Indistractable

Chapter Takeaways

Chapter 1: Living the life you want requires not only doing the right things but also avoiding doing the wrong things. (p. 228)

Chapter 2: Traction moves you toward what you really want while distraction moves you further away. Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. (p. 228)

PART 1: Master Internal Triggers

Chapter 3: Motivation is a desire to escape discomfort. Find the root causes of distraction rather than proximate ones. 

Chapter 4: Learn to deal with discomfort rather than attempting to escape it with distraction. 

Chapter 5: Stop trying to actively suppress urges—this only makes them stronger. Instead, observe and allow them to dissolve. 

Chapter 6: Reimagine the internal trigger. Look for the negative emotion preceding the distraction, write it down, and pay attention to the negative sensation with curiosity rather than contempt. 

Chapter 7: Reimagine the task. Turn it into play by paying “foolish, even absurd” attention to it. Deliberately look for novelty.

Chapter 8: Reimagine your temperament. Self-talk matters. Your willpower runs out only if you believe it does. Avoid labeling yourself as “easily distracted” or having an “addictive personality.” 

PART 2: Make Time for Traction

Chapter 9: Turn your values into time. Timebox your day by creating a schedule template. 

Chapter 10: Schedule time for yourself. Plan the inputs and the outcome will follow. 

Chapter 11: Schedule time for important relationships. Include household responsibilities as well as time for people you love. Put regular time on your schedule for friends. 

Chapter 12: Sync your schedule with stakeholders. 

PART 3: Hack Back External Triggers

Chapter 13: Of each external trigger, ask: “Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?” Does it lead to traction or distraction? 

Chapter 14: Defend your focus. Signal when you do not want to be interrupted. 

Chapter 15: To get fewer emails, send fewer emails. When you check email, tag each message with when it needs a reply and respond at a scheduled time. 

Chapter 16: When it comes to group chat, get in and out at scheduled times. Only involve who is necessary and don’t use it to think out loud. 

Chapter 17: Make it harder to call meetings. No agenda, no meeting. Meetings are for consensus building rather than problem solving. Leave devices outside the conference room except for one laptop.

Chapter 18: Use distracting apps on your desktop rather than your phone. Organize apps and manage notifications. Turn on “Do Not Disturb.” 

Chapter 19: Turn off desktop notifications. Remove potential distractions from your workspace.

Chapter 20: Save online articles in Pocket to read or listen to at a scheduled time. Use “multichannel multitasking.” 

Chapter 21: Use browser extensions that give you the benefits of social media without all the distractions. Links to other tools are at: NirAndFar.com/Indistractable. 

PART 4: Prevent Distraction with Pacts

Chapter 22: The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. Plan ahead for when you’re likely to get distracted. 

Chapter 23: Use effort pacts to make unwanted behaviors more difficult. 

Chapter 24: Use a price pact to make getting distracted expensive. 

Chapter 25: Use identity pacts as a precommitment to a self-image. Call yourself “indistractable.” 

PART 5: How to Make Your Workplace Indistractable

Chapter 26: An “always on” culture drives people crazy. 

Chapter 27: Tech overuse at work is a symptom of dysfunctional company culture. The root cause is a culture lacking “psychological safety.” 

Chapter 28: To create a culture that values doing focused work, start small and find ways to facilitate an open dialogue among colleagues about the problem. 

PART 6: How to Raise Indistractable Children (and Why We All Need Psychological Nutrients

Chapter 29: Find the root causes of why children get distracted. Teach them the four-part indistractable model.

Chapter 30: Make sure children’s psychological needs are met. All people need to feel a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. If kids don’t get their needs met in the real world, they look to fulfill them online. (p. 231)

Chapter 31: Teach children to timebox their schedule. Let them make time for activities they enjoy, including time online. 

Chapter 32: Work with your children to remove unhelpful external triggers. Make sure they know how to turn off distracting triggers, and don’t become a distracting external trigger yourself. 

