So most people don't know this. Writing a book is almost
impossibly hard. Like it just requires an insane
amount of focus over such a long period of time.
Like you're, you're literally spending months and months and
months by yourself, struggling, sitting by yourself, nothing
keeping you in that chair other than your desire to finish this
impossible project. So as you would expect,
distraction plays a really big role in book writing.
And it just so happens I was having such a hard time with my
second book that a friend of mine who was also writing a book
and struggling with distraction, we decided to start getting
together and Co writing together and holding each other
accountable. And so it turns out my
accountability buddy who got me through my second book near IL
is here. And irony of ironies, the book
he was writing when we were writing together is called
Indistractible and it's about how to resist distraction so
near. I noticed in your book there was
nothing about me and I, I clearly, you know, as as the
person who cured your distractions.
I was a little bit hurt by that so.
That's actually not true, no. You need to give it another
pass. Actually in the section on
pacts, we talk about price packs are where you make this, this
pre commitment where you decide in advance what the consequences
will be if you don't do what you say you're going to do.
It's the last step. Very important you don't do that
first. But as the last line of defense,
you can do these packs. There's different kinds of packs
and one of those packs is a price pack.
And I actually talk about in the book how we made that $10,000
bet that if I didn't finish my book by January 1st, I was going
to have to pay you $10,000. Dammit, Nir, you're making me
look like an asshole. All right, I'm in the buck.
Read the buck. Mark.
Read the Buck. It's the Subtle Art of Not
Giving a Fuck podcast with your host Mark Manson.
Welcome my friend Mira. Y'all, my old friend.
For people who aren't familiar with them, Nira is an author, a
technologist, a former startup founder, an investor, but most
importantly, you're you're most well known for writing about
distraction, what you call behavior design, managing your
focus, attention and all the distractions in your lives.
It is great to have you here. I feel like this is long
overdue. You're beaming in thanks from
Singapore. Thanks for coming on man.
Oh my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Why don't we start out by just kind of getting into the core,
like how do we want to take this?
Do we want to take it like through the the the four factors
in an indistractible like do we want to go one by one or how are
we going to do? This, I think, yeah, Near.
If you want to take us with this first segment, we call it the
fuck of the week. What are we giving a fuck about?
What are we not giving a fuck about?
We're having you on. We're going.
We're going to be talking about giving a fuck about being and
becoming indistractible. So if you could kind of frame
this for us, what is indistractible to you?
What is indistractibility and how do we get there?
Yeah. Sure, sure.
So I think, you know, becoming indistractible is the skill of
the century that for the first time in human history, we are
inundated with so much abundance.
And that's generally a good thing, right?
It's the first time in history that more people die of diseases
of excess from too many calories like diabetes, obesity, then die
from starvation. And so that's actually a great
thing, right? So the price of progress is that
we have so much abundance and we're seeing that same
phenomenon happen when it comes to information that we have so
much entertainment, we have so much access.
We can beam here. I'm in Singapore, you're in
California. We have this free connection
that we can have on our video screens.
I mean, this would have been science fiction when we were
kids. And yet the price of all that
progress is that we have to learn how to focus our
attention. Because even though you can have
the world's information at in your, in the palm of your hand,
if you can't focus long enough to turn that information into
wisdom, it might as well not even exist.
So I think that the, the critical skill of the century is
going to be the power to be indistractible.
Because if you think the world is distracting now, just wait a
few years, right? Between AI and augmented reality
and virtual reality and all the stuff that's happening in
reality, reality, the world is only going to become a more
distracting place. So I, I think we're really
bifurcating into people who allow their time and attention
to be manipulated and controlled by others, by media interests,
by their boss, by their kids, by all this stuff outside of them.
And people who stand up and say, no, no, no, I decide how I
control my time and attention because I am indistractible.
And so that's, you know, I, I write books not because I have
the answer. I write books because I need the
answer. And I found that I was becoming
incredibly distracted and not able to focus on the things that
really matter to me. And so I really wanted to crack
this code for myself. And the first thing I did was
think, OK, well, I'll just go read other people's books on
this, right? And so I read a bunch of books
that told me, you know, technology is evil and stop
using social media and stop checking e-mail.
But that didn't work. It's really easy for some
professor to say that because they have tenure.
But you know, the rest of us with real jobs, we actually need
to use e-mail, we need to use social media, we need to use
these technologies. So I wanted a tech positive
approach that allowed me to get the best of both worlds.
And so that's what I came up with with Indistractible.
So take us through what you have, 4 keys of
indistractibility or 4 four factors of indistractibility.
Like take us through each one of those one by one.
What are they? Why do they matter?
Is there a specific order that we should go in?
What's what's your approach? Sure, sure.
So let's let's start with, OK, let's back up what is
distraction? Let's start with some
definitions here. So the best way to understand
what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is
not what is the opposite of distraction.
Most people, if you ask them what's the opposite of
distraction, they'll say focus, right?
I don't want to be distracted, I want to be focused.
That's not exactly right. The opposite of distraction is
not focus. If you look at the origin of the
word, the opposite of distraction is traction.
Of course it is, right? Traction and distraction,
they're opposites. So traction and distraction both
end in the same 6 letters. A/C TION.
That spells action, reminding us that distraction is not
something that happens to you. OK.
It is an action that you yourself took.
So traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you
towards what you said you were going to do.
Things that you do with intent, things that move you closer to
your values and help you become the kind of person you want to
become. Those are acts of traction.
The opposite, distraction is anything that is not what you
plan to do in advance, something that pulls you away from your
values, further away from becoming the person you want to
become. So this isn't just semantics.
This is really, really important because the difference between
traction and distraction is one word, and that one word is
intent. As Dorothy Parker said, the time
you plan to waste is not wasted time.
So I think we need to stop vilifying and moralizing and
medicalizing what people do with their spare time.
