0:00

Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode,

0:02

I would love to tell you a little bit about

0:04

Life Notes. Now Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that

0:06

I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it

0:09

contains my notes from Life. So notes from books that

0:11

I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and

0:13

experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around

0:15

once a week, I write these up and share them

0:17

in an email with my subscribers. So if you would

0:19

like to get an email from me that contains the

0:21

stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm

0:23

learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a

0:26

link down in the show notes or in the video

0:28

description. There's

0:30

something about the human condition that makes

0:32

us distractable, that makes us constantly look

0:34

for other things. And that probably served

0:36

us on the plains of the Serengeti

0:39

200,000 years ago when you were constantly looking out

0:41

for danger, you're looking out for opportunity. But today,

0:44

that's not a study skill that we want

0:46

to run rampant, we need to learn how

0:48

to control it. If you can remove external

0:50

triggers from your environment, so for example, if

0:53

people are trying to stop a substance abuse,

0:55

sure, abstinence might be able to work for

0:57

you. But how do you remove the triggers

0:59

for technology? There's nothing wrong with external triggers. If

1:01

an external trigger tells you, hey, it's time for that meeting,

1:03

it's time to go exercise, it's time for that thing

1:05

you said you were gonna do that's in your calendar, wonderful,

1:07

it's serving you. But if it's an external trigger that you

1:10

get this notification while I was with my daughter,

1:12

now it's not serving me, I was serving the

1:14

notification. Mary, welcome to the podcast, how

1:16

are you doing? I'm doing great, it's so great to be

1:18

with you. We've been talking about this for a while now.

1:20

Thank you so much for coming to London. My pleasure. Experiencing

1:23

the vibe on this lovely summer's day. All right, so

1:25

what does it mean to be indestractable? Being

1:28

indestractable means that you are as

1:30

honest with yourself as you are

1:33

with others, meaning one of the worst

1:35

things you can be called in life is a

1:37

liar, right? That is a horrible put down about

1:39

your character. And so we never wanna be a

1:41

liar, that would be a horrible thing for someone

1:43

to call us. And yet we lie to ourselves

1:45

every day. We say we're gonna exercise, but we

1:47

don't. We say we're gonna eat right, but we

1:49

skip. We say we're gonna be fully present with

1:51

our loved ones, but we're not really. We say

1:53

we're gonna work on that big project, we're

1:55

not going to procrastinate, but somehow we delay and

1:58

we delay. So we constantly lie to ourselves. And

2:00

what that means is that we look back on our

2:02

lives. And we are full of regret.

2:05

We said we should have done that thing. We should

2:07

have started the business. We should have written the book.

2:09

We should have started the podcast. We should have started

2:11

YouTubeing, whatever the case might be. But we didn't do

2:13

it. We got distracted. So being in distractible is about

2:15

doing what you say you're going to do. So

2:18

what prompted you to write the book in distractible? Okay,

2:21

so for me, there

2:24

was one inciting incident for me that really kind

2:26

of started me down this path where I had

2:28

to reassess my relationship with distraction. I

2:31

was with my daughter one afternoon, and we

2:33

just had some daddy daughter time planned.

2:36

And we had this book of activities that

2:38

dads and daughters could do together, you know,

2:40

make a paper airplane throwing contest, do a

2:42

Sudoku puzzle. But one of the activities in

2:44

this book was to ask each other this

2:46

question. The question was, if you could have

2:48

any superpower, what superpower would

2:50

you want? And I remember that question of

2:52

verbatim, but I can't tell you what

2:54

my daughter said. Because in that moment, for

2:57

whatever reason, I just thought it was a good time. Let

2:59

me just check this one thing, honey. And by the time

3:01

I looked up for my phone, she got the cue that

3:03

whatever was on my phone was more important than she was.

3:05

And she left the room to go play with some toy

3:07

outside. And I knew I blew it. And

3:09

so that's when I realized that I had to reassess

3:11

my relationship with distraction. Because if I'm honest with you,

3:14

it wasn't just with my daughter, it would happen when

3:16

I would say I was going to do one thing,

3:18

I was going to exercise, I was going to

3:20

work on a big project. And yet, one thing

3:22

another came up and I didn't do what I

3:24

said I was going to do. And so that's

3:26

when I decided that if I could have any

3:28

superpower, it would be the power to become indestractable

3:30

simply to follow through on the things I know

3:32

I want to do, right? And I don't need

3:34

convincing I know I need to do this. And

3:36

yet somehow I didn't do it. And so that's

3:38

why I think becoming indestractable is the skill of

3:40

the century, that there's no

3:43

facet of your mental health, your

3:45

physical well being, your career, all

3:47

of these things require us to be able to

3:49

harness our attention. This is truly how we choose

3:52

our life. Nice. So

3:54

why do so many of us struggle with distraction?

3:56

What's going on there? I think it's a product

3:58

of two things. One, it's

4:00

human nature. We know that Plato, the Greek

4:02

philosopher, talked about this struggle with a crassia,

4:05

the tendency to do things against our better

4:07

interests. He talked about this 2,500 years ago.

4:10

So there's something about the human condition

4:12

that makes us distractible, that makes us

4:14

constantly look for other things. And that

4:16

probably served us on the plains of

4:18

the Serengeti 200,000 years ago when

4:21

you were constantly looking out for danger, you were looking

4:23

out for opportunity. But today, that's not

4:25

necessarily a skill that we want to run rampant, we

4:27

need to learn how to control it. So that's reason

4:29

number one. Reason number two is that we

4:31

have this abundance

4:33

of so many good things in our

4:36

life. We live in an age where

4:38

the first time in human history, there

4:40

are more people dying of diseases of

4:42

excess than of scarcity.

4:45

So it used to be that human

4:47

beings would die of starvation when there

4:49

was a famine. Well, today, more people

4:51

die of diabetes and obesity than they

4:53

do of famine. So we have this

4:55

excess, we have abundance, the same goes

4:57

with information. We don't ever have

4:59

to be bored anymore because there's instant entertainment at all

5:01

times of day or night right here in our pockets

5:04

found with our phones. And that's a good

5:06

thing. A lot of people like to drive this stuff. They

5:08

say, oh, it's technology, it's the modern world, it's all these

5:10

bad things. Well, number one, these

5:12

distractions have always been with us, right? Plato talked about

5:14

it 2,500 years ago. And

5:17

two, getting rid of these things are not

5:19

gonna solve the problem because distraction is part

5:21

of the human condition. And furthermore, the

5:24

fact that these devices are so

5:26

engaging, that they're so

5:28

fun to use, that's not a problem, that's

5:30

progress. Right, what are we

5:32

gonna say? Hey, Apple, your phones are too

5:34

user friendly. Stop making them. I wanna use

5:36

them too much. Hey, Netflix, your

5:38

shows are too entertaining. Please stop making such

5:41

good shows. No, that's ridiculous. We want these

5:43

good things in our life. So

5:45

the price of all that progress, the price of living in

5:47

an age with so much abundance is that we have to

5:49

learn a new skill set. We have to learn how to

5:51

live with these technologies, how to get the best of them

5:53

so they don't get the best of us. In

5:56

the book, you talk about the idea of internal triggers. What

5:59

are... internal triggers and how do they cause us

6:01

to get distracted? Yeah, so many people when it

6:03

comes to distraction, they blame the things outside of

6:05

us. We blame the pings, the

6:08

dings, the rings, all of the things in

6:10

our outside environment that can lead us towards

6:12

distraction. Now, they those things

6:14

can be a trigger for distraction. Those

6:16

are called external triggers, but

6:18

we know from time studies that

6:20

those external triggers only account for

6:22

about 10% of our distractions. So

6:25

10% of the time that you check your phone, is

6:27

it because of a ping ding or ring? But that's what

6:29

we tend to blame. What we don't remember, what we don't

6:32

think about is that 90% of

6:34

our distractions, 90% begin from within. These

6:38

are called internal triggers. What are

6:40

internal triggers? Internal triggers are uncomfortable

6:42

emotional states that we seek to

6:44

escape. Boredom, loneliness,

6:47

fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. These

6:50

are these uncomfortable sensations that

6:52

we look to escape many

6:54

times with distraction. So

6:56

whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much

6:58

football, too much Facebook, you are always going to get

7:01

distracted from one thing or another unless you understand the

7:03

root cause of the problem. So if we just keep

7:05

blaming the external triggers, when they account for such a

7:07

small share of the reason for our distractions, we don't

7:09

get to the real cause of the problem. Solid.

7:13

That surprises me. I would have thought that like the reason

7:15

I get distracted by my phone is the fact that I

7:17

get all these notifications. But we're saying it's not actually because

7:19

yeah, because then I think when I'm on the couch or

7:21

when I'm on the toilet, it's not a

7:23

notification of responding to it. There's

7:26

something else. Yeah, that's right. It's a feeling.

7:28

And so that's to me, you know, this

7:30

whole question of distraction, and why don't we

7:32

do we say we're going to do right

7:34

this ancient question that Plato asked us? Well,

7:37

I think it's a fascinating question. If we know what to

7:39

do, why don't we just do it? Right? We all know

7:41

what to do. And today, you know, you could say,

7:43

okay, well, maybe in generations past, our grandparents had

7:46

a shortage of information. If you wanted to know how to do

7:48

something, you had to go to the library or ask some expert

7:50

today, it's all here, right? Google it. It'll tell you what to

7:52

do. And who doesn't basically know what to do? We know if

7:54

you want to get in shape, you have to eat right and

7:56

exercise. If you want to have better relationships with your family, you

7:58

have to be fully present. with them. If you want to do

8:01

well at your job, you have to do the things that other people

8:03

aren't willing to do, right? We know this stuff. You have to do

8:05

the hard work. We know, but we don't do it.

8:08

And so to me, that's a really interesting question. So

8:10

in order to understand why do we get distracted, I

8:12

think we have to actually go a layer deeper and

8:15

ask why do we do anything and everything? What's

8:18

the nature of human motivation? Most

8:20

people tell you that motivation is about carrots and

8:22

sticks. We've all heard this, right? Turns

8:25

out neurologically, that's not true. That

8:28

neurologically, the way the brain gets us

8:30

to act is not through carrots and

8:32

sticks, per se, but rather everything is

8:34

about the desire to escape discomfort. The

8:37

way the reward system in the brain

8:39

works is that the carrot is

8:41

the stick, right? Think about

8:43

that. That carrot is the stick, meaning that even

8:46

when we want to feel good, pleasure,

8:49

desire, craving, hunger, lusting for

8:51

something, the desire

8:54

for pleasure is itself psychologically

8:56

destabilizing. So everything we

8:58

do, everything you do is about the

9:00

desire to escape discomfort. So

9:02

that means if everything you do is about

9:04

the desire to escape discomfort, that must therefore

9:06

mean that time management is

9:08

pain management. Money management

9:10

is pain management. Weight management is

9:13

pain management. And so that's

9:15

why these internal triggers are so important. If

9:18

you don't master these internal triggers, they will

9:20

become your master. Nice. How

9:22

do we master these internal triggers? Yeah.

9:24

So this is the most important part.

9:26

I think a lot of people gloss

9:28

over. They look for the tips, the

9:30

tricks, the life hacks, right? Show me the app, show

9:32

me the secret solution, give me the new tropic that's

9:34

going to fix this problem. But at the end of

9:36

the day, if 90% of our

9:38

distractions begin from within, we have to figure out these

9:40

strategies to master internal triggers. So there's a dozen different

9:42

tactics in my book Indestructible on how to do this.

9:45

And you have to experiment, you have to see what

9:47

works for you. I'll tell you what works for me.

9:49

So a couple of techniques that work really well

9:51

that I use literally every single day, come

9:55

from acceptance of commitment therapy. I didn't make them up. They've

9:57

been around for decades. One of them is

9:59

called the 10 million. The 10 minute

10:01

rule says that you can give in to any

10:03

distraction, whatever that distraction might be, whether you're on

10:05

a diet and you're trying to resist that chocolate

10:07

cake, whether you're trying to quit smoking, whether you're

10:09

trying to not check your phone every five minutes

10:11

when you're trying to be with your family or

10:13

do a work project, you can give into that

10:15

distraction, but not right now

10:18

in 10 minutes. And if 10 minutes

10:20

is too long, make it the five minute rule. It doesn't

10:22

really matter. What you want to do is a couple of

10:24

things. Number one, this shows you that you have agency, that

10:27

you can actually do what you say you're going

10:29

to do. You can resist anything for just

10:31

five minutes. So by showing to yourself, hey, you know what? I'm

10:34

not controlled by these distractions. I can wait a

10:36

few minutes. I will do that thing, but

10:39

a little bit later in 10 minutes. The

10:42

other thing that I think is super important that a lot of people forget is

10:44

that they think that the right path to stop

10:46

a behavior is abstinence. And for

10:49

some behaviors, that can be the case, right?

10:51

If you can remove external triggers from your

10:53

environment. So for example, if people are trying

10:55

to stop a substance abuse,

10:57

if you can remove those triggers from your environment,

10:59

sure, abstinence might be able to work for you.

11:02

But how do you remove the

11:04

triggers for technology? Right?

11:06

It's all over the place, right? We need our

11:09

devices in order to stay connected to work, to

11:11

family, to loved ones. That is part of the

11:13

modern experience. Food, same way. You can't just stop

11:15

eating food. You need food to survive. So

11:18

in those cases, strict abstinence,

11:20

telling yourself no can backfire.

