. And I think to myself, why am I doing that?

11:17And if the answer is, I'm not really interested in the work, or I don't feel up for the work, how does that help you improve the situation?

11:27Nir Eyal:So that might be a situation where you may have to ask yourself, if you look at yourself in the mirror enough times per day and say, I hate this job, that might be something you want to fix. The first category of fix the source of the problem. Because, you know, these tactics are only so good. If fundamentally, you are miserable in your job, in your relationship, in your home life, the problem isn't the phone, The problem isn't email. The problem is what's going on in your life. And so that might be somewhere that you need a bit of introspection to see, hey, is this job right for you? To be clear, I was speaking hypothetically.

11:55Of course, of course. We all are.

11:57Nir Eyal:I don't want to get a call from your boss. Yes, of course. But absolutely. So if, however, you know, for most folks, they say, yeah, my job's fine. I'm good. Home life is fine. But this one particular thing I have to do today is kind of driving me up the wall. I don't really want to do it. And so this is where you might implement one of these tactics of saying, wait, why don't I want to do this? What is difficult about this? Is it boredom? Is it that it's fatiguing me? Is it that it's, I'm not certain if this is worth doing? And just writing down that sensation, exploring that sensation with curiosity, and then using this last thing we want to do is called the 10 minute rule, where literally I will pick up my phone and I will say to my phone, set a timer for 10 minutes.

12:33Nir Eyal:I'll put the phone back down. And my job is to just sit with that sensation for a few minutes with curiosity. And this is called surfing the urge. Because what we know from acceptance of commitment therapy is that these sensations, these uncomfortable emotional states, they crest and then they subside much quicker than you think. And so in those 10 minutes, you have two choices. You can either get back to the task at hand or sit with that sensation. At the end of those 10 minutes, you can give in to whatever it is you want. Okay, this is not about abstinence. This is about acknowledging you can do that thing that you want to do, whether it's eat the piece of chocolate cake or check a Slack channel or check email or YouTube video, whatever it is that takes you off track.

13:12you can do it in 10 minutes.

13:16Nir Eyal:And you would be amazed how just becoming conscious of those sensations for just 10 minutes and surfing the urge, nine times out of 10, it will crest and subside. So that's one of the three big techniques, reimagining the internal trigger. We can also reimagine the task, and we can also reimagine our temperament. So now let's talk about external triggers. You know, the chatter in an open office, a client calling unexpectedly, and your boss emails you. How do you deal with that, especially when some of them actually are urgent? You know, they need to be answered right away. Yeah, yeah. So the first step is about mastering the internal triggers.

13:52There's one step we skipped, which is about making time for traction, which is about making what's called a time box calendar. So assuming you have made that time box calendar, we can walk into exactly how to do that and what we have to do to...

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14:44To keep that useful, such as there's this technique called schedule syncing that we can discuss as well.

14:49Nir Eyal:Now what you're going to do is to make sure that you turn off the external triggers that don't serve you. Remember, if an external trigger prompts you to do something you wanted to do, let's say it's your alarm clock saying, okay, now it's time to get up and go to the gym or a notification saying, okay, it's time for that call or that meeting you had. Well, these are very helpful external triggers. The technologies are wonderful in that respect. They help us remember to do the things we wanted to do. But if the external trigger prompts you to do something you didn't want to do, well, now it's a distraction.

15:21Nir Eyal:So the first step is to define what is traction for you and what is distraction for you. And it's about carving out that time in your day to make sure that you do the things that you really want to do on your schedule, as opposed to your boss's schedule, your kid's schedule, your spouse's schedule. So to do that, we have to hack back these external triggers. And I use the term hack back because in my first book, it was about how to build habit-forming products. And there's no doubt that these companies are using your psychology to hack your attention. However, that doesn't mean we can't hack back.

15:56Nir Eyal:And so I talk about in my book, these eight different environments where we might experience these pings, dings, and rings that take us off track. And the obvious ones are our phones, our computers, but that's kindergarten stuff. That's actually very easy, even though two-thirds of Americans never change their notification settings on their smartphone, right? Two-thirds of people never change the notification. It drives me crazy. Take the 10 minutes, for God's sakes, to change the notification settings so that people can't just reach you whenever they want to so that you use these products on your schedule as opposed to the app maker's schedule.

16:29I will tell you that I tried to today set up an out-of-office reply on my email to say that I can't respond to every pitch for an article or an idea. But then I felt it was going to be rude for the people who I was actually wanting to email with. And so I abandoned the pursuit.

16:45Nir Eyal:Okay. So there's a few – let's dive into email. So it's interesting that you mentioned as soon as you said – you implemented this technique, you immediately followed up with a feeling, right? So email is the mother of habit-forming technology because it uses all of these quirky psychological biases that we have, like this idea that we want to reciprocate. If someone puts out their hand to shake your hand, you feel compelled to shake it without even thinking, just out of habit. And so we have that same sensation when it comes to email with this asynchronous communication channel. When someone sends you an email, you feel like you need to reply to it.

17:19Nir Eyal:But do you? The fact is someone as busy as you doesn't need to reply to every single person. And the person who doesn't get the reply will be perfectly all right. So you've referenced time boxing a lot. And that is something that I've heard before from other people advising on time management. Schedule syncing was a new idea to me. So explain that for our listeners and how one might do it both at work and at home. The process starts by realizing that to-do lists are not good enough. We've heard that to be productive, you have to write a to-do list, right? They write everything down and somehow they magically get done.

17:57Nir Eyal:When? I don't know. You know, what I used to do day after day after day was, you know, half my to-do list would not get done. It would get moved over and recycled to the next day and the next day and the next day. And you've heard that quote that insanity is defined as doing the same thing day after day and expecting different results. This was insane. I mean, I did this for years. And what I didn't realize is that your to-do list is the output, right? That's what you want to do. but having output without input makes no sense. What is the input? For a knowledge worker, our input is time. So that means that we need to budget for when we want to do everything on our to-do list.

18:34Nir Eyal:The putting on our to-do list is just step one. The next step has to be, when are you going to do that task? Now, once you've done that, this becomes a very, very powerful tool because this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.

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19:25Nir Eyal:Then we can do what's called schedule syncing. Once you have a time box calendar, they can take that calendar to their boss and say, hey, look, here's what I have. Here's what I'm doing with my week. How does this look? Okay, so it looks all right. My priorities are correct. By the way, you also asked me to do these six other things. Now, my schedule is full. Which one should I swap out? What is more of a priority? This is a life-changing practice because most managers and employees have kind of accepted this crazy relationship that we have where we just lob work over to each other and say, do this, do this, do this with no appreciation for, is there time to do these things?

20:02Nir Eyal:And it frees up your time for the other areas of your life, right? It's not fair that if we don't finish work at work, that the default is, well, it has to come home with us for nights and weekends. That's not fair. We enter into a trust pact with our employer that we say we will give you X amount of hours and the employee expects X amount of hours for a certain amount of pay. But if our work keeps expanding outside of work and we're not getting compensated for that. And so, of course, there are some professions where you just have to expect that. If you're going to work at a startup, if you're going to work on Wall Street, you know what you're signing up for.