Like, let's stop harping on video games or melting your
brain and stop using social media and stop doing this.
Stop doing that. Look, anything you want to do
with your time and attention is fine, right?
Why is playing video games more inferior to watching golf on TVI
don't know the difference. If that's what you want to do
with your time, fine. Stop worrying about, you know,
how other people spend their time.
Ask yourself how do you want to spend your time in accordance
with your values? So if you plan for that, if
that's what you said you were going to do in advance, is play
video games or go on social media or watch YouTube videos,
Awesome. Do it, enjoy it, don't feel
guilty about it, but do it on your schedule and according to
your values, not someone else's. Certainly not the the tech
company's schedule. Conversely, just because
something is a a work related task doesn't mean it's not a
distraction. So I'll give you a perfect
example. In my own life, for years, I
would sit down at my desk and I would say, OK, I'm going to get
started. I'm going to work on that big
important project that I've been delaying and procrastinating on.
Nothing's going to get in my way.
I'm not going to get distracted. Here I go.
I'm going to get started. But first, let me check some
e-mail, right? Let me just scroll that Slack
channel. Let me just catch up on industry
news 'cause that's a work related task.
I'm being productive, right? But if it's not what I said I
was gonna do in advance, it's just as much of A distraction as
playing Candy Crush or whatever, you know, stupid activity might
distract you. So if it's not what you said
you're gonna do in advance, it is by definition a distraction.
OK, so now to frame this, this model, you've got traction,
you've got distraction. Now what prompts us to take
these actions? We have two kinds of triggers.
So think of them as two arrows bisecting here.
So the usual suspects are what we call external triggers.
External triggers are the pings, the Dings, the rings, anything
in our outside environment that can lead us towards traction or
distraction. Now that's what people tend to
blame, right? They tend to say, oh, I was
planning to do something and then on my phone rang and I got
distracted. Those are called external
triggers, but they only account for 10% of our distractions.
There's been many studies on this.
Only 10% of the time that you check your phone is it because
of a ping, Ding, or ring an external trigger.
So what's the other 90%? Turns out studies find that 90%
of the time that we get distracted, it's not because of
what's happening outside of us, It's because of what's happening
inside of us. These are called internal
triggers. What are internal triggers?
Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states,
boredom, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety.
That is the source of 90% of our distractions.
Because what what I discovered the the the thing that most
impacted my life, looking at the research was that distraction is
not a moral failing. It's not some kind of broken
brain syndrome. For the vast majority of people,
they don't have anything wrong with their brains.
And even those who think they do, most of them are
misdiagnosed, to be honest. It's simply that we haven't
learned this skill set. We haven't learned how to deal
with discomfort in a healthy way that moves us towards traction
rather than trying to escape it with distraction.
So whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much
football, too much Facebook, if you don't know what's really
driving your distraction, that if these uncomfortable emotional
states you don't know how to deal with, you are always going
to get distracted. So now we have the four points
of our compass #1 Master internal triggers, or they
become your master #2 take time for traction #3 hacking back
these external triggers. And then finally, as the last
line of defense is to prevent distraction with pacts, that's
the four strategies we have to use to become indistractible.
And using those four strategies in concert, anybody can become
indistractible. I find there's like an
interesting common thread that I see in a lot of those which is
self-awareness because AI think a lot of people aren't aware of
their own internal triggers. I know that, you know, a big
story of my adult life has just been becoming more aware of my
internal triggers of what has led to bad habits and bad
behavior. But also I think there's there's
a question of being aware of what your intent is of what you
actually want to accomplish. I think a lot of people, if
you're muddy on where you're trying to get, then you're more
susceptible to all the distractions because it, it can
actually be a way of, of hiding the fact that you, you don't
have clarity around what you want out of your life.
And so talk a little bit about how self-awareness fits into all
these components and, and, and what the process around that.
Looks like absolutely, absolutely.
So I think, you know, a big part of it is that people don't have
that self-awareness around what they're feeling in the moment.
Because remember the, the, you know, the brain is a cognitive
miser. The, the, the, the, we used to
think about human motivation as carrots and sticks, right?
That everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the
avoidance of pain. Sigmund Freud said this, Jeremy
Bentham said this. Turns out neurologically, if you
actually look at what's happening in the brain, it's not
true that that metaphor doesn't apply, that in fact, everything
we do, everything we do, it's not about carrots and sticks,
It's that the carrot is the stick.
The carrot is the stick. What am I talking about?
Meaning. I'm imagining a very long thin
carrot that that you are beating people with, so please explain
yourself. Kind of yeah, that's actually
not that's that's actually would be a better metaphor.
You know, it's almost like, remember that scene in the
Matrix that that Neo goes into that room where that kid is
bending the spoon and the kid says, imagine there is no spoon.
And then, you know, Neo realizes there's something else going on.
And that's exactly what's happening with human motivation,
that it's not about the pursuit of pleasure, of the avoidance of
pain, but in fact all human motivation, everything you do,
everything you do is about one thing, and that is the desire to
escape discomfort. So even pursuing pleasure,
wanting, craving, urging, desire, hunger, all of those
feelings to get the pleasure are driven by the desire to
extinguish the wanting of that pleasure.
So everything we do is about pain management.
So that must therefore mean that time management is pain
management, money management is pain management, weight
management is pain management. That's all it is.
And so when you look at that as the very first most important
step, which is mastering these internal triggers, becoming
aware of the fact that our, our processing, our rationalization
of why I can't do something. Oh, I just need to check e-mail
for a minute or let me just watch that YouTube video, or I
just need a quick break, or I need a cigarette or I need a
drink or I need a whatever it might be.
They are just maladaptive habits around dealing with discomfort.