11:23

It's called psychological reactance. Psychological

11:26

reactance says that when you are

11:28

told what to do, when

11:30

your agency is threatened, the natural

11:32

human response is to rebel. So

11:35

when your mom told you, oh, it's raining

11:37

outside, put on a coat, and you said,

11:39

don't know what to do, or your boss

11:41

tries to micromanage you, that feeling of being

11:43

controlled, that's reactance. Now, the

11:45

crazy thing is that the human brain

11:47

will elicit reactance even when

11:50

we are telling ourselves what to do. So

11:53

when you tell yourself, don't check TikTok, don't

11:55

watch YouTube, you are literally making

11:57

yourself want it more. So

12:00

instead to disarm psychological reactance, a much

12:02

better approach is to say, hey, I

12:04

can do whatever I want. I'm a

12:06

grown human being, I can make my

12:08

own choices. I choose to delay this

12:11

by 10 minutes. I will do that thing in

12:13

10 minutes. Now, what's the next step? When

12:16

you do that, you wanna

12:18

explore that internal trigger with curiosity rather

12:20

than contempt. A lot of people, they

12:22

beat themselves up. So when people think

12:25

about distraction, we find that they fall into two

12:28

buckets, two categories. We have what we call the

12:30

blamers, and then we have what's called the shamers.

12:32

The blamers, they blame things

12:34

outside themselves. They blame technology, they blame

12:36

the news, they blame the modern world,

12:38

they blame all this stuff outside of

12:41

them. Those are the blamers, and

12:43

that's futile because you're not gonna change that stuff, right?

12:45

People have always been distracted by things happening outside them.

12:47

So that's not an effective strategy. The

12:50

other category is what we call the shamers. They take it

12:52

on the inside. That's what I used to do. Oh, there

12:54

must be something wrong with me. If

12:56

I was a real writer, I wouldn't have this

12:58

urge to constantly get distracted. Maybe my

13:00

brain is broken somehow. I would shame

13:02

myself into thinking there was something broken

13:04

about me. And of course, shame is

13:06

a very uncomfortable internal trigger, so what

13:09

do we do in response to shame?

13:11

We're more likely to look for distraction

13:13

to escape the shame that we're feeling.

13:15

So we don't wanna be a blamer, we don't wanna be a shamer.

13:18

We wanna be what's called a claimer. A

13:20

claimer claims responsibility not

13:22

for how they feel. So this was a big one

13:24

for me. Turns out, we

13:27

don't control our urges. We don't control

13:29

our urges. People try and control their urges. You cannot

13:31

control your urges. Think about the urge to sneeze. When

13:34

you feel the urge to sneeze, it's too late.

13:36

You already felt the urge. All

13:39

you can do is to decide what you will

13:41

do in response to that urge, right? Hence,

13:43

we can claim responsibility. Responsibility comes from how you

13:45

will respond to that urge. So what do you

13:47

do when you feel the urge to sneeze? Do

13:50

you sneeze all over everyone and get them sick?

13:52

No, you take out a handkerchief and you

13:54

cover your face, that's the responsible thing to do.

13:57

And the same goes for our urges around

13:59

getting distracted. It's not about shaming

14:01

and blaming, it's about claiming responsibility

14:03

for having a plan for what

14:05

we will do when we feel

14:07

that discomfort. So the 10-minute rule

14:10

allows us to say, okay, I will give into that

14:12

distraction in 10 minutes. Now, what do you do for

14:14

those 10 minutes? What I

14:16

do is I use this technique called

14:18

surfing the urge. Surfing the urge

14:20

acknowledges that these emotions are

14:23

like waves. They crest and then

14:25

they subside. But that's not how it

14:27

feels in the moment. In the moment when

14:29

you feel bored or anxious or uncertain or lonely,

14:31

you feel like you're always going to experience that

14:33

emotion. But that's not true. Right?

14:36

And if you acknowledge that in a short, a

14:38

very short period of time, that emotion will

14:41

crest and subside. You can ride it like

14:43

a surfer on a surfboard until it's gone.

14:45

And so what I do, you

14:47

know, I write every single day and

14:50

writing never gets easier. Like,

14:52

there's no such thing as a writing habit, by the

14:54

way, you know, people try and make everything into a

14:56

habit these days. And by definition, that you can't write

14:59

a habit is defined as a behavior done with little

15:01

or no conscious thought. How exactly do

15:03

you write with little or no conscious thought? Right? I

15:06

don't know how to do that. Right? How

15:08

do you exercise habit? That's a misnomer because

15:10

habit requires little or no conscious thought. If

15:12

you're trying to break your PR, that requires

15:14

effort that requires thought. So,

15:17

so you can't just, you know, habit it

15:19

away, you have to put effort towards these

15:21

things. These are the things that

15:23

people tend to get distracted from. So while I'm writing,

15:25

oftentimes when I'm about to say, oh, let me just

15:27

check email real quick, or let me just Google something,

15:29

right? What I'm doing is I'm trying to create an

15:31

excuse for me to get away from that internal trigger

15:33

of, is this writing going to

15:35

be any good? And it's kind of boring, and I'm

15:37

not sure where it's going to go. And is anybody

15:39

going to read this, all this down uncertainty? What

15:42

do I do? What I do is I take a

15:44

pause, I set a timer for 10 minutes, I put my phone

15:46

down, and I say, okay, I close

15:48

my eyes and I just surf that urge. And so for

15:50

me, a useful technique, another one that I talk about in

15:52

the book is to have a personal mantra. And

15:54

so you can create your own mantra, I'll share with you

15:57

my mantra. So in those 10 minutes.

16:00

I have a choice to make. I can either get back to

16:02

the task at hand, and whenever I'm ready to get back at

16:04

the task at hand, get right back to the

16:06

writing, or I can surf

16:08

that urge by just taking a few seconds

16:10

to repeat my mantra. My mantra sounds like

16:12

this. I close my eyes and

16:15

I say, this is what it feels like to get better.

16:18

This is what it feels like to get better. That's

16:21

just my personal mantra. You can create

16:23

your own. To me, that reminds me

16:25

that it's supposed to be difficult, right?

16:27

If it was easy, everyone would do

16:29

it. That's part of the struggle. That's

16:31

part of a craft is pushing through

16:33

that discomfort. What I find

16:36

nine times out of 10 is that before

16:38

those 10 minutes are up, I'm right back at that

16:40

task at hand. What

16:42

happens over time is that the 10-minute rule

16:45

becomes the 12-minute rule, becomes the 15-minute rule,

16:47

becomes the 20-minute rule, and now you're proving

16:49

to yourself that you actually do have control,

16:51

you do have agency over these distractions. Man,

16:54

you're so good at this. Fucking sick. I'm

16:57

like, damn, I wish I was this prepared when

16:59

I was doing podcasts by my back. Really? You're

17:02

the man. Such conviction, such confidence. I'm like, so good. I don't

17:04

know what you're talking about. I've always admired how you can get

17:06

in front of a camera and do what you do. Oh, it's

17:08

so good. Wait, so you don't do it like this? No. How

17:11

are you doing? I'm all over the place. It feels like

17:13

you've got the talking points down, you've nailed it, the blame of the

17:15

shame of the this, you've got your football and

17:17

Facebook thing, it's like the rings, the dings, the

17:21

pings, the things. It's like, it's just so well done.

17:23

I guess you've done so many of these that you've

17:25

gotten in the reps. When

17:27

you, your YouTube videos sound just

17:29

as good, if not better. Yeah, maybe. Do

17:31

you edit them? We do a

17:34

lot of editing of the YouTube videos. I'm not very

17:36

sponte. I don't know. Well,

17:38

I don't know. It sounds like you're just spouting

17:40

off genius. Okay, nice. I'm glad to hear it.

17:43

Because it sounded like you were spouting off genius right now. Anyway,

17:46

is willpower a resource that runs out? Okay.

17:49

So there is this popular notion that

17:52

willpower is a limited resource. And this

17:54

came out of some research done several

17:57

years ago now around this concept

17:59

called ego. depletion ego depletion says that

18:02

we run out of willpower just like we would run

18:04

out of battery charge on our phone or gas in

18:06

our gas tank that it's a depletable resource. And this

18:09

got a lot of press

18:11

because it's kind of a concept people want to believe or

18:13

we want to think like I used to, I get

18:15

home from work and say, Oh, what a rough

18:17

day. Give me that pint of

18:19

ice cream. I'm gonna sit in front of

18:22

the TV and just chill out, right? I'm out

18:24

of willpower. I'm spent. I used to say I'm

18:26

spent. And so it's kind of a

18:28

comforting thought. Turns

18:31

out it was a little too good to be true.

18:33

So as happens in the social sciences, when something sounds

18:35

a little bit fishy, what do we do? We

18:37

rerun the study. We try and replicate the study. And

18:39

it turns out that this idea of ego depletion that

18:42

we run out of willpower like gas and a gas

18:44

tank turns out not to be true. Except

18:47

in one group of people, there is actually

18:49

one group of people who really do run

18:52

out of willpower. They really do

18:54

spend it up. And those people

18:56

and only those people in this work was done

18:58

by Carol Dweck. I'm sure you know her work,

19:00

her wonderful book called Mindset. And

19:03

she found that the only

19:05

group of people who run out of willpower

19:08

are people who believe that

19:11

willpower is a depletable resource. And

19:13

so I talk about this in the book, in

19:16

Inestractable as a way that we have to reimagine

19:19

our temperament. That if you

19:21

believe you are spent, you are.

19:24

As Henry Ford said, whether you believe you can or you cannot,

19:26

you are right. And so when

19:28

you hear people saying things like, we are all

19:30

addicted to technology and there is nothing we can

19:32

do, it's hacking our brains. If

19:34

you believe that stuff, of course that's the case.

19:37

And of course that is exactly what the tech

19:39

companies want. The tech companies want you to believe

19:41

you are addicted. The word addiction comes from the

19:44

Latin addictia, which means slave. So

19:46

when you say to yourself, I am a slave,

19:48

I am addicted, I have no more

19:50

willpower, I am spent, you are making it true.

19:53

And so we have to be very, very careful

19:55

about these labels and make sure that we only

19:57

adopt the labels that serve us rather than the

19:59

ones that hurt us. Interesting. So, um, I

20:02

very much vibe with this. Um, a

20:04

pushback to this might be, okay, like, one

20:07

of my team members, for example, comes to mind. She always

20:09

says to me that like, Oh, you know, Ali, I don't

20:12

have time to work on my YouTube channel because after a

20:14

day of work, I have no energy and

20:16

I just have to watch Netflix to recharge. And

20:19

I've always found that a bit fish. I'm like, do you really

20:21

like, I mean, the work that we

20:23

do is it's not like we're coal miners or

20:25

something. It's not, it's not that physically demanding. She's

20:27

like, no, but I'm just like mentally, I'm mentally

20:29

drained of energy. And she says she has to

20:31

watch Netflix for three hours or whatever it is

20:34

to recharge. Okay. I love when people say I

20:36

hear this all the time. They say you don't

20:38

understand. I can't or I have to, or I

20:40

must, or there's no way, right? I hear it

20:42

all the time. I've heard the book is published

20:44

in 2019. I've heard literally every excuse you could

20:46

possibly come up with. And whenever

20:49

I hear one of these definitive statements of I can't

20:51

or I must or I have to, I always say,

20:53

okay, well, let's test that a bit. Let's, let's test

20:55

this. What would happen if

21:00

when you got home, instead

21:02

of watching Netflix, which you say you have

21:04

to watch because you're spent, I

21:06

told you that if you don't do

21:08

whatever it is you said you're going to do, go to

21:11

the gym, play with my kid,

21:13

read a book, work on a project.

21:16

If you don't do that, you're gonna have to pay me

21:18

$10,000. Are you gonna do

21:21

that thing? Of course I am.

21:23

I'm gonna go to the gym. Of course I'm gonna work

21:25

on the video. Of course I'm gonna do that thing. Of

21:27

course I'm gonna pay $10,000. Okay, well, what does that tell

21:29

us? That tells us we've established you can now

21:31

we're just negotiating the price. And

21:34

so when you do that, this is this is step

21:36

four becoming a distractable making it packed. And this is

21:38

something that that I actually did with a friend of

21:40

mine with Mark Manson, actually,

21:42

when we were writing, we were both working on our

21:44

books. And I had it took

21:46

me five years to write and distract. It took

21:48

me five years to write and distractable because I

21:51

kept getting distracted. It wasn't until I

21:53

figured out these techniques starting from first principles and adopted

21:55

them into my own life that I can actually change

21:57

my life. And today I'm in the best shape of

21:59

my life. I have better relationship with my family than

22:01

ever before, I'm more productive than ever before because I've

22:04

adopted these techniques. But it took me a long time

22:06

to dig through all the garbage out there that doesn't

22:08

work. So once I finally figured out how to become

22:10

indestructible, now it was time to actually write the book.

