Indistractable Page 10

  3Although I originally bought an Apple Watch for this purpose, I no longer use it. I prefer the Nokia Steel HR, which, along with being a much less expensive smartwatch, has the wonderful feature of always displaying the time, no wrist jerk required.

  4Chime, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chime/id414830146?mt=8.

  Chapter 19

  Hack Back Your Desktop

  By the looks of his laptop, Robbert van Els could be mistaken for a secret agent. His screen is an explosion of urgent files—a master control center for managing clandestine operatives. The man-of-mystery persona is typified by the sports car tearing behind an onslaught of Word documents and JPEG files. Just looking at his desktop could raise your blood pressure.

  But Robbert van Els is not a secret agent. He’s a mess.

  Apparently, there’s no correlation between the mayhem on one’s computer and the adventure in one’s life. Anyone can find themselves swamped with desktop clutter. Unfortunately, this digital debris costs us time, degrades performance, and kills concentration.

  I first met van Els at a conference where I presented a talk on digital distraction. At that time, he was at his breaking point. He realized if he was going to grow his business, he needed to regain control of his attention. “Less distraction; more time to focus,” he told me. Later, I learned that van Els had taken my presentation to heart and gone even further. Over Facebook, he shared a screenshot of his new desktop and reported, “I tested the new layout for a month now and the result works great!”

  Robbert van Els’s desktop screen.

  Van Els discovered that a cluttered desktop doesn’t just look ugly; it’s also costly. For one, there are cognitive costs. 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.

  Unsurprisingly, our brains have a tougher time finding things when they are positioned in a disorganized manner, which means every errant icon, open tab, or unnecessary bookmark serves as a nagging reminder of things left undone or unexplored. With so many external triggers, it’s easy to mindlessly click away from the task at hand. According to Sophie Leroy at the University of Minnesota, moving from one thing to another hurts our concentration by leaving what she calls an “attention residue” that makes it harder to get back on track once we have been distracted.

  Today, van Els’s desktop couldn’t be more pristine. He replaced the screeching sports car and hundreds of icons with a black background and simple white letters that read, “What we fear most is usually what we most need to do.”

  Removing unnecessary external triggers from our line of sight declutters our workspace and frees the mind to concentrate on what’s really important.

  Robbert van Els’s desktop today—inspiring and trigger-free.

  Inspired, I decided to follow van Els and implement a clean sweep of my own. With the exception of one or two files I will work on over the week, I put everything on my formerly cluttered desktop into one folder labeled “Everything” (very original, I know). There’s no need to sort files into folders. If I need a file, I use the search function to find it. I now start every workday with a blank slate on my computer screen. (You can download your own Indistractable wallpaper at NirAndFar.com/Indistractable.)

  But my decluttering crusade didn’t stop there. I decided to disable all desktop notifications to ensure that various unhelpful external triggers could no longer interrupt me. To eradicate notifications, I opened the System Preferences control panel on my Mac, clicked the Notifications option, and deactivated all the notification preferences for each of the listed apps.

  I also hacked the Do Not Disturb feature so that it remained on at all times by setting it to turn on at 7:00 am and turn off one minute earlier. With these hacks in place, the countless desktop notifications finally stopped. Similar steps can be taken on a Windows computer using the Focus Assist feature, which also includes the ability to allow interruptions from select people, like your boss.

  I turned off all desktop notifications and set my laptop to perpetual Do Not Disturb mode.

  Like van Els and me, you’ll find that a clutter-free desktop can help you get on the path toward traction every time you switch on your computer. You will benefit from working in a digital space free of the triggers that pull your attention away from what you really want to do.

  REMEMBER THIS

  •Desktop clutter takes a heavy psychological toll on your attention. Clearing away external triggers in your digital workspace can help you stay focused.

  •Turn off desktop notifications. Disabling notifications on your computer ensures you won’t get distracted by external triggers while doing focused work.

  Chapter 20

  Hack Back Online Articles

  If the internet had a voice, I’m fairly certain it would sound like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  “Hello, Nir,” it might say to me in its low, monotone voice. “Glad to see you again.”

  “Internet, I need a few quick things for an article I’m writing,” I’d reply. “Then it’s back to work. No distractions this time.”

  “Of course, Nir, but while you’re here, won’t you look at the news headlines?”

  “No, internet,” I’d say. “I’m just here to find some specific information. I can’t be distracted.”

  “Of course, Nir,” the internet would reply. “But this article titled ‘The Top 10 Productivity Tricks You Just Have to Know’ could be helpful. Give it a click, won’t you?”

  “Interesting,” I’d say hesitantly. “Just a quick read and then it’s back to work.”

  Three hours later, I’d realize how long I’d wasted clicking from article to article and would curse the internet for sucking me into its content vortex yet again.