That's all it is. It's just training ourselves to
find the the path of least resistance to alleviate
discomfort. So for me, that was incredibly
liberating because that meant if I was having trouble writing my
book, if I wasn't spending time fully present with my family, if
I wasn't exercising, if I wasn't eating right, it's just about
learning how to manage discomfort.
And once you have that skill set, once you have those tools
in your tool kit, doing what you say you're going to do becomes
much, much easier. Near There's a particular kind
of discomfort that I want to ask you about, and it's a something
that keeps coming up. I, I it's a simple question, but
I haven't found a good answer for it.
What is boredom? What?
Why is Why are we so uncomfortable with boredom?
It seems like it's like, oh, it's just this, you know, we're
not doing anything, so we should be fine, but we're not.
What is that all about? Yeah, and you're right.
I mean, I, I don't know if you know how right you are, but
there's actually been some amazing studies where they
actually put people in a room and tell them don't do anything,
OK? Just just sit here.
And all you can do is either sit here or give yourself.
They they tie them up with this band around their arm.
They say you, you know, here's a button, you can electrocute
yourself or not, but just sit here.
And it turns out that something like 2/3 of men, I think it's a
much smaller proportion of women, they're much more
rational than men, apparently will, will electrocute
themselves just to feel something, to avoid boredom.
I mean, how, how crazy is that? But actually it's this is an
evolutionary attribute that we have this on purpose.
Because if you think about it, you know, one of the goals of
many world religions is to transcend wanting to transcend
desire like that, that becomes the ultimate Nirvana is not to
want things, not to be attached to things.
But if you think about it evolutionarily, if there was a
tribe of humans who were blissed out, who were contented, who
were happy all the time, and they encountered our ancestors,
right? People who are constantly bored,
constantly wanting more, constantly seeking our ancestors
would have met them, killed them and eaten them, right?
Because it's not evolutionarily beneficial to be blissed out and
not want. It's in fact our wanting, our
boredom, our anxiety to do better that helps us invent
world changing medicine, that helps us overturn despots, that
helps us make a better world. So that's an evolutionary
attribute. The fact that we're antsy is
what made our species so fantastic is that we want to
improve that, right? That's why we dominated the
Earth. And so it the reason we have
that that aversion to boredom is because it's spurring us to go
do something to make our lot better.
I think I talked about this in my book that there's like a
Goldilocks level of pain, like the optimal amount of pain in
life is not zero. It it's, it's kind of the AU
shaped curve, right? Like if there's too much pain,
then you, you, it results in trauma and, and overwhelming
feelings and, and it like just cripples people.
But if there's not enough pain, if there's not enough
stimulation, that is also a form of suffering.
It's, it's almost like we, there's like this perfect
Goldilocks amount of struggle and challenge and, and
irritation that we thrive on that it's like this perception
of surmountable pain, of, of just enough pain that we feel
like we can get over the hump. And, and that seems to be the
the hamster wheel that like generates a sense of of meaning
and purpose. Yeah, and it turns out what
moderates what is the right level of discomfort is one
thing, and that's control. There's some amazing research
that came out of Oxford a few years ago from the work of
Stanfield and Candy that found that we exactly know what is the
recipe for burnout. Do you guys know the recipe for
burnout? The recipe for burnout is a
confluence of two factors. It's not what kind of job you
do. It's not, you know, depressing
work. You know, if you ask me what
kind of work causes anxiety and depression and burnout, you
would think it'd be like a sad job or a hard job.
No, no. Turns out it's jobs that cause
burnout are ones where you have high expectations coupled with
low control. It has to be that that
confluence. If you have high expectations
and high control, no problem, right?
People can cope with the discomfort, with the pain in
life, as you said, Mark, as long as they feel they have agency
and control over modulating their behavior, like doing
something about that, right? That's why you, you hear
people's best experiences in life are when they were in that
super hard game that they were managed to rally the team, you
know, when they went to war with their, with their fellow
comrades. Like with these life changing
experiences are when they had hot hard experiences and high
control people rise to the occasion.
It's when we have high expectations with low control,
that's when we burn out, that's when we get distracted, that's
when we have all kinds of anxiety and depression issues is
when we lack agency and control. So step #2 to becoming
indistractible and this is a game changer.
So step #1 again is mastering those internal triggers, having
those tools ready to go so you can deal with that discomfort in
a healthy way. Step number 2 is about making
time for traction. And this is, this is such a huge
opportunity that most people don't take.
When you ask most people, you know, you say, I'm struggling
with distraction. I have, I probably have a DHDI
can't get anything done because look at what's happening in the
news and the elections and social media, blah, blah, blah.
And then you say, OK, but what did you plan to do today, right?
What did you get distracted from?
Show me your calendar. I don't know, it's blank.
Maybe I got a dentist appointment or a meeting here
and there, right? But here's the fact.
You can't call something a distraction unless you know what
you got distracted from. I'll say it again, it's so
important. You can't say you got distracted
unless you know what you got distracted from.
So if you can't show me on your calendar, what is it that you
wanted to do? What is traction?
You can't say you got distracted.
Everything is a distraction unless you know in advance what
you want to do with your time. So that's where this whole
technique of time boxing, which I didn't invent, it's been
around for decades. It's actually the most studied,
well researched time management technique that blows to do lists
out of the water. To do lists suck for your
personal productivity in comparison.
There's a way to use To Do List, which we can talk about, but for
most people to do lists are really sinking their personal
productivity. As opposed to a time box
calendar where you say, hey, according to my values and I
show you exactly how to do this in the book, How do I turn my
values into time? So now I can look back at my
calendar and say, OK, that's what I plan to do.
Whether it's being with my kids, whether it's working on that
project, whether it's playing video games, that's what I plan
to do. That's traction.
Everything else would be a distraction.
I'm I'm on team to do okay. Sorry, we could argue with Mark
Near. We'll, we'll have to.
We'll have to. Yeah, let's talk about.
We'll have to fight about it next time we see each other.