22:13

And I had to practice what

22:15

I preach. I looked at this technique called making a

22:17

commitment pact. And I told

22:19

Mark, I said, look, if I don't finish

22:21

my manuscript by January 1st, I

22:24

will owe you $20,000. And

22:26

we shook on it. You think I paid on the $20,000? Of

22:29

course not. I finished my damn book. And

22:31

think about it, right? We pay coaches and

22:33

trainers and fitness and diets, we pay all

22:35

this money, which is gone. We'll never get

22:38

that money back in order for other people

22:40

to hold us accountable. Well, we can do

22:42

this to ourselves, right? By making this commitment

22:44

pact, what I call a price pact, it's

22:46

one of several different kinds of packs

22:48

we can make. Turns out we can have

22:50

our cake and eat it too, except if you're on a

22:52

diet, you can have the goal, you can get to that

22:54

accomplishment, you can finish that book, you can do whatever it

22:56

is you said you're going to do, and

22:59

you get to keep your money. So as the

23:01

fourth step, by the way, I do have to

23:03

give a disclaimer, that technique of setting this pact,

23:05

you have to do it last. Many people

23:08

have heard of a similar technique. But if you don't

23:10

do it in the right order, it will

23:12

absolutely backfire. If you don't first do step

23:14

number one, master internal triggers, make time for

23:16

traction, hack back external triggers, then

23:18

prevent distraction with packs as a fourth and final

23:20

step. If you don't do it

23:23

in the right order, it will backfire. But having that

23:25

type of commitment pact, right? When someone says I can't,

23:27

I won't, it's impossible, always shows you

23:29

that actually you can, there's just a matter of a

23:31

price to be negotiated. Why? Why

23:33

does it backfire? How does

23:35

it backfire if you do it

23:37

first? Because the most common cause

23:40

of distraction are these internal

23:42

triggers. So if you don't first deal with the internal

23:44

triggers, for example, so I used to

23:46

be clinically obese. And

23:48

exercise has always been a struggle for me. I

23:50

still to this day, I'm in the best shape

23:52

of my life at 46 years old, but I've

23:54

always disliked it. So one of

23:56

the things I did after I did the research

23:59

for the book is I utilize. this technique of

24:01

making a price pact. And I still

24:03

to this day, I have a calendar in

24:06

my dresser, next to my dresser, that

24:09

on this calendar is taped a fresh,

24:11

crisp $100 bill. And above that, that

24:16

calendar is a little shelf. And on that

24:18

shelf, there's a big lighter. And

24:20

every day I have a choice to make, it's

24:22

called the burn or burn technique, I can

24:24

either burn some calories by doing

24:26

some push ups, going for a walk around

24:29

the block, going for a swim, doing some

24:31

kind of exercise every day to burn

24:33

calories, or I have to burn the $100

24:35

bill, the burner burn technique. Now,

24:37

I've been doing this for five years

24:40

now, I've never had to burn the $100

24:42

bill, because I just do the damn exercise.

24:45

Because my personal integrity is worth more than the $100 bill.

24:48

Now, if I haven't, if I hadn't done

24:50

the first three steps, if I didn't

24:52

know how to deal with those internal triggers of I

24:54

don't really feel like working out right now, if I

24:56

didn't plan the time, if I didn't remove the external

24:58

triggers that don't serve me, then this technique wouldn't work.

25:00

So you have to do it last. Nice.

25:03

So it sounds like you don't buy the

25:06

idea that mental energy is like

25:08

a thing. I get to the I

25:10

get home from the day of work, I've been like

25:12

productive all day at work. And now I

25:14

feel mentally drained dot, dot, dot. Yeah, I

25:16

mean, I can prove it to you right

25:18

now. If you had something interesting, yeah, all

25:20

of a sudden you have energy. How could

25:22

that be if the brain is drained? You

25:24

know, the theory was that that Baumeister, the

25:26

guy who did the research or ego depletion

25:28

was that it's a depletable resource because your

25:30

glucose is somehow depleted, right? And he's had

25:32

these studies, which we can't replicate that if

25:34

you give people lemonade somehow they were boosted.

25:36

Well, it turns out that if

25:38

you think about it, if the brain is

25:40

drained of energy, well, then why are interesting

25:42

and fun things suddenly possible

25:45

to do? Right? So it turns out, I think

25:47

it's it's what we call a no SIBO effect,

25:49

like the opposite of a plus SIBO is a

25:51

no SIBO effect, that when you think something is

25:53

going to happen, right when you have an expectation

25:55

that you're spent, when you have an expectation that

25:57

you're tired, when you have an expectation that you

25:59

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26:50

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27:47

I found myself so yesterday, I had

27:50

like a, I

27:52

had like a big session at the gym with a personal

27:54

trainer. I got home and I

27:56

was meant to be going on this, this

27:58

like nice restaurant with a few for dinner and

28:01

there was like an hour to wait between kind

28:03

of coming back home from the gym and the dinner and

28:07

the story told myself was oh man I'm so tired

28:09

oh I just want to blub out and then I

28:11

ended up just like scrolling instagram or something for like

28:13

an hour until the dinner and then the dinner rolled

28:15

around and I was like pokey and fresh there was

28:17

no side of the tiredness right and I was kind

28:19

of thinking hmm that's a bit suspicious it's like there's

28:22

no law physics really that's like I wasn't

28:24

running out of glucose and ATP right stuff

28:26

right I had just told

28:30

myself the story that oh I I'm

28:32

I'm mentally fatigued right now therefore I'm just

28:34

gonna blob out and watch random memes on

28:36

instagram right and of course the

28:38

more you you do that in the past the

28:40

more you abide by that expectation the more likely

28:42

you are to expect it to occur yeah so

28:45

the more you come home and say oh I

28:47

can't I can't I can't well now it becomes

28:49

a pattern right now you're it's

28:51

becomes a self-fulfilling processing what

28:54

is a destruction notebook so a distraction

28:56

notebook is a way for for you

28:58

to keep track of what took

29:01

you off track right so when you

29:03

uh so one of the things we have to

29:05

do in order to become indestractable is to be

29:07

able to identify those internal triggers again that's 90

29:10

of our distractions so most people have no sense

29:12

of why they got distracted they all of a

29:14

sudden find the cigarettes in their hand they all

29:16

of a sudden find the phone you know they're

29:18

scrolling on tiktok or whatever without

29:20

realizing what was the preceding internal trigger

29:23

so a distraction notebook is a way

29:25

for you to start bringing awareness to

29:27

what is that preceding emotion that you

29:29

are trying to escape because every

29:31

distraction every distraction only has three potential causes

29:34

right if you're doing something that is not

29:36

what you said you were going to do

29:38

it's only because of three reasons either it's

29:40

an internal trigger some kind of feeling an

29:43

external trigger some kind of external prompt in

29:45

an outside environment or a planning

29:47

problem that's it there's only three potential reasons so

29:49

when you have a distraction journal when you start

29:51

keeping track of okay i said i

29:53

was going to do this but i did something else you

29:55

can start identifying why now why is it so important there's

29:58

a wonderful quote by paula Koylov who said,

30:00

a mistake repeated more than once is a

30:03

decision. Such a good quote. A

30:05

mistake repeated more than once is a decision. So

30:07

good, right? So the problem is

30:09

that for distractible people, they keep getting distracted

30:11

by the same things again and again and

30:13

again. How many times are they gonna complain

30:16

about YouTube and TikTok and Facebook before we

30:18

do something? Okay, we got it. You distracted

30:20

me once. I'm not gonna let it happen

30:22

again. So an indestractable person

30:25

looks at why they got distracted the first time

30:27

and they make sure they take steps today

30:29

to prevent getting distracted again tomorrow. One

30:32

of the things that I found really helpful and

30:35

that we recommend for our students in productivity lab

30:37

is at the end of every

30:39

focused hour, every focused hour of work, you just

30:41

do a little like 30 second reflection to reflect

30:43

on how focused was I really during that time

30:46

and were there any distractions that came up. And

30:48

then if you have that written down, like

30:50

for me the other day I noticed that like in the

30:52

middle of the work session, I got up and went to

30:54

the bathroom, but while I was there, I

30:57

opened up my phone and just habitually went on

30:59

Instagram. And then I ended up there for

31:01

like 15 minutes longer than I really should have been. And I was

31:03

like, oh, that's interesting. It's

31:05

interesting that I did that. And I just set up all

31:07

my app blocking thing to be like, okay, let me just

31:09

block Instagram during working hours. And now that problem is gone.

31:12

So now when I'm on the toilet, it's like the only thing I

31:14

have the option of opening is the Kindle app. And that is just

31:16

a lot less dopamine inducing than Instagram,

31:18

for example. So like, okay, cool. I may as well

31:21

get off the toilet and get back to work. And

31:23

if it gets you once, okay, distraction can get anybody

31:25

once, but you took action about that. You noted what

31:27

happened and you did something about it. So you can't

31:29

complain about it. If you know the cause, you know

31:31

the solution. You can't just keep complaining.

31:34

You've got to do something about it. And that's exactly what you did. Yeah.

31:36

The other thing I found when doing the strategy was,

31:39

I'd be like, oh, you know, there's a thing on my desk,

31:41

like a piece of paper I've just taken a note on. And

31:44

then, oh, I don't have a bin next to me.

31:46

So let me just get up and go downstairs to the

31:48

kitchen. And I realized, you know what? Let

31:51

me just spend three pounds on Amazon and just buy a

31:53

bin and just have it next to my desk. Yes, exactly.

31:55

It just like solves that problem. That's exactly the purpose of

31:57

this distraction journal, is that when you write down, oh, I

31:59

want it to take down the trash downstairs. and then you

32:01

look back and say, like, okay, that wasn't necessary. What can

32:04

I do to prevent it from happening tomorrow? So if you

32:06

want to boil down my work over the past decade now

32:08

on distraction, it's this. The antidote

32:10

to impulsiveness is forethought. That's

32:14

the summary of my work. The antidote to impulsiveness

32:16

is forethought. That procrastination, distraction,

32:18

it's not a character flaw. There's

32:21

nothing wrong with you. It's not a moral failing. For the vast

32:23

majority of people, they don't have ADHD. It's

32:25

way over diagnosed. Very, very few people

32:27

actually have clinical level ADHD. I believe.

32:31

But we believe that there's something wrong

32:33

with us. But rather, what

32:35

it means is simply that if we can

32:37

take steps today to prevent distraction

32:40

tomorrow, so the antidote to impulsiveness is

32:42

forethought. That if you leave it to the last moment, if

32:44

you wait till the cigarettes in your hand, you're going to

32:46

smoke it. If the chocolate cake is on

32:48

the fork on the way to your mouth, you're going to eat

32:51

it. If you leave your cell phone on your nightstand every night,

32:53

it's going to be the first thing you reach for in the

32:55

morning before you say hello to your loved one. It's

32:58

too late, right? If you leave it to the

33:00

last minute, they're going to get you. But if

33:02

you take steps, if you prevent it from

33:04

happening by taking steps today, there's no distraction.

33:06

We can't overcome tomorrow. One

33:08

thing that my fitness coach swears by is that

33:10

whenever you're going to a restaurant, look up the

33:12

menu online and decide before you get in advance

33:14

what you're going to eat. Love it.

33:17

I still don't do that, but I really should. Yeah.

33:20

Or like, for example, one rule that I have. So for

33:23

a while I stopped drinking altogether and then

33:25

I brought it back because I missed it,

33:27

frankly. And so now I

33:29

have a rule, because we all know how unhealthy alcohol

33:31

is for you, but now I have a rule I

33:33

say I only drink alcohol when I don't pay for

33:35

it. So if I'm going to a function, if it's

33:37

a corporate event, okay, fine. If

33:39

I'm, I don't know, flying somewhere and they offer

33:41

it, okay, great. But I have these

33:43

rules, these heuristics that take out the decision making so that

33:45

I make sure I do what I say I'm going to

33:47

do. Well, one of my favorite

33:49

rules that I've had since I started university was

33:52

I never watch TV on my own. Nice.

33:54

It has to be a social activity, otherwise I'm

33:56

not going to do it. Oh, that's a great

33:59

rule. I've received years of my life. Absolutely. In

34:01

the last 10 years. And probably, I would argue,

34:03

probably made the TV watching you do do even

34:05

more enjoyable. It's like doing a Game of Thrones

34:07

night, inviting people over, ordering pizza. It's like, yeah,

34:09

that's the one TV show that I watch in

34:11

a five year period, you know, that kind of

34:13

thing. Isn't it amazing how we are so generous

34:17

with our time? Like we give it to

34:19

all these forms of media, right? We just

34:21

throw it away, whoever wants it takes it,

34:23

right? Whatever stupid things happening in the news,

34:25

some war that has nothing to do with

34:27

us, thousands of miles away. Whatever

34:30

drama or whatever is happening, gossip at work. And

34:32

yet when it comes to our time, we give

34:34

it away, but our money, we're so

34:36

cheap with, right? How much time do people spend?

34:38

How much effort do people spend protecting their money?

34:41

We put it in vaults and we clip coupons

34:43

and we split checks to save every penny. But

34:46

that's a renewable resource, right? You can always make

34:48

more money. You can always make more money. You

34:50

can't make more time. And yet somehow

34:52

we're very cheap with our time. Sorry,

34:55

we're very generous with our time and cheap with our money. And

34:57

I think it should be the exact opposite. We should be generous

34:59

with our money and cheap with our time. Love

35:01

that. Do you ever

35:03

get accused of toxic productivity with

35:05

all of these rules and stuff? What does

35:08

that mean? Oh, it's like a Gen Z thing.

35:12

One thing, I've often mentioned this,

35:15

I have this rule that I don't want you to

35:17

be on my own and people will say, well, that's

35:19

toxic productivity. You're being toxic in the way that you're

35:21

telling people that they shouldn't be able to chill out

35:23

and they shouldn't be able to relax. And in fact,

35:25

they should be working all the time. Yeah. What

35:30

I'm saying is that productivity is when you're using your

35:32

time intentionally. If you intend to watch the TV, watch

35:35

the damn TV. If you intend to scroll TikTok, scroll

35:37

TikTok, but just do what you intend it

35:39

to do. That's right. And by the way, you're sharing what works

35:41

for you. It may not work for somebody else. They

35:43

don't have to adopt this technique, but I think my

35:45

goal is to help people do whatever they say they

35:47

want to do, right? So if you want to play

35:49

video games all day, do it, right?

