How to Stay Indistractable in Business and Life with Nir Eyal

0:00Nir Eyal:We like to think that distraction is about what happens outside of us, right? The pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment that leads us off track. But that is only 10 % of the reason we get distracted. Studies find that on average, only 10 % of the time that you're distracted, are you distracted because of something in your outside environment? 90 % of the time, the reason we go off track is because of an internal trigger, not an external trigger, but an internal trigger. Because one of the revelations I had in the five years writing this book, is that distraction begins from within.

0:33Alex Chisnall:Nia Ayal, best-selling author of Indistractable and Hooked.

0:37Nir Eyal:Plato talked about distraction 2 ,500 years ago. Before the iPhone, before the internet, 2 ,500 years, the Greek philosophers were talking about distraction. This is not a good problem. Unless we figure out how to deal with that discomfort in a healthy way that leads us towards traction rather than distraction, we'll never overcome it.

0:55Alex Chisnall:Welcome to this special bite-sized episode of Screw It, Just Do It from our back catalogue of over 550 past episodes. If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow the show and grab your free two-day pass to the Festival of Entrepreneurs this October. Just head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to claim yours and don't forget to dive into the back catalogue. Now open for this year's Festival of Entrepreneurs. Join us at the NEC in Birmingham on October the 8th and 9th for two game-changing days with 200-plus speakers and thousands of ambitious founders. Get your free limited two-day pass at festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and click my personal link in the show notes.

1:32Alex Chisnall:You said you were clinically obese then. What made you, I didn't know that by the way. When did you make the decision to do something about that and what steps did you put in place? Because one of the biggest takeaways I've gotten from your book is literally that thing of scheduling those things that are important to you. So for me, again, it was like with the exercise And I kind of go, you know, like everybody, you know, you kind of go, you know, up and down. And I would set myself these. I did this thing called 75 hard. He did it for 75 days. And I ended up going from like running 5K five weeks later.

2:06Alex Chisnall:I ran a marathon, which in hindsight was kind of a crazy thing to do. But it's led me to a love of long distance running. And that's what I now do. And that's like a big, you know, lockdown takeaway. But I now know that I have to schedule those runs in. so my time goes into that darren i also now know from reading your book that i schedule time with my wife even when we want to talk about plans for the house or plans for the holidays with the girls you know um but yeah interested to know from you then when did you make that decision and what

2:37Nir Eyal:steps did you put in place so there's there's four big strategies to becoming indistractable the first strategy is to master the internal triggers and i think this is the most important because we like to think that distraction is about what happens outside of us, right? The pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment that leads us off track. But that is only 10 % of the reason we get distracted. Studies find that on average, only 10 % of the time that you're distracted, are you distracted because of something in your outside environment? 90 % of the time, 9-0 % of the time, the reason we go off track is because of an internal trigger, not an external trigger, but an internal trigger.

3:15Nir Eyal:because one of the revelations I had in the five years writing this book is that distraction begins from within. Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, stress, anxiety. This is why we look for distraction, which is why we have to understand this cardinal principle that time management requires pain management. Let me say that again. Time management requires pain management. Because if you don't understand this fact, whether it's too much booze, too much news, too much food, too much Facebook, too much football, it doesn't matter.

3:53Nir Eyal:You will always find distraction somewhere unless you understand what you are trying to escape, that uncomfortable emotional state that you're trying to escape from. So when you asked about how I overcame my obesity, I would love to tell you that I was obese because I was hungry a lot, right? Or because McDonald's made delicious food. Come on, it's not true. I wish I could blame it on the junk food manufacturers. Oh, the big bad food manufacturing industry with their delicious food that they're shoving down my throat. Come on, give me a break. You know why I overate? Because I ate my feelings, right?

4:27Nir Eyal:I was eating when I was bored. I was eating when I was lonely. I was eating when I felt shameful for how much I had eaten.

4:33Alex Chisnall:Yeah, yeah.