No, you know, I've converted a lot of people.
People, people used to say, like, bring up people like you.
Or they would say like Marc Andreessen.
You know, Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz, he wrote
this very famous article that said, you know, I don't keep a
calendar. You know, if you need to see me,
you need to see me, that's fine. I don't keep a schedule.
And then and people would talk to me about this and say, like,
hey, look, here's a super successful guy.
Look, he doesn't keep a schedule.
And actually a couple of like about a year ago, he said, OK, I
give up. Use a time box.
Calendar. I do.
I do use a calendar, but I do love to do lists.
They make me very happy. So just to be clear, there's
nothing wrong with taking things out of your brain and putting
them on a piece of paper. I do that as well.
That's great. What you don't want to do is run
your life on A to do list. So if you wake up in the morning
and you say, oh, what should I do with my day?
And you look at your To Do List, you know what you're going to
do. You're going to do the easy
stuff. You're gonna do the urgent
stuff. You're gonna do the fun stuff on
the To Do List. You're not gonna do the stuff
that requires your full attention.
That's oftentimes difficult to do.
You're gonna delay on that, right?
Because A to Do list doesn't tell you when to do what you say
you're going to do because it has no constraints.
It just goes on and on and on. So.
So it's not that A to do list is a bad idea, it's that people
don't use To Do List properly by putting that those tasks inside
their schedule as well. Yeah, I've had a lot of
conversations with people like to do lists are very similar to
goals, which is I think the way to to do them well is to be
flexible with them. So like I'll set A to do list
for the week and I'll like roughly kind of plan out.
Here's what I'm going to do Monday.
Here's what I'm going to do Tuesday.
Here's, you know, everything on Wednesday.
But then things start to get shuffled, right?
Like it's like actually this is way more important than these
three things. So I'm going to move these three
things to Thursday and then I'm going to do this this afternoon.
And like, I think you need to like, critically think about
your To Do List as you're going through it.
If you just go through it mindlessly, then yeah, it's
probably not going to end well. Let's take a quick break.
We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored by
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All right, we're back. I'm really excited for this
brilliant or bullshit because you have developed a bit of a
reputation here as the social media defender.
You know, it's it's social media has become everybody's favorite
punching bag and scapegoat for all of the problems of the last
10 years. And you, you have been one of
the few people that is like vocally stood up and said, hey,
it's not as bad as everybody thinks.
So Drew lead us into brilliant or bullshit.
Yeah, for brilliant or bullshit we're gonna be doing.
Is The Social Dilemma the documentary, the Netflix
documentary, The Social Dilemma. Is it brilliant or bullshit and
near? I don't know what your thoughts
are on this, but why don't you take us through both your
relationship with the documentary and then your your
thoughts on it as well? Well OK, you said brilliant or
bullshit. I want to create a 1/3 B which
is both. OK.
Brilliant and bullshit. What do I mean by that?
That, you know, I think, I think what's often times lacking in
our conversation around these complex topics is nuance, right?
That we want dichotomies, we want good guys and bad guys.
We want, you know, black and white thinking.
And that's not reality, right? That's that's Star Wars.
I don't know that's, that's not reality.
Even even Star Wars is more complex than good guys and bad
guys. And so certainly these complex
social issues like social media, social media, good or bad, the
answer is yes, it's good. Yes, and it's bad.
Yes, many things are both. And so it's about this much more
complicated look at social media in terms of who is using it, how
much they are using it, what they are doing when they're
using it and what they would be doing instead of using it.
So it's it's a much more nuanced question.
But if you want to focus in on that film specifically, it's
more bullshit than the the I think because while I respect
the fact that the movie focus attention on on how people can
waste their time on social media, I think the aperture was
way too small that I think I don't think the problem is
social media per se as much as it is all media being a source
of distraction. I mean, let's let's call a spade
a spade here. You right now are watching this
on a form of media, right, which Mark and Drew are benefiting
from by getting sponsorship that you probably saw an ad that pays
their bills. And that's great, right?
They are monetizing your attention.
They are turning your eyeballs into money, just like the New
York Times, just like Fox News, just like Facebook, all these
companies do. That's their business model.
Does anybody not know that? Like, do we really need a movie
to guilt us into thinking that watching something on on YouTube
is, is so bad for us? When and if that's how you want
to spend your time, fine. There's nothing inherently evil
about that. What's evil is when we do these
things instead of living our life, when we look back in
regret and say, why did I spend so much time watching Fox News
or or CNN or whatever social media when I really want to
spend time with my kids, when I really wanted to work on that
big project, when I really wanted to go get in shape,
That's when it's it's harmful. So if you do it with intention,
there's nothing wrong with that. But that message was never
communicated. So I sat down with the social
dilemma people. I sat down with them for three
hours and I gave them the entire summary summary of my book.
And I wasn't in the movie. Now, I'm not bitter about that.
What I'm bitter about is that nobody offered solutions of what
to do with the problem. So it's as if, imagine you go to
a doctor, right? You go to a doctor and the
doctor says, oh, I'm so sorry, Mark, you have a terrible
disease. It's probably lethal.
It's probably going to kill you. I'm so sorry.
Oh, my God, Doctor. Well, do you have a cure?
In fact, I do have a cure. Yeah.
Yeah, Yeah, I have the cure. Well, can I have it?
No, I'm not going to give it to you.
Which is? That's malpractice.
And So what the Social Dilemma movie did was freak everyone out
using the very psychology they derive.
It was on Netflix for God's sakes.
Algorithmically driven, sensationalized, full of hooks,
and. All the psychology of of scaring
the shit out of people with, Oh my God, you're a puppet on a
string. And what's ironic is if the
social media companies wanted to create a movie to get people to
use their products more, they would have created the Social
Dilemma movie. Why?
Because the reason people can't stop using social media is
because they think they can't stop using social media.
