Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like life is just one problem
Speaker 1: after another. You finally feel like maybe there's a break,
Speaker 1: and then bam, another problem. This is how it is
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Speaker 1: to respond, a way of responding that brings greater ease
Speaker 1: into your life and returns some of the energy that
Speaker 1: the problems drained from you. We are hosting a free
Speaker 1: live masterclass on Sunday, March third, called Learn the Keystone
Speaker 1: Habit to unlock energy and ease in your life. In it,
Speaker 1: I will teach you how to tap into resources already
Speaker 1: within you so that life feels less like a never
Speaker 1: ending fight and more like an ever evolving dance. You
Speaker 1: will learn the number one source of unhappiness that drains
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Speaker 1: doesn't feel like such a constant struggle. This will be
Speaker 1: a live event and you'll have a chance to interact
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Speaker 2: Time management is pain management. Everything we do is about
Speaker 2: a desire to escape discomfort.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 3: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 3: joining us. Our guest on this episode is near Al,
Speaker 3: author and previous lecture at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Speaker 3: and Hasso Platner Institute of Design. His writing on technology, psychology,
Speaker 3: and business appears in the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic,
Speaker 3: Psychology Today, and others. His new book is Indistractable, How
Speaker 3: to Control Your attention and Choose your Life.
Speaker 1: Hi, Near, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks great to be here.
Speaker 1: I am excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about your book, Indistractable, How to Control your Tension
Speaker 1: and Choose your Life here in a moment. But let's
Speaker 1: start the way we always do, with a parable. There
Speaker 1: is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather. He's his grandfather. Which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 2: I think the parable is really about the power of habits,
Speaker 2: that we are a sum of our behaviors. I don't
Speaker 2: believe that people have fixed personalities. I don't believe that
Speaker 2: there's an identity that we are stuck with from birth.
Speaker 2: That we are able to in fact change ourselves anyway
Speaker 2: we wish, and we are a sum product of our behaviors.
Speaker 2: We can change those behaviors if we are diligent about
Speaker 2: understanding why we do what we do and then take
Speaker 2: the steps to alter our path so that we can
Speaker 2: be the kind of people we want to be. And
Speaker 2: that's to me, what feeding one wolf or the other
Speaker 2: is all about. It's about which behaviors do you repeat
Speaker 2: versus which behaviors do you starve?
Speaker 1: As a wonderful way to start off and a good
Speaker 1: summary for why we do what we do here on
Speaker 1: this show. So your book is about being indistractable, how
Speaker 1: to control our attention and choose our lives. And I
Speaker 1: love this idea that where our attention goes really controls,
Speaker 1: to a large extent, the quality of our life. What
Speaker 1: we pay attention to really directs our experience. And so
Speaker 1: I've got a spiritual habits course that I lead, and
Speaker 1: one of the key principles we talk about in the
Speaker 1: very beginning is the idea of what's my intention, and
Speaker 1: then what am I doing with my attention? And if
Speaker 1: you've got those two things sort of locked in, you
Speaker 1: can do so much.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. I mean, there's a reason we call
Speaker 2: it paying attention. There is a value there, there's a cost,
Speaker 2: and for most of us, we just give it away, right,
Speaker 2: And how crazy is that? Right? If we think about
Speaker 2: our stuff, our physical possessions. We put our you know,
Speaker 2: we put our money behind vaults inside banks, we put
Speaker 2: security systems in our homes, alarms in our cars to
Speaker 2: protect our stuff. But when it comes to the one
Speaker 2: thing that everyone on earth has the same amount of
Speaker 2: our time, Well, I don't care if you're Warren Buffett
Speaker 2: or Bill Gates or anyone. You have the same twenty
Speaker 2: four hours every day. And yet so many of us, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: just give it away anybody.
Speaker 4: Who wants it.
Speaker 2: Whatever's in the news, whatever happened on Twitter, whatever our kids,
Speaker 2: our spouse, our boss, whoever wants it, Come on.
Speaker 4: Over, take as much as you want.
Speaker 2: And I think what's going to happen, especially in this
Speaker 2: day and age, where you know, distraction is so easy
Speaker 2: to find because it's so accessible in our pockets at
Speaker 2: all times, with ourselves, phones, and other technologies that if
Speaker 2: you are looking for a distraction, you will certainly find it.
Speaker 2: And so I think what's going to happen, It's already happening.
Speaker 2: Is a real bifurcation between people who say to themselves, look,
Speaker 2: my time, my attention, my life is mine, and I
Speaker 2: will choose how I allocate my time and attention, or
Speaker 2: the people who say, okay, you know whatever, I'll give
Speaker 2: it away to whoever wants it. And I think the
Speaker 2: people who can proudly proclaim that no, they are going
Speaker 2: to be in control of their time and attention and
Speaker 2: their life, those are the people who'll be able to say,
Speaker 2: I am indistractable. And that's what this book and hopefully
Speaker 2: this movement is really all about. It's about creating this
Speaker 2: identity of people who say I am indistractable. I decide
Speaker 2: how I will spend my time and attention in my life.
Speaker 1: And that is the most important thing I often say
Speaker 1: with coaching clients. You know, the fundamental life skill is
Speaker 1: to be able to decide what's important and then give
Speaker 1: it your attention and your devotion. So you start off
Speaker 1: by saying that one of the things that we really
Speaker 1: need to realize is that we tend to blame our
Speaker 1: distractability on the things that distract us. And you know,
Speaker 1: we live in a world, as you said, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to be distracted. It's never been easier to be distracted.
Speaker 1: But you say that, you know where most people are
Speaker 1: blaming the devices, the technology, all of that, that the
Speaker 1: root cause of this is a lot deeper than that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, that's absolutely right. So you know, there's two
Speaker 2: types of approaches that I think most people take. We
Speaker 2: have what we call the blamers and the shamers. The
Speaker 2: blamers say, oh, you see, I got distracted because of
Speaker 2: my iPhone, because of the email, because of what's happening
Speaker 2: in the news, because of oh I hear this all
Speaker 2: the time. This is my favorite the modern world these days.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Blaming those kind of things outside of yourself is futile.
Speaker 2: You can't change that stuff. Right, These technologies aren't going away,
Speaker 2: and frankly, we don't want them to. These are wonderful technologies, right,
Speaker 2: We use these companies make so much money because we
Speaker 2: like to use these products and services.
Speaker 4: So it's not going away.