4:34Nir Eyal:And it's only when I sat down and realized that that's what I was doing. It's the same reason we procrastinate, same reason we get distracted, same reason we drink too much, scroll too much, click too much. It's all about the desire to escape discomfort. We don't like to talk about this, this icky, sticky truth, but that's what's going on. If we don't master these internal triggers, they become our masters.

4:57Alex Chisnall:I love that. That's really interesting, isn't it? And I can totally relate to that at the moment, like keep putting another project off and you find yourself looking at your favorite websites, checking the sport, checking price of Bitcoin, whatever it is. You'll always find something. Escapism, isn't it? Yeah, you'll always find something. You'll always find something, which is why that's where we have to start.

5:19Nir Eyal:None of the life tips, none of the hacks and none of that stuff will work unless you deal with this fact first and foremost. You'll always find a distraction one place or another. That's why I don't like it when people blame technology. Oh, technology is addicting us. Come on, rubbish, silly. You'll always find something. What do you think? Distraction is new? Plato talked about distraction 2 ,500 years ago. Before the iPhone, before the internet, 2 ,500 years, the Greek philosophers were talking about distraction. This is not a new problem. Unless we figure out how to deal with that discomfort in a healthy way that leads us towards traction rather than distraction, we'll never overcome it.

5:54Nir Eyal:And so that's why I give people these arrows in their quiver, these tools that they can use whenever they feel this discomfort, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, stress, fearfulness, what are you going to do when you feel that discomfort? Are you going to try and escape it? Are you going to try and figure out how to get out of that discomfort by scrolling, by clicking, by drinking, by doing anything but the thing you said you were going to do? Or are you going to harness that discomfort to propel you forward like rocket fuel towards traction rather than distraction?

6:23Alex Chisnall:If you're enjoying this conversation and thinking, I need to be around more people like this, then I've got the perfect solution for you. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is where 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it. It's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes. Real entrepreneurs, real stories, real strategies, exactly like what you're hearing right now, but live and in person. Go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone. When you were moving from a place of obesity to where you are now, was it a series of you know those small actions compounded over time and then you you you you felt the traction you felt that momentum and you know mentally you're in in a place that you could you could keep going now and i'm sure you kind of fell up you might have fallen off the wagon got

7:20Nir Eyal:back on the wagon those kinds of things for sure for sure you know it's it's uh it's really about that first step of understanding those internal triggers i mean that you know distraction is not just about digital distraction. It's about all kinds of distractions, about anything that takes you away from doing what you said you were going to do. So whether it's I'm on a diet and I slipped up and I ate that chocolate cake, or I smoked that cigarette I'm trying to quit, or I procrastinated and watched sports or Bitcoin or whatever, right? Not doing what you said you're going to do, which by the way, none of those things, I'm not against those things.

7:51Nir Eyal:If those are things that you do according to your values, do them, but do them with intent, right? Do them because you decided that's what you were going to do with your time in advance. So for me, my journey with physical fitness has to do with a few principles. One, and by the way, you can apply these principles in many different categories. I think one of my life mantras that I've adopted since writing the book is consistency over intensity. Consistency over intensity. That to move your life, your career, your relationships forward, it's not about those bursts of intense activity. That's what we want, right?

8:27Nir Eyal:We want the simple solutions. We want the pill. We want the magic formula. There is no magic formula. We have to freaking do the hard work, but we have to do it consistently, right? And I see this all the time. Oh, I'm going to go on a diet so that I can get into my wedding dress or my suit. And then the next day after the wedding, I'm going to eat everything I want. What the heck is the point of that? This is why diets don't work because they're temporary, right? Like you're going to be, you know, you're overweight the rest of your life because you've gotten to the wedding gown or the suit? Who cares?