It's called learned helplessness.
That when you believe there's nothing to be done about a
problem, what do you do? Nothing.
I can't. Look, The Social Dilemma told me
I was a puppet on a string. We're all addicted, right?
And we actually know this. It it sounds far fetched, but
there's actually been studies that show that there is a
correlation between adverse mental health issues and not how
much time you spend on social media, but what you believe is
the effect of social media. Meaning that it doesn't matter
how much time you spend, what matters is if you believe social
media is bad for you, that's the people that who are much more
likely to have social to have mental health issues.
So in a way, you're creating this this problem by telling
people there's nothing you can do about it.
As opposed to I would have been much more for the film if they
had put stuff in the movie that anyone can do.
For example, how about turning off those goddamn notifications
that are constantly interrupting you?
Is that so hard? I mean, it takes 5 minutes.
Turn off those stupid notifications.
How about planning time to use social media as opposed to using
it whenever you feel bored and lonesome and checking it 52
times a day. Use it on your schedule, right?
These are simple things anyone can do.
And I feel, I think that the fact that they didn't talk about
those very simple solutions that anyone can do until the very,
very end, they put a couple, you know, stupid points when nobody
was, was, was watching the credits anymore.
That's where the movie really fell flat.
Yeah, I, I was very disappointed by it, and I was very
disappointed by how popular it became.
But, you know, I, I do think it, it became a little bit of a, a
social craze of just piling on the social media stuff.
I like the point you make about media because you and I are old
enough to remember television in the 80s and 90s.
And it's, there was a bit of a hysteria around kids watching
TVI remember hearing all these things of like, oh, the amount
of TV you watch is rotting your brain.
And they're all these scary statistics of like the average
person back in the 90s was watching six to seven hours of
television a day. It's, it's a lot of the same
concerns and a lot of the same fears.
And, and to your, to your point, it's not social media, it's just
media. Like as long as there is mass
entertainment and as long as it's going to be packaged
extremely well and that you're always going to have a very
large population of people who feel a certain amount of
emptiness in their lives or who are craving distraction from
whatever is uncomfortable in their life that they're they're
going to be susceptible to it. As you know, we just had
Jonathan Haidt on the show a few months ago who has really taken
up the the banner of, you know, social media is kind of at the
root of, of, of the mental health crisis.
There are a couple of things I would love to hear your
perspective on. You know, one of the things I
tried to kind of push him on was this claim that this is
happening internationally. And of all the studies and data
that I've seen, it, it seems to be very much an Anglosphere
thing. When you look at countries and
cultures that are more communal, more collectivist that they, you
know, have, they're not as lonely.
They have, they're more religious, They, they have,
people are still going out in person and, and inhabiting the
physical world. You don't see a lot of these
same mental health effects happening in those parts of the
world. And so I, I, to me, it just
feels like social media can't be the whole story.
It, it seems to be like, in my opinion, it's like one piece of
a much larger narrative going on.
I'm curious like how? How do you see the situation?
Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I greatly respect
Jonathan. I think he's, he's an amazing
researcher. And and I, I, our kids used to
play together back when I lived in New York.
And there's a lot we agree about.
In fact, well before he wrote the Anxious Generation, we
co-authored an article saying that, hey, we don't exactly
agree that social media is the source of the problem.
I think it's a symptom of the problem.
We can get into what that means in a minute, but that our
conclusions are the same. So when you look at what he
recommends, I'm in complete agreement.
I don't see a really good reason why my kids need cell phones
before 13. That's, you know, that's that's
the age when these social media companies say is the minimum age
to give your kid a product that the product manufacturers tell
you is not for people under a certain age is is lunacy.
Like what are we doing as parents?
And you say, oh, but I can't stop my kid.
Who pays for your kids cell phone?
You did right. So letting your kid use a
product that that below the age limit, I think is, is crazy.
I think we should raise that age limit.
I'm fully in agreement with he says 16 years old.
That seems very, very legit to me.
Phone free schools, That makes a lot of sense to me.
So at the end of the day, we agree on the conclusions in
terms of what to do. I think we're in full agreement.
I think what's different is that I, I think that this is like
you, a, a factor, not the whole story.
And I think the whole story has to do with something much
deeper, which is the fact that children in the Anglosphere are
severely deficient in what we call psychological nutrients.
And so psychological nutrients, that's kind of the name I gave
these three elements of self determination theory.
Self determination theory is the most widely accepted theory of
human flourishing and motivation.
Every psychiatrist and psychologist on the face of the
earth, no self determination. It's been around since the
1970s. And self determination theory
says that every human being, in order to have proper mental
health and Wellness needs three things.
We need competency, autonomy and relatedness and when you look at
children's lives today as opposed to previous generations,
they are severely deficient in these three psychological
nutrients. If you think about the sense of
competency. Peter Gray is a researcher who
who who drew the same conclusions that Jonathan Height
drew around social media being the cause of the problem.
He actually concluded that it was the No Child left Behind
Act. The fact that kids are
constantly tested, you know, starting in the 1st grade 456
times a year on these standardized tests and that
teachers salaries are tied to their, these kids performance on
standardized tests means that we have built a generation of kids
who are constantly told you are not competent, you are not
enough. And so if you don't have that
sense of competency and mastery in the real world, this is
called the needs displacement hypothesis.
If you're not getting what you need in the real world, you look
for it in the virtual world. And so that's why they are
online playing these games, going on TikTok, going on on on
various sites, because that's where they feel competent,
That's where they feel mastery because they're not getting that
sense in the real world. Then if you think about
autonomy, we know that this is the most scheduled generation in
history. You know, there's only two
places in society where you can tell people where to go, what to
think, how to dress, what to eat, who to be friends with, and
that's prison and school. And so it's no surprise if we
hyper regulate our children and we put them in cages, they act
like animals. And that's exactly what's
happened. And so by hyper scheduling our
kids, it used to be at least, you know, when we were kids, you
know, 3:00 school's out the rest of the day, you just got to
play. Well, not anymore.
