Indistractable Read online

  The logic isn’t surprising, but the extent of the effect is remarkable. A study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that individuals who believed they were powerless to fight their cravings were much more likely to drink again.

  Addicts’ beliefs regarding their powerlessness was just as significant in determining whether they would relapse after treatment as their level of physical dependence.

  Just let that sink in—mind-set mattered as much as physical dependence! What we say to ourselves is vitally important. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control actually leads to less self-control. Rather than telling ourselves we failed because we’re somehow deficient, we should offer self-compassion by speaking to ourselves with kindness when we experience setbacks.

  Several studies have found people who are more self-compassionate experience a greater sense of well-being. A 2015 review of seventy-nine studies looking at the responses of over sixteen thousand volunteers found that people who have “a positive and caring attitude . . . toward her- or himself in the face of failures and individual shortcomings” tend to be happier. Another study found that people’s tendency to self-blame, along with how much they ruminated on a problem, could almost completely mediate the most common factors associated with depression and anxiety. An individual’s level of self-compassion had a greater effect on whether they would develop anxiety and depression than all the usual things that tend to screw up people’s lives, like traumatic life events, a family history of mental illness, low social status, or a lack of social support.

  The good news is that we can change the way we talk to ourselves in order to harness the power of self-compassion. This doesn’t mean we won’t mess up; we all do. Everyone struggles with distraction from one thing or another. The important thing is to take responsibility for our actions without heaping on the toxic guilt that makes us feel even worse and can, ironically, lead us to seek even more distraction in order to escape the pain of shame.

  Self-compassion makes people more resilient to letdowns by breaking the vicious cycle of stress that often accompanies failure.

  If you find yourself listening to the little voice in your head that sometimes bullies you around, it’s important to know how to respond. Instead of accepting what the voice says or arguing with it, remind yourself that obstacles are part of the process of growth. We don’t get better without practice, which can be difficult at times.

  A good rule of thumb is to talk to yourself the way you might talk to a friend. Since we know so much about ourselves, we tend to be our own worst critics, but if we talk to ourselves the way we’d help a friend, we can see the situation for what it really is. Telling yourself things like “This is what it’s like to get better at something” and “You’re on your way” are healthier ways to handle self-doubt.

  Reimagining the internal trigger, the task, and our temperament are powerful and established ways to deal with distractions that start within us. We can cope with uncomfortable internal triggers by reflecting on, rather than reacting to, our discomfort. We can reimagine the task we’re trying to accomplish by looking for the fun in it and focusing on it more intensely. Finally, and most important, we can change the way we see ourselves to get rid of self-limiting beliefs. If we believe we’re short on willpower and self-control, then we will be. If we decide we’re powerless to resist temptation, it becomes true. If we tell ourselves we’re deficient by nature, we’ll believe every word.

  Thankfully, you don’t have to believe everything you think; you are only powerless if you think you are.

  REMEMBER THIS

  •Reimagining our temperament can help us manage our internal triggers.

  •We don’t run out of willpower. Believing we do makes us less likely to accomplish our goals by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.

  •What we say to ourselves matters. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control is self-defeating.

  •Practice self-compassion. Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend. People who are more self-compassionate are more resilient.

  Part 2

  Make Time for Traction

  Chapter 9

  Turn Your Values into Time

  Traction draws you toward what you want in life, while distraction pulls you away. In part one, we learned ways to cope with the internal triggers that can drive us to distraction and how to reduce the sources of discomfort; if we don’t control our impulse to escape uncomfortable feelings, we’ll always look for quick fixes to soothe our pain.

  The next step is to find ways to make traction more likely, starting with how we spend our time. The German writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe believed he could predict someone’s future based on one simple fact. “If I know how you spend your time,” he wrote, “then I know what might become of you.”

  Think of all the ways people steal your time. The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” Though Seneca was writing more than two thousand years ago, his words are just as applicable today. Think of all the locks, security systems, and storage units we use to protect our property and how little we do to protect our time.

  A study by Promotional Products Association International found only a third of Americans keep a daily schedule, which means the vast majority wake up every morning with no formal plans. Our most precious asset—our time—is unguarded, just waiting to be stolen. If we don’t plan our days, someone else will.

  So we need to make a schedule, but where do we begin? The common approach is to make a to-do list. We write down all the things we want to do and hope we’ll find the time throughout the day to do them. Unfortunately, this method has some serious flaws. Anyone who has tried keeping such a list knows many tasks tend to get pushed from one day to the next, and the next. Instead of starting with what we’re going to do, we should begin with why we’re going to do it. And to do that, we must begin with our values.