  Not only was I wasting time reading too many articles, I’d often end up with dozens, if not hundreds, of open tabs strewn across my browser. These external triggers not only made me more likely to be distracted in the future but also led to dreaded crashes, whereby all my tabs, and whatever else I’d been working on, would be wiped out.

  Thankfully, a simple rule fixed all my tab troubles and has helped me steer clear of mindless web browsing:

  I never read articles in my web browser.

  As you can imagine, as a writer, I use the web for research every day. However, whenever I discover a new article, I no longer read it in my web browser right away. Instead, I’ve time-shifted when and how I read online, thereby removing the temptation to read for longer than I intend. Here’s how:

  I started by installing an app called Pocket on my phone, along with its browser extension on my laptop. In order to abide by my “never read articles in my browser” rule, I simply click the Pocket button in my browser every time I see an article I’d like to read. Pocket then pulls the text from the web page and saves it (without ads and any other superfluous content) to the app on my phone.

  I replaced my old habit of either reading online content immediately or letting it clog up my web browser with the new habit of saving the articles for consumption at a later time. With this new behavior, my temptation to digest the content wasn’t thwarted; I was just as satisfied knowing that the content was safe and sound, waiting for me until later.

  But when would I get to the hundreds of articles I’d saved? Was I merely shifting the problem from my browser to my phone? Here’s where the benefits of combining timeboxing with hacking back external triggers can yield big dividends.

  Everyone knows that multitasking destroys productivity, right? Haven’t we all seen studies and read articles telling us that it’s impossible to do two things at the same time? In some ways, that’s true. The evidence is pretty clear that humans are awful at performing two complex tasks at once. Generally speaking, we commit more errors when juggling many tasks
at the same time, and we also take longer—sometimes double the time—to complete the tasks. Scientists believe this wasted time and decreased proficiency occurs because the brain has to work hard to refocus attention.

  However, when used correctly, multitasking can let us get more out of our schedules with little extra effort. I call it “multichannel multitasking,” and it’s a terrific trick for getting more out of your day. To multitask the right way, we need to understand our brain’s limitations that prevent us from doing more than one thing at the same time. First, the brain has a limit on its processing horsepower—the more concentration a task requires, the less room it has for anything else. That’s why we can’t solve two math problems at the same time.

  Second, the brain has a limited number of attention channels, and it can only make sense of one sensory signal at a time. Try listening to two different podcasts, one in each ear. Not surprisingly, you won’t be able to understand what’s going on in one without mentally tuning out the other.

  However, although we can only receive information from one visual or auditory source at a time, we are perfectly capable of processing multichannel inputs. Scientists call this “cross-modal attention,” and it allows our brains to place certain mental processes on autopilot while we think about other things.

  As long as we’re not required to concentrate too much on any one channel, we’re able to do more than one thing at a time.

  Studies have found that people can do some things better when they engage multiple sensory inputs. For example, some types of learning are enhanced when people also engage their auditory, visual, and tactile senses at the same time. A recent study found walking, even if done slowly and on a treadmill, improved performance on a creativity test when compared to sitting down.

  Some forms of multichannel multitasking pair particularly well together. Cooking and eating a healthy meal with friends allows you to do something good for your body while also investing in your relationships. Stepping out of the office for a long walk while taking a phone call or inviting a colleague for a walking meeting checks off two positive things at once. Listening to a nonfiction audiobook on the way to work is a good example of making the most of a commute while investing time in self-improvement. Doing the same while cooking or cleaning makes the chores seem to pass more quickly.

  Another form of multichannel multitasking has been shown to be an effective way to help people get fit. Katherine Milkman at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has shown how leveraging a behavior we want to do can help us do things we know we should do. In her study, Milkman gave participants an iPod loaded with an audiobook they could only listen to at the gym. Milkman chose books like The Hunger Games and Twilight that she knew had story lines likely to keep people wanting more. The results were amazing: “Participants who had access to the audiobooks only at the gym made 51 percent more gym visits than those in the control group.”

  Milkman’s technique is called “temptation bundling” and can be used whenever we want to use the rewards from one behavior to incentivize another. In my case, the articles I save to Pocket are my rewards for exercising.

  Every time I go to the gym or take a long walk, I get to listen to articles read to me through the Pocket app’s text-to-speech capabilities. The built-in reading feature is astounding, and the HAL 9000 voice of the internet has been replaced by a British chap with a cheery disposition who reads the articles I’ve selected, commercial free.

  Getting through my articles feels like a small reward, often encouraging me to work out or take a stroll while satisfying my need for intellectual stimulation and saving me the temptation of reading at my desk. That, folks, is what we call a triple win in the hack-back battle against distraction!

  Multichannel multitasking is an underutilized tactic for getting more out of each day. We can build this technique into our schedules to help us make more time for traction and use temptation bundling to make activities, like exercising, more enjoyable.