Because if you have money, well now your kids in test prep and
swimming lessons and Mandarin lessons.
And if you don't have money, because the media has convinced
us of this myth of stranger danger, we're locking kids up
inside. And this is something that
Jonathan and I greatly agree on. Kids need play.
They have to have that socialization that comes from
play. But parents are starving their
children from that, from that those social relationships with
which leads us to this 3rd psychological nutrient of
relatedness that when kids don't have time for play, and we know
that kids have less time for play in the Anglosphere than
ever before. Well, they're looking for what
they would get with play online if they can't get it offline.
So if you're not playing in neighborhoods like we used to
play, you know, they, our parents said go outside and
don't come back until the the street lights turn on.
Parents are terrified. They're not, They're not doing
this for their kids. And So what the heck are kids
supposed to do indoors? They go on Fortnite.
Well, what is Fortnite? I hear parents complaining
about, oh, my kid plays too much Fortnite.
I say, have you actually played Fortnite?
It's not a video game. It's a way to interact with your
friends, just like we used to be on the phone talking to our
friends. That's what they're doing on
Fortnite. And in fact, it turns out it may
have some protective effects. If you think about the fact
that, you know, even Jonathan will say this, that girls are
doing much worse than boys. Partially we think it's because
boys have video games to give them those psychological
nutrients they're missing. And then the finally, the last
point is that we have to remember none of this stuff
happens in a vacuum, right? The critics of technology, they
only point to the bad stuff. But got to remember, zoom out a
bit. Look at the big picture here,
that if you look at all the things that used to kill kids in
our generation, drunk driving record lows.
A drug use other than cannabis, Record lows.
A truancy, record lows. Murder rates, record lows.
This was supposed to be the generation of the Super
predator. They built prisons all over
America to house these kids who were going to commit crazy
crimes that never happened. Why?
Because if you wanted to invent a device to keep kids safe at
home and off the streets, maybe one of these devices is not such
a bad idea. So it turns out, despite the
fact he's absolutely right, that we're seeing a greater rates of
of suicide among certain demographics, mostly girls in
the Anglosphere. That's true.
We're not seeing it everywhere. We're only seeing in certain
demographics. Overall, it's much safer to be a
kid today than before these technologies.
Now, I'm not saying these technologies don't cause harm.
And in fact, I'm the biggest advocate to saying don't be a
parent who just let their kid do whatever they want online.
Absolutely not. There's a whole chapter in my
book on how to raise indistractible kids.
And, you know, I have a 16 year old myself, and this is
something we have to do mindfully because of course, you
know, as Paul Virilio said, when you invent the ship, you invent
the shipwreck. So, you know, ships are great.
We sail ships all the time. Do we stop sailing ships?
No, we made ships better. We made them safer.
So what we will do as a society, whether it's children, whether
it's adults, we're gonna do the same thing we've always done in
society when it comes to a new technology is we don't stop
using the technology. We adapt and we adapt to it,
meaning we adapt our behavior. We adapt our norms.
We, we, we, we, we have new standards around how we use
these technologies. We change our behavior.
That's what I'm trying to do with Indistractible.
And then we invent new technology, we adopt new
technologies to fix the last generation of technology.
So I think this is something we're working through.
If we just blame social media for all of our troubles, we
don't get to the root cause of the problem, which of course is
something we love to do, right? People love to say it's not my
fault my kids are crazy. It's because of social media as
opposed to saying, wait a minute, maybe it's this much,
this new technology of institutionalized learning,
right? Nobody ever thinks about school,
this ridiculous notion that we can put 1 teacher in front of a
classroom of 30 kids and expect 5 year olds to sit there and
just take it, right? That's not a problem that social
media created. The fact that 10% of American
children are have 88 are diagnosed with ADHD, 10% and up
to 25% of American boys, one in four boys today are diagnosed
with ADHD. This is not something that that
social media created. This is something
institutionalized that somehow we don't want to come to grips
with that maybe we're expecting children to do things that maybe
children aren't designed to do. A 5 year old is not designed to
sit and listen to a teacher blabble on for hours on end.
That's not what 5 year old 6 year old should be doing.
And yet we blame it on all these exogenous conditions.
So all I'm saying is there are deeper reasons here than just
saying it's technology's fault, which is exactly what parents
have been doing for thousands of they've always said it's the
latest and, you know, latest trend.
That's what's causing my kids problems as opposed to a bit of
introspection. Well said, Sir, well said.
I have a, a little bit of a follow up there.
So I think almost everybody, even if you they do disagree
with John Height or you or or or whatever, everyone kind of does
agree on the, the solution like you said where you and John
Height disagree, but you agree or disagree, but you agree on
the solutions. Great, but what about he?
He made another very astute observation when Mark
interviewed him. I thought anyway, which was a
lot of times these moral panics are are misplaced in a way that
kind of hides the real problem. So like for television, for
example, we thought television and video games, they're rotting
kids brains. You know the IT, it's going to
be the end of childhood as we know it.
That didn't happen there. That doesn't rot our brains, but
it does destroy what he calls social capital.
It made everybody, it forced everybody to go sit at home and,
and just, you know, kind of, you don't know your neighbors
anymore. Now you're just inside isolated.
Do you think there's any parallel there with social
media? Because they kind of did.
Well, we've been told anyway. They've kind of nod this sleight
of hand, right? They came in and they, they gave
us all this free cool shit. We could connect with everybody
anywhere at any time. And then they kind of pulled the
rug out from under us and started monetizing our eyeballs
and attention. Is that, is that just another
form of moral panic or is there something to that?
