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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Nir Eyal
Read between
October 7 - October 15, 2019
Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.
Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality.
Understand the root cause of distraction. Distraction is about more than your devices. Separate proximate causes from the root cause.
Dissatisfaction is responsible for our species’ advancements and its faults. To harness its power, we must disavow the misguided idea that if we’re not happy, we’re not normal—exactly the opposite is true. While this shift in mind-set can be jarring, it can also be incredibly liberating.
Without techniques for disarming temptation, mental abstinence can backfire. Resisting an urge can trigger rumination and make the desire grow stronger.
Techniques like surfing the urge and thinking of our cravings as leaves on a stream are mental skill-building exercises that can help us stop impulsively giving in to distractions. They recondition our minds to seek relief from internal triggers in a reflective rather than a reactive way. As Oliver Burkeman wrote in the Guardian, “It’s a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate—but positive ones expand.”
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.
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.
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.”
If we don’t plan our days, someone else will.
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.
Keeping a timeboxed schedule is the only way to know if you’re distracted.
By turning our values into time, we make sure we have time for traction.
You can’t always control what you get out of time you spend, but you can control how much time you put into a task. • Input is much more certain than outcome. When it comes to living the life you want, making sure you allocate time to living your values is the only thing you should focus on.
Socially disconnected people are, according to Waldinger, “less happy; their health declines earlier in midlife; their brain functioning declines sooner; [and] they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.”
The people you love deserve more than getting whatever time is left over. If someone is important to you, make regular time for them on your calendar.
Is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it?
Spend less time on each message. Label emails by when each message needs a response. Reply to emails during a scheduled time on your calendar.
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.
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.
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.
YouTube
the SelfControl app, which blocks my access to a host of distracting websites like Facebook and Reddit, as well as my email account.
app called Freedom is a bit more sophisticated and blocks potential distractions not only on my computer but also on mobile devices.
Chapter 4: Learn to deal with discomfort rather than attempting to escape it with distraction.
Chapter 5: Stop trying to actively suppress urges—this only makes them stronger. Instead, observe and allow them to dissolve.
Chapter 20: Save online articles in Pocket to read or listen to at a scheduled time. Use “multichannel multitasking.”
