How to Not Waste Your Life (Stop Getting Distracted)

hey friends welcome back to the channel so we often think that the opposite of distraction is focus but this isn't actually true the opposite of distraction is traction and what's really cool about these two words is that they both end in the same six letters which means that distraction is any action that pulls you away from your goals and traction is any action that pulls you towards your goals now this is something I came across when I first read The Incredible Book indestructible by near I've taken a lot of advice from that book myself personally and I recently had a wonderful conversation with near all about how to become indestructible so we constantly lie to ourselves and what that means is that we look back on our lives and we are full of regret we said we should have done that thing we should have started the business we should have written the book we should have started the podcast we should have started youtubing whatever the case might be but we didn't do it we got distracted so being indistractable is about doing what you say you're going to do n is in his 40s now and he's in an amazing shape with six-pack apps he's got a great family he thinks very intentionally about what he wants in his life but it actually took near 5 years to write the book because ironically he kept on getting distracted so partly he wrote the book to find out for himself how he could become IND distractible both when doing day-to-day tasks and also on big long-term projects and in this video we're going to be breaking down the four key elements of the indistractable model which is all about doing more traction and less distraction perhaps unsurprisingly principle number one the 10minute rule so a lot of us think that the reason why we're so distracted is because of our phones and emails and work and kids and all of those things around us but according to ne's research this is actually a myth because external triggers only account for around 10% of our distractions instead 90% of our distraction is caused by internal triggers what are internal triggers internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape boredom loneliness fatigue uncertainty anxiety these are these uncomfortable Sensations that we look to escape many times with distraction so the research shows that we are more motivated to avoid pain than we are to seek pleasure this is something called prospect theory and it explains why you care more about not losing $100 than you do about winning $100 rationally it's the same thing you either win 100 or you don't lose 100 but there's something about losing stuff experiencing that pain that makes us feel very motivated to avoid that so like what n said internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we are trying to avoid and so if we want to become indistractable we need to get way better at taking control of our internal triggers and there are loads of techniques that NE talks about in his book about this but one of the key ones is that 10-minute rule the 10-minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction whatever that distraction might be whether you're on a diet and you're trying to resist that chocolate cake whether you're trying to quit smoking whether you're trying to not check your phone every 5 minutes when you're trying to be with your family or do a work project you can give into that distraction but not right now in 10 minutes and if 10 minutes is too long make it the 5minute rule it doesn't really matter so next time you feel distracted try procrastinating from that distraction for just 10 minutes now in those 10 minutes you can do a couple of things you can firstly choose to get back to whatever you were doing before you got distracted or alternatively you can use that time to surf the urge and this is where we acknowledge that emotions come in waves and you sort of explore why that feeling came about in the first place and a key action point here is to create what NE calls a distraction notebook so most people have no sense of why they got distracted they all of a sudden find the cigarettes in their hand they all of a sudden find the phone you know they're scrolling on Tik Tok or whatever without realizing what was the preceding internal trigger so a distraction notebook is a way for you to start bringing awareness to what is that preceding emotion that you are trying to escape he recommends actually doing this on pen and paper or keeping it written down somewhere rather than just doing in your head but you can do it in your head if you want basically it's a good way to keep track of those internal triggers that cause you to become distracted and then obviously you can put steps in place to avoid that thing distracting you again in the future hopefully now in the rest of this video we're going to talk about three other things but if you're the sort of person who gets distracted you're also probably the sort of person who's not going to watch the rest of this video so I'm telling you now if you just take one thing away from this video it is to recog ize that practically all of the time 90% of the time when you're getting distracted it's because there is some kind of emotional state that you are trying to avoid and just having that knowledge that appreciation that you are a little and no not that and just having that knowledge and just having that knowledge can help you actually figure out okay what's the source of that emotion why is that emotion happening what's the narrative you're telling yourself about the emotion feelings are not facts as various people on the internet famously say which is kind of true feelings are not facts the feeling is caused by some kind of internal sensation and then you're telling yourself some sort of narrative or some sort of story which is then precipitating that specific feeling and that negative emotion is the thing that you're trying to avoid when you get distracted so if you just remember that feel free to click off this video scroll Tik Tok instead but if that's a thing that you take away from this video this video will have been totally worth it but okay if you're still with me then we know that internal triggers are not 100% of the problem there is another 10% and if we want to solve the other 10% of distraction then we've got to think about two other causes of distraction that is firstly planning problems and secondly external