35:51

You have that right. Who am I to judge how you spend your

35:53

time? But do it

35:56

with intent. It's about forethought. If that's what you said

35:58

you were going to do. Do

36:00

it and do it without guilt, right? So one of

36:02

the things I tell people to do is I want

36:04

you to schedule time for social media. If you find

36:06

you're using too much social media, that becomes a distraction,

36:08

right? You're checking TikTok when you're on Instagram, when you

36:10

didn't intend to. It's because it's

36:12

not in your calendar. Put it in

36:14

your schedule. I have time in my schedule to

36:17

go on social media. So I'm not using it

36:19

whenever I'm looking to escape boredom or insecurity or

36:21

fear, uncertainty or loneliness. I'm not using it as

36:23

escape for an internal trigger. I'm doing it because

36:26

it's a planned activity and there's nothing wrong with

36:28

that. I should enjoy it. So

36:30

it's not about me telling people what to

36:32

do. It's about me helping people do the

36:34

things that they themselves want to do but

36:36

aren't doing. Love that. Yeah, I've got solo

36:38

evenings playing PlayStation scheduled into the calendar for

36:40

Wednesday evenings. Beautiful. So good. And what's great

36:42

about that, I think very few people have

36:44

actually experienced what true leisure feels like. Because

36:46

even when they're supposed to be having fun,

36:48

right? This is why I hate to-do lists.

36:51

I hate to-do lists. Because even

36:53

when you are spending time with your kids or,

36:56

you know, having a nice dinner or playing a

36:58

video game, you're thinking about all the things you

37:00

still haven't left undone. As opposed

37:02

to a person who time boxes, who says, this

37:04

is my time to do what I

37:06

said I was going to do, whether that's playing a video

37:08

game or meditating or being with my kids or whatever. That's

37:10

exactly what I said I'm going to do. And everything else

37:13

becomes a distraction. Nice. Okay,

37:15

I feel like that segues us nicely into method

37:17

number two. So traction timeboxing. What is that? Sure.

37:20

Okay, so let's talk about, let's start

37:22

a little bit at the beginning with what is distraction?

37:24

Right? So this is important to understand what does

37:26

that word even mean? And

37:29

I mean, I think this relates

37:31

to productivity, but I don't know if it's exactly productivity,

37:33

because I'm trying to help people get the things out

37:36

of their way, right? So much of behavior changes about

37:38

what you should do. And I think

37:40

maybe we should focus more on the things that get in

37:42

our way from doing the things we know we should do.

37:44

So let's start with what is distraction? So

37:46

the best way to understand what distraction is, is

37:49

to understand what distraction is not. What's the opposite

37:51

of distraction? So most people, if you say what's

37:53

the opposite of distraction, they'll tell you it's focus.

37:56

But that's not true. The opposite of distraction is

37:58

not focus. If you look at the origin of

38:00

the word. the opposite of distraction is traction. Right

38:02

makes sense when you look at them next to

38:05

the traction and distraction are opposites. They both come

38:07

from the same Latin root, Trahare, which means to

38:09

pull. And they both end in

38:11

the same six letter word a CTI when

38:14

the spells action, reminding us that distraction is

38:16

not something that happens to us, it is

38:18

an action that we ourselves take. So

38:20

traction by definition is any action that pulls

38:22

you towards what you said you were going

38:24

to do things that move you close to

38:26

your values, help you become the kind of

38:28

person you want to become those are acts

38:30

of traction. Distraction is any action

38:33

that pulls you away from what you said you were

38:35

going to do away from your values away from become

38:37

becoming the kind of person you want to become. So

38:39

this is this is super important. It's not

38:42

just semantics, because the difference between traction and

38:44

distraction is one word and that one word

38:46

is intent. So as Dorothy Parker said, the

38:48

time you plan to waste is not wasted

38:50

time. So there's nothing wrong with

38:52

scheduling time for video games, that is traction

38:54

if that's what you said you were going

38:57

to do in advance. Conversely,

38:59

and more dangerously is when people

39:01

don't even realize they're distracted. So

39:03

my workday routine used to look like this, I would

39:06

say, okay, I'm not

39:08

going to procrastinate, I've got that big project, I have

39:10

to finish, nothing's going to get in my way. Here

39:12

I go, I'm going to get started. But

39:15

first, let me check some email. Right?

39:17

Let me just scroll that slack channel real quick.

39:19

Let me just do this easy task on my

39:21

to do list, right? Those are productive things. I'm

39:23

doing work related tasks, I'm being productive, right? But

39:26

if it's not what you said you were going to do, in

39:28

advance, it's just as much of a distraction

39:30

as, you know, playing Candy Crush or something.

39:33

So it is all about what you said

39:35

you were going to do in advance. That's

39:37

traction and distraction. So how do you

39:39

put this into practice? You cannot

39:41

call something a distraction, unless you

39:43

know what it distracted you from. So

39:46

if you have big open white space in your

39:49

calendar, what the hell did you get distracted from?

39:51

You can't tell me everything's a distraction unless you

39:53

plan your time. So unlike a to do list,

39:55

which is just a register of things you want

39:57

to have done when you

39:59

timebox. And I didn't make up this

40:01

technique, it's been around for a long

40:03

time. It's called setting implementation intention. It's

40:05

the most widely studied technique that far

40:07

too few people use. It's

40:10

basically saying, here's what I'm gonna do and what I'm gonna do it.

40:12

Now the difference is that the metric of

40:14

success, what I added in my book, which

40:16

is unlike a to-do list, which

40:18

is about checking cute little boxes, it's

40:20

about finishing things. That's a terrible metric

40:23

because you don't control the output,

40:26

right? You don't control the output. How long is something gonna

40:29

take you? When you're doing a YouTube video, sometimes it takes

40:31

you a few hours, sometimes it can take you dozens of

40:33

hours probably. You don't always know. What

40:35

you do know is the input. What's your input?

40:38

It's time and attention. And

40:40

so when you budget those things, your time

40:42

and attention, the new metric isn't

40:44

did I finish. The

40:46

new metric is did I do what I said I

40:48

was going to do for as long as I said

40:50

I would without distraction? Whether that's

40:52

being with my family, whether that's playing video games, whether

40:54

that's working on a big project. Did I do what

40:56

I said I was going to do for as long

40:58

as I said I would without distraction? Because that is

41:00

the only way to have a feedback loop. So

41:03

the reason that it takes people on average

41:05

three times longer to finish a task than

41:07

they predict is because they have no

41:10

way of knowing how long things take. So

41:12

when you have a time box calendar, you say, okay,

41:14

I'm gonna work on this task for one hour, 30

41:16

minutes, 15 minutes, doesn't matter. And I'm gonna do nothing

41:18

but. Now you have a feedback

41:20

loop. Now you can say, okay, well, I need to

41:22

make this slide presentation and it's gonna be 30 slides

41:24

long. And I did about three slides.

41:26

That means I need a total of 10 time boxes

41:29

to finish the entire presentation. You can start being a

41:31

better estimator of how long things take. As

41:33

opposed to someone who uses a to-do list, say,

41:35

okay, I'm gonna finish that task today. Here I

41:38

go. I'm gonna get started for five minutes. They work on

41:40

it and they say, oh, you know what? Let me

41:42

get a cup of coffee real quick. And oh, Janice is at the

41:44

water cooler. And oh, you know what? I need to do this other

41:46

thing. And wait, what was I working on again?

41:48

So this is why time boxing

41:50

eats to-do lists for breakfast. It's a much,

41:52

much better technique because it allows you to

41:54

understand for the first time what is traction,

41:56

anything that's actually in your calendar, and everything

41:59

else is a distraction. Yeah, man, I completely

42:01

agree. I discovered timeboxing, I think,

42:04

some time into my first year of med school. And

42:06

immediately I realized, oh, okay, this

42:09

is just has unlocked so much more time for me,

42:11

right? Because now I can timebox when I'm supposed to

42:13

be working on that essay based on the deadlines, I

42:15

can timebox all of my social events, I can timebox

42:17

lunch breaks, I can timebox breakfast, right? I was rowing

42:20

for that first year, so I could timebox waking up

42:22

at four frickin am and going for a rowing session

42:24

in the freezing cold. But it helped

42:26

me figure out what I wanted to do with

42:28

my time, but also where the free time was.

42:30

Yes, I could be like, Oh, got three hours

42:32

tomorrow evening free. I wonder what I want to

42:34

do with that time. Oh, there's this

42:36

long list of clubs I've been thinking of joining. Let

42:38

me go try Taekwondo for like an evening or something

42:40

like that. I became immediately way more intentional when I

42:43

started running my life by my calendar. Then this is

42:45

what people forget they think, oh, timeboxing has to be

42:47

just about the boring stuff, just about the product of

42:49

you know, the work and the you know, the I

42:51

have to be an automaton. You can schedule fun, right?

42:54

You I want you to schedule fun, right? If you like playing

42:56

video games, you want to hang out with your friends, whatever it

42:58

is you like to do, put that time in your schedule. In

43:00

fact, what in the book I talk

43:02

about these three life domains of you have to

43:04

schedule time to take care of yourself. If you

43:07

can't take care of yourself, you can't take care

43:09

of other people can't make the world a better

43:11

place. You've got to schedule time for for rest,

43:13

for exercise, whatever it is that's important to take

43:15

care of yourself, including video games, including Netflix, including

43:17

all the stuff that you want to do for

43:19

yourself to become the person you want to become.

43:22

But the second domain is your relationships.

43:24

That part of the reason we have a

43:27

loneliness epidemic in the industrialized world is that

43:29

we no longer have those pre

43:31

scheduled interactions with our friends

43:33

with our community, right? But as society

43:35

became more secular, many

43:37

people don't go to church or the kiawanis

43:39

club or those look those interactions. And this

43:41

is why more and more people are lonely

43:44

today. And loneliness isn't just sad, it's it's

43:46

unhealthy, we know that it's as dangerous statistically

43:48

as smoking and obesity. So we've

43:50

got to schedule this time, whether it's our

43:52

significant others, our family, our friends, that time

43:55

has to be in our schedule to

43:57

connect with other people. So that's the relationship

43:59

domain. And then finally, the last life

44:01

domain is the work domain. So

44:03

most people go throughout their day

44:06

doing what's called reactive work, reacting to notifications,

44:08

reacting to emails, reacting to taps on the

44:10

shoulder from their boss. That's reactive work. It's

44:12

part of everyone's job. We have to have

44:14

that time. The problem is

44:16

that people get habituated to this reactive

44:18

work. Why? Because you don't have to think. You

44:21

don't have to ask yourself, what should I be

44:23

doing? I'll do whatever my email inbox tells me

44:25

to do. I'll do whatever, you know, whatever the

44:27

local crisis is. That's what I'll do, right? I'll

44:30

do whatever is easy. That's what I'll do. As

44:32

opposed to when you do what's

44:34

called reflective work, as opposed to reactive work.

44:36

Reflective work is the kind of work

44:38

that can only be done without distraction. So

44:41

planning, strategizing, thinking for God's sakes can only

44:43

be done without distraction. So if you're

44:45

not planning that time in your day, if

44:47

you're not keeping some time in your

44:49

calendar for reflective

44:51

work, I promise you you're gonna

44:54

run real fast in the wrong direction. Mm,

44:56

nice. Yeah, one way I think

44:58

about this is where

45:00

I kind of think of tasks as falling

45:03

into two categories. Either it is a focused

45:05

task or it is a admin task. And

45:07

I have to categorize it in one of the two. A focused

45:09

task is like, the goal for me is to just sit down,

45:12

focus on just one thing and just do it ideally

45:14

for as long as I can without being distracted as long as it takes

45:16

to get the thing done. An admin task is

45:18

where the goal is to just finish it as

45:20

soon as possible because it's this random thing that

45:22

has to be done. And so I

45:25

will schedule, when I have enough admin tasks that pile

45:27

up, I'll schedule a half an hour block that I

45:29

call an admin party in my calendar to

45:31

just sort of play a game with myself where the goal is to

45:33

put on some music, maybe go to the local coffee shop and just

45:35

bang up all of these different admin tasks.

45:38

And the way I think of it is that admin

45:40

tasks, it's sort of like if you're a boat, the

45:44

random reactive shit you have to do is like water

45:46

piling onto the boat and your admin is sort of

45:48

like paling it out. It's not actually helping you move

45:50

forward. The focused tasks are helping you roll the boat

45:52

forward. It's just going in the direction that you want.

45:54

But you gotta make some time to get rid of

45:56

the admin because otherwise it's gonna cause you to sink

45:58

because you haven't paid your taxes or anything. and

46:00

what, oh, whatever. So this, actually what

46:02

you've done is a fantastic demonstration of

46:04

what Ian Bogos calls making things fun.

