Being indistractable is about understanding the real reasons why we do things against our best interests. While it doesn’t seem like such a big issue at first sight, distraction can seriously impact our work performance, consume our precious time, and alter our work-life balance. Therefore, to increase productivity, have more time to spend with your loved ones, and target your focus better, Indistractable by Nir Eyal comes forth with a series of solutions for this concerning issue. We all get distracted – there’s no question about that. While you may think that your phone or other gadgets you own may be the cause of your distraction, it’s all rooted deeper inside you. In fact, your triggers wired within are the reason you look for distraction. Time management = pain management. The drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior. Everything else is a proximate cause. It’s one thing to tell this to knowledge workers who ride electric scooters to work and stream productivity podcasts into their AirBuds. But tell it to the single working mother who can barely carve out enough “me time” to take a shower. Better yet, tell the tech designers it’s not their fault, that it’s ultimately their users’ responsibility to manage distractions, and that even if their products do distract, the “root cause” of it lies in users themselves.

I recently read that the pope wanted to alter a line of the Lord’s Prayer, from “lead us not into temptation” to “do not let us fall into temptation”. Indistractable is Eyal’s attempt at a pope-like pivot. Thankfully, he can’t pivot by fiat. However, as the book Merchants of Doubt by Erik M Conway and Naomi Oreskes brilliantly chronicled in the domains of climate science and tobacco research, a smokescreen of doubt can be thrown up, which provides a cover for interests averse to systemic change, whether regulatory or otherwise. And Eyal can make people who get distracted by adversarial design less inclined to demand more from their technologies, and more inclined to demand “superpowers” of themselves that their all-too-human limitations render them unable to meet.

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY:

While I appreciated the “Remember This” section at the end of each chapter because it made highlighting my ebook easy, it almost felt unnecessary because of how short each chapter was and how little content was covered. All the tips are practical and very useful. There are also reminders in the book and I have already recommended it to some of my friends.

Could it be anxiety, anger, boredom, or anything else? Identify that emotion, then you’ll be able to let go of them. How? Psychologists suggest visualizing them being carried away by a force, like water, or wind. Diminish them in your mind, and your body will follow. You can also try making your tasks more engaging by setting a record time to finish them, or try a creative way of doing them. This way, you’ll be less prone to indulge in your social media. Lesson 2: Use timeboxing to set intervals of work and increase productivity. I especially enjoyed the section he put in the book on how to help our children become less distracted. As a father concerned with screen time and non-productive behaviors, there were some absolute gems here. Not surprisingly, I discovered where the problem lies. It's not the screen, it's the parenting and there are some brilliant ideas on how to achieve a better outcome.Sometimes people call a meeting to avoid going through the effort of thinking through a problem themselves. Require: agenda and a brief (a proposed solution) The most tactical and practical book + resources for getting to deep work. One of the few books I’ve read that come with a workbook and other materials to help with the implementation of the theory and guidance outlined in the book. This past weekend I started working through the workbook with my family and they've been largely receptive given the way the points and exercises are laid out. I won’t share all my notes here but a few key points I found really interesting were: hooked مشهور شد. میدونین موضوع اون کتاب چی بود؟ چطور کمپانیا باید محصولشونو طراحی کنن که مصرف کننده ها نتونن دست ازشون بکشن و دائم و دائم‌ازشون استفاده کنن. One way to let go of thoughts or feelings that are not helpful is to use the "leaves on the stream" method. Imagine you sitting next to a gently flowing stream with leaves floating by. Put the thought or emotion on one of the leaves and watch the leaf carry on floating on down the river.

As a real estate broker, coach, and father of 6 boys, I am always being distracted by something. I would get anxious every time the phone chirped or beeped or pinged. Was it a client emergency, do my kids need me ... and most of the time it was nothing but a distraction. I spend far too much time on Apple News (mostly saving stories to gmail folders or bookmarks in Chrome but I have a wide range of interests and they cover over 200 publications. I do not plan to stop using Apple News but am defiantly being more selective and delaying my reading to a later time. In a world filled with an ever increasing number of distractions, Nir Eyal comes to the rescue with a book full of well researched and thoroughly tested ideas to help you choose how to spend your time wisely. It's all in service of the idea that what you consistently do over time is going to make you the person you end up being. Are you spending your time according to your values and who you want to be?

The chapter around identity was interesting. Much easier to make good decisions when you identify as someone who eats healthily or isn't a smoker than if you identify as someone who has a sweet tooth or a smoker trying to give up. There are many curious contortions here. Eyal’s conception of distraction remains mercurial. His foundational claim that avoiding discomfort or dissatisfaction is our motivation for everything we do in life is simply asserted; no evidence is adduced. (It’s a claim that, in any event, seems unfalsifiable – can’t any desire for change be framed as “dissatisfaction” with some status quo?) Yet the essential rhetorical move, for which Eyal gives no justification, is his separation of inner motivations from external factors and his conception of them as root causes. This root/proximate cause distinction comes from a diagnostic process in engineering and management sciences called root cause analysis. Why is this method appropriate for diagnosing human behaviour? No reason is given. Why can’t a behaviour be the result of multiple root causes? The question goes unasked. Can’t technologies, like many other external influences, increase our degree of inner discomfort and dissatisfaction? The issue is not even raised. What even counts as a “root cause”? Eyal leaves it undefined. deep work و willpower instinct و atomic habits رو خیلی خیلی بیشتر دوست داشتم و به نظرم مفیدتر بودن و خوندن هر سه تاشون تقریبا همه‌ی چیزایی‌که لازم دارین رو بهتون میده. Contrary to belief, external triggers aren’t always harmful. Of each external trigger, ask: “Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” Does it lead to traction or distraction? If it’s the former, it serves you. Well, I completed this book today and was contemplating the right kind of words to pen down. I do love non-fiction reads be it belongs to self-help books, business reads, biographies or autobiographies, books on mind or life. I read all the styles of non-fiction. But Indistractable wasn’t the book for me.