Why You’re Always Distracted - 5 Mistakes Ruining Your Focus

2024-03-19 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 18:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Health, sleep and habits) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali names five mistakes that ruin focus: not having a plan, ignoring the negative emotion behind a distraction, switching between tasks, not taking real breaks, and neglecting the "hardware" of sleep, diet and exercise; the video opens his three-part series on focus.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why focus is a life-changing skill; his first year of medical school

★★ Ali calls being able to not get distracted one of the most life-changing skills: progress in studies, work, a side hustle or being present with family all requires focus. — 00:00:00 · deep work (concept)
★★ Ali has realised over the years that the quality of his life is directly proportional to his ability to focus. — 00:00:23 · deep work (concept)
★★ Ali says he really struggled to focus in his first year of medical school: burning the midnight oil, overwhelmed and stressed, and he did not do that well in his exams. — 00:00:23

00:01:21 — Mistake 1: not having a plan (Nir Eyal's traction and distraction, the calendar)

★★★ Nir Eyal (quoted): Nir Eyal's Indistractable says the opposite of distraction is traction: traction is doing something intentionally that moves you towards where you want to go, distraction what takes you away from it. — 00:01:30

“the opposite of distraction is traction”
★ Ali says his channel will probably make a video about Nir Eyal's book Indistractable at some point. (hedged) — 00:01:30
★★ Nir Eyal (quoted): Nir Eyal says that to know what you want to do and what you want to avoid you need a plan: distraction is intending to do one thing and finding yourself doing another. — 00:01:30
★★★ Ali's first focus mistake, one he makes all the time, is not having a plan: sitting down at the computer or phone with nothing in mind leads to doing all the other small things. — 00:02:14
★★ Going on YouTube or social media with no goal, Ali says, outsources the decision of how to spend his time, his most valuable resource, to developers whose goal is to keep him on the platform. — 00:02:14 · YouTube
★★ Nir Eyal (quoted): When people tell Nir Eyal they struggle with distraction, he asks to see their calendar and what they intended to do in that time block. — 00:02:55
★★ Ali advises anyone who does not use a calendar to start, calling it game changing because it is a log of what you intend to do; a task time-blocked as an intention gives you traction. — 00:02:55
★ Ali says that when we set an intention or a goal, the brain is far more likely to marshal the resources and mental faculties to get there. — 00:03:36

00:04:06 — Sponsor read for HubSpot's free ebook on generative AI for content

★★ When people still get distracted after making a plan, Ali says, a key mistake is telling themselves identity statements such as "I'm just a distracted person" or "I just can't focus". — 00:05:04
★★ Another mistake, Ali says, is blaming the social media companies for distraction: fundamentally it is our own job to control our psychology. — 00:05:04

00:05:13 — Mistake 2: ignoring how you feel (fear, self-doubt and boredom; fast, bad, wrong; what would this look like if it were fun)

★★★ Ali's second focus mistake is ignoring how you feel: once you have a plan and still get distracted, generally a negative emotion is at the root of the distraction. — 00:05:42
★★ Ali's rule: whenever he gets distracted while having a plan, he assumes there is an emotion he is trying to avoid and asks what that negative emotion is. — 00:06:12
★★ Ali names three broad categories of negative emotion we try to avoid through distraction: boredom, anxiety and self-doubt, the last two rooted in fear. — 00:06:12
★★ Writing his book Feel-Good Productivity, Ali had time blocks and word targets but so much anxiety and self-doubt about his ability to write a book that fear blocked him. — 00:06:49 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
★★ Rather than face that fear while writing his book, Ali would soothe himself by opening his phone or watching YouTube, such as an Asmongold video essay about World of Warcraft. — 00:07:14 · World of Warcraft, YouTube
★★★ Against the fear behind writer's block, Ali uses fast, bad, wrong (FBR): if the goal is to make something fast, bad and wrong, he is confident he can, and the negative emotion goes away. — 00:07:44
★★★ For boring tasks, Ali keeps the question "What would this look like if it were fun?" as his phone wallpaper, and usually as a sticky note on his computer monitor. — 00:08:25
★★ Ali says the three Ps of his book, play, power and people, can be applied to any work to make it more fun, and work that is more enjoyable distracts us less. — 00:08:25 · play, power, people, Feel-Good Productivity (book)
★★ Ali says the term attention residue was introduced by Professor Sophie Leroy of the University of Washington in a 2009 paper: switching from task A to task B, attention does not instantly follow. — 00:09:07