Speaker 2: And frankly, there's this myth of you know, the good
Speaker 2: old days, that somehow there was a day when the
Speaker 2: world was without trouble and wasn't distracting. And that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I mean, twenty five hundred years before the iPhone complained
Speaker 2: about how distracting the world was, and the Greek he
Speaker 2: called it acrasia, the tendency that we have to do
Speaker 2: things against our better interest twenty five hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: So this is clearly not a new problem. So being
Speaker 2: a blamer isn't very useful, It doesn't accomplish much. Being
Speaker 2: a shamer is the other extreme. A shamer, they don't
Speaker 2: blame things outside of themselves. They shame themselves. So a
Speaker 2: lot of people do this, right, They have a self
Speaker 2: image that says, oh, you see, I'm so lazy. Here
Speaker 2: I go again getting distracted. That's so like me, I
Speaker 2: can't I have a short attention span. They shame themselves.
Speaker 2: And ironically, what we find is that shame is a
Speaker 2: negative emotion. Shame feels bad, And it turns out that
Speaker 2: the root cause of distraction is in fact unco comfortable
Speaker 2: sensations that when we really look at why people do
Speaker 2: things against their better interest. To answer Plato's twenty five
Speaker 2: hundred year old question of why we do things we
Speaker 2: know we shouldn't do, or don't do the things we
Speaker 2: know we should. It's not a character flaw. It's that
Speaker 2: we just don't know how to regulate our emotions. You see,
Speaker 2: time management is pain management. That everything we do is
Speaker 2: about a desire to escape discomfort. That most people have
Speaker 2: this notion that motivation is about the pursuit of pleasure
Speaker 2: and the avoidance of pain. Freud called this the pleasure principle.
Speaker 2: But in fact it's not true. Like a lot of
Speaker 2: things with Freud, it's not true that, in fact, everything
Speaker 2: we do is not about the pursuit of pleasure and
Speaker 2: the avoidance of pain. Neurologically speaking, it's only about the
Speaker 2: desire to escape discomfort. Everything you do, whether it's physiologically,
Speaker 2: if you feel cold, the brain says, ooh, this is uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Put on a coat. If you feel hunger payings, the
Speaker 2: brain says, this doesn't feel good, you should eat something.
Speaker 2: So everything we do physiologically is about the desire to
Speaker 2: escape discomfort, and the same holds true for our psychological sensations.
Speaker 2: So if we are feeling lonely, we check Facebook. If
Speaker 2: we're uncertain. We google if we're bored, We watch the news,
Speaker 2: We check stock prices, sports scores, pinterest, Twitter, or read it.
Speaker 2: All of these tools cater to these uncomfortable sensations. So
Speaker 2: we have to address this fact that everything we do
Speaker 2: is about the desire to escape discomfort.
Speaker 4: So it's about which wolf you feed? Right?
Speaker 2: Do you feed this wolf by escaping that discomfort? Do
Speaker 2: you look for psychological escape from reality so that you
Speaker 2: don't have to deal with whatever it is is around
Speaker 2: you with too much booze, too much news, too much Facebook,
Speaker 2: too much football, too much whatever to take your mind
Speaker 2: off of those uncomfortable sensations. Or do you build the
Speaker 2: habit of harnessing those internal triggers to lead you towards
Speaker 2: traction rather than distraction. And so this is why we
Speaker 2: don't want to be blamers. We don't want to be shamers.
Speaker 2: We want to be what's called claimers. Claimers acknowledge that
Speaker 2: you cannot control your emotions. Okay, your urges are not
Speaker 2: in your control. Many people don't understand this fact that
Speaker 2: controlling your emotion is like trying to hold in a
Speaker 2: sneeze or a cough. You cannot stop that urge. You
Speaker 2: can only act in response to it. So when you
Speaker 2: feel the urge to sneeze, do you sneeze all over
Speaker 2: everyone and get them sick. No, you take out a
Speaker 2: handkerchief and you sneeze into a tissue, as opposed to
Speaker 2: getting everyone else sick. And so the same thing happens
Speaker 2: with our emotional sensations. How do we respond to those
Speaker 2: internal triggers is incredibly important, and so you know, the
Speaker 2: word responsibility is about how we respond to these these
Speaker 2: uncomfortable sensations, and so that's the really the first step
Speaker 2: to becoming indestractable.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go down this rabbit hole too far,
Speaker 1: but I read the book and I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: a couple of times about this idea that everything is
Speaker 1: a response to pain, right, that it's not seeking pleasure
Speaker 1: and avoiding pain, it's just a response to pain. And
Speaker 1: I just wanted to understand a little bit more about
Speaker 1: where you're pulling that idea and that research from. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. I'm not sure I agree with it,
Speaker 1: but before I go disagreeing with something, i'd want to
Speaker 1: know how to learn more about it. Buddhism has been
Speaker 1: a big part of my life. And right we talk
Speaker 1: about greed and aversion. Right, it's wanting, and it's wanting
Speaker 1: good things and not wanting bad things. But so I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious that the neurological piece of that that
Speaker 1: you talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it comes down to the neural wiring of the
Speaker 2: brain that, in fact, pleasure is an abstraction from what
Speaker 2: is happening neurologically. You said it yourself, it's wanting, craving, desire, lusting.
Speaker 2: There's a reason we say love hurts because even the
Speaker 2: desire for good things, wanting to do something, even if
Speaker 2: it's the pursuit of pleasure is what you want, the
Speaker 2: wanting itself is psychologically destabilizing. That the way the brain
Speaker 2: gets us to act and do anything, even to pursue pleasure,
Speaker 2: is not about what feels good. It's about what felt good.
Speaker 2: That's a very important point. How does that work? The
Speaker 2: way the dope allergic system works in the brain, The
Speaker 2: way our reward system works is by having a memory
Speaker 2: of a past experience that felt good, and then what
Speaker 2: the brain does is cause us this itch, this desire,
Speaker 2: this craving to feel that again. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that the way we should incentivize and motivate people is
Speaker 2: by punishing them and with pain. That's not what I'm
Speaker 2: saying at all. That absolutely that we know that the
Speaker 2: best motivators are these intrinsic motivations, these intrinsic rewards for
Speaker 2: something that is pleasurable. But that doesn't mean that the
Speaker 2: desire to go pursue that pleasurable sensation is itself a
Speaker 2: desire to escape the discomfort of wanting.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me. That piece totally makes sense.
Speaker 1: That wanting is an unpleasant sensation that we then seek
Speaker 1: to relieve, totally makes sense. So I love this idea
Speaker 1: of time management. Is pain management, right? And what you're
Speaker 1: talking about here, essentially there's lots of different words for it.