Do you think is there Is the is the panic misplaced or is it
just not even not even a thing? So, so again, I, I wish I could
give a black and white, yes or no, right or wrong answer, but
I, I, I think I'll. Damn it near they'll give you
you with your nuance again. So I'll, I'll go way back.
I'll I'll quote Sophocles. Sophocles said nothing vast
enters the life of mortals without a curse.
So of course these things give us all kinds of goods, and
they're also gonna excise a 'cause they're also gonna give
us bads. And so the solution isn't to say
stop using it. That's ridiculous.
It's about getting the good while doing away with the bad.
And and this has happened over and over again with every
technological revolution, right? The car.
Is the car good or bad? Yeah, it's kind of both, right.
It gave us global warming. It also gave us the ability to
transport goods and services to people who need them.
So. So they always come with a
curse. And So what we're going to do as
a species is to figure out how to get the best of these these
devices without letting them get the best of us.
I think, though, what we need to be very careful of is a drum
beat for action that only comes from one source, Meaning where
do we hear the call to regulate social media from?
You hear it from traditional media, and nobody's turning the
lens on traditional media who is in competition with social
media, right? We know that Fox News, we talk
about in The Social Dilemma, they talk about how Facebook at
the time, that was what social media was.
Social dilemma was about how Facebook was causing social
derision. We know that Fox News had a much
bigger impact on changing people's opinions than than than
than Facebook did during previous elections.
So what I think we need to do is to refocus the lens to say, wait
a minute, how do we make sure that people are getting the
right media diet, not just on social media.
At least on social media we can tweak the algorithms, right?
Mark Zuckerberg and other people, you know, if there was
regulation as such, or even if you just want to keep people
engaged, it turns out that giving an occasional dose of
someone else's opinion that's not yours in the social media
feed can actually increase engagement.
Whereas if you're watching Fox News, you are only getting one
side of the story all day long or MSNBC or whoever else you
want. So in a way, hey, social media
has the opportunity to give a more diverse opinion, said if we
so designed it. Whereas our older technologies,
they're only spouting the same perspective.
And so I think we need to be a little bit skeptical about the
old media, legacy media telling us that new media is so bad for
us and when they're not looking at themselves in the mirror.
I feel like social media is similar to to To Do List, which
is the more conscious you are as you use them, the better it
gets, the more benefit it gets. Do you like that?
Do you like that connection there?
No, not good. Not good.
Near liked it, drew near likes my hair brain theories.
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What are you waiting for? All right, we're back.
You know, during the break I was thinking, Drew, hear me out
here. We have a social network that is
A to do list. God.
And we can share To Do List the 8th circle of you can see each
others to do. List no.
Are you and do you want to do you want to invest in my to do?
Here you go ahead out. I want to see the pitch deck
first. All right, we've got, we've got
some audience questions. Nier's going to join us and and
help us answer them. What do we have first?
Drew, we do. This one comes from Kartiki.
I think I'm saying that right from YouTube, who asks how do I
get myself to do the things that I know I should do?
We get some variation of this question all the time.
We know what we should do. We have all the information.
Why don't we do it? Yeah.
I mean, this is the question that drove the writing of this
book as well as as my research for the past decade and 1/2.
Here is all about this question. This is a fascinating question.
In fact, Plato asked this question, the Greek philosopher,
2500 years ago. He called it acrasia, the
tendency to do things against our better interest.
It is such a good question. Why is it that despite knowing
what to do, we don't freaking do it?
And today, you know, you can't argue.
You don't know what to do. Maybe, you know, our
grandparents could say, well, I don't know how to lose weight
because I don't have access to that information.
I don't know how to start a Business Today, you know, right.
And if you don't know, Google it.
All the information is right there.
The problem today is that not that we don't know what to do,
it's that we don't know how to get out of our own way.
We don't know how to stop getting distracted.
So the answer is to use these 4 strategies in concert #1 master
the internal triggers. You need to have a plan in place
so that when you feel bored, lonesome, indecisive, fatigued,
uncertain, you know what to do with that sensation.
As opposed to what most people do is escape, right?
I can't deal with this discomfort.
Let me scroll something or click something or smoke something as
opposed to wait a minute. Let me deal with this
discomfort. Because what high performers do,
what we find in studies is that high performers, they feel the
same way the rest of us do. They also get bored and lonesome
or indecisive. They feel the same way, but they
know what to do with that feeling.
And high performers will use that discomfort.
They will use those internal triggers as rocket fuel to
propel them towards traction rather than trying to escape it
with distraction. So that's the first and most
important step. You have to have a tool ready to
go to deal with that discomfort. And there's about a dozen of
those different tools in my book.
The second step, make time for traction.
You've got to have that calendar so that, you know, OK, I'm going
to work on that task without distraction.
And the important thing here is when you use A to do list, back
to railing on To Do List Mark. When you use a.
To Do List, it's all about checking cute little boxes,
right? That becomes the metric of
success. I'm going to check what I used
to do. It's so satisfying.
I used to do that too.
I'll I'll go even deeper. I'll I'll expose this.
I used to write things in my To Do List after I had done.
I love that just for the drawing.
How stupid is that? Right?
So that is the wrong metric of success.
The right metric of success is not did I check off a cute
little box? Because you know what you're
gonna do? You're gonna do the easy stuff,
the urgent stuff. Rather, the right metric of
success is, did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as
I said I would without distraction.
That's it, That's it. Not did I finish?
This is really important. Not did I finish, but did I do
what I said I was going to do for as long as I said it would
without distraction. Mark, this is how you wrote your
second book and how I finished Indistractible.
We remember, we sat down together.
We said, all right, we're going to write for 45 minutes and
we're not going to stop until the clock rings.
That's all that matters. It wasn't about finishing.
It was about working without distraction.
Because then for the first time, you'll be able to say to
yourself, OK, I've got this much to do.