  According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, values are “how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.” They are attributes of the person we want to be. For example, they may include being an honest person, being a loving parent, or being a valued part of a team. We never achieve our values any more than finishing a painting would let us achieve being creative. A value is like a guiding star; it’s the fixed point we use to help us navigate our life choices.

  Though some values carry over into all facets of life, most are specific to one area. For example, being a contributing member of a team is something people generally do at work. Being a loving spouse or parent occurs within the context of a family. Being the kind of person who seeks wisdom or physical fitness is something we do for ourselves.

  The trouble is, we don’t make time for our values. We unintentionally spend too much time in one area of our lives at the expense of others. We get busy at work at the expense of living out our values with our family or friends. If we run ourselves ragged caring for our kids, we neglect our bodies, minds, and friendships and prevent ourselves from being the people we desire to be. If we chronically neglect our values, we become something we’re not proud of—our lives feel out of balance and diminished. Ironically, this ugly feeling makes us more likely to seek distractions to escape our dissatisfaction without actually solving the problem.

  Whatever our values may be, it’s helpful to categorize them into various life domains, a concept that is thousands of years old. The Stoic philosopher Hierocles demonstrated the interconnected nature of our lives with concentric circles illustrating a hierarchal balance of duties. He placed the human mind and body at the center, followed by close family in the next ring, then extended family, then fellow members of one’s tribe, then inhabitants of one’s town or city, fellow citizens and countrymen next, finishing with all humanity in
the outermost ring.

  Inspired by his example, I created a way to simplify and visualize the three life domains where we spend our time:

  The three life domains: you, relationships, and work.

  These three domains outline where we spend our time. They give us a way to think about how we plan our days so that we can become an authentic reflection of the people we want to be.

  In order to live our values in each of these domains, we must reserve time in our schedules to do so. Only by setting aside specific time in our schedules for traction (the actions that draw us toward what we want in life) can we turn our backs on distraction. Without planning ahead, it’s impossible to tell the difference between traction and distraction.

  You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it’s distracting you from.

  I know many of us bristle at the idea of keeping a schedule because we don’t want to feel hampered, but oddly enough, we actually perform better under constraints. This is because limitations give us a structure, while a blank schedule and a mile-long to-do list torments us with too many choices.

  The most effective way to make time for traction is through “timeboxing.” Timeboxing uses a well-researched technique psychologists call “setting an implementation intention,” which is a fancy way of saying, “deciding what you’re going to do, and when you’re going to do it.” It’s a technique that can be used to make time for traction in each of your life domains.

  The goal is to eliminate all white space on your calendar so you’re left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day.

  It doesn’t so much matter what you do with your time; rather, success is measured by whether you did what you planned to do. It’s fine to watch a video, scroll social media, daydream, or take a nap, as long as that’s what you planned to do. Alternatively, checking work email, a seemingly productive task, is a distraction if it’s done when you intended to spend time with your family or work on a presentation. Keeping a timeboxed schedule is the only way to know if you’re distracted. If you’re not spending your time doing what you’d planned, you’re off track.

  To create a weekly timeboxed schedule, you’ll need to decide how much time you want to spend on each domain of your life. How much time do you want to spend on yourself, on important relationships, and on your work? Note that “work” doesn’t exclusively mean paid labor. The work domain can include community service, activism, and side projects.

  How much time in each domain would allow you to be consistent with your values? Start by creating a weekly calendar template for your perfect week. You’ll find a blank template in the appendix and a free online tool at NirAndFar.com/Indistractable.

  Next, book fifteen minutes on your schedule every week to reflect and refine your calendar by asking two questions:

  Question 1 (Reflect): “When in my schedule did I do what I said I would do and when did I get distracted?” Answering this question requires you to look back at the past week. I recommend using the Distraction Tracker found at the back of this book to note when and why you become distracted, per Dr. Bricker’s suggestions of noting your internal trigger from chapter six.

  If an internal trigger distracts you, what strategies will you use to cope the next time it arises? Did an external trigger, like a phone call or a talkative colleague, prompt you to stop doing what you wanted to do? (We’ll address tactics to control external triggers in part three.) Or was a planning problem the reason you gave in to distraction? In which case, you can look back through your Distraction Tracker to help answer the next question.

  Question 2 (Refine): “Are there changes I can make to my calendar that will give me the time I need to better live out my values?” Maybe something unexpected came up, or perhaps there was a problem with how you planned your day. Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work out in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around. The idea is to commit to a practice that improves your schedule over time by helping you know the difference between traction and distraction for every moment of the day.