Speaker 1: A term we've used on the show a lot is
Speaker 1: it's emotional regulation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's this ability, as you said, to be able to Okay,
Speaker 1: I feel an unpleasant emotion and instead of letting that
Speaker 1: spin me off in a variety of directions, I'm going
Speaker 1: to allow that to be there. I'm going to cope
Speaker 1: with it, and then I'm going to act according to
Speaker 1: what I value or what's important to me. So let's
Speaker 1: break down from your perspective. How do we do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So becoming indistractable is really about these four key steps.
Speaker 2: And the first we talked about, which is about mastering
Speaker 2: these internal triggers. And that's the most important step because
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's some technology today. You know it's
Speaker 2: Facebook today or iPhone today, Tomorrow, it's going to be
Speaker 2: something else. Fifty years ago it was the radio or
Speaker 2: television or comic books. Every generation has these successive technologies
Speaker 2: that everybody has a moral panic around and says, it's
Speaker 2: melting our brain, it's super distracting. It's the same story
Speaker 2: every single generation. But the real cause is always what
Speaker 2: is going on inside of us. It's always about the
Speaker 2: desire to escape discomfort. And so there's some tactics I
Speaker 2: talk about three big tactics in the book about what
Speaker 2: you can do to reimagine the trigger, reimagine the task,
Speaker 2: and reimagine your temperament. So that's the first most important step.
Speaker 2: The next step involves differentiating between traction and distraction. And
Speaker 2: so this is a really important point to talk about
Speaker 2: just a bit, because in order to understand what is distraction,
Speaker 2: we have to understand what is the opposite of distraction. Right,
Speaker 2: and so most people will say it's focus. The opposite
Speaker 2: of distraction is focused, But that's not exactly right. The
Speaker 2: opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction
Speaker 2: is track. That In fact, both words come from the
Speaker 2: same Latin root trahare, which means to pull, and they
Speaker 2: both end in the same six letters action that spells action.
Speaker 2: So traction is any action that pulls you towards what
Speaker 2: you want to do, things that you do with intent.
Speaker 2: The opposite of traction is distraction, anything that pulls you
Speaker 2: away from what you plan to do, any actions that
Speaker 2: you are doing without intent. So this is really important
Speaker 2: for two reasons. Number one, anything can become a distraction. Okay,
Speaker 2: so this used to happen to me all the time
Speaker 2: before I wrote this book. You know, I would sit
Speaker 2: down at my desk and I'd say, Okay, now I'm
Speaker 2: going to focus. I'm going to finally get to work.
Speaker 2: I'm going to stop procrastinating. I'm going to do what
Speaker 2: I said I'm going to do. Here I go, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna work on this big project. I'm gonna get so
Speaker 2: much done today. But first, let me check some email, right,
Speaker 2: let me do that one thing on my to do list.
Speaker 2: That's kind of an easy thing to do to get
Speaker 2: some momentum, right, And what I didn't understand is that
Speaker 2: I was allowing distraction to trick me, to full fool me,
Speaker 2: to pull the wool over my eyes, and that I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that when I did that other thing, I
Speaker 2: was getting distracted. And so that's a much more pernicious
Speaker 2: form of distraction. Because look, if you're playing candy Crush
Speaker 2: or watching YouTube video, or you know, putting around at
Speaker 2: your desk playing candy Crush at work, you know that
Speaker 2: that's not what you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 4: You know that's a distraction.
Speaker 2: But if you check email, oh that feels productive, right,
Speaker 2: that's kind of worky.
Speaker 4: But we don't.
Speaker 2: Realize that when that happens, distraction has tricked you into
Speaker 2: prioritizing the urgent at the expense of the important, and
Speaker 2: that is toxic for your productivity and for your well being.
Speaker 2: So anything can become a distraction, and conversely, anything can
Speaker 2: be traction. So I am not one of these chicken
Speaker 2: little anti tech people that say the sky is falling
Speaker 2: and this tech is so horrible and it's melting our brain.
Speaker 2: I know too much history to believe that stuff in
Speaker 2: too much research that says that that is not true.
Speaker 2: It's not hijacking your brain, it's not addicting everyone. That's
Speaker 2: an excuse. That's what the blamers say, because look, the
Speaker 2: fact of the matter is there is nothing wrong with
Speaker 2: using Facebook or YouTube, or watching the news or playing
Speaker 2: a video game, as long as you do it on
Speaker 2: your schedule, not on some media company schedule.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: It's that idea of time that you enjoy.
Speaker 4: Wasting is not wasted time.
Speaker 2: Time you plan to waste is not wasted time. It's
Speaker 2: exactly right if you plan that time. It's traction.
Speaker 1: That's such an important point. It's why when I'm doing
Speaker 1: coaching work with people like we don't start with emotional regulation.
Speaker 1: We start with a plan because until you have the plan,
Speaker 1: you don't know, as you say so eloquently, you don't
Speaker 1: know are you being distracted or not. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what you plan to be doing, what you want
Speaker 1: to be doing in this moment, then you don't know
Speaker 1: if you're procrastinating or not. It's when you go, all right,
Speaker 1: I should be doing this, and then you don't do it.
Speaker 1: Now we know we've got a very clear example.
Speaker 5: Okay, distraction, right exactly.
Speaker 2: And so this is one of the key mantras of
Speaker 2: the book is that you can't call something a distraction
Speaker 2: unless you know what you are distracted from. You can't
Speaker 2: call something a distraction unless you know what you are
Speaker 2: distracted from. Meaning if you don't plan out your day,
Speaker 2: you have no right to complain about getting distracted, because.
Speaker 4: What did you get distracted from?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 2: You know, if you have a bunch of white space
Speaker 2: in your day, everything is a distraction.
Speaker 4: So what are you complaining about? And it's amazing to me.
Speaker 2: You know, two thirds of Americans don't keep any sort
Speaker 2: of a calendar, and I've always kept a calendar, but
Speaker 2: I was actually the one third of people who do
Speaker 2: keep a calendar. But I didn't realize until I wrote
Speaker 2: this book that I was doing it wrong because I
Speaker 2: would interview people. I interviewed hundreds of people for this
Speaker 2: book over the past five years, and the people who
Speaker 2: were most distracted, you know, I talked to them and
Speaker 2: they say, oh, you know, I'm so distracted these days.
Speaker 2: I can't seem to get what I want to do done.