00:09:14 — Mistake 3: switching between too many tasks (attention residue, notifications, shallow work)

★★ Ali says our brains are not designed to keep parallel tracks of attention going, so switching between many tasks in a work block may feel productive but is counterproductive. — 00:09:36
★★★ Ali's third focus mistake is task switching: do one thing at a time, since writing while answering Slack messages and emails is far less efficient and effective than working in series. — 00:10:06 · deep work (concept), Slack
★★ Ali advises turning off notifications and turning on the focus mode on the phone and every device; his Apple devices share the focus mode, and he keeps his phone face down on the table. — 00:10:06 · Apple
★★ Just before filming the video, Ali saw about 18 unread Slack messages he was tagged in and chose not to look at them, knowing they would cause attention residue. — 00:10:35 · Slack
★★ Ali sometimes uses an empty half hour after lunch for shallow work, replying on WhatsApp and elsewhere, which is fine because that is the intention he set for that block. — 00:11:04 · WhatsApp
★★ Ali says the more intentional we are with the blocks of time in our calendar and life, the more likely we are to make time for what really matters to us. — 00:11:04

00:11:42 — Mistake 4: not taking breaks (52 minutes of work, 17 of rest)

★★★ Ali cites the Draugiem Group, a tech company: with a time-tracking app it found its most productive employees worked fewer hours and took more breaks; the top 10% worked intensely for 52 minutes, then took 17 minutes off. — 00:11:48 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
★★ Ali likes keeping the numbers 52 and 17 in mind: odd numbers, but a pretty reasonable ratio of work to break time, with the breaks spent really resting rather than checking Slack or email. — 00:12:17 · Slack
★★ Rather than fixed blocks, except before a meeting, Ali puts on the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, works as long as he makes full-focus progress, and takes a break when he finds himself wanting to do something else. — 00:13:28 · The Lord of the Rings
★★★ Ali says what you do in a break should not generate any additional obligations: checking messages during a break creates new tasks that distract you from the next piece of work. — 00:13:52
★★★ Ali's fifth focus mistake is neglecting the "hardware", the body and brain: diet, exercise and above all sleep are among the biggest things that ruin focus. — 00:14:21

00:14:26 — Mistake 5: not hitting the golden trio of sleep, diet and exercise

★★ Ali says what everyone already knows: sleep eight hours a night, eat healthy food ("eat like an adult, don't eat like a child") and ideally exercise every day. — 00:14:50
★★ Ali finds going to the gym first thing in the morning, four or five times a week, incredibly helpful for his energy levels and for not getting distracted during the day. — 00:14:50
★ Ali slept only about four and a half hours the night before filming, after watching Dune: Part Two and video essays on how it was made, so he has to be even more careful about his plan. — 00:15:49
★★★ Ali says you cannot expect to focus when your sleep, diet and exercise are terrible, so with focus problems you usually want to deal with the hardware first. — 00:15:49
★★ Sahil Bloom (quoted): Ali's friend Sahil Bloom often says there is no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5 a.m. and does a workout. — 00:15:49 · also in: My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom
★★ Ali reads Sahil Bloom's line as saying that waking an hour earlier to exercise takes care of yourself in a way that bleeds into all other areas of life and helps you stay focused. — 00:16:18
★ Ali says every high-flying CEO he has spoken to works out first thing in the morning. (overstated) — 00:16:41
★★ When people at his events and talks tell Ali they struggle with distraction, he usually finds they are not exercising, eating well or sleeping well. — 00:16:41

00:17:06 — The first video of a three-part series on focus; sign-off

★★ Ali says this video is the first of a three-part series on how to be more focused, made because polls show his audience struggles with focus; video two will cover strategies and techniques. — 00:17:06
★★ The third video of Ali's focus series will be about his favourite tools for staying focused. — 00:17:50