triggers oh and by the way if you are enjoying this video then you might like to check out brilliant who are very kindly sponsoring this video brilliant is a fantastic online education platform where you learn by doing not just by consuming and they've got thousands of interactive lessons in maths and data analysis programming and even AI I've personally been learning stuff on brilliant for the last 5 years and I've gotten a lot of value from it in helping me understand various things around Ai and programming and crypto and I've even had people in my audience in that time who have said that they started using brilliant on the various recommendations that I that I give for it and they've gotten value out of it as well they've got a really good first principles approach to learning which helps you build understanding from the ground up and it's all crafted by an award-winning team of teachers and researchers and professionals from cool places like MIT Caltech Microsoft Google and many more places and really brilliant helps you build critical thinking skills through problem solving rather than through memorizing things which is traditionally how we're taught to do stuff in school so while you're building real knowledge on specific topics you're also becoming a better thinker and in just a few minutes each day which can replace some of the minutes you spend mindlessly scrolling brilliant can help you build genuine Real World Knowledge the growing number of courses on programming are particularly good and those can help you get familiar for example with python which is the world's most popular programming language and you can start building programs on day one with their built-in drag and drop editor if any of that sounds interesting and you'd like to try out everything brilliant has to offer completely for free for a full 30 days head over to brilliant. org Al adal or you can scan or screenshot the QR code on screen or you can click on the link in the video description and if you sign up for brilliant using any of these mechanisms you'll also get 20% off the annual premium subscription so thank you so much brilliant for spons answering this video principle number two The Willpower myth okay so aside from all of these internal triggers there are lots of other external triggers that also pull us away from traction like phones and computers and TV shows and work emails and meetings and the whole Shang and I've made a bunch of videos specifically on how to deal with some of these external triggers like phone addiction and stuff but one of the really interesting things that n and I talked about was willpower and whether or not willpower is really something that runs out towards the end of the day like some people think it does so there is this popular notion that willpower is a limited resource and this came out of some research uh done several years ago now uh around this concept called ego depletion ego depletion says that we run out of willpower just like we would run out of battery charge on our phone or gas in our gas tank that it's a depletable resource and this got a lot of of of press because it's kind of a concept people want to believe this original study on ego depletion was published in 1998 by a psychologist called Roy balister and a lot of people subscribe to this idea of willpower being a limited resource because it's a comforting thought it allows us to say that oh man I I'm just so tired by the end of the day my willpower has run out I get so drained at work by my boss or by life or by circumstances or by the weather or by whatever my willpower has run out and so I have to watch Netflix in the evening it's not my fault that I'm not actually making progress on my goals and instead I'm just scrolling Tik Tok and Instagram and all that kind of stuff it's not my fault it's that my willpower has run out but it turns out actually that the results from this original 1998 study have been totally debunked turns out this idea of ego depletion that we run out of willpower like gas in a gas tank turns out not to be true except in one group of people there is actually one group of people who really do run out of willpower they really do spend it up and those people and only those people and this work was done by Carol DW I'm sure you know her work uh her wonderful book uh called mindset and she found that the only group of people who run out of willpower are people who believe that willpower is a depletable resource so if you think that you run out of willpower by the end of the day then your body and mind will behave in that way if you just choose to believe that willpower is not a depletable resource and actually you can always muster up willp power and discipline whenever you feel like it then it's not really going to become a problem the word Addiction comes from the Latin addico which means slave So when you say to yourself I am a slave I am addicted I have no more willpower I'm spent you're making it true and so we have to be very very careful about these labels and make sure that we only adopt the labels that serve us rather than the ones that hurt us by the way if you are enjoying this video then you might like to check out my completely free 7-Day Focus crash course it's completely free and it's a series of seven emails that I'll send you each day that each have some evidence-based principles strategies and tools that you can use to improve your focus as well and the reason we've put that together is because whenever I pull the audience and ask like what are you guys struggling with focus and like consistency seems to be the the highest thing on that list basically all the time and so we thought you know what let's just turn into a bit of an email course cuz there is so much to share and so many strategies that are really helpful when it comes to focus so if you're interested it's completely free you can sign up you can unsubscribe whenever you want head over to focus crashcourse tocom or hit the link in the video description all right principle number three is traction time boxing everything is a distraction unless you plan your time so unlike a to-do list which is just a register of things you want to have done when you time box and I didn't make up this technique it's been around for a long time it's called setting an implementation intention it's the most widely studied technique that far too too few people use it's basically saying here's