Speaker 2: And you know, did you hear what's happening? In the
Speaker 2: news and Donald Trump said this, and Kim Kardashian that,
Speaker 2: and all this stuff that they get distracted with. And
Speaker 2: then I would say, well, what did you plan to
Speaker 2: do with your time today? And they say, oh, let
Speaker 2: me show you. Look at my to do list. Look
Speaker 2: at all this stuff I didn't get done today that
Speaker 2: I planned to do. And I said, no, no, you
Speaker 2: didn't hear the question. I said, what did you plan
Speaker 2: to do with your time today? Show me your calendar?
Speaker 2: Because what most people don't realize that the to do
Speaker 2: list is evil.
Speaker 3: Right yeap?
Speaker 2: The to do list keeps most people as slaves. And
Speaker 2: people don't realize this. This is a really important point.
Speaker 2: I call this the tyranny of the to do list
Speaker 2: because here's how most people use the to do list.
Speaker 2: They use it as a device to reinforce their identity
Speaker 2: of not.
Speaker 4: Being able to do what they say.
Speaker 2: They are using a method that reinforces their inability to
Speaker 2: do what they say.
Speaker 4: And here's how it works.
Speaker 2: If you're anything like I was, I would keep it
Speaker 2: to do list because you know that's what the productivity
Speaker 2: guruz tells you. To get things done right, you have
Speaker 2: to keep it to do list and day after day,
Speaker 2: about half of my to do list I wouldn't get done.
Speaker 2: I would just recycle that stuff from one day to
Speaker 2: the next the next, and it just wouldn't get done.
Speaker 2: And so what I was doing to myself is reinforcing
Speaker 2: a self image. You know, when you see day after day,
Speaker 2: week after week, month after month, year after year, Yep,
Speaker 2: another day went by and you didn't do what you
Speaker 2: said you were going to do.
Speaker 3: Loser.
Speaker 2: You start to believe that over time you don't even
Speaker 2: realize the subconscious effects that it has on you. And
Speaker 2: so instead of keeping it to do list, which is
Speaker 2: fine if it is a temporary repository of tasks, what
Speaker 2: most people do is they have a big, long to
Speaker 2: do list and then they do whatever they want, whenever
Speaker 2: they want, and they get very little done as opposed
Speaker 2: to the right way is to keep a timebox calendar
Speaker 2: where immediately, if something is important enough to make it
Speaker 2: into your to do list, you put it on your schedule,
Speaker 2: because that is the only way we can live out
Speaker 2: our values. If you want to see my values, look
Speaker 2: at my calendar. Why because I consciously sit down for
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes. It's all It takes fifteen minutes and I
Speaker 2: ask myself, how will I turn my values into time
Speaker 2: this week? The values that I have around taking care
Speaker 2: of myself, which include physical exercise, rest, education, meditation, prayer,
Speaker 2: whatever it is that are your values. I'm not telling
Speaker 2: you what to do, by the way, I'm telling you
Speaker 2: that whatever it is you want to do, you have
Speaker 2: to make time for it, even if it's video games.
Speaker 4: Right. Here's the thing, here's the amazing thing.
Speaker 2: This is why the tyranny of the to do list
Speaker 2: is so evil because even when a productive person wants
Speaker 2: time to relax.
Speaker 4: Okay, I used to get home from work and say,
Speaker 4: I just want to watch some Netflix.
Speaker 2: Right, even when I was watching Netflix, or worse, even worse,
Speaker 2: playing with my daughter in the back of my mind, Oh,
Speaker 2: there's all those things on my to do list, I
Speaker 2: didn't get done yet. And let me tell you, a
Speaker 2: tiny percentage of people in the world have ever experienced
Speaker 2: the bliss that is watching a movie, playing with your kid,
Speaker 2: going out to dinner with your spouse, or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: without the guilt of thinking in the back of your head, oh,
Speaker 2: I should be doing something else. That's such a beautiful
Speaker 2: feeling and it's so ironic that by keeping a to
Speaker 2: do list and not finishing what you said you would do,
Speaker 2: you're actually not even enjoying the leisure time you do
Speaker 2: give to yourself, And so that's why that technique really
Speaker 2: does backfire.
Speaker 1: I would say it slightly differently, but I agree one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. I mean, for me, the to do list
Speaker 1: stands like you said, it's a place to hold things
Speaker 1: until I can marry them to my calendar.
Speaker 4: Right as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: I start each day by sort of just writing out
Speaker 1: thirty minute intervals all day long, and then I look
Speaker 1: at what's actually already on the calendar, so okay, that
Speaker 1: covers the things that I've already prioritized enough to put on.
Speaker 1: And then I look at the to do list, and
Speaker 1: I go, okay, what's getting plugged into those rest of those?
Speaker 1: And like you say, now I kind of know all
Speaker 1: day long, at any given moment what I'm doing and
Speaker 1: prioritized in there are all the things that are also important,
Speaker 1: like exercise and meditation and spending time with friends and
Speaker 1: all of that. And so I agree one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And I think that like Friday nights for me is
Speaker 1: I know Friday nights with unless something else comes up.
Speaker 1: Friday nights are like pizza and Netflix night. And I
Speaker 1: do it and I love it because I know it's
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. It's so freeing
Speaker 1: right in my calendar. I have time for social.
Speaker 4: Media every night.
Speaker 2: I have time on my calendar to puts around on
Speaker 2: Facebook and YouTube. And it's great. I love it and
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with it. And I took something that
Speaker 2: used to distract me all the time and I turned
Speaker 2: it into traction simply by deciding with intent when I.
Speaker 4: Will do it.
Speaker 2: This process is life changing in large part. I think
Speaker 2: a second order benefit is that when you have a
Speaker 2: physical manifestation, I don't tell people to do this every day.
Speaker 2: I advise most people can do it once a week
Speaker 2: and it literally takes.
Speaker 4: Their team minutes.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'll give you a link for the show
Speaker 2: notes where I built this online tool to make it
Speaker 2: super easy. You don't have to buy anything or even
Speaker 2: give me your email. It totally totally free. Anybody can
Speaker 2: use it. It's just basically a calendar template for the week.
Speaker 2: And what it does is when you do this, you
Speaker 2: have a physical manifestation of what your week will look like.
Speaker 4: And this is.
Speaker 2: Really powerful for a few reasons. One, you can know
Speaker 2: for every minute of your day what is traction. What
Speaker 2: is on your calendar is traction. Anything else is a distraction.
Speaker 2: So that's really important. Now you can at least identify
Speaker 2: the enemy right Toila Coilo has this great quote where
Speaker 2: he says a mistake repeated more than once is a decision.