46:07

Now what's interesting about, he talks about

46:09

play anything. He has a wonderful book

46:11

called Play Anything. And what's so interesting

46:13

about his technique is that he talks

46:16

about how the conventional advice of

46:18

how do you do the things you don't wanna do. Just to back up,

46:21

everything we're talking about now is about the things

46:23

you don't wanna do, right? People talk about flow

46:25

as a solution to our productivity problems. Just getting

46:27

to flow. How do I get to flow doing

46:30

my taxes? That's no fun, right? You'll never get

46:32

into flow with taxes. Flow is about, you know,

46:34

Chicksendmehigh, when he wrote flow, it's about athletes

46:36

playing basketball and painters painting. It's fun things. It's the things

46:38

you want to do. The part that people have trouble with

46:41

are the things that are not fun to do. So

46:43

how do you get those things done? So

46:45

Ian Bogos talks about how you can add

46:48

fun to a task and that fun doesn't

46:50

have to be enjoyable. It's kind

46:52

of counterintuitive. You don't have to enjoy play. Why?

46:56

Because play can be a tool to

46:59

focus our attention long enough

47:01

to help us complete the task. So

47:03

how do you do that? How do you make something

47:05

into play? You do two things. You add constraints, which

47:07

is exactly what you did. You said, okay, I got

47:09

a bunch of things. I wanna see how many I

47:11

can do in this hour at this

47:13

coffee shop without distraction, right? How many can

47:15

I bang out? That's a constraint, right? The

47:17

time constraint. And the other is to add

47:19

variability, to look for the uncertainty

47:22

in that situation. Kind of peel back the

47:24

onion and find what's interesting about it. So

47:26

when I write, the only thing

47:29

that drives me is that curiosity, right? What might I

47:31

find? What's the answer to this problem? So if you

47:33

can find what's interesting about that task, you can learn

47:35

to play it. And again, it doesn't have to be

47:37

enjoyable. It just has to hold your attention long enough

47:40

to get the test done. Nice.

47:42

You talk about building a schedule around your values. What

47:44

do you mean by that? So

47:47

value, what are values? I define values as

47:49

attributes of the person you want to become.

47:52

So the way you do that

47:54

is that you turn your values

47:56

into time. If you

47:58

want to know what someone's values are, you don't. don't look at

48:00

what they say. What you

48:02

do is you look at two things. You look at their calendar

48:04

and you look at their pocketbook. You look at how they spend

48:06

their money and how they spend their time. That's

48:08

someone's values. So what you want

48:11

to do is to turn your values into time by

48:13

asking yourself, how would the person I

48:15

want to become spend their time? And

48:18

that's where those three life domains come in handy. How

48:20

would the person you want to become spend their time taking

48:22

care of themselves, taking care of their relationships, and taking care

48:24

of their work? And so what that's

48:26

going to invariably do is it's going to force you

48:28

to make trade-offs. Because

48:31

unlike a to-do list that has no constraints, you

48:34

can always add more to a to-do list. By the way, I'm not

48:36

against taking things out of your brain and putting it on a piece

48:38

of paper. That's a great idea. But most

48:40

people end there. So they've got a million

48:42

things on their to-do list and they never accomplished half of

48:44

them. And then they get home from work every day and

48:47

they say, oh man, I was so busy today, I

48:49

did so much. But look at all these things I

48:51

still haven't done. And so what does

48:53

that do to your psyche? Day after day, week after week,

48:55

month after month, year after year, you have this list of

48:57

things that you said you were going to do and you

48:59

didn't do. Loser. So you

49:01

start this script in your head of, oh, I

49:03

must not be good at time management or it's because

49:06

I'm a Sagittarius or maybe I have some kind of

49:08

disorder. It's not that you're broke

49:10

and it's that this stupid time management technique doesn't work.

49:13

So what we have to do instead is to

49:15

turn our values into time by asking ourselves with

49:17

the limited time we have, how would the person

49:19

I want to become spend their time? So

49:22

you're always going to have more things that

49:24

you want to do in that day than you have time for

49:26

and that forces you to make the trade offs to say, well,

49:29

how bad do I want to watch sports on TV

49:31

versus being with my kids? How much do I want

49:33

to spend an extra hour of work versus going to

49:35

the gym? You have to make those trade offs, but

49:37

that's the only way to live a life without regret.

49:40

Because if you don't do that, if you don't decide how

49:42

are you going to, you're going to spend your time, somebody's

49:45

going to decide for you, your boss, your

49:47

kids, the media, some distraction is

49:49

going to take you off track unless you decide

49:51

in advance what trade offs you're going to make

49:53

based on your values. Nice. What

49:56

apps do you use to help build

49:58

this schedule? like the to-do list,

50:00

do you have a special stack, or what's your

50:03

take on the apps? Very, very special stack. It's

50:05

a Google Calendar, any calendar. Look,

50:08

the best, and I get this question a lot, what's

50:10

the secret app, what's the secret solution? The best solution

50:13

is the one you use, right? This

50:15

is what I call talking protein. Do

50:18

you ever go to the gym and you see those

50:20

two guys, typically guys, and they're in the corner, they're

50:23

not in particularly good shape, and instead of

50:25

exercise, they're talking about, bro, should we use

50:27

the whey protein isolator, should we use the

50:29

soy protein, or they're arguing about details, right?

50:33

What really matters is to do the exercise, work

50:35

out if you wanna get in shape. Protein, what

50:37

kind of protein you use, that's details. So what

50:39

kind of tool you use is not as important,

50:41

right? Tactics are

50:43

what we do, strategy is why we do it. So

50:46

it's much more important that you understand traction,

50:49

distraction, internal trigger, external triggers, the indestructible model, that

50:51

picture, if you can engrave that in your brain

50:53

to understand, hey, I'm not doing what I say

50:55

I'm going to do, why? Which

50:58

one of these four steps is missing? Is

51:01

there an internal trigger? Is it a

51:03

planning problem? Is it that hacking back external triggers,

51:05

or is it having a

51:07

pact in place? Using those four

51:09

tactics, anyone can become indestructible. Nice.

51:13

To what extent do you recommend I

51:15

should have 24-7 time boxed? Yeah,

51:20

I think that's a great idea. Yeah, I mean, that's what

51:22

I do. I was wondering, it's like. I think it's a

51:24

great idea. I mean, I think it helps you enjoy every

51:27

moment. Yeah, it's like I've got my wake up time box,

51:29

my big time. It's like walking to the park first thing

51:31

in the morning, doing the podcast. Everything. Me

51:34

too, and by the way, you can absolutely

51:36

change it. You just can't change

51:38

it in the day. I think people sometimes resist making

51:40

a time box counter and say, oh, it's too rigid,

51:42

and what if I can't follow it? That's fine, because

51:45

they have this mentality that we have to be like

51:47

drill sergeants, but that's not the right mindset. The right

51:49

mindset is not being a drill sergeant. It's

51:51

being a scientist. What's the job of a scientist?

51:54

A scientist makes a hypothesis,

51:56

runs an experiment, and then looks at the results,

51:58

and then runs new experiments. based on those results. So

52:01

what I've done, I change my calendar

52:03

constantly. I just don't change it in

52:05

the day. So I can change

52:07

tomorrow's schedule, that's fine. If I say, oh, I'm

52:09

gonna meet my friend Ollie, or I'm gonna do

52:11

this task or that task, that's fine. There's no

52:14

problem with that. But once that calendar is set,

52:16

once I know what I plan to do, that's

52:18

it. Now I have to leave it alone. So

52:20

the tools I use, I use Google Calendar. You

52:25

can use a spreadsheet, you can use a piece of paper,

52:27

whatever works for you to make a time box calendar. There's

52:30

a schedule planner on my site that people ask this so much

52:32

that I created one that they can download. I'll

52:35

tell you some other tools that I really like for

52:38

what's called multi-channel, multi-tasking. Because there's

52:40

a myth that we can't multi-task.

52:42

And that's not true. We absolutely

52:44

can multi-task if we do it

52:46

correctly. That it's

52:49

kind of productivity advice, don't try and multi-task. If

52:51

you do it correctly, you absolutely can't.

52:53

How do you multi-task? You do what

52:55

I call multi-channel multi-tasking. So it is

52:57

true that you can't multi-task on the

52:59

same input channel. You can't do

53:01

two math problems at the same time. You can't

53:03

watch two television shows at the same time.

53:05

You can't listen to two podcasts at the same

53:08

time. It's impossible. Your brain will have

53:10

to switch attention between the two. But

53:12

what you can do is you can

53:14

mix the channels. So for example, when

53:17

I'm in the gym, the reward for going

53:19

to the gym is that I

53:21

get to listen to podcasts. Or in my case,

53:23

I use an app called Pocket that reads articles

53:25

to me. They have this wonderful text-to-speech service. I'm

53:27

not affiliated with them. Wonderful

53:30

way to kill two birds with one stone. I'm

53:32

not reading articles online. I have a very strict

53:34

rule. I never, ever read articles on my desktop.

53:36

I only read them through this Pocket app.

53:38

And it reads it to me so that I

53:40

can do something else healthy like taking a walk

53:42

or exercise. Yeah. So it's like doing a walking

53:45

meeting. Yeah, absolutely. I would have phone call with

53:47

Angus, my job manager, while walking around the park.

53:49

And it's like multi-channel multi-tasking. But

53:51

if I was trying to have two meetings at once, that's That's

53:53

right. That's right. A bit tricky. What

53:56

is schedule synchronization? OK, so this is

53:58

a fantastic. It's one of my favorite

54:00

techniques, a schedule sink, solves

54:03

this problem that I hear all the

54:05

time, which is, okay, I'm indestractable, I

54:07

read the book, I'm doing the techniques,

54:10

I'm indestractable, but my boss is not.

54:12

What do I do now? My boss is constantly pinging

54:14

and dinging me, asking me for all kinds of stuff. What do

54:16

I do then? How do I let them

54:19

know I need my time to do my work? So

54:22

this process of schedule sinking helps you with

54:24

that. And it helps you avoid the worst

54:26

piece of personal productivity advice that we hear

54:28

all the time. It drives me crazy. The

54:30

worst piece of personal productivity advice is, if

54:33

you want to be more productive, you have to

54:35

learn how to say no. How

54:38

many times have we heard that? That is the worst

54:40

piece of productivity advice. You're gonna tell your boss, the

54:42

guy who pays your bills, you're gonna tell that person,

54:45

no, you're gonna get fired. That's

54:47

terrible advice. You don't tell them no. Instead,

54:49

what you tell them is, let's

54:52

look at the schedule. Right? Let's,

54:54

you know, not in this way. Let me tell you

54:56

how you do. You sit down with them and you

54:59

say, look, can I have 15 minutes with you? Monday

55:01

morning, whenever time, 15 minutes, I want to show you

55:03

something. And what you do is you print out your

55:05

time box calendar, part of the beauty of a time

55:08

box calendar is that now you have a physical manifestation

55:10

of how you spend your time. You print that out,

55:12

you show them your time box calendar. You say, okay,

55:14

boss, here's how I'm gonna spend my working hours. Here's

55:16

this meeting you asked me to attend. Here's what I'm

55:19

gonna spend time doing email. Here's time when I'm gonna

55:21

work on that big project you asked me to do.

55:23

And then you say, okay, boss, here's this other list

55:25

of things you asked me to do. Okay,

55:28

here's all the things you asked me to do that

55:30

I'm having trouble fitting into my schedule. And

55:32

now you're asking your boss to do

55:34

their most important job. Your boss's most

55:36

important job is to help you prioritize.

55:39

That is the most important job of a

55:42

manager, right? So you're not saying no, you're

55:44

saying, please help me prioritize. What on

55:47

this list is more important than what

55:49

I currently scheduled? And your

55:51

boss will kiss the ground you want.

55:54

Yeah, I'm just like, oh. Every boss is

55:56

worth a fresh air. We're all wondering, what

55:58

are you doing all day? How are you spending

56:00

your time? time. And we don't want to ask

56:02

you what your schedule is, because we don't want

56:04

you to think like we're micromanaging you. So if

56:06

you proactively do this, if you manage up, if

56:08

you manage your manager by doing the schedule sync,

56:11

every time they're gonna say, you know what, that meeting,

56:13

that's actually not that important. But this task over here,

56:15

that's super important. Can we swap that out? So

56:18

by having that transparency, by doing this weekly

56:20

schedule sync, it's, it's incredible. It

56:22

solves so many problems. By the way,

56:24

it also works really well in

56:27

the home. So my

56:29

wife and I have been married now for 23 years.

56:33

And we used to have these terrible fights a

56:36

few years ago before I wrote indestractable around

56:38

how I wasn't pulling my weight. And

56:41

by the way, this is something statistically is

56:43

very common. This is going to be no

56:45

surprise to any married woman. But it turns

56:47

out that women even in 2024, take on

56:49

a disproportionate share of household responsibilities, okay, even

56:51

in marriages where both people work outside the

56:54

home, that's still the case. And

56:56

that was certainly the case in my household, I didn't realize it.

56:58

But my wife would tell me, hey, you know, near the stuff's

57:00

gotta get done, right? You got to feed our daughter, we got

57:02

to take out the trash, we got to we got to do

57:04

all this stuff, like you need to help out more. To

57:07

which I would say, honey, if you need

57:09

me to do something, just ask,

57:12

what's the problem? If you need it, you know, don't get

57:14

all upset, right? Don't get emotional, just tell me what you

57:16

need. And I didn't realize

57:18

that what I was asking her to do was

57:20

yet another job. Now she had to be my

57:22

camp counselor, right telling me to clean up. So

57:25

now what we do, we never have these

57:27

fights anymore. This has been such a game

57:30

changer for our marriage. Now every week, Sunday

57:32

nights, 8pm, then our calendar, we

57:34

have a schedule sink, we sit down

57:36

together, she brings out her timebox counter, I

57:38

bring out my timebox counter, takes

57:40

us maybe 10 minutes. And now

57:42

we know, okay, who has to do what when, okay, my

57:44

daughter needs to be taken here, then and we need to

57:46

make sure that dinner is made by this time. 10

57:49

minutes. Now we're in sync. And now exactly

57:51

I can live out my values of being

57:53

in an equitable marriage, because we know where

57:55

the responsibilities lie. I know what I need

57:58

to do. She knows what she needs to

58:00

do. do. Nice. What

58:02

other productivity techniques have helped you in your marriage?