what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it okay so the issue with to-do lists is that when you write a to-do list and then you tick things off one by one then you can't plan firstly how much time it will take you to complete the task and secondly how much attention you actually need for the task but the idea of traction time boxing is that it lets you track both of these inputs because traction time boxing is basically a fancy way of describing putting stuff in your calendar and like actually doing it I discovered this when I was at University and I realized that I sucked at managing my time and then I started using a calendar and actually just time boxing things and actually trying to plan my week at the start of the week and figuring out okay when do I need to allocate time for my essays when I'm going to work on my side hustle business that's going to go in the calendar and that just helped me really become way more effective with how I use my time and it wasn't that I was sort of planning every single moment of the day because I also had a very social life at Uni and hung out with friends playing board games until 4 in the morning way too often but it let me sort of Juggle all these different things and it's still just amazes me how few people actually use a calendar when people get into the professional workplace everyone has to use a calendar cuz it's how me are organized and stuff but using a calendar for your personal life as well and also using a calendar for any side hustle type goals that you want to work towards whether that's starting a YouTube channel or a business or even just I don't know watching the top 50 movies in IMDb actually just putting those into your calendar and time boxing it really helps you make the most out of your time and so when you budget those things your time and attention the new metric isn't did I finish the new metric is did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction whether that's being with my family whether that's playing video games whether that's working on a big project did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction because that is the only way to have a feedback loop now over time you get better at estimating how much time and attention these different things in your calendar need and that way you can keep on improving at it over time but the most important takeaway is that everything in your calendar should ideally be traction so actions that pull you toward words your goals rather than distraction now sometimes people don't like this sometimes people like will say that well if you time block everything then that's like toxic productivity and like where's the spontaneity and where's the fun and I'm like no that's not how it works you can absolutely timebox your evenings for example to be fully present with your partner you can time boox a whole Wednesday evening for like a solo relaxation evening which is what I do on Wednesday evenings I don't care what your goals are the thing that I care about that I would love to happen is that you use your time which is the single most valuable non-renewable resource that we have you use that time towards things that you actually care about doing you don't use that time ideally just scrolling a random app based on what the like Engineers who get paid stupid amounts of money at Facebook and at Tik Tok and at Instagram and stuff instead of letting them decide what you're doing with your most valuable asset on this planet you decide yourself what you'd like to do with your most valuable asset on this planet I. E your time and if that means being on Tik Tok and chilling out watching Netflix watching Disney plus whatever you want great fantastic as long as you have made that decision then I'm happy cool principle number four the rule of pcts okay so there are three types of pcts that we can use to help become more indestructible price effort and identity so firstly price packs involve money now this part of the conversation near told me about his burn or burn technique when it came to working out now near used to be pretty overweight and now he's become absolutely ripped and apparently the way he did this was that he taped a $100 note to his mirror and when he looked at that mirror every single day he made a decision I can either burn some calories by doing some push-ups going for a walk around the block going for a swim doing some kind of exercise every day to burn calories or I have to burn the $100 bill and to this day near has never broken this price packed and he actually even did the same thing when writing the book IND distractable if he didn't write the book by a certain date then he owed someone $20,000 but of course he managed to write the book and so he never actually had to pay the money okay secondly we have effort packs which is where you put a bit of friction between you and the distraction so for example near has set it so that his internet automatically turns off at 1000 p.

m. every single day yeah he could always go and turn the router back on and like unplug the Amazon Alexa switch or whatever the thing is that's turning it off but that would take effort to do and he has to really think about it and then he has to really think about whether he actually wants to use the internet after 10 p. m.

this is the same reason why I've installed an app called opal which is very good and I set it so that it blocks all social media apps after 10 p. m. and before 9:00 a.

m. so when it gets to night time and I'm sitting on the toilet scrolling through my phone and I'm like huh you know what I'm just habitually going to go on Instagram reals I can't because Instagram is blocked and I think well what if I just watch a YouTube video and I can't because YouTube is blocked as well and then sometimes I think you know I should have Instagram unblocked because I need obviously need to post an Instagram story at 11:30 p. m.

and then I go on opal and then you know you can always unblock the apps but you have to wait like 30 seconds and in that 30 seconds I'm like do I really need to post this Instagram story at 11:30 well why don't I just go to sleep I can wake up early I can have a nice morning I'll be a bit more refreshed and energized and stuff and so I end up not going on social media anywhere near as much as I used to because I've now set this app to automatically block of these offending apps between 10: p. m. and 9:00 a.

m.