Speaker 2: And in many people, including myself, before I wrote this book,
Speaker 2: I made the decision essentially effectively, to be distracted all
Speaker 2: the time time. Well, we can make the decision to
Speaker 2: be indistractable, but that starts by identifying, Wait a minute,
Speaker 2: where did I get distracted?
Speaker 4: People feel distracted, but.
Speaker 2: They don't actually identify what did they get distracted from
Speaker 2: in order to understand the distraction. So that's a really
Speaker 2: important point. The second point is that when you have
Speaker 2: this artifact of yep, this is my schedule for every
Speaker 2: minute of the day for the entire week, it sounds
Speaker 2: like a lot of work. Believe me, it's not right.
Speaker 2: It's actually and it sounds like it's stifling people's Oh,
Speaker 2: I want to have spontaneity. You can plan spontaneity, as
Speaker 2: oxymoronic as that sounds. You can plan time for that
Speaker 2: as well. You can reserve that time to you know,
Speaker 2: go hang out with your kid. You know, every Saturday,
Speaker 2: I hang out with my kid for three hours. We
Speaker 2: don't know what we're going to do. We might go
Speaker 2: to the park, we might go get some ice cream,
Speaker 2: we might go to the museum.
Speaker 4: We don't know. But what I do know is that
Speaker 4: I will not be on email.
Speaker 2: I will not be checking social media. I will not
Speaker 2: be doing something that's a distraction. That time is reserved
Speaker 2: for her. But the spontaneity is still there because the
Speaker 2: time is reserved. But the other point I wanted to
Speaker 2: make here is that when you have that artifact, you
Speaker 2: can take it to the important stakeholders in your life,
Speaker 2: like your boss. So when you go to your boss,
Speaker 2: you know, we've heard this, this ridiculous trope that gets
Speaker 2: repeated in every single productivity article I read. If you
Speaker 2: want to be more productive, you have to learn how
Speaker 2: to say no, give me a break. You're gonna go
Speaker 2: to your boss, the person who cuts your checks, and
Speaker 2: you're gonna say no, you're.
Speaker 4: Not gonna be in business for very long. You're gonna have.
Speaker 2: Fired, right, right, You can't say that to your boss.
Speaker 2: That's stupid advice. Instead of saying no, what you want
Speaker 2: to do is to get your boss to say no,
Speaker 2: how do you do that? You show them your schedule.
Speaker 2: You say, hey, look, boss, I made my schedule for
Speaker 2: the week. Here's how I will do all the things
Speaker 2: you asked me to do this week. Now you see
Speaker 2: this other piece of paper, You see this other thing
Speaker 2: over here. I wrote down all the things you asked
Speaker 2: me to do that I don't seem to find time
Speaker 2: for because look at the week ahead, I don't you
Speaker 2: know there's no extra time left over. Can you help
Speaker 2: me reprioritize what's more important?
Speaker 4: Okay? Is it the task here that's on my calendar?
Speaker 2: Or should I rearrange the calendar in some way to
Speaker 2: make time for another task you think.
Speaker 4: Is more important.
Speaker 2: First of all, your boss will worship the ground you
Speaker 2: walk on because most employers have no idea how you
Speaker 2: spend your time, and most of them assume you're slacking
Speaker 2: off in one way or the other. So when you
Speaker 2: show them here is how I plan to spend my time.
Speaker 4: They crave that visibility.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, as a boss, a founder of
Speaker 2: two companies, I'm telling you from personal experience. They want
Speaker 2: to know, but they don't want to ask you to
Speaker 2: do this because they don't want you to feel like
Speaker 2: you're being micromanaged. But when you voluntarily show them, hey,
Speaker 2: here's how I plan to spend my time, help me
Speaker 2: reprioritize that visibility is a game changer. The same tool
Speaker 2: of that timebox calendar can help you in your home
Speaker 2: life as well. You know, I used to fight with
Speaker 2: my wife all the time about domestic responsibilities that you know.
Speaker 2: She would say, why why aren't you know, Look, the
Speaker 2: laundry needs to be done, or our daughter needs to
Speaker 2: be fed, or the house needs to be cleaned up,
Speaker 2: why aren't you doing it? And my response was always.
Speaker 4: Honey, if you want me to do something, don't you
Speaker 4: just ask? Right.
Speaker 2: What I didn't realize is that when I said crap
Speaker 2: like that, I was giving her yet another job to do,
Speaker 2: which is to be my babysitter essentially. And so now
Speaker 2: we never have those fights anymore. By the way, this
Speaker 2: is a statistic that across the board, in dual income
Speaker 2: heterosexual relationships, women still take on an outside share of
Speaker 2: household responsibilities even when they have a job outside the
Speaker 2: home as well. So we are really slacking here, guys,
Speaker 2: And let me tell you a lot of it is
Speaker 2: not maliciousness. It's just ignorance. Right, I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I was supposed to be doing.
Speaker 4: So what do we do? We sat down, we said, Okay,
Speaker 4: here's all the.
Speaker 2: Stuff that needs to get done, and now that stuff
Speaker 2: has time in my calendar. It's not just part of
Speaker 2: my to do list. I know every Saturday, these are
Speaker 2: my responsibilities to do today and when they get done.
Speaker 2: Because many household responsibilities have contingencies. Right, you know she
Speaker 2: can't cook lunch if I haven't cut the vegetables, things
Speaker 2: like that, and so I know when I will do
Speaker 2: those things. So by having this weekly schedule, sink, Okay,
Speaker 2: where are you going to be this day?
Speaker 4: Do you need the car? Who's taking our daughter? Things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 2: It takes ten minutes, ten fifteen minutes a week. We
Speaker 2: do it every Sunday night. Life changing. We never have
Speaker 2: those fights anymore because of this simple practice.
Speaker 1: It is a really powerful way to live, to be
Speaker 1: that intentional about your time and like you said, to
Speaker 1: make it visible, because I love that idea too, of
Speaker 1: taking it to your boss. Because you're right, you can't
Speaker 1: be like no I'm not going to do that. But
Speaker 1: the great question is always like, help me understand how
Speaker 1: to prioritize all this if I can't fit it all in,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of just not fitting it in or.
Speaker 4: That's a distraction.
Speaker 2: Boss, no thanks, I'm learning how to say no break.
Speaker 1: So an important point here is, like you said, this
Speaker 1: sounds like it's overwhelming to do, like the amount of effort,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like it's control freaky. But I found
Speaker 1: that it's really not that much time and effort, and
Speaker 1: that you know, there's a lot of productivity systems out
Speaker 1: there that because way too much, and there's all this
Speaker 1: endless categorization and all this stuff. But this time boxing
Speaker 1: method is actually pretty straightforward and simple.