58:05

My marriage. So

58:09

I talk about, okay, this is kind of personal,

58:11

but you asked. So let's talk about our sex

58:14

life. Why not? So

58:16

we found a few years ago, again, been

58:19

married for 23 years now. And a few

58:21

years ago, we found that

58:23

our sex life was really suffering. And

58:25

the reason it was suffering was not for a lack

58:28

of not loving each other or lack of intimacy. It

58:30

was that every night we

58:32

were going to bed later and later, and we were just exhausted.

58:35

And part of that was that every night I

58:37

would go to bed and I was caressing my

58:39

iPhone and she was fondling her iPad and

58:42

we weren't being intimate. And so

58:44

it wasn't until I started writing in distractible that I

58:46

decided to take on this challenge. And one

58:48

of the best things we did was

58:50

that I went to the hardware store and

58:53

I bought us this outlet timer and

58:56

this outlet timer will turn on

58:58

or off anything you plug into it at a set

59:00

time of day or night. So

59:02

in my household till this very day,

59:04

every night at 10 p.m. our

59:07

internet router shuts off. So

59:10

we probably don't even need any work. So we've been doing

59:13

it for so long. But what that means is that everybody

59:15

knows no internet past 10 p.m. My daughter knows that my

59:17

wife knows that I certainly know that. So

59:19

as opposed to checking

59:21

email to the wee hours or scrolling social media

59:23

or watching YouTube videos or whatever, hey, got

59:26

to wrap everything up because 10 p.m. the internet's going to

59:28

shut off. And so that that's

59:30

called an effort pact. Now it's called the effort

59:32

pact because it takes a bit of effort. It

59:35

puts some friction in between you and the distraction.

59:37

Now could I still get on the internet? Of

59:39

course I could. I could use my cell phone.

59:41

I could unplug the internet and then you know

59:43

take out this timer and re-plug it in. But

59:46

that takes work. That takes effort. It

59:48

proposes this minute of mindfulness when I say wait

59:50

a minute, do I really need to stay online

59:52

here or is it time to go to bed

59:54

and maybe be intimate with my wife? Love

59:57

that. That's great. One

1:00:01

of the things that people often say in response to the

1:00:03

whole like, time box everything,

1:00:05

is that, but doesn't that take the

1:00:07

joy out of life? Doesn't it remove

1:00:09

any spontaneity? Yeah, well the

1:00:11

beauty of it is, I've heard this one

1:00:14

before, the beauty is that you can plan

1:00:16

spontaneity. That's literally what I do.

1:00:18

So every Saturday I have time with my

1:00:20

daughter and we have this big

1:00:23

swath of time, a three-hour chunk of time, where

1:00:25

it's literally called planned spontaneity. Why? I don't know

1:00:27

what we're gonna do. Maybe we're gonna go surfing,

1:00:29

maybe we're gonna go get some ice cream, maybe

1:00:31

we're gonna take a walk, I don't know what

1:00:33

we're gonna do. But I know what I will

1:00:36

not be doing. I will not be checking social

1:00:38

media, I will not be responding to work emails

1:00:40

because that time has been a portion for someone

1:00:42

I love very much and I want to be

1:00:44

fully present. So you can still

1:00:46

be spontaneous, right? You can still plan that time,

1:00:48

but by booking that time you're blocking out

1:00:50

all the things that you don't want to

1:00:52

be doing. Nice. Alright, good stuff.

1:00:55

Let's talk about external triggers. Yeah,

1:00:57

so external triggers, all these pingsdings and rings, they only account

1:00:59

for about 10% of our distractions, but

1:01:02

there's all kinds of things we can do to prevent

1:01:04

them. And this is where it kind of gets nuts

1:01:06

and bolts. So of course we can do stuff with

1:01:08

our phone, right? There's maybe one page in my book

1:01:10

about how to make your phone indestructible. It's not very

1:01:12

hard, you know, you just need to

1:01:14

use some of the settings that come pre-installed

1:01:16

with everyone's phone to do that. That's kind

1:01:19

of the kindergarten stuff, right? Because we all

1:01:21

know that those are external triggers.

1:01:24

So just simply following the rule, the best rule is

1:01:26

asking yourself for all those notifications, which

1:01:29

are serving you and which are you serving?

1:01:32

Oh, so fun. Yeah, if the notification is serving you, for

1:01:34

example, if you get a notification, there's nothing wrong with external

1:01:36

triggers. If an external trigger tells you, hey, it's time for

1:01:38

that meeting, it's time to go exercise, it's time for that

1:01:40

thing you said you were gonna do that's in your calendar.

1:01:43

Wonderful. It's serving you. But if it's

1:01:45

an external trigger that you get this notification while

1:01:47

I was with my daughter, now it's

1:01:49

not serving me, I was serving the

1:01:52

notification. So having that rule is a

1:01:54

great step. Turns out two thirds of

1:01:56

people with a smartphone, two thirds of

1:01:58

people with a smartphone, Never

1:02:00

change the notification settings. Can

1:02:02

we honestly say that this that technology is addicting

1:02:05

us? It's hijacking our brains when we haven't taken

1:02:07

five minutes to change the notification settings That's kindergarten

1:02:09

stuff. The more I think that

1:02:11

the the stuff that people don't think about

1:02:13

are the external triggers That

1:02:15

that we don't give enough attention

1:02:17

for example Meetings how many stupid

1:02:20

meetings do we not need to attend that could have

1:02:22

just been an email, right? Why do we have to

1:02:24

meet synchronously huge waste of time? How many

1:02:26

of those emails that we get our inbox are a

1:02:28

complete waste of time? Those can be external triggers that

1:02:30

we need didn't need to receive or send turns out

1:02:33

There's an article in the Harvard Business Review that found that 50% of

1:02:35

the emails That the

1:02:37

average white-collar worker receives they didn't need to

1:02:39

receive and 50% of the emails they sent

1:02:41

they didn't need to send So email can

1:02:43

be a huge source of distraction our

1:02:46

kids We love our kids right family members are great,

1:02:48

but they can be a huge source of distraction So

1:02:50

we have to go through and hack back each and

1:02:52

every one of those external triggers And there's a way

1:02:54

to conquer each one of them. How do you hack

1:02:56

back your kids? Like how do you think about it?

1:02:59

Yeah, so how do you hack back the external trigger

1:03:01

caused by your kids? so we love them

1:03:03

to death or fantastic we love our kids, but They

1:03:06

can be a distraction when you're trying to focus on

1:03:08

a task and your kid needs you So what do

1:03:10

you do first thing is to make sure you schedule

1:03:12

your time appropriately? I talked to a lot of people

1:03:14

who somehow think they can do it all the same

1:03:16

time, right? You can do it all you just can't

1:03:18

do it at the same time So if your primary

1:03:20

responsibility is to take care of the kids take care

1:03:22

of the kids But if the primary responsibility is to

1:03:24

work on something work on something So what do you

1:03:26

do while you're working on something? Don't don't try and

1:03:28

do both So when my daughter was

1:03:30

only six years old and my wife and I both work from

1:03:32

home When my daughter was six years old

1:03:34

we sat down with her and

1:03:36

we said look honey mommy and

1:03:39

daddy need time in their day to do their work and

1:03:42

so we went to Amazon and we

1:03:44

bought what we call in our household the Concentration

1:03:47

crown the concentration crown if there's a picture of

1:03:49

it in the book It's this

1:03:51

little wreath that that my wife puts on her

1:03:53

head and it has this little LED lights up

1:03:55

You can't miss it and what we

1:03:57

told our daughter we said look when mommy is wearing

1:03:59

the concentration That means

1:04:01

you can't interrupt her unless you're bleeding.

1:04:03

If you're bleeding, it's okay to interrupt.

1:04:05

But unless you're bleeding, go figure something out. And

1:04:09

it will never be more than 30 minutes. We promised her the time

1:04:11

block will never be more than 30 minutes. So

1:04:15

what we're doing is interrupting the interruption. Frankly, if

1:04:17

you're on your computer, your kid doesn't know what

1:04:19

you're doing. Are you

1:04:21

watching a YouTube video and you can be interrupted, or

1:04:23

are you doing a work call and you can't be

1:04:25

interrupted? So by interrupting that

1:04:27

interruption, we're giving them

1:04:30

that grace to give them

1:04:32

a cue to not interrupt you. So if you're

1:04:34

lucky enough to have a door

1:04:36

in your house that you can close, so

1:04:39

I got a little label that I put

1:04:41

on the hook for the door so

1:04:45

that she knows, okay, I'm indestructible at the moment, but

1:04:48

my wife wears the indestructible crown, the concentration

1:04:50

crown. And it's surprisingly effective not

1:04:52

only with children, but also with husbands. Yeah, when I see

1:04:55

her, you know, I used to interrupt her when she's doing

1:04:57

work. It's really effective now when she

1:04:59

wears a concentration crown. She says, okay, I can't be

1:05:01

bothered. We all know it's time to leave her alone.

1:05:03

Yeah. So it's interesting you say

1:05:05

that because another way of thinking about that might be that

1:05:07

like, hey, you know, the kid's only going to be six

1:05:09

years old once. There's

1:05:11

nothing on my work that's more important than being distracted by the

1:05:14

kid. And this is in fact a welcome distraction. I love for

1:05:16

the kid to distract me. How do

1:05:18

you, but I guess, yeah, how do you think

1:05:20

about that versus balancing with, I want to grind

1:05:22

on this work task? Well, for that time when

1:05:24

you're with them, absolutely be a

1:05:27

hundred percent available. If they want you be a

1:05:29

hundred percent available. But, and that can

1:05:31

be your entire day. If that, if your value system, and

1:05:33

if you have enough money in the bank to not have

1:05:35

to work, good for you. You're in a very privileged place.

1:05:38

Most of us got to get some work done.

1:05:40

Yeah. Right. And so it's a reality that we

1:05:42

need that time and space. And so as opposed

1:05:44

to say, here's what happens. People don't drop

1:05:47

everything and play with their kids. They yell at

1:05:49

their kids, right? They say, I work

1:05:51

right now. Get out. That's that's

1:05:54

really unfair because they don't know they can't see.

1:05:58

So you have to make some kind of very

1:06:00

clear. By the way, this is also very effective

1:06:02

in the workplace. So in every copy of my

1:06:04

book, there is a what's called a screen sign.

1:06:06

It's this piece of cardstock. You pull it out

1:06:08

of the book, you fold it into thirds and

1:06:11

you put it on your computer monitor. So

1:06:13

everybody who walks by sees this big red sign

1:06:15

that says, I'm indestructible at the moment, please come

1:06:17

back later. So by

1:06:19

having that explicit message that says, Hey, I need

1:06:22

to work without distraction for a bit, not all

1:06:24

day. You can't, you know, go in some cave

1:06:26

like a monk and not be bothered. Of course,

1:06:28

some of your day is going to be spent

1:06:30

doing that reflective reactive work as well. But for

1:06:32

that time when you're when you need to work

1:06:34

with that distraction, particularly if you're working at open

1:06:36

floor plan office, incredibly distracting, incredibly hard to get

1:06:38

work done. You need some kind of external cue

1:06:40

and frankly, putting on headphones, nobody knows what you're

1:06:42

doing when you're wearing headphones. Are you listening to

1:06:44

music? Can you be interrupting? Can you not? No,

1:06:46

we need to make it socially acceptable. And increasingly

1:06:49

it has been since I published the book, having

1:06:51

that screen sign that says I can't be

1:06:53

distracted right now is very effective. Nice. What

1:06:56

is temptation bundling? So temptation bundling

1:06:58

is when we take a reward

1:07:01

from one area of our life, and we use

1:07:03

it to incentivize us to do something in another

1:07:05

area of our life. So this was work done

1:07:08

by Katie Milkman. And it's

1:07:10

what I use when I do

1:07:12

this multi-channel multitasking. So listening to

1:07:14

a podcast episode while I'm exercising,

1:07:16

right? In my case, oftentimes

1:07:19

it's articles that I have a hard rule. I

1:07:21

never read an article on my

1:07:23

computer. I only listen to an article when I'm

1:07:25

doing something healthy. So that would be temptation bundling.

1:07:27

Nice. Yeah, I really like that. Back

1:07:30

when I didn't have a personal trainer, I would listen to

1:07:32

fiction audiobooks at the gym. I would find that for

1:07:34

me, I would get so engrossed in the audiobook, I

1:07:36

would half-arse the workout. Like how do

1:07:38

you not half-arse the workout if you're

1:07:40

like engrossed? It's a great point. I find so

1:07:43

short form articles, you can only

1:07:45

get so engrossed because they're max what, five minutes?

1:07:48

So even if I miss something, I don't

1:07:51

miss that much because it's only one article worth it. So worst

1:07:53

case, I'll just listen to the article again. Nice. Kind of do.

1:07:56

Let's talk about the three different types of packs.

1:07:59

Packs, okay. So we have price packs, effort packs,

1:08:01

and identity packs. So price packs is when there's

1:08:03

some kind of monetary disincentive for going off track.

