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Nir Eyal: Instead Of Complaining Your Phone Is Addictive, Become 'Indistractable'

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Nir Eyal

When serial entrepreneur and Stanford lecturer Nir Eyal released Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products in late 2014, it quickly became a bestseller.

The book–which is passed around at Google, Facebook, PayPal and Slack–revealed how tech giants in Silicon Valley and beyond build habit-forming products that lure users back time and again, without the need for costly or aggressive advertising.

The tome put Eyal on the map–it regularly features on must-read business book lists–but will his latest work do the same?

Five years on, and his forthcoming title, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, is about to be released.

What it shares with Hooked is the message that, in order for humans to coexist happily with technology, and not be controlled by it, we need to understand exactly how it works.

When I met Eyal in London earlier this year, he told me the book’s working title had, for a long time, been Unhooked. Convinced technology was becoming a problem in his own life, Eyal had been reading every book on tech addiction he could find, and testing out the many techniques proposed for combatting its overuse.

None of those techniques I read about–like digital minimalism or digital detoxes or digital sabbath–worked,” he says. “All those books tell you it’s no one’s fault but it’s technology’s fault. And so I tried that stuff. And it didn’t work.

“I even bought a 1990s word processor off eBay that didn’t have an internet connection and I used that for a while. And I was still getting distracted. I would start looking at books on my shelf or doing laundry.” In short, he replaced one distraction for another.

The reason it didn’t work, Eyal tells me, is because technology is not going away–we need it for our livelihoods–and because those books failed to confront the psychology of why we get distracted.

Indistractable is both handbook and toolkit for overcoming distraction and leading a more fulfilling life. The premise is that every action either moves us away from our goals (distraction) or towards them (traction). Our actions are prompted by triggers, both internal (cold or hunger or sadness) and external (the ping of a smartphone notification or a chatty colleague passing by).

But, argues Eyal, we can take steps to “retrain and regain our brains”, and we can avoid impulsiveness, i.e. reaching for our phones, with careful planning.

The problem, he says, is not technology, it’s our desire to escape what we don’t enjoy in real life, be it a difficult task we’re putting off, or a relationship that’s breaking down.

As he remarks in the book, although distractions have been around as long as humans, today’s distractions “feel different”. The ease of access to content, the transfer of information means that “if it’s a distraction you seek, it’s easier than ever to find”.

As such, Eyal recognizes humans are at a critical juncture in their relationship with technology. He tells me:

I do think that learning to become indistractable, to control your attention and choose your life, is the skill of the century, because if we think the world is distracting now, then wait a few years. Wait until we have augmented and virtual reality and goodness knows what else. I do think there’s a bifurcation occurring between people who can control their attention and people who let their attention be controlled. It’s a vital skill.”

I ask him if it’s fair to put the onus on us, as consumers, to break our toxic relationship with our smartphones given how they are deliberately designed to suck us in.

He brings up the small rewards that keep us wanting more and more from our phones–likes and comments on our Instagram posts for example–and explains these are fuelled by internal triggers such as a feeling of loneliness. At that point, he says, tech is irresistible, adding:

In the moment, they [tech makers] are going to get you. You just need to know that. Sean Parker said Facebook was designed to exploit these psychological vulnerabilities. That’s absolutely true. What most people take that to mean, and what tech critics take that to mean, is that it’s irresistible, it’s hijacking your brain, it’s addictive. But actually we’re quite empowered. There are things that we can do.”

Eyal believes the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought: he doesn’t believe we have any free will in the moment.

He says: “We’re the only species that can plan ahead in this very complex way. If I know I am vulnerable psychologically, I can take action now to prevent it from happening later. The core message of the book is to plan ahead.”

That is why Eyal lives by his "timebox" which looks a lot like a school timetable, broken down into 15- or 30-minute increments. He timeboxes everything, from posting on Facebook and LinkedIn, to date night with his wife.

Nir Eyal

But the book goes deeper than such techniques. Eyal asks us to confront our internal triggers, often our pain, that have us needing and wanting to be distracted. And these don’t only originate from our home lives.

He says: “One of the most prevalent sources of those internal triggers, these negative emotional states, comes from the workplace. It’s workplace stress, anxiety, uncertainty, guilt, social pressure, all of these uncomfortable emotional states.”

Many believe technology to be the main source of distraction in the workplace. Eyal points out that, if that’s the case, then those companies using technology the most should be the most distracted. But that’s simply not true.

He draws on Slack as a good example of a tech company that doesn’t have a problem with tech distraction.

At Slack company HQ, it says on the wall ‘Work Hard and Go Home’ in bright pink writing. You get chastised if you’re on Slack past 6pm or at the weekend. But more importantly, they have this culture where people can talk about their problems. It's called psychological safety. That’s huge. I don’t think it’s well enough understood that if your workplace is struggling with distraction, you’ve got bigger problems than technology. What that’s a symptom of is a dysfunctional culture where people can’t raise their hands and say ‘hey, I’m struggling here’."

As well as a culture change, the answer, he says, is careful scheduling: “You take your plan for the week and show it to your boss and ask her or him, does it look correct? If not let’s fix it, tell me where I should change things. Having that syncing, whether it’s with a domestic partner or with your boss is critical. We don’t know the difference between distraction and traction unless we plan in advance.”

Eyal thinks the way many companies expect employees to work is nonsensical. He explains: “We barf all these tasks on people and expect them to magically find time to do them all. Well that’s not fair. We plan for the output not the input, which is ridiculous.”

For now at least, Eyal is the biggest champion of his own techniques. He says: “It has changed my life tremendously. I’m in the best physical shape of my life. I used to be obese as a kid and I hated being athletic. Now, for the first time in my life, I exercise consistently. I have close relationships with my wife and daughter, better than ever. And I’ve published my second book."

I would hazard a guess that after the release of Indistractable next month, he’ll have a few more converts.

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life By Nir Eyal is published by Bloomsbury in hardback, 17 October 2019, £20

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