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How to Not Waste Your Life (Stop Getting Distracted)

2024-10-25 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 16:49 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, Evidence-based framing, Sponsor segment present

Ali goes through four principles of Nir Eyal's Indistractable and his conversation with Nir: the 10-minute rule against the internal triggers behind 90% of distraction, the willpower myth, traction timeboxing in the calendar, and price, effort and identity pacts.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Introduction: the opposite of distraction is traction; Nir Eyal and Indistractable

  • ★★★ Drawing on Nir Eyal's Indistractable, Ali says the opposite of distraction is traction: distraction is any action that pulls you away from your goals, traction any action that pulls you towards them. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Being indistractable, Ali says, is doing what you say you are going to do; otherwise we look back full of regret at the business, book, podcast or YouTube channel we never started because we got distracted. — 00:00:29
  • ★ Ali says it took Nir Eyal five years to write Indistractable because, ironically, he kept getting distracted, and that Nir partly wrote it to find out how to become indistractable himself. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ According to Nir Eyal's research, Ali says, external triggers such as phones, emails, work and children account for only around 10% of our distractions, and 90% come from internal triggers. — 00:00:58

00:01:18 — Principle 1: the 10 minute rule, internal triggers and the distraction notebook

  • ★★ Ali defines internal triggers as uncomfortable emotional states we seek to escape, such as boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty and anxiety. — 00:01:44
  • ★★ Ali says research shows we are more motivated to avoid pain than to seek pleasure, which prospect theory uses to explain why people care more about not losing a hundred dollars than about winning a hundred. — 00:01:44
  • ★★★ Ali's first principle is Nir Eyal's 10-minute rule: you may give in to any distraction, whether chocolate cake on a diet, a cigarette or checking your phone, but not right now, in 10 minutes; if 10 minutes is too long, make it five. — 00:02:22
  • ★★ During the 10 minutes before giving in to a distraction, Ali says, you can go back to what you were doing or surf the urge: acknowledge that emotions come in waves and explore why the feeling came about. — 00:02:48
  • ★★ Ali's key action point is a distraction notebook, as Nir Eyal calls it, to become aware of the emotion that comes before each distraction; Nir recommends keeping it on pen and paper rather than in your head. — 00:02:48
  • ★★★ Ali's one takeaway: practically all of the time, 90% of the time, you get distracted because there is an emotional state you are trying to avoid, and knowing that helps you find the source of the emotion. — 00:03:47
  • ★★ Ali says feelings are not facts: a feeling comes from an internal sensation and the story we tell ourselves about it, and that negative emotion is what we try to avoid when we get distracted. — 00:04:16

00:04:45 — Sponsor read for Brilliant

  • ★★ Beyond internal triggers, Ali says, the other 10% of distraction has two causes: planning problems and external triggers. — 00:04:45

00:06:30 — Principle 2: the willpower myth, ego depletion and Carol Dweck

  • ★★ Ali says the popular notion that willpower is a limited resource came from research on ego depletion, whose original study was published in 1998 by the psychologist Roy Baumeister. — 00:06:42
  • ★★ Ali says people like the idea of willpower as a limited resource because it is comforting: it lets them say their willpower ran out by the end of the day, so watching Netflix instead of working on their goals is not their fault. — 00:07:29 · Netflix
  • ★★★ Ali says the results of the original 1998 ego depletion study have been totally debunked: we do not run out of willpower like gas in a gas tank. — 00:07:29
  • ★★★ Ali cites work by Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, which found that the only people who run out of willpower are those who believe willpower is a depletable resource. — 00:07:58
  • ★★★ Ali says that if you choose to believe willpower is not a depletable resource and that you can always muster willpower and discipline, running out of it will not really become a problem. — 00:08:27
  • ★ Ali says the word addiction comes from the Latin addictio, meaning slave. — 00:08:27
  • ★★ Telling yourself "I am addicted, I have no more willpower" makes it true, Ali says, so adopt only the labels that serve you rather than the ones that hurt you. — 00:08:27

00:08:59 — Plug for his free focus email course

  • ★★★ Ali's third principle, traction timeboxing: everything is a distraction unless you plan your time, and timeboxing is setting an implementation intention, saying what you will do and when. — 00:09:28 · time-blocking

