Indistractable by Nir Eyal: Book Review
Just like following movie directors to watch good movies, I had started following modern authors to read good books. I learnt that after reading Brad Stone’s all three books and I was literally hooked to this book called Hooked by the author Nir Eyal. So when www.1729.com was paying $100 for reviewing this book, I was like, why not.
So here it goes.
The book starts with clear boundary setting around the framework the author has created around the internal and external triggers with very simple and straightforward to-do tasks at the end of each chapter. Though the book does not touch the deepest of the issues which habit forming techniques which the big tech uses which the author promised in the start. he did manage to reveal very obvious but effective measures anyone can take to avoid distraction in life wherever they are coming at you.
Just like any good read, if one summaries the chapters into short points at the end of every chapter so that the reader can feel the sense of achievement of having some actionable insights, this book achieves to summaries very beautifully to give the reader very very powerful insights at the end of every chapter.
Chapter 1: Mastering the internal triggers
The Book promises a great deal of things about being indistractable. It almost felt like the author took a page out of some SEO hacks article mentioning the word ‘Indistractble’ too many times. As an individual who has assorted to everything from books, music, drugs, Yoga, reading, exercise, sex, meditation and anger, this introduction sure felt like a oversell to me. But as they say, one needs to soldier through the first 25% of the book to actually know if you really like the book and the point the author wants to make. So I dragged on. (And obviously $100 worth of Bitcoin was definitely acting a powerful trigger for me to keep reading.)
Part 1: Indistractable Model
The author rightfully points towards the pain management aspect of life by first educating us about the root causes of becoming habituated or obsessed about something. Just like most of the drug addicts, everyone is trying to escape the pains of life. For some the answer lies in money, others drugs and many relationships which may sometimes come from a very wrong direction. To escape loneliness one should not sick companionship, one should seek companionship with someone because that someone genuinely wants to be with you. Finding the root cause of discomfort just like a doctor, is the root answer to many problems in life. This directs the discussion to the framework by saying looking for the internal triggers and finding out the real triggers so that you can master them to become less distracted and more focused on the things that matter to your life.
Just like our constant need to seek dissatisfaction which fuels us to look for more happiness, four main aspects of psyche which drive the things around us are: Boredom, negativity bias, rumination and hedonic adaptation. While we cant control the thoughts in our heads, we can definitely control what to do with them. Most of the cravings for whatever is constantly distracting oneself is the function of when will one do the same thing next than the last time one did it.
Adding fun to the task by creating the gamification of the work has been the conventional tactic used to avoid distractions, but the author quotes IAn Bogost who refers to the fun as the exhaust created when we focus on the thing at hand with determination to know about thing familiar in a new way. Finally the author managed to reach the self compassion part where the most of the distracted souls struggle. The act of giving in to the distractions is the one which defeats the most and the author suggest practicing self compassion and letting yourself understand that the will to win over ones demons lies within and shouting back at the voices which bully us around in our own heads.
With this he concludes the segment on mastering the internal triggers which send us down the distracting rabbit hole or lead us to the part redemption to lead a more focused life.
Part 2: Making time for traction
You can not call something distraction until you do not know what it is distracting you from. Here the author is trying to answer what actually puts us forward in life. Most of the distracted souls are not going anywhere because maybe they have not thought about what matters to them. Knowing what traction will take us ahead matter more than removing the distraction in life. Here the author sheds the light on turning one’s values into the time which we spend.
Understanding the life domains and driving the action and time towards the things which need the most attentions matters a lot for those who want to learn to be indistractable. It is completely fine to watch Tv series or play games when the time allocated them. One can just spend time on work when its time to spend on family or yourself and vice versa.
Author goes on to suggest a powerful but tough technique which is called Timeboxing where you fill every nook and cranny of your calendar with tasks. This is not to say make yourself so busy that you will never get distracted. It actually about allocating time for every activity so that you know if you have achieved the task which will bring traction to your life that you intended to bring. Obviously allocating free time to do things which are completely non traction creating is also important but that time should never be used to catch up unintended tasks.
Spending time with yourself is as important as doing the meeting with your CEO and therefore never postponed appointments with yourself. Give yourself enough time. Also when it comes to allocating time for oneself many times one can not follow through because most of the times the outcome is not under our control but input is. So keep feeding right inputs to your mind and body. The outcome will follow suit.
Part 3: Hack back external triggers
In this part of the book the author has finally tackled the biggest ailment the world is suffering from, the external triggers coming from all kinds of technologies around us. In this part even if the author tries to go deeper into the daily struggles modern corporate slaves, the narrative lost its charm and taste it had in the first 100 pages. I suppose my initial hunch about the book was right. But the arguments the author is bringing to the table has managed to bring back all the bad memories from my last traumatic job experiences.
As the author goes along trying to improve the mobile and desktop experience of the readers, I believe these are some of the very basic techniques which most of the productivity masterminds had already used. But obviously if you look at the book from the perspective of a complete dummy or someone starting off their journey towards a cleaner undistracted life then I would say these chapters from part three may seem very enlightening to some.
Part 4: Prevent distractions with pacts
This part of the book focuses on literally creating your own external triggers using various techniques just like the nudge theory of Richard Thaler to direct us to go away from our distractions completely. The author emphasizes on the point that unless you have not worked on your internal triggers, tractions and external triggers, these pacts have little chance to work but ironically in his framework this point is put on the right most side of the framework which is quite counterintuitive if you ask me.
Part 5: How to make your workplace indistractable
Somehow the author gets back this rhythm in the last part just like most books, how you finish is kind of always important. As rightfully explained and summarized in the first four part of the book, the sources of distractions lie much deeper in the psyche of the humans than the technologies they use. Similarly the deeper psyche of the workplaces is the culture of the organization you work with. It depends on the people and how they treat their company which decides if you are going to be distracted at your workplace or not. Sometimes if you have sorted out your personal triggers, then you need to worry about the corporate triggers.
Part 6: How to raise indistractable children
Here I must say the marketer in the author arose very significantly, understanding that many people do not actually give a moment to understand how distracted they are until they start seeing that in their children. The part does justice to some of the techniques parents can use to actually make their kids most attentive but I felt this topic needs more expansion maybe in his next book.
From this point onward the books transforms itself into a full scale self help counselling session to avoid psychologist. But the author has managed to give real time use-cases of his framework from first four parts of the book.