8:57Nir Eyal:So that's what it's really about. It's about consistency over intensity. Writing a book, I didn't set out to write two bestsellers. I set out to make consistent forward progress. So every day, writing for a couple hours, it's all it takes. If you sit down and write for two hours a day, you'll have a book at the end of the year. But how many people can dedicate the time to put forth that consistent effort? It's not about the flash in the pan. It's about consistent forward momentum, consistency over intensity.

9:24Alex Chisnall:And even, you know, those days that you, you struggle to write, did you just make yourself write something in that, you know, allotted time?

9:34Nir Eyal:So, so step one is about making, is about mastering the internal triggers. So knowing what I will do when I feel bored, right? Writing is hard work, or there's a myth these days that you can turn anything into a habit. Okay. Let me tell you right now, writing ain't a habit. All right. People use the term habit to mean something that I want to have done. I don't want to do it. I want to have done do it because it sucks doing it. We've been taught, I think, this myth. Look, I write about habits. I'm a proponent of habits. Habits are great, but people don't understand what habits are. Habits are defined as impulses to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought.

10:12Nir Eyal:How do you write with little or no conscious thought? I don't know how to do that. I've written thousands of articles. I've been in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, two bestsellers. Writing is always hard work. It's always difficult. And telling people that you can turn things into a habit when you can't, what happens is people don't think that the technique is broken. They think they're broken. They think, oh, there must be something wrong with me. No, it's this stupid technique you've been sold that doesn't work. Writing, for example, is not going to become a habit. Exercise is not a habit.

10:43Nir Eyal:Can you do with little or no conscious thought? Not if you're trying to get stronger, you can't. It's the antithesis of a habit. It's called deliberate practice. You know, the whole 10 ,000 hour rule, that wasn't 10 ,000 hours of habitual practice. It was deliberate practice. You have to think about how you can improve. So I think this is a message that we're not told enough is that many behaviors are never going to get easy. They're never going to get easy. They're never going to become habits. What they can become are routines. Routines is a series of behaviors frequently repeated. But what we've been sold by, I think, the self-help industry is that you can make everything effortless.

11:18Nir Eyal:You can't. You can't. So what we have to do is to learn how to lean into that discomfort. Listen, feeling bad is not bad. There's nothing wrong with discomfort. It's telling you this is something rare and valuable, right? If it wasn't, other people would do it and find it easy. So we have to learn, and this is what I teach in Indistractable, how do you lean into that discomfort? How do you master the ultimate power of turning something you hate into something you enjoy. That's how you get consistency over intensity. You learn to love the doing, not the outcome, but the input.

11:52Alex Chisnall:That conversation just proves something. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here's my challenge. Upgrade your network. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection. Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance.

12:28Nir Eyal:It's missing the opportunity entirely.

12:31Alex Chisnall:Some key takeaways from Nia's insights there. And what I'll say also is when I, I mean, again, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you'll know the first ever interview I did was with Stephen Bartlett, host of Diary of the CEO. I remember going to an event to see Stephen during lockdown, I think it was. It was in, I don't know, 2021, maybe something like that. He said as part of his keynote, somebody asked him a question and said, who's, and it is a few years ago, I know, but he'd done a lot of interviews at that point. They asked him who his favorite guest had been at that point in time.

13:07Alex Chisnall:And he said near IR was his favorite conversation. And obviously, since then, if you follow Diver's CEO, you've seen he's gone way more down the route of interviewing people who are experts in their field rather than just entrepreneurs, business owners. I would say he's, you know, if you follow Stephen Farl, it's more about finding out, you know, what people tick, what makes people tick, how we can improve ourselves in any way, shape or form. And obviously Nia Ayal leans into that in a number of things if you've just listened to the episode. So for me, you can't cause something a distraction unless you know what it's distracting you from.

13:50Alex Chisnall:Okay, so you need to work that bit out first and you need to note what are your individual internal triggers, like what triggers you to be unproductive. And it's gonna be different for everybody, right? it's going to be completely different. And the one I like the best, choose consistency over intensity for long-term results. Just doing that thing every day.