Speaker 2: It is it is, and most importantly, it's backed by
Speaker 2: really good research. I didn't invent timeboxing. It's been around
Speaker 2: for a very long time, and in fact, thousands of studies,
Speaker 2: no joke, thousands of peer reviewed studies have found this
Speaker 2: is one of the most effective techniques for doing what
Speaker 2: you said you're going to do. The psychologist we call
Speaker 2: it making an implementation intention, which is just a fancy
Speaker 2: way of saying planning doing what you plan to do.
Speaker 2: When you plan to do it. And that's really what
Speaker 2: living with personal integrity is all about. And so that's
Speaker 2: a very simple thing. Anyone can do it to some degree.
Speaker 2: And if you say, oh my gosh, every minute of
Speaker 2: every day that sounds like too much, no problem. You know,
Speaker 2: becoming indistractable doesn't mean you never get distracted. Becoming indistractable
Speaker 2: means you strive to do what you say you're going
Speaker 2: to do. And so the beauty of this methodology is
Speaker 2: that anyone, whenever they want, can implement these tactics and
Speaker 2: small degrees. So we talked about the first one, mastering
Speaker 2: the internal triggers. There's very simple techniques like the ten
Speaker 2: minute rule I talk about in the book is a
Speaker 2: wonderful way to disarm these internal triggers in order to
Speaker 2: help us stay on track and not lead towards distraction
Speaker 2: when we feel these uncomfortable emotional states. Anyone can learn
Speaker 2: that technique in just a few minutes, making time for traction.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're not ready to book you every minute of
Speaker 2: every day, seven days a week. How about you start
Speaker 2: with one weekend?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: And the questioning to ask yourself is how can I
Speaker 2: turn my values into time values are attributes of the
Speaker 2: person you want to become. So how could you maybe
Speaker 2: plan out one weekend and then maybe two weekend days,
Speaker 2: and then maybe one weekday. And so what we're doing
Speaker 2: is progressively learning to use this muscle of getting better
Speaker 2: at time blocking. Because remember, unlike the to do list method,
Speaker 2: which tends to reinforce a self image of someone who
Speaker 2: is not capable of doing what they said we're going
Speaker 2: to do, by time boxing, you're a winner at the
Speaker 2: end of every block of time because remember, the goal
Speaker 2: of time boxing is not to finish anything. Let me
Speaker 2: say that again. I know people are scratching their heads.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, not finish anything? How am I
Speaker 2: going to get anything done? Here's the goal when you
Speaker 2: use a time boxing technique. The only goal is to
Speaker 2: work on what you said you will work on for
Speaker 2: as long as you said you will work on it
Speaker 2: without distraction.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: Whether it's ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, two hours,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, irrelevant. The point of this methodology is that
Speaker 2: when you finish that time block, you are reinforcing your
Speaker 2: identity as someone who follows through you do what you
Speaker 2: say you're going to do. That is what becoming indistractable
Speaker 2: is all about you strove to do what you said
Speaker 2: you were going to do, and you did it. That's
Speaker 2: why it's such a powerful technique. So that's what making
Speaker 2: time for traction is all about. The third technique is
Speaker 2: about hacking back the external triggers. And so the external triggers,
Speaker 2: you know, this is what most people tend to blame.
Speaker 2: It's the pings, the dings, the rings, all of these
Speaker 2: things in our outside environment. And it turns out this
Speaker 2: is actually the easiest and most tactical section of the book.
Speaker 2: People complain about these technologies being so distracting. I can
Speaker 2: teach you in just a few minutes, how to make
Speaker 2: your phone indistractable, how to make your computer indistractable. That's
Speaker 2: kindergarten stuff. What's a bigger source of distraction are things
Speaker 2: like the open floor plan office? Right, eighty percent of
Speaker 2: survey respondents in the modern American workplace said the number
Speaker 2: one source of distraction wasn't their phone, their computers, their apps,
Speaker 2: It was other people. So I teach you how to
Speaker 2: hack back distraction in the workplace, how to hack back meetings.
Speaker 2: Holy moly, how much time do we spend in meetings
Speaker 2: that are just a pointless distraction. I teach you how
Speaker 2: to hack back all of these external triggers in all
Speaker 2: these various contexts. And then finally, the last step, the
Speaker 2: line of last defense, is what we call preventing distraction
Speaker 2: with pacts. And this is something we do after we've
Speaker 2: implemented the other three tactics. So a pact is what's
Speaker 2: called a pre commitment device. We in advance decide what
Speaker 2: we will or won't do with some kind of backstop, right,
Speaker 2: some kind of firewall that prevents us from getting distracted.
Speaker 2: So there's three types of We have what's called an
Speaker 2: effort pact, where we put some kind of friction in
Speaker 2: between us and the distraction. Then you have a price
Speaker 2: packed where there's some kind of monetary disincentive, and then
Speaker 2: finally there's an identity pact where who we are helps
Speaker 2: us stay on track. And so that's the essence of
Speaker 2: these force strategies. Master internal triggers, make time for traction,
Speaker 2: hack back external triggers, and prevent.
Speaker 4: Distraction with packs.
Speaker 2: And when you know those force strategies, the strategy is
Speaker 2: more important than tactics. Tactics are what we do. Strategies
Speaker 2: why we do it, and so understanding those force strategies
Speaker 2: is really all you need because you can come up
Speaker 2: with your own tactics to best suit you, and over time,
Speaker 2: implement more and more of these small tactics so you
Speaker 2: know first, you find ways to master internal triggers in
Speaker 2: a few small ways, You make time for traction, You
Speaker 2: hack back a few of those external triggers, You create
Speaker 2: a few pre commitments to make sure that you prevent
Speaker 2: distraction with packs, and you add more and more and
Speaker 2: more of these over your lifetime. This isn't something you're
Speaker 2: ever done doing. It's about constantly reassessing and saying, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, now that I know why I got distracted,
Speaker 2: will I do something about it? Or will I keep
Speaker 2: being a dummy and get distracted again and again and again,
Speaker 2: making the decision to become distracted write a mistake repeated
Speaker 2: more than once of the decision, Or will I decide
Speaker 2: I am indistractable If I get distracted next time, I
Speaker 2: will make sure I won't get distracted by the same thing,
Speaker 2: because I will know what to do about it when
Speaker 2: the time comes.