1:08:05

So if you're making a bet with someone and

1:08:07

saying, okay, I'm gonna finish my book, and if

1:08:09

I don't finish my book, I'm gonna pay you

1:08:12

a certain amount of money, the

1:08:14

burn or burn pact I made with myself, and I'm gonna burn that $100

1:08:16

bill unless I decide to do

1:08:18

some form of exercise, that would be

1:08:20

an example of a price pact. An

1:08:22

effort pact is when there's some bit

1:08:24

of effort, some friction in between you

1:08:26

and the distraction. So some kind of

1:08:28

effort, that makes you

1:08:31

pause and reflect on whether that task

1:08:33

is something you really want to go

1:08:35

off track, or whether you wanna stay.

1:08:37

Sure, like unplugging the PlayStation, or something

1:08:39

like that. Well, the timer, for example,

1:08:41

right? Unplugging the outlet timer. And

1:08:44

then an identity pact is actually the

1:08:46

most powerful of the three. An identity

1:08:48

pact is when you give

1:08:50

yourself some kind of moniker. And

1:08:52

this came out of some amazing work done by Ignutian and

1:08:54

all, and he found that the

1:08:58

most effective way to

1:09:01

increase voting in an

1:09:03

election was this

1:09:06

very simple technique whereby he called participants

1:09:09

in the study, and he changed

1:09:11

one variable. He asked them,

1:09:13

are you a voter, or

1:09:16

are you planning to vote? It's

1:09:18

the only difference, noun versus verb form. And

1:09:21

he found that people who were asked, are you a

1:09:23

voter, were much more likely to vote. He

1:09:25

actually went later and looked at the voter rolls to see

1:09:27

how they voted, or if they voted, you didn't know how

1:09:29

they voted, but whether they voted or not. And

1:09:32

by simply asking, are you a voter, they

1:09:34

were much more likely to go ahead and

1:09:36

head to the polls. So using

1:09:38

that technique to our advantage, by

1:09:40

actually having a moniker, by having an

1:09:42

identity, this is why the book is

1:09:45

called Indestractable. Indestractable is meant to sound

1:09:47

like indestructible. It's who you are. So

1:09:49

when you have this identity, it makes you

1:09:52

much more likely to follow through. This comes

1:09:54

from the psychology of religion, in fact, that

1:09:56

when someone calls themselves a member

1:09:58

of a particular faith, likely to

1:10:01

act in accordance. That's very good. This

1:10:04

is going to be a very first-world problem. But I've

1:10:06

been thinking a lot about, what

1:10:08

do I call myself on my Instagram bio? Do

1:10:11

I go like a Dr. Turned YouTuber? Do I go

1:10:13

Dr. Turned Entrepreneur plus YouTuber? Do I put writer in

1:10:15

there somewhere? And two days ago, I

1:10:18

was thinking, huh, I want to make a start

1:10:20

on my next book, because I

1:10:22

feel like that would be kind of fun. You know what? Let

1:10:24

me just add writer into my Instagram bio, and

1:10:26

on my website sort of thing. I'd be like,

1:10:29

hey, I'm Ali. I'm a Dr. Turned YouTuber, entrepreneur,

1:10:31

and writer. It's like, ah. Now

1:10:33

I feel like I can really embody the identity of

1:10:35

writer, and what does a writer do? Well, a writer

1:10:37

writes. And now it's like, I've almost

1:10:39

given myself permission that like,

1:10:41

oh, this is the thing I'm going to do with some

1:10:44

hours of the day. Yeah. And it's

1:10:46

weird how adding that as an Instagram bio, I

1:10:48

think, has actually made me feel a lot better

1:10:50

about like, oh, I can do my writing now.

1:10:53

Absolutely. And we see people using it in

1:10:55

a way that serves them, and many times in a way

1:10:57

that hurts them. So when

1:11:00

someone says that I'm a

1:11:02

Sagittarius, and a Sagittarius has certain things that I'm

1:11:04

bad at, or I'm good at, you act in

1:11:06

accordance with that, right? Or if you think you

1:11:09

have some kind of diagnosis, and that's incurable, and

1:11:11

you know, there's all kinds

1:11:13

of things that we label ourselves that

1:11:15

many times are not actually

1:11:17

helpful. So if you say, oh, you hear this

1:11:20

all the time, I'm bad at time management, or

1:11:22

I have a short attention span. Well, yeah, again,

1:11:24

if you label yourself as that, it'll be true,

1:11:26

versus someone who says, I'm indestractable, it's who I

1:11:28

am, right? And is it

1:11:30

that different from someone who says, I'm a vegetarian? Is

1:11:33

it so different? Oh, really, right? You go to lunch with

1:11:35

someone who's a vegetarian, they order what they order, you order

1:11:37

what you order, it's who they are, it's part of their

1:11:39

identity. The fact that, you know, I am

1:11:41

a vegetarian means that that person isn't contemplating,

1:11:43

ooh, should I have a bacon sandwich for

1:11:45

breakfast? No, it's who they are, and so

1:11:47

they act in accordance with that. And so

1:11:50

it should be the same when it comes

1:11:52

to being indestractable. You know what, I'm sorry,

1:11:54

I don't respond to notifications every 30 seconds,

1:11:56

because I'm indestractable. Or you know what, if

1:11:58

we're gonna have lunch together, let's be both

1:12:00

present and body. Let's put our phones away

1:12:02

because I'm indestructible. That's really cool.

1:12:04

I remember a few years ago, there was a

1:12:06

friend of mine who asked something,

1:12:08

we were talking about like learning languages or something. And

1:12:11

I just sort of threw out the phrase, oh, I'm not

1:12:13

very good at languages. And then I

1:12:15

was like, hold the fuck up. Who

1:12:18

says? How did that

1:12:20

thought come into mind? And I was like, oh, it's

1:12:22

because when I was in like year eight, I

1:12:25

got like, when the groups were

1:12:27

set in terms of ability, I was like in the middle group.

1:12:29

I was in the top group for everything else, but I was

1:12:31

in the middle group for French. And I

1:12:33

realized like 15 years later that that had come back

1:12:35

to give me this narrative that I'm bad at languages.

1:12:37

I was like, no, I'm not going to

1:12:39

accept that. But if I want to learn a language, I'd

1:12:41

learn a freaking language. Yes.

1:12:43

And it's true, you may not have been very good,

1:12:46

but that doesn't mean you can't practice and get better.

1:12:48

Yeah. Right. And

1:12:50

so it's the same when it comes to our focus and attention.

1:12:52

And unfortunately, I think a lot of people almost

1:12:55

want the label. We want

1:12:57

to think that we're somehow deficient in some way because

1:12:59

then we don't have to try anymore. I'm

1:13:01

no good at languages. So then I don't have to learn,

1:13:03

right? I can bow out of it, which

1:13:05

is fine if that's your value system. But if

1:13:08

there's something that you know you are capable of

1:13:10

and you have this self-limiting belief that's keeping you

1:13:12

from accomplishing that goal, that's

1:13:14

sad. It's a disaster of your

1:13:16

human potential. We have a bunch of students in our

1:13:18

YouTuber Academy, often beginners, often

1:13:20

slightly older, I eat in their 40s, but

1:13:23

I'm actually slightly older, who will

1:13:25

say, oh, I'm very bad at tech. And

1:13:28

that is just a surefire sign that we

1:13:31

need to work on some emotional issues here because they're

1:13:34

telling themselves they're bad at tech. And

1:13:36

then they need the handholding from our team about the

1:13:38

cameras and the settings. And then they have this narrative

1:13:41

that they're bad at tech. And you

1:13:43

can't do anything on YouTube if you have the self-professed

1:13:45

belief that you are bad at tech. Right.

1:13:48

And so that's a big part of what we're trying to work on when we're doing that. We're

1:13:51

trying to figure out how to do a job,

1:13:53

how to do a drive, how to operate a camera. that

1:14:00

kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it's,

1:14:02

again, it's through practice. Just like any other

1:14:04

skill, we somehow think that we're supposed to

1:14:06

miraculously have these skills embedded. We're supposed to

1:14:08

know how to deal with these internal triggers.

1:14:11

I never took a class on how to

1:14:13

deal with my emotions. We never sat

1:14:15

down and said, okay, how do you

1:14:17

react to uncomfortable emotional sensations? It's

1:14:19

a learned skill, it's a learned behavior. What

1:14:22

do you feel to ADHD, over diagnosis

1:14:24

and stuff? Yeah, so this is pretty

1:14:26

controversial and not very

1:14:28

popular, but I think it's way, way over

1:14:30

diagnosed. I mean, just the fact that there's

1:14:33

apps on here that I could download

1:14:36

and basically get a diagnosis in less

1:14:38

than 30 minutes tells you something and

1:14:41

everybody gets a diagnosis. If you know

1:14:43

what to say, you're gonna get

1:14:45

that diagnosis. And it's

1:14:48

not that I don't think ADHD is real. ADHD

1:14:50

is absolutely real. There are particularly children who do

1:14:52

suffer from it. I think it's way over diagnosed.

1:14:54

How can it be the case that 1% of

1:14:57

European children have ADHD and

1:14:59

10% of American children? Something's

1:15:01

going on here. And part

1:15:03

of it is that it's a

1:15:05

very convenient diagnosis. If

1:15:07

little Johnny can't sit still and

1:15:09

he's six years old, I don't think little boys were meant to

1:15:12

sit still for very long at six years old. And

1:15:14

in our generation, we were just rambunctious, and we accepted him,

1:15:16

we grew out of it. Today, it's

1:15:18

just very inconvenient for teachers and parents

1:15:20

to find other means. And

1:15:23

so what do you do? You medicate. And

1:15:25

I think not only is that very dangerous from

1:15:27

potential side effects, it

1:15:31

casts a die of saying that

1:15:33

to solve my problems, a

1:15:36

pill is a solution. And I think

1:15:38

that that's potentially very dangerous.

1:15:40

So it's not that I'm against medication,

1:15:43

it's not that I'm against ADHD. I

1:15:45

think though, we always need to try skills

1:15:48

before pills. That pills should

1:15:50

be what we do after we've

1:15:52

tried the non-pharmaceutical interventions. Simple

1:15:54

things like learning to deal with uncomfortable emotional

1:15:56

states, planning our day, removing external

1:15:59

triggers. This is not rocket science, right? We

1:16:01

can all do this. And then

1:16:03

if that stuff doesn't work, okay, now

1:16:05

let's look at some perhaps pharmaceutical interventions.

1:16:08

Particularly when I think it comes to adults,

1:16:10

I mean, there's a lot of controversy around

1:16:12

adult ADHD. That it turns out

1:16:14

that particularly when it comes

1:16:16

to thinking that it's incurable,

1:16:19

that it's a state you'll have for the rest

1:16:21

of your life. Well, look, if I can fix

1:16:23

the symptoms, haven't I cured the disease? Right,

1:16:25

if you're no longer, you're a doctor, right?

1:16:28

Like if you're not exhibiting any symptoms, it's

1:16:31

at least in remission, you can say, right? And

1:16:34

so wouldn't we wanna try that? Wouldn't

1:16:36

we first wanna say like, look, let's

1:16:38

use these techniques. And I, many ADHD

1:16:40

coaches now use my book, Indistractable, in

1:16:43

their coaching practice. The book wasn't written for people

1:16:45

with ADHD, but it's been very helpful to those folks

1:16:47

as well. And if they

1:16:49

are able to reduce their medication, stop

1:16:51

their medication altogether, and their symptoms are

1:16:55

alleviated, well, it can

1:16:57

be, I think, a curable disease. Yeah, this

1:16:59

is something I really wanna look into, because every

1:17:01

single psychiatrist I've ever spoken to, and I'm asked

1:17:03

this question too, says, oh yeah, way

1:17:05

overblown in terms of over diagnosis. I

1:17:08

was like, ooh, that's interesting. But the public hates hearing that.

1:17:10

Yeah, they never wanna say it, like on the record. You

1:17:13

get, I'm sure if you post this, I'm

1:17:16

not sure it's even worth posting, because

1:17:19

you're gonna get so much hate, because

1:17:21

it's not a diagnosis, it's an identity.

1:17:24

It's an identity. People think that having

1:17:27

ADHD is like being a particular race,

1:17:29

that you're born with it, and that's

1:17:31

what I am. And

1:17:34

I don't know if that's true. I'm not gonna claim to

1:17:36

know if that's true. But even if

1:17:38

it is true, why would you believe that's

1:17:41

an inhibiting factor? Why would you succumb to

1:17:43

that? Because what happens is when you think,

1:17:45

oh, I can't focus,

1:17:47

it's because of my ADHD. You're

1:17:50

focusing on the ADHD, rather than getting back on

1:17:52

the task. So it's like this

1:17:54

idea of a senior moment. Someone loses their keys, and

1:17:56

they think, oh my gosh, it's a senior moment. Well,

1:17:58

it's because you're thinking about the senior. in your moment that

1:18:00

you're not finding your keys. So you're taking

1:18:02

up that cognitive bandwidth to actually pay attention to

1:18:04

the thing you should think through. So

1:18:07

it's just not helpful for most people. I

1:18:10

think it oftentimes hurts rather than helps. Not

1:18:12

that we shouldn't try and, you know, if

1:18:15

it is a problem, if it is something that is

1:18:18

a challenge, the worst thing

1:18:20

you can do is to say, oh, I probably have

1:18:22

undiagnosed ADHD. At least go get a diagnosis to know

1:18:24

one way or the other rather than, you know, carrying

1:18:26

around this belief that really may not even be true.