00:09:40 — Principle 3: traction timeboxing, the calendar and the new metric

  • ★★ Ali says the issue with to-do lists is that ticking items off one by one lets you plan neither how much time a task will take nor how much attention it needs; timeboxing in the calendar tracks both. — 00:09:57
  • ★★ At university Ali was bad at managing his time until he started using a calendar, timeboxing and planning his week, deciding when to write essays and work on his side business, which made him far more effective. — 00:10:27 · time-blocking
  • ★ Planning his calendar at university did not mean planning every moment: Ali also had a very social life and played board games with friends until four in the morning way too often. — 00:10:27
  • ★★ Ali recommends using a calendar for your personal life and side goals too, such as starting a YouTube channel or a business or watching the top 50 films on IMDb: timeboxing them helps you make the most of your time. — 00:10:56
  • ★★★ With timeboxing, Ali says, the metric becomes "Did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction?", the only way to have a feedback loop. — 00:11:21
  • ★★ Ali says everything in your calendar should ideally be traction, actions that pull you towards your goals. — 00:11:21
  • ★★ To people who call time-blocking everything toxic productivity with no room for spontaneity or fun, Ali answers that you can timebox your evenings to be fully present with your partner. — 00:11:21 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Ali timeboxes every Wednesday evening as a solo relaxation evening. — 00:12:09
  • ★★★ Ali wants you to spend your time, the most valuable non-renewable resource, on what you care about and to decide that yourself instead of letting engineers at Facebook, TikTok and Instagram decide; TikTok or Netflix is fine if it is your decision. — 00:12:09 · Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Netflix
  • ★★ Ali's fourth principle, the rule of pacts: three types of pact help you become indistractable, price, effort and identity. — 00:12:52 · friction
  • ★★ Nir Eyal told Ali about his "burn or burn" price pact for working out: once overweight and now very fit, he taped a $100 note to his mirror and each day either burned calories exercising or had to burn the note. (hedged) — 00:12:52

00:12:53 — Principle 4: the rule of pacts: price, effort and identity

  • ★★ Nir Eyal has never broken his burn-or-burn price pact, Ali says, and used one to write Indistractable: had he not finished the book by a certain date, he would have owed someone $20,000. — 00:13:26
  • ★★ Effort pacts, Ali says, put a bit of friction between you and the distraction: Nir Eyal's internet turns off automatically at 10 p.m. every day, and turning it back on takes effort and thought. — 00:13:26 · friction
  • ★★★ As an effort pact Ali uses Opal, an app he calls very good, set to block all social media apps on his phone after 10 p.m. and before 9 a.m. — 00:13:55
  • ★★ Opal lets Ali unblock apps after a wait of about 30 seconds, in which he asks himself whether he really needs to post an Instagram story at 11.30 p.m.; he now goes on social media far less than he used to. — 00:14:24 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali recommends blocking social media at night: there is no reason ever to click on a social media app at night when your main goal is to sleep. — 00:14:54
  • ★★ Identity pacts, Ali says: giving yourself an identity makes you much more likely to act on it, which is why the book is called Indistractable, a name meant to sound like indestructible. — 00:14:54
  • ★★ Tony Robbins (quoted): Tony Robbins says the strongest force in human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we think of ourselves. — 00:15:23 · first in: 2024-06-06, What Identity Do You Want To Embody? 🫵
  • ★★★ Ali says identity drives behaviour: if your identity is that of a writer you are much more likely to write, a YouTuber to create videos, a healthy person to go to the gym. — 00:15:52
  • ★★ Ali cites James Clear's Atomic Habits: identity-based behaviour change is a lot easier than focusing on the tactics. — 00:16:21 · James Clear, Atomic Habits
  • ★★ Ali recommends Nir Eyal's book Indistractable, which he calls really good. — 00:16:21

00:16:30 — Recommends the book and his phone addiction video; sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali says that a few months ago he spoke to author and investor Nir Eyal about how not to get distracted, and this video goes through the best parts of that conversation and lessons from Nir's book Indistractable. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: ego depletion · Indistractable · internal triggers · Nir Eyal · time-blocking · traction (concept)

Also: People: Carol Dweck · James Clear · Roy Baumeister · Tony Robbins

Works: Atomic Habits · Mindset

Organizations: Facebook · Instagram · Netflix · TikTok

Concepts: distraction notebook · friction · identity-based habits · implementation intentions · price pact · prospect theory · surfing the urge

Products: Amazon Alexa · Opal

Also centred on Indistractable: How I Work for 15 hours and Not Get Bored · Why You’re Always Distracted - 5 Mistakes Ruining Your Focus

Also centred on Nir Eyal: Why You’re Always Distracted - 5 Mistakes Ruining Your Focus

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