How To NEVER Let Bad Habits Ruin Your Life Again | Nir Eyal

when we know what to do why don't we just do it particularly in today age where we have the world's information in our fingertips we don't have the excuse of not knowing what to do anymore who doesn't know basically how to lose weight who doesn't know that if you want to have better relationships with people you have to be fully present with them who doesn't know that if you want to do better at your job you have to do the work especially the hard stuff that other people don't want to do we know these things so there's no excuse anymore to say well I just didn't know how what we're lacking is the ability to follow through we're lacking the ability to avoid distraction getting ahead in life is not just about doing the right right things it's about avoiding not doing the wrong things and that's what becoming in distractible is all about it's about whatever it is that you say is important to you in your life how do you make sure you do those things so let's start with defining what we mean by distraction so the best way to understand what distraction is is to understand what it is not so the opposite of distraction is not focus the opposite of distraction is attraction they both come from the same Latin root meaning true hara which means to pull traction is any action that pulls you towards what you want to do things that you do with intent the opposite of traction is distraction anything that pulls you away from something that you can plan to do something that you are not doing with intent so this is super important for two reasons one I think it frees us from this moral hierarchy that what you do with your time that's frivolous but what I do with my time that's okay right so mean watching football that's all right but you playing candy crush not okay I argue know anything that you want to do with intent that is according to your values is fine they're both pastimes there's nothing wrong with them anything can be traction and just like anything can become traction if you plan for it anything can become distraction as well so for example I work with a lot of folks they say they're gonna do something they say they're going to work on that big project they're gonna stop procrastinating do that thing that they've been planning to do right after they check email right after they scroll that slack channel right after they do that quick thing that they have to talk with a calling real quick and so 3045 minutes later they still haven't started to do the thing they plan to do we are slaves now to the urgent at the sacrifice of the important when we do that in today's age where technology is so pervasive and so persuasive I mean it is designed to be persuasion and we want it to be persuasive we want products to be engaging then it's easier than ever to get distracted so we've got traction we've got distraction we have two things that move us towards traction a distraction we have what's called an external trigger or an internal trigger external trigger is what kind of everybody blames on distraction right it's the pings the dings the Rings anything in your environment that prompts you towards traction or distraction now they're not inherently bad these tools are not somehow evil if a notification on your phone says hey it's time to wake up and hit the gym or it's time to go to that meeting or it's time to do the thing you plan to do it's moving you towards traction but if you get a notification on your phone while you're with somebody that you're your your we plan to spend time with in my case it was my daughter one day I got this notification while I'm spending time with my daughter and I'm checking my phone as opposed to being from the present with her that was moving me towards distraction so those are the external triggers but it turns out even though we love to blame those things we think that that is the root cause of the problem in fact a psychology of distraction goes much much deeper that most distraction it turns out is not spurred by the external triggers at all most distraction does not start outside of us but rather starts from within that the root cause of why we become distracted is because we feel these internal triggers these uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape neurologically speaking we only do things for one reason and that is to avoid discomfort physiologically we know this is true if you go outside and it's that's not comfortable when you do you founder code and when you go back inside now it's too hot that's not comfortable you take it off if you're hungry you feel hunger pangs you eat and when you're stuck that doesn't feel good you stop eating so physiologically we feel this all the time this is called the homeostatic response the same rules apply with psychological sensations not just with physiological sensations so when you're feeling lonely check Facebook when you're uncertain you google when you're bored check the news check sports scores check reddit and Pinterest whatever all of these things cater to these uncomfortable sensations so that means if all human behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort that means as you said time management is pain management and so this is why is the most important first step that with all the ways you can you know life hack yourself and all of the Guru's technique does you're fundamentally if you don't deal with this fact that we are trying to escape an uncomfortable sensation when we become distracted if we don't understand it and learn new methods to cope with that discomfort we're always going to be distracted by one thing or another that we are so uncomfortable doing nothing that we just want to feel something we need some kind of sensation this is by design I think one of the things that bothers me I think by some self-help experts is that they kind of preach this gospel