Threads in this video

restate · How do you improve your focus? — Nir Eyal says that to know what you want to do and what you want to avoid you need a plan: distraction is intending to do one thing and finding yourself doing another. (00:01:30)
restate · How do you improve your focus? — Ali's third focus mistake is task switching: do one thing at a time, since writing while answering Slack messages and emails is far less efficient and effective than working in series. (00:10:06)
refine · How do you improve your focus? — Ali's second focus mistake is ignoring how you feel: once you have a plan and still get distracted, generally a negative emotion is at the root of the distraction. (00:05:42)
refine · How do you stop your phone and social media from eating your time? — Going on YouTube or social media with no goal, Ali says, outsources the decision of how to spend his time, his most valuable resource, to developers whose goal is to keep him on the platform. (00:02:14)
restate · How do you stop your phone and social media from eating your time? — Ali advises turning off notifications and turning on the focus mode on the phone and every device; his Apple devices share the focus mode, and he keeps his phone face down on the table. (00:10:06)
restate · Should you time-block your calendar? — Ali advises anyone who does not use a calendar to start, calling it game changing because it is a log of what you intend to do; a task time-blocked as an intention gives you traction. (00:02:55)
refine · Should you time-block your calendar? — Ali says the more intentional we are with the blocks of time in our calendar and life, the more likely we are to make time for what really matters to us. (00:11:04)
restate · How do you get past perfectionism and the fear of starting? — Against the fear behind writer's block, Ali uses fast, bad, wrong (FBR): if the goal is to make something fast, bad and wrong, he is confident he can, and the negative emotion goes away. (00:07:44)
refine · How do you make boring work more enjoyable? — For boring tasks, Ali keeps the question "What would this look like if it were fun?" as his phone wallpaper, and usually as a sticky note on his computer monitor. (00:08:25)
restate · Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work? — Ali says the three Ps of his book, play, power and people, can be applied to any work to make it more fun, and work that is more enjoyable distracts us less. (00:08:25)
refine · Should you use the Pomodoro technique? — Ali likes keeping the numbers 52 and 17 in mind: odd numbers, but a pretty reasonable ratio of work to break time, with the breaks spent really resting rather than checking Slack or email. (00:12:17)
restate · Should you use the Pomodoro technique? — Rather than fixed blocks, except before a meeting, Ali puts on the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, works as long as he makes full-focus progress, and takes a break when he finds himself wanting to do something else. (00:13:28)
refine · How do you have more energy during the day? — Ali finds going to the gym first thing in the morning, four or five times a week, incredibly helpful for his energy levels and for not getting distracted during the day. (00:14:50)
looked back · Ali's first book, which a publisher asked him to write (2020) — Writing his book Feel-Good Productivity, Ali had time blocks and word targets but so much anxiety and self-doubt about his ability to write a book that fear blocked him. (00:06:49)
progress update · Ali says he can do a three-part video series on the art and science of how to focus if viewers ask for it (2024) — Ali says this video is the first of a three-part series on how to be more focused, made because polls show his audience struggles with focus; video two will cover strategies and techniques. (00:17:06)
promised · Ali says his channel will probably make a video about Nir Eyal's book Indistractable (2024) — Ali says his channel will probably make a video about Nir Eyal's book Indistractable at some point. (00:01:30)
refine · What morning routine should you have? — Ali finds going to the gym first thing in the morning, four or five times a week, incredibly helpful for his energy levels and for not getting distracted during the day. (00:14:50)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: attention residue · deep work (concept) · Draugiem Group · Indistractable · Nir Eyal

Also: People: Asmongold · Sahil Bloom · Sophie Leroy

Works: Dune: Part Two · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · The Lord of the Rings

Organizations: Apple · University of Washington · YouTube

Concepts: FBR (fast, bad, wrong) · play, power, people · shallow work

Products: Slack · WhatsApp · World of Warcraft

Also centred on Indistractable: How I Work for 15 hours and Not Get Bored · How to Not Waste Your Life (Stop Getting Distracted)

Also centred on Nir Eyal: How to Not Waste Your Life (Stop Getting Distracted)

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