Speaker 1: Let's spend a couple minutes on mastering the internal triggers,
Speaker 1: because I think that's an area we could go a
Speaker 1: little bit deeper that would be really helpful. And I
Speaker 1: do think that's the biggest challenge of the work that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. The rest of the stuff, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it is is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: But I think it's learning to work with our uncomfortable
Speaker 1: emotions that is the work of a lifetime in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. So maybe let's dive a little deeper
Speaker 1: into that particular space.
Speaker 2: Sure, So there's three big pillars on how to master
Speaker 2: these internal triggers. It's about reimagining the trigger, reimagining the task,
Speaker 2: and reimagining our temperament. And it would take me a
Speaker 2: while to describe all three, but let me give you
Speaker 2: just one very tactical, practical technique that you can use
Speaker 2: that I mentioned earlier, called the ten minute rule. And
Speaker 2: this falls under the category of reimagining the internal trigger.
Speaker 2: And so this is really about finding new ways to
Speaker 2: deal with that discomfort in a way that leads us
Speaker 2: towards traction rather than distraction, by disarming and understanding the
Speaker 2: source of that distraction. Because again, you know, procrastination distraction,
Speaker 2: it's not a character flaw, it's an emotion regulation problem.
Speaker 2: But once you learn these techniques, once you have the
Speaker 2: arrows in your quiver ready these tools, then you can
Speaker 2: apply them. So there's only three reasons we ever get distracted.
Speaker 4: Only three.
Speaker 2: Either it's an internal trigger, an external trigger, or a
Speaker 2: planning problem.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: So all we want to do is to make sure
Speaker 2: when that distraction arises, do we know how to fix
Speaker 2: it for next time. And so let's say it's one
Speaker 2: of these internal triggers, which turn out. The reason it's
Speaker 2: the first step is because it's a vast majority of distractions.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of distractions come about when people feel
Speaker 2: bored or lonelier and decisive or fatigued, and so they
Speaker 2: use something to try and escape that discomfort. That's what
Speaker 2: procrastination distraction always is about. So this ten minute rule
Speaker 2: is fantastic. The ten minute rule says, and this is
Speaker 2: not something that I made up. This comes from acceptance
Speaker 2: to commitment therapy. The ten minute rule says that you
Speaker 2: can give in to any distraction, any distraction, in just
Speaker 2: ten minutes. Now why is this so effective Because what
Speaker 2: we want to do for those ten minutes is one
Speaker 2: of two things. If you want to either surf the urge,
Speaker 2: meaning to be with that sensation, contemplate what is it
Speaker 2: that you are feeling for just ten minutes to ride
Speaker 2: out that sensation, because remember, these emotions, they feel like
Speaker 2: they're going to last forever in the moment, but it
Speaker 2: turns out that emotions are like waves. They crest and
Speaker 2: then they subside. So if you can ride that sensation
Speaker 2: for just a few minutes, most of the time, it
Speaker 2: will subside by the time that ten minutes are up.
Speaker 2: So your choice that you have to make for those
Speaker 2: ten minutes, so you can give into that distraction, you
Speaker 2: can eat that piece of chocolate cake, You can go
Speaker 2: check email when you know you should be writing on
Speaker 2: that blog post or whatever it might be in just
Speaker 2: ten minutes of surfing the urge. So your choice is
Speaker 2: either surf the urge, sit with that sensation without judgment,
Speaker 2: right with curiosity, not with contempt. Don't be one of
Speaker 2: those blamers and shamers. Instead, what you can do is
Speaker 2: either surf the urge or get back to the task
Speaker 2: at hand. And what you will find if you set
Speaker 2: that timer ten minutes actually is a long time.
Speaker 4: If you set that.
Speaker 2: Timer, you know many times I'll take out my eye phone,
Speaker 2: I'll say set a time for ten minutes, I'll put
Speaker 2: down my phone and I'll just sit with that sensation.
Speaker 2: And what we find is that nine times out of ten,
Speaker 2: before that alarm rings, you will be back at that
Speaker 2: task at hand by just giving that sensation a little
Speaker 2: bit of time, a little bit of space before you
Speaker 2: react to escape that discomfort. And that. Of course, you know,
Speaker 2: you get better at this technique over time, so it
Speaker 2: becomes just as effective when you know you should eat
Speaker 2: something or drink something or say something. You can use
Speaker 2: this technique with all kinds of impulses that you might have.
Speaker 1: A tremendously useful one. It's it's sort of the twelve
Speaker 1: step program, you know, one day at a time, but
Speaker 1: shrunk way down, you know, yeah, because that's the origin
Speaker 1: really of that, you know what, like just not today,
Speaker 1: just not today, delay till tomorrow, right, you know. But
Speaker 1: it's but it's shrunk down, and it's it's a remarkably
Speaker 1: effective technique.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, just delay right exactly.
Speaker 2: You know. I like to say the antidote to impulsiveness
Speaker 2: is forethought. The antidote impulsiveness is for that. I think
Speaker 2: this is a really important concept, because you know, if
Speaker 2: there's one thing that our species does better than any
Speaker 2: other animal on the face of the earth, it's that
Speaker 2: we can plan ahead. We can see into the future
Speaker 2: with greater fidelity than any other creature that has ever
Speaker 2: roam the earth. And we can use that ability right
Speaker 2: because we know that if you wait till the moment, right,
Speaker 2: if the chocolate cake is on its fork, you're gonna
Speaker 2: eat it. If the cigarette is lit in your hand,
Speaker 2: you're gonna smoke it. If you sleep next to your
Speaker 2: cell phone every night, you're gonna pick it up first
Speaker 2: thing in the morning. It's too late. They've won, They've
Speaker 2: got you. So the antidote to that impulsive reaction is
Speaker 2: not willpower, it's not self control.
Speaker 4: The people who I interviewed from.
Speaker 2: My book, these masters of doing what they said they're
Speaker 2: going to do, the most indistractable people on earth. They
Speaker 2: don't have tremendous amounts of willpower. What they have is
Speaker 2: a system so that when the time arises, they don't
Speaker 2: need willpower and self control. Willpower and self control don't work,
Speaker 2: they collapse over time. Instead, it's about thinking in advance,
Speaker 2: what am I going to do? Okay, when I feel
Speaker 2: that internal trigger, what comes my habitual response is it
Speaker 2: to escape this discomfort, right, to look for a pacifier
Speaker 2: like a baby looks for their pacifier, to just take
Speaker 2: my mind off of that sensation. Or do I have
Speaker 2: a mature response to this that leads me towards traction
Speaker 2: rather than distraction?
Speaker 5: Yep?
Speaker 1: Okay, so the ten minute rule, that's a great one.