1:18:29

Nice. Final thing I wanted to ask you about,

1:18:31

it's a bit more of a sort of selfish question. How

1:18:34

do you make time for writing amidst

1:18:36

the other things that you want to

1:18:38

do with your life? Yeah. This

1:18:41

is something that I'm currently struggling with, with like

1:18:43

business commitments and all this stuff. And it's like

1:18:45

the videos and the podcast and the business stuff.

1:18:47

And it's like carving out time for writing, which

1:18:49

always feels like it's an ever urgent. Because

1:18:51

it's like, I don't need to write another book,

1:18:53

like ever, but like I kind of want to. Yeah. It's

1:18:56

like one of those projects that's like, I don't know. Important

1:18:59

but not urgent in the slightest.

1:19:02

Any tips? So I think there's different

1:19:04

seasons to writing a book. And

1:19:08

I think the best, so I have a friend in Hollywood who

1:19:11

I went to college with, who's been in Hollywood forever. And

1:19:14

he never made

1:19:16

his big break. He's never gotten any

1:19:18

super famous rules. And

1:19:21

I asked him, I told him, I was like, you

1:19:23

know, you've been doing this for like 20 years now.

1:19:25

Like at what point do you find

1:19:28

a different profession? And he says, the

1:19:30

only reason you become an actor is because you can't do anything

1:19:32

else. And I think that applies to

1:19:34

book writing. For most

1:19:36

authors, it's not gonna be profitable, right? It's not

1:19:39

a good idea if you think you're gonna make

1:19:41

lots of money being an author. The

1:19:43

same with a startup, right? If you think you're gonna get

1:19:45

rich on your startup, you're just bad at math, right? You

1:19:48

have to do these things because you want the

1:19:51

thing to exist. You want to birth this. So

1:19:54

if you're gonna start a company, do

1:19:56

it because you want a certain product to

1:19:59

exist in the world. You want to use

1:20:01

that product. If you're going to write

1:20:03

a book, it's because you want the answer to this

1:20:05

question that's burning. Don't write a book

1:20:07

because of what you know, write a book because of what

1:20:09

you want to know. That's why I write. I mean, personally,

1:20:11

that's my experience. I always write books because of what I

1:20:14

want to know. I never have the answer in advance. It's

1:20:16

a journey. And sometimes I don't

1:20:18

write the book because I find the

1:20:20

answers not that interesting. But

1:20:22

if I do publish a book, it's because

1:20:24

I have this brain desire. So in that

1:20:26

early stage, only do it because you

1:20:28

have to, because it keeps gnawing

1:20:31

at you to get the answer to this question. So

1:20:33

with Indestractable, I read

1:20:35

everybody else's book on the topic and

1:20:38

it still didn't solve my problem. Saying, well,

1:20:40

get rid of your technology. Stop using email.

1:20:42

That's not really practical. It didn't work for

1:20:44

me. So I needed to really start with

1:20:47

bare bones on what is distraction and dive into

1:20:49

the psychology of the problem to really fix it

1:20:51

for myself. Then at

1:20:54

some point, after you have tons and tons

1:20:56

of information, tons of research, at least, again,

1:20:58

this is all autobiographical, your mileage might vary.

1:21:01

I had so much information, so many anecdotes,

1:21:03

so much research, so many things. Then the

1:21:06

stage, I think, is the most

1:21:08

fun where you're starting to connect dots.

1:21:11

You see this constellation of stars, now you're trying to

1:21:13

figure out, are there any patterns here? So that's why

1:21:15

both my books, there's always a central picture. Yeah,

1:21:17

it's really nice. Well, that to

1:21:20

me is actually- That must be very satisfying.

1:21:22

It's very satisfying. It's also the hardest part.

1:21:24

I spend more time on that picture than

1:21:26

the writing. Because that's actually the hard part,

1:21:28

because that's when you have to figure out what goes in and what

1:21:30

goes out. Because it's really easy to write a book full of anecdotes.

1:21:33

You can fill out, you can, in a week, write

1:21:35

a bunch of anecdotes around successful people and

1:21:38

cockamamie case studies and, okay, you got

1:21:40

a book. But to

1:21:44

imprint an image in someone's mind says,

1:21:46

when I have this problem, here's the

1:21:48

picture, attraction, distraction, internal, external, to

1:21:51

me, that's what's valuable when I read a book. So

1:21:53

that's what I wanted to get my readers.

1:21:56

So that's the second stage. And

1:21:58

the third stage is the cranking stage. where,

1:22:00

okay, now you understand the outline,

1:22:03

you understand the major points

1:22:05

of the book, you understand the big picture message that you

1:22:07

wanna get across. That's where I

1:22:10

find Monk Mode is quite helpful. Monk

1:22:12

Mode is not helpful in stage one or

1:22:15

two. It's really helpful in stage three where

1:22:18

you go away for full

1:22:21

days at a time, sometimes like, I

1:22:23

wasn't at Tony Moore's, who

1:22:25

was the author who would lock herself

1:22:27

at a hotel, Maya Angelou, Maya

1:22:30

Angelou, that's right. Maya Angelou would

1:22:32

do that. That's that final stage. I think

1:22:34

in the beginning stage, I think it's very hard

1:22:37

to force yourself, I

1:22:39

mean, you could do it for, in those

1:22:42

stages I would do, in stage one it's

1:22:44

more time boxing, the research time, I need

1:22:46

to read these studies, I need to finish

1:22:49

that book and take notes on it. That's

1:22:52

more where you can time box, but then when you just

1:22:54

gotta crank, to me I like

1:22:56

having the big chunks of time.

1:22:58

So this is very reassuring, cause I'm in stage

1:23:00

one and I'm still not sure what

1:23:02

book two will be, but there's like two or three

1:23:05

ideas that I'm sort of intrigued by. And

1:23:07

when I am procrastinating, I'll research them and

1:23:09

occasionally just tinker away on a notes file

1:23:11

and over time, they're just sort of slowly

1:23:13

getting clashed out. I guess I've been

1:23:15

thinking, oh, I don't have my time booked

1:23:17

for writing, but actually at this stage, I don't really need it.

1:23:19

I'm just sort of exploring and assembling

1:23:22

things together and maybe something will come of it, but I'm

1:23:24

in no rush. In some ways the writing,

1:23:27

I think writing prematurely can be really demoralizing

1:23:29

because if you start writing before you understand

1:23:31

the big picture, you're probably gonna trash that.

1:23:33

I can't tell you how many words I've

1:23:35

tossed out, probably 10 times as many

1:23:37

words that have been tossed out versus what's been published because I

1:23:39

thought it was gonna go one way and then it was a

1:23:41

dead end and then it didn't work out. Whereas if I had

1:23:43

just collected tons of research, tried to make

1:23:45

a picture out of it, tried to make something that is

1:23:49

novel and is helpful, then

1:23:51

write about it, that would be I think a

1:23:53

complete order. I wish I would have

1:23:55

told myself that two books ago. Same,

1:23:57

I wish I had told myself this four years ago. So,

1:24:01

final thing is, I've just turned 30. Congrats.

1:24:04

And you very kindly gave me one piece of life advice, which is

1:24:06

going to feature in a video very soon. Any

1:24:09

other tips? Any other advice you would

1:24:11

give a 30-year-old dude who is

1:24:14

kind of doing a similar-ish career as you

1:24:16

are and seem to have similar-ish values?

1:24:19

I mean, I feel like I need to take advice from you. I don't

1:24:21

need to ask you that question. I

1:24:24

think something that's served me as

1:24:26

an author, and it's a real privilege

1:24:28

to be an author. I think it's such a great job.

1:24:30

We get paid to learn. So

1:24:33

one thing that's always I've

1:24:35

tried to follow is follow my

1:24:37

curiosity, that whenever I

1:24:39

don't do that, whenever I worry too much

1:24:42

about, is this book going to sell? And

1:24:44

what are people going to think? And I

1:24:46

don't know, all the other stuff, all the

1:24:48

insecurities that come from writing. Whereas

1:24:50

if I just remind myself, I

1:24:53

want to know the answer. Follow the curiosity.

1:24:56

And the second thing, I think a lot

1:24:58

of people get imposter syndrome when they

1:25:00

write, thinking, well, who am I to say this

1:25:02

thing? And

1:25:07

I took a class in college on jazz,

1:25:11

because this teacher, Dwight Andrews, was

1:25:13

just a legendary teacher. And

1:25:15

I never paid attention to jazz before. What I

1:25:18

really loved about jazz is that it's the

1:25:20

mixing of these various genres. It's

1:25:24

European instruments with African

1:25:27

syncopation. It's all this

1:25:29

mishmash, this purely American

1:25:32

amalgamation. And I remember thinking

1:25:35

much later on how wonderful

1:25:37

metaphor that is for

1:25:39

overcoming imposter syndrome, that

1:25:41

yes, the topic you're writing about

1:25:44

may have been written about before. But nobody's

1:25:46

written about it in your way, with your

1:25:48

background, with your experience. You're making jazz. You're

1:25:51

taking maybe some stuff that's already been out there. But

1:25:55

invariably, when it's mixed with your story and

1:25:58

your perspective, it has to be novel. And

1:26:01

so that helps me always when I'm like, well, who am I to

1:26:03

say this? So well, it's gonna be different.

1:26:05

It's gonna be nice. It's not gonna be the

1:26:07

same. That's cool. Thank you And finally any fiction

1:26:09

book recommendations? fiction

1:26:11

recommendations or in books TV

1:26:13

shows movies I'm trying to I'm trying to

1:26:15

more intentionally use some of my time for

1:26:17

like downtime and I'm like, ooh Like

1:26:20

what recommendations gonna get from friends for like interesting

1:26:22

media? Well non nonfiction book that I always recommend that

1:26:24

I think deserved more attention is Rory Sutherland's book alchemy

1:26:27

Oh, I started reading that great book. Yeah, I'm on

1:26:29

the pot a few years ago I sort of skim

1:26:31

through it to do the research but I should read

1:26:33

it properly. It's a great book I really like that

1:26:35

book if you're interested in marketing and Yeah,

1:26:39

fantastic book. I

1:26:41

think what some favorite fiction books

1:26:49

What was that book I just finished that Derek Thompson

1:26:51

actually recommended in New York I

1:26:53

just finished it wellness That

1:26:55

was a pretty good book it was okay. I don't

1:26:57

know if it was a great book. It's pretty good

1:26:59

That was the last fiction book I read Oh perfect.

1:27:01

Nice. Great. Yeah. Sorry.

1:27:05

Maybe that wasn't a great recommendation I don't read that much

1:27:07

fiction. I must read not fiction breathe was really good. You

1:27:09

read breathe by James S. Tor

1:27:11

I think so. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was that

1:27:13

was scary. I've started taping my mouth since Yeah,

1:27:16

I think like my whoop sleep

1:27:18

scores seem Marginally higher

1:27:20

when I do really I mean, I don't have

1:27:23

an update because it when I

1:27:25

take my mouth I'm also going to bet

1:27:27

a decent hour putting the phone away making the

1:27:29

frickin magnesium supplements I'm like take her my sleep.

1:27:32

So I haven't isolated the variables particularly Yeah, but you

1:27:34

try and do it every night to tape around. Yeah,

1:27:36

did you store it before? Yes,

1:27:38

but also I would breathe a lot through my mouth And so I'd wake up

1:27:40

in the middle of the night with a very dry mouth Oh,

1:27:42

and then I'd be I'd wake up that I mean, okay,

1:27:44

well I might as well use the bathroom now And it

1:27:46

would just sort of interrupt asleep. Hmm. So yeah for me

1:27:48

It's been let it's just been more about it's a thing

1:27:50

that stops me from waking up at night with a dry

1:27:52

mouth Hmm, which is kind of nice that There's

1:27:56

a there's a actually insomnia was something

1:27:58

that I helped that

1:28:00

the research I did for Indestructible helped me overcome. I used

1:28:02

to have like get up in the middle of the night

1:28:05

and have a really tough time falling asleep

1:28:07

and it kind of brings up a point you brought up earlier

1:28:09

of what do you do when you say you're gonna do something

1:28:11

and then doesn't go the way you want. So, if I say

1:28:14

I'm gonna sleep, I timebox sleep, but I'm not sleeping, what do

1:28:16

I do? And I

1:28:19

started repeating this mantra that

1:28:21

at night that the body

1:28:23

gets what the body needs. The

1:28:25

body gets what the body needs that I

1:28:28

should put the postulate if you

1:28:30

let it. So, because

1:28:32

it turns out the number one cause of insomnia is

1:28:35

worry about having insomnia. And so,

1:28:37

I would enter this rumination loop of, oh, you know,

1:28:39

if I don't get to sleep soon, then tomorrow's gonna

1:28:41

be wrecked and I gotta go, why am I not

1:28:43

sleeping? I'm not sleeping, I would stay up for hours.

1:28:45

As opposed to now, whenever I can't sleep, I say

1:28:48

to myself, the body gets what the body needs if

1:28:50

you let it. So, as long as I went to

1:28:52

bed on time and then repeated this mantra whenever I

1:28:54

would wake up, turns out my body

1:28:56

would relax, I'd chill out and I'd fall back asleep.

1:29:00

Fantastic. Yeah, thank you so much. It was my pleasure.

1:29:02

Yeah. Thank you. All right. So,

1:29:04

that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so

1:29:06

much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we

1:29:08

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1:29:10

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