that somehow if you're not happy all the time if you're not satisfied with your life somehow something's wrong with you and it turns out that evolutionarily speaking nothing could be further from the truth that our species is designed to be perpetually perturbed right we we have this instinct of feeling bored to prod us to go do something to go search to find better resources to improve our lot in life and that's not necessarily a bad thing that we can harness that right this is the same impulse that helps us develop life-changing medicine it helps us invent new things helps us to shoot for the moon it comes from that desire for more so I don't think the answer to all of our problems is to not want to not crave to not desire I think the answer is to channel these internal triggers towards traction rather than distraction I mean there's one thing that our brain is incredibly good at is pattern matching so if the brain feels discomfort and then find something that can relieve that discomfort that's what it forms the habit around we need to understand that if we are to fight distraction if we are to be the kind of people who do what we say we're going to do we only really have two choices we can either fix the source of the discomfort in our life whatever it is that's causing us this pain or we need tactics to cope with the discomfort that we can't alleviate our own for for example you know weak part of being human is that part of the human condition is that you can't solve every problem in your life you can't even I would argue you can't even keep yourself from feeling those feelings what you can't do is change how you react to your emotions and so that's the really important part is either fixing the source of the problem where you can or learning tactics to cope with that discomfort in a healthier manner one of the things that people do that doesn't work is strict absence now strict abstinence is when you tell yourself I am NOT going to do that thing and it turns out that strict abstinence for many behaviors backfires particularly Bayt behaviors that are very difficult to avoid completely how do you abstain from food if from a diet we have to eat how do you abstain from technology these days I mean it's imperative to do our jobs we can't just say stop using email for 30 days you lose your job you get fired so for those type of potential distractions we don't want to just abstain when we do abstain when we tell ourselves no actually not it's almost like pulling on a rubber band that when you pull on a rubber band you stretches stretches stretches stretch if you let go it doesn't just go back to where you started it ricochets even further and that's what happens when we employ strict abstinence we tell ourselves don't do it don't do it don't do it don't do it okay fine I'll give in and that sensation of relieving the discomfort of telling yourself not to is itself pleasurable this is why this is a big reason why smokers get addicted to cigarettes smokers when they when they are mindful about the experience of smoking they actually rate it as not pleasurable the stinky it's not very pleasurable there's nothing inherently pleasure nicotine does make you feel a certain way but many smokers don't actually report and makes them feel good it just makes them feel something what gets them to to keep smoking is not only the physiological effects of the nicotine what more so gets them addicted is telling themselves don't do it don't do it don't do it finally I smoked and now I'm relieved of the discomfort of having to tell myself don't do it so strict absence oftentimes backfires you can give in to any distraction whether that distraction is you know checking email when you want to work on a big project whether that you're tempted to Google something or or do eat that piece of chocolate cake you know you don't want to have you can give in to that distraction in ten minutes ten minutes of doing what psychologists call surfing the urge when when it comes to these uncomfortable emotional states we know that emotions don't last forever in the moment we think they will ask forever that's how the brain Spurs us to do something about it right it spurs us to action by making us I don't want to feel this way anymore but logically rationally we'll think about it emotions are like waves they crest and they subside so we can surf these urges like a surfer riding away so for 10 minutes what would I oftentimes do I'll take out my phone I'll say set a timer for 10 minutes I'll put my phone down and my job for those 10 minutes is to simply reflect on that sensation and talk to myself the way I would talk to a good friend with self compassion so what many people do when they tell themselves no when they try and not get distracted they fit into two buckets the blamers or the shamers the blamers say it's my phone that got me distracted it's Facebook it's YouTube it's you know it slacks that thing got me distracted the shamers this is the categorize to fall in to say there's something wrong with me maybe I'm not cut out for this job I'm lazy I have a short attention span there's something wrong with me right and we shame ourselves and of course that's not helpful either because where does this shame spiral lead it causes more internal triggers which makes us even more likely to seek a distraction to escape that uncomfortable emotional state yeah so how do you defuse it you don't become contemptuous you become curious so for 10 minutes your job is to reflect on that sensation to feel that sensation with curiosity rather than contempt or to get back to the task at hand and nine times out of 10 by just setting that 10 minute rule and saying I can give into that distraction and I can have that chocolate cake I can go check you know my email or Google whatever it is that I am tempted to do but in 10 minutes it's an incredibly effective and simple technique