Chapter 33: Help your kids make pacts and make sure they know managing distraction is their responsibility. Teach them that distraction is a solvable problem and that becoming indistractable is a lifelong skill. 

PART 7: How to Have Indistractable Relationships

Chapter 34: When someone uses a device in a social setting, ask, “I see you’re on your phone. Is everything OK?” 

Chapter 35: Remove devices from your bedroom and have the internet automatically turn off at a specific time. 

Actions to Prevent Distraction

• Ten-Minute Rule: “If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes.” 

• Reimagine a task as play. “Instead of running away from our pain or using rewards like prizes and treats to help motivate us, the idea is to pay such close attention that you find new challenges you didn’t see before.” (p. 42)

• Time-boxing: put time on your calendar for all the things you want to accomplish 

• Sync your plan with stakeholders

• Schedule recurring time with friends

• Use visual signs (e.g., bright card, hat) to signal that you are not to be disturbed. “...my wife bought a hard-to-miss headpiece on Amazon for just a few dollars. She calls it the “concentration crown,” and the built-in LEDs light up her head to send an impossible-to-ignore message. When she wears it, she’s clearly letting our daughter (and me) know not to interrupt her unless it’s an emergency.” (p. 91)

• “To receive fewer emails, we must send fewer emails.” (p. 95)

• Schedule office hours. “Next time you receive a nonurgent question over email, try replying with something like, ‘I’ve held some time on Tuesday and Thursday from 4:00 to 5:00 pm. If this is still a concern then, please stop by and let’s discuss this further.’” (p. 95)

• Unsubscribe from unwanted emails

• Batch process emails

• Touch each email only twice: “The first time we open an email, before closing it, answer this question: When does this email require a response? Tagging each email as either “Today” or “This Week” attaches the most important information to each new message, preparing it for the second (and last) time we open it.” (p. 99)

• Invite a smaller number of people to group chats, only those who are necessary

• Use group chat selectively: “Instead of using group chat for long arguments and hurried decisions, it’s better to ask participants in the conversation to articulate their point in a document and share it after they’ve compiled their thoughts.” (p. 103)

• Require agendas for meeting: “One of the easiest ways to prevent superfluous meetings is to require two things of anyone who calls one. First, meeting organizers must circulate an agenda of what problem will be discussed. No agenda, no meeting. Second, they must give their best shot at a solution in the form of a brief, written digest. The digest need not be more than a page or two discussing the problem, their reasoning, and their recommendation.” (p. 105)

• Eliminate screens from meetings (e.g., present information from just one computer)

• Eliminate apps from phone you don’t need

• Eliminate apps that you don’t need to use in mobile settings: “I found my solution by replacing when and where I used the problematic services. Since I’d set aside time for social media in my timeboxed schedule, there was no longer any need to have them on my phone.” 

• Rearrange home screen to only show the right apps: “If the app triggers any mindless checking from you, move it to a different screen.” (p. 112)

• Turn off notifications on your phone

• Put all files on your computer desktop into one folder: “A study by researchers at Princeton University found people performed poorly on cognitive tasks when objects in their field of vision were in disarray as opposed to neatly arranged. The same effect applies to digital environments, according to a study published in the academic journal Behaviour & Information Technology.” (p. 118)

• Disable all desktop notifications

• Use 3rd-party tools that eliminate the “feed” on social media sites

• Effort Pacts: “An effort pact prevents distraction by making unwanted behaviors more difficult to do.” (p. 142)

• Price Pacts: “A price pact is a type of precommitment that involves putting money on the line to encourage us to do what we say we will. Stick to your intended behavior, and you keep the cash; but get distracted, and you forfeit the funds.” (p. 147)

• Identity Pacts: “To leverage the power of identity to prevent distraction, we can enter into what I call an “identity pact,” which is a precommitment to a self-image that helps us pursue what we really want.” (p. 156)