  My hack is one method for conquering the seductive draw of reading “just one more thing” or having one more tab open “for later.” By replacing my bad habits with new rules and tools, I’ve increased my productivity and kept HAL’s seductive call at bay. Today, when online articles tempt me to keep clicking, I respond robotically, “I’m sorry, internet, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  REMEMBER THIS

  •Online articles are full of potentially distracting external triggers. Open tabs can pull us off course and tend to suck us down a time-wasting content vortex.

  •Make a rule. Promise yourself you’ll save interesting content for later by using an app like Pocket.

  •Surprise! You can multitask. Use multichannel multitasking like listening to articles while working out or taking walking meetings.

  Chapter 21

  Hack Back Feeds

  On the New York City subway, I often find myself surrounded by a sea of social media scrollers, their heads down as they try to reach a mythical news feed finish line before they reach their stops. Social media is a particularly devilish source of distraction; sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit are designed to spawn external triggers—news, updates, and notifications galore.

  The infinite scroll of Facebook’s News Feed is an ingenious bit of behavioral design and is the company’s response to the human penchant for perpetually searching for novelty. But just because Facebook uses sophisticated algorithms to keep us tapping doesn’t mean we can’t hack back; I’ve found the most effective way to regain control is to eliminate the News Feed altogether. Didn’t think that was possible? It is, and here’s how.

  A free web browser extension called News Feed Eradicator for Facebook does exactly what it says; it eliminates the source of countless alluring external triggers and replaces them with an inspirational quote. If that tool doesn’t strike your fancy, another free technology called Todobook replaces the Facebook News Feed with the user’s to-do list. Instead of scrolling the feed, we see tasks that we planned to do for the day, and only when we’ve completed our to-do list does the News Feed unlock. Ian McCrystal, Todobook’s founder, told Mashable, “I love News Feed, I just want a more healthy relationship with it . . . So I wanted a way to keep up my productivity while still having access to the less-distracting parts of Facebook.” (For links to all my favorite tools to hack back distractions, visit NirAndFar.com/Indistractable.)

  You can hack back Facebook by removing the News Feed.

  Personally, I still use Facebook, but now I use it the way I want instead of the way Facebook intended. When I want to see updates from a certain friend or participate in the discussion happening in a particular Facebook group, I go straight to the page I want instead of having to wrestle myself away from the News Feed. I allocate time on my calendar to check Facebook almost every day, but without the unwanted external triggers in the News Feed to tempt me down a rabbit hole of frivolity; I’m in and out in less than fifteen minutes.

  Though technologies like Todobook work across several other social media sites including Reddit and Twitter, there’s another way to avoid distractions on these and other feed-based social networking sites: bypass the feed using a clever bookmarking protocol.

  For example, typing in “LinkedIn.com” takes you to the website’s feed, where a stream of stories can keep you scrolling and clicking for hours. While I could install a browser extension called Newsfeed Burner, which eliminates the LinkedIn feed, I benefit from the industry information in the LinkedIn feed and don’t want it gone completely. In this case, instead of eradicating the feed, I simply take charge of the exact URL when I visit the site, making sure I choose a destination with fewer external triggers likely to distract me.

  Here’s how it works: during my scheduled social media time, I click on a button in my browser to activate an extension called Open Multiple Websites. As the name suggests, the button opens all the website addresses I’ve preloaded. Since I don’t want to land on the LinkedIn.com feed, I’ve pre
loaded LinkedIn.com/messaging, where I can read and respond to messages instead of falling victim to the endless, distracting feed. With the same click, the browser extension opens Twitter.com/NirEyal, where I can respond to comments and questions without seeing the infamous and inflammatory Twitter feed.

  By avoiding the feed, I’m much more likely to use social media mindfully while still allowing time to connect with others proactively.

  Just as companies like Facebook and LinkedIn implement behavioral design to keep us scrolling, YouTube deploys similar psychological hacks to keep us watching with its powerful external triggers. As you watch a video, YouTube’s algorithm hums away at predicting what you’ll likely want to watch next, based on the topic of the video you’re currently watching and your video history. YouTube serves up thumbnail images of recommended videos along the right side of the web page, usually next to advertisements for sponsored videos targeted at you. Similar to a news feed, these thumbnails also appear as soon as you land on YouTube’s homepage, sending you on a hunt for more digital treasure. Such external triggers are there to keep you watching video after video.

  Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with spending time on YouTube. I have time reserved in my timeboxed calendar to indulge in YouTube videos, and I love it! But rather than mindlessly viewing the next recommended video or clicking on yet another enticing suggestion, I use some hacks of my own to make sure I only watch videos I’d planned to see.

  Specifically, I like the free browser extension called DF Tube, which scrubs away many of the distracting external triggers and lets me watch a video in peace. I find that removing the suggested videos and ads along the side of the screen is a huge help.