Speaker 2: What else, and so there's other tactics as well in
Speaker 2: the book about reimagining the task itself. This is where
Speaker 2: I look at this freaky science around how we can
Speaker 2: learn to do what's called play anything. And basically what
Speaker 2: we can do is we can learn to make any
Speaker 2: task something that is play without necessary looking for enjoyment.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that play doesn't necessarily have to be fun,
Speaker 2: believe it or not. It just has to focus our attention.
Speaker 2: And so we look at this weird science around how
Speaker 2: people learn to love all kinds of mundane tasks. Right,
Speaker 2: we all know that car buff that works on their car. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, you know you'd have to pay me to
Speaker 2: be a mechanic, and yet these people love it. Why
Speaker 2: the barista who's obsessed with getting just the right You
Speaker 2: know you'd have to pay me a lot of money
Speaker 2: to work in the Starbucks. I wouldn't do that for free,
Speaker 2: and yet they're obsessed with it. I have another friend
Speaker 2: who's really into quilting. Oh my god, I can't even
Speaker 2: imagine how boring that is, and yet she loves it.
Speaker 2: Why how do you make a task something that is
Speaker 2: playful and I teach you exactly how to do that.
Speaker 2: There's some very simple tactics that we can use to
Speaker 2: learn how to play anything. And then, finally, the last
Speaker 2: of these three pillars is about reimagining our temperament. That
Speaker 2: there's a lot of junk science out there, or overturned science.
Speaker 2: I should say that people still believe. One of the
Speaker 2: most prevalent myths is this idea of what we call
Speaker 2: ego depletion. Ego depletion says that we run out of willpower,
Speaker 2: and many, many people believe this, that they run out
Speaker 2: of willpower, And even if they don't know the term
Speaker 2: ego depletion, they experience something like this. So I used
Speaker 2: to come home from work and I would say, boy,
Speaker 2: I've had such a tough day. I feel quote unquote spent.
Speaker 2: Give me that pin of Ben and Jerry's I have
Speaker 2: no willpower left. I'm going to watch some Netflix and
Speaker 2: just veg out right. I'm spent, I got nothing left.
Speaker 2: And many people have this notion, consciously or subconsciously, that
Speaker 2: willpower is something you run out of. And there was
Speaker 2: actually some research that showed this was true about a
Speaker 2: decade ago. And it turns out that the research that
Speaker 2: you know, the press loved it. There was a best
Speaker 2: selling book about this. But when other you know, in
Speaker 2: the social science, is when a study sounds too good
Speaker 2: to be true, we replicate the study, We try and
Speaker 2: run it again. And it turns out when other researchers
Speaker 2: tried to replicate this study, it turns out that ego
Speaker 2: depletion didn't exist. That the studies can't replicate except accept
Speaker 2: with one.
Speaker 4: Group of people.
Speaker 2: There is one group of people who really do experience
Speaker 2: ego depletion. They really do run out of willpower like
Speaker 2: gas in a gas tank.
Speaker 4: Who is this group?
Speaker 2: It's people and only people who believe that willpower is
Speaker 2: a limited resource. So if you believe that you are
Speaker 2: running out of well power, you were running out of
Speaker 2: self control. It becomes true. And so much of our
Speaker 2: beliefs these days are self limiting. Principally, this idea that
Speaker 2: technology is addicting you, it's hijacking your brains. Your kids
Speaker 2: won't stop playing video games because of these algorithms. If
Speaker 2: you believe it's true, it leads to what's called learned helplessness.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what the ego depletion study shows. So
Speaker 2: what we want to do is to reimagine our temperament,
Speaker 2: to realize that we are not a fixed self, that
Speaker 2: we can reimagine our capabilities and only keep the identities
Speaker 2: that serve us versus the identity that we are serving.
Speaker 1: Such an important piece This idea of I'm the kind
Speaker 1: of person who and we are attached to these ideas
Speaker 1: that simply aren't true. They're just their patterns of behavior
Speaker 1: that we have over identified with. I often say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not you, it's your approach. You know, it's this
Speaker 1: idea that we can be different with the proper tools
Speaker 1: and techniques and skill sets.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that, you know, having an identity is a
Speaker 2: bad thing. In fact, one of the last chapters in
Speaker 2: the book is about how you can reshape your identity
Speaker 2: to make what's called an identity pact. So I want
Speaker 2: people to go from these self limiting beliefs to self
Speaker 2: enhancing beliefs.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So, we know, for example, in the psychology of religion,
Speaker 2: that when someone calls themselves a devout observer of a
Speaker 2: particular faith, they become much more likely to stay in line.
Speaker 2: So when someone, for you know, when a devout Muslim says,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't ask themselves Ooh, I wonder if
Speaker 2: I should have that gen and tonic. No, that's forbidden.
Speaker 2: Devout Muslims do not drink alcohol.
Speaker 4: Even a vegetarian.
Speaker 2: You know, if you call yourself a vegetarian, you don't
Speaker 2: wake up in the morning and say, h, I wonder
Speaker 2: if I should have some bacon for breakfast.
Speaker 4: No, vegetarians don't eat meat.
Speaker 2: So we can use an identity to help us become indestractable.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly why I named the book what I did.
Speaker 2: Indestractable sounds like indestructible, and we can use that, Moniker.
Speaker 2: We can use that identity and teach others about this
Speaker 2: practice to help stay in line, to help us do
Speaker 2: what we know we are capable of, to live the
Speaker 2: kind of life we know we deserve.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a great way to say it, and
Speaker 1: that idea of letting identity be something that serves you
Speaker 1: because they're not as fixed as we think we are.
Speaker 1: So if we're putting one on, if in essence, in
Speaker 1: some ways it's like a costume. We ought to choose
Speaker 1: to put on the costumes that lead us in the
Speaker 1: direction of what matters. If we're making it up, we
Speaker 1: ought to make up stories that are useful and life
Speaker 1: supporting and and you know, being indistractable is a good
Speaker 1: one to.
Speaker 4: Carry absolutely, yep, could agree more.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you and I are at the end
Speaker 1: of our time here, so thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on. You and I are
Speaker 1: going to talk for just a couple of minutes in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation about some way, some simple techniques
Speaker 1: to hack back distractions from our phones and computers. So
Speaker 1: we'll do that in the post show conversation listeners. If
Speaker 1: you'd like access to that, as well as a mini
Speaker 1: episode each week and supporting the show, you can go
Speaker 1: to oneufeed dot net, slash join new yor thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to come on. I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 4: Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: All right, take care.
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