Indistractable – Nir yeal

Author: Nir Yeal Type: #book

• Most distractions start internally – as a psychological discomfort.

• Internal and external triggers can lead to traction (which moves us closer to our goals) or distractions (which moves us away from our goals)

• We bear some responsibility to manage distractions. It's not just up to the medium of the distractions to be responsible for it – e.g. an app or a social network.

• Our behavior is motivated by the desire to escape discomfort/pain. That's the root cause of internal distractions. We get distracted when we want to escape reality.

• • Internal distractions are caused by the desire to escape discomfort

• To manage our internal distractions, we must understand (and ultimately manage) the discomfort that's causing them.

• In this sense, Time management is pain management

Mastering internal distractions is about:

• reimagining the internal triggers -> being mindful of them + letting go, instead of resisting/suppressing

• reimagining the task (by making it more "fun" and focusing on it more intensely)

• reimagining our temperament

• What we believe determines how we behave.

  • Eyal asserts that ego depletion theory (as posited by Baumeister, 2011) doesn't apply (citing research by Dweck, 2013) -> Implying that we can have unlimited willpower unless we believe it's a limited resource.
  • If this is true – if ego depletion isn't a natural but self-created limitation – then we could persist in situations when we'd otherwise quit.
  • There's another view of willpower (proposed by Michael Inzlicht of University of Toronto): willpower acts like an emotion rather than a finite resource.
  • Self-talk plays an important role in creating beliefs about outselves: e.g. if we tell ourselves we have no self-control, we'll exert less of it! -> We need self-compassion.