  When our lives change, our schedules can too. But once our schedule is set, the idea is to stick with it until we decide to improve it on the next go-round. Approaching the exercise of making a schedule as a curious scientist, rather than a drill sergeant, gives us the freedom to get better with each iteration.

  In this section, we’ll look at how to make time for traction in the three domains of your life. We’ll also discuss how to sync expectations of how you spend your time with the stakeholders in your life, like coworkers and managers.

  Before moving on, consider what your schedule currently looks like. I’m not asking about the things you did, but rather the things you committed to doing in writing. Is your schedule filled with carefully timeboxed plans, or is it mostly empty? Does it reflect who you are? Are you letting others steal your time or do you guard it as the limited and precious resource it is?

  By turning our values into time, we make sure we have time for traction. If we don’t plan ahead, we shouldn’t point fingers, nor should we be surprised when everything becomes a distraction. Being indistractable is largely about making sure you make time for traction each day and eliminating the distraction that keeps you from living the life you want—one that involves taking care of yourself, your relationships, and your work.

  REMEMBER THIS

  •You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. Planning ahead is the only way to know the difference between traction and distraction.

  •Does your calendar reflect your values? To be the person you want to be, you have to make time to live your values.

  •Timebox your day. The three life domains of you, relationships, and work provide a framework for planning how to spend your time.

  •Reflect and refine. Revise your schedule regularly, but you must commit to it once it’s set.

  Chapter 10

  Control the Inputs, Not the Outcomes

  In this visual representation of your life, you are at the center of the three domains. Like every valuable thing, you require maintenance and care, which takes time. Just as you wouldn’t blow off a meeting with your boss, you should never bail on appointments you make with yourself. After all, who’s more critical to helping you live the kind of life you want than you?

  Exercise, sleep, healthy meals, and time spent reading or listening to an audiobook are all ways to invest in ourselves. Some people value mindfulness, spiritual connection, or reflection, and may want time to pray or meditate. Others value skillfulness and want time alone to practice a hobby.

  Taking care of yourself is at the core of the three domains because the other two depend on your health and wellness. If you’re not taking care of yourself, your relationships suffer. Likewise, your work isn’t its best when you haven’t given yourself the time you need to stay physically and psychologically healthy.

  We can start by prioritizing and timeboxing “you” time. At a basic level, we need time in our schedules for sleep, hygiene, and proper nourishment. While it may sound simple to fulfill these needs, I must admit that before I learned to timebox my day, I was guilty of spending many late nights at work, after which I’d quickly grab a double cheeseburger, curly fries, and a decadent chocolate shake for dinner—a far cry from the healthy lifestyle I envisioned.

  By setting aside time to live out your values in the “you” domain, you will have the time to reflect on your calendar and visualize the qualities of the person you want to be. With your body and mind strong, you will also be much more likely to follow through on your promises.

  You might be thinking, “It’s all well and good to schedule time for ourselves, but what happens when we don’t accomplish what we want to, despite making the time?”

  A few years ago, I started waking up at three o’clock every morning. Over the years I’d read many articles
about the importance of rest and knew that the research was unequivocal—we need quality sleep. I’d toss and turn, disappointed that I wasn’t following through on my plan to get seven to eight hours of shut-eye. It was on my schedule, so why wasn’t I asleep? It turns out that sleeping wasn’t completely under my control. I couldn’t help the fact my body chose to wake me up, but I could control what I did in response.

  At first, I did what many of us do when things don’t go as planned—I freaked out. I’d lie in bed, thinking about how bad it was that I wasn’t sleeping and how groggy I was going to feel in the morning, and then I’d start thinking of all the things I had to do the next day. I’d mull over these thoughts until I could think of nothing else. Ironically, I wasn’t falling back asleep because I was worried about not falling back asleep—a common cause of insomnia.

  Once I realized my rumination was itself a distraction, I began to deal with it in a healthier manner. Specifically, if I woke up, I’d repeat a simple mantra, “The body gets what the body needs.” That subtle mind-set shift took the pressure off by no longer making sleep a requirement. My job was to provide my body with the proper time and place to rest—what happened next was out of my control. I started to think of waking up in the middle of the night as a chance to read on my Kindle and stopped worrying about when I’d fall back asleep.2 I assured myself that if I wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep right at that moment, it was because my body had already gotten enough rest. I let my mind relax without worry.

  You see where this is leading, don’t you? Once my rumination stopped, so did my sleepless nights. I soon started regularly falling back asleep in minutes.

  There’s an important lesson here that goes well beyond how to get enough sleep. The takeaway is that, when it comes to our time, we should stop worrying about outcomes we can’t control and instead focus on the inputs we can. The positive results of the time we spend doing something is a hope, not a certainty.