How much did I accomplish in this period of time when I
worked with that distraction? And then you can plan out how
long the rest of the task will take you as opposed to a person
who just used A to do list. They start on a task for 5
minutes, they start working on it.
Let me just check e-mail for a quick minute.
Oh, I could use a cup of coffee. And oh, Janet at the water
cooler. Hey, Janet.
OK, what was I working on again? I totally forgot.
And so they take way longer to finish a task because they have
no idea how long it takes to finish.
And we know that on average, people take three times longer
to finish a task than they estimate.
This is why because they don't have this feedback loop on how
long things take. You can only do that with time
boxing. So that's the third step.
The second step, sorry. The third step is to hack back
the external triggers and where we talk about how to clear all
those pings, Dings, and rings. That's kind of kindergarten
stuff that doesn't take too much time, but it's still important.
What's more important are all those stupid meetings you didn't
need to go, two that are nothing more than a distraction, emails
that didn't need to be sent and received.
We can go through each and every one of those as well to hack
back the external triggers. And then as the last line of
defense, that's when we use these pacts where we have this,
this pre commitment that keeps us on track.
So it's really about using those four strategies in concert.
I do have a comment about the the time versus because, you
know, as somebody who's written multiple books, I've struggled
both ways with this, right? Like you can set the task, which
is like, I'm going to write 1500 words today.
And the flaw of that is that you quickly find yourself just
writing a bunch of shitty words that aren't usable so that you
can hit your metric and say you're done for the day.
From there, I switched to what you just described, which is
like, OK, I'm going to write for three hours today.
And it doesn't. If I do 1500 words or 500 words
or 3000 words, it doesn't matter as long as I write for three
hours today. The flaw of that is that I can
just sit there and like kind of half ass an hour or two of it
and say I did three hours. And so I've struggled with it.
And I'm being very genuine here. Like I've struggled with this.
I've kind of come to the conclusion that some tasks are
more suited towards certain metrics than others.
Like there are some tasks that like like you either pay your
electric bill or you don't. Like there's no, I'm going to
time box 20 minutes to pay my electric.
It's like, no, you just pay your fucking electric bill, right?
Like it's a very yes or no binary thing.
Where is there other, you know, say like researching something
or brainstorming? Like there's theoretically you
could, you could research something infinitely, right?
So you have to put a time limit on it.
So this isn't, this is less of a question and more of just like
a, a little bit of a digging further into this topic of I've,
I've come to the conclusion over the years that some, some things
are more well suited towards some measurements of
productivity than others. And I also believe that some
like people's personalities tend towards like, like when I've
experimented with time boxing, I just look at my calendar and I
get so fucking stressed like instantly.
And I, I feel it feels so inflexible and so rigid and, and
like anything that goes over or under or I'm late to like, it
feels like a failure that it's, it's like I need a little bit
more flexibility in my life. So it's like I do this.
I do a combo of calendar plus To Do List, but I don't, I'm not
too religious about either one of them.
I kind of like they live in harmony.
But anyway. So the good news is the good
news is that you can plan for this flexibility.
The problem is that a lot of people let perfect be the enemy
of good. And we know that time boxing and
using what's called setting an implementation intention, just a
fancy way of saying planning out what you're gonna do and when
you're gonna do it. We know it works.
I mean, study after study after study have shown this.
The The thing is people very common trap, they make it overly
rigid and they think that the right mindset is to be a drill
Sergeant. You have to do this and then you
have to do this, and that becomes exhausting.
The right mindset is not to be a drill Sergeant, it's to be a
scientist. What is the job of a scientist?
The job of a scientist is to make a hypothesis, run an
experiment, look at the results, and then run new experiments
based on those results. So when you make a time box
calendar in the day, it's set, it's locked and loaded.
But there's no rule that says you can't change your calendar
for the next day or the next day or the day after that.
So right off the bat, I know Mark, anybody who tells me I'm
going to do 3 hours of writing in my schedule, No way.
I don't know anybody who can do. We've both written best selling
books. I don't know anybody who can
write for three hours. So what you will learn, what I
would definitely learn is if I try and I've done this where I
said OK, I'm going to write for I was never that ambitious.
I said two hours and then after 2-2 hours like, Oh my God, I, I
am, this is not working out. This is miserable.
OK, well then tomorrow, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to do a 30 minute time box, schedule a 15 minute break
and then do another 30 minute time box.
And that works out much, much better for me.
So that experimentation is one thing that that makes it much
easier to follow that schedule. The the second thing is that you
can actually plan time for spontaneity, right?
People say, well, what if somebody needs me?
What if I, what, what, what if I'm not sure, you know what,
what I want to do, That's fine. So for example, with my
daughter, we, you know, it's, it's we have time every weekend.
We have a big three hour block of time and we call it plan
spontaneity. We don't know we're going to do
together. Maybe we'll go to the park,
maybe we'll get some ice cream. I don't know we're going to do.
But I know what I will not be doing.
I will not be checking social media.
I will not be taking work calls because I've scheduled that time
for someone I love very much. So that is a huge benefit of
time Boxing is that you know you have scheduled out your values
in advance. You know, when it comes to
spending time with people you love in my calendar, taking care
of my body, exercising, you know, it's 46.
I'm in the best shape of my life, not because I have good
genes or because I'm particularly athletic, but
because I do what I say I'm going to do.
So the part of the problem is that people get so scared about
scheduling the other day, they don't even try it.
As opposed to the idea is you're constantly asking yourself week
after week, how do I make my schedule easier to follow?
If something was too hard to do well, then pare it down for the
next day or make adjustments, move it around.
But the idea is that if you don't plan that time, you look
back and say, what the heck was I doing?
Right? I was.
I was doing all this other junk as opposed to the stuff that's
really important to me and my values.
Yeah, I, I think the, the, the commonality here, I've always
said that that productivity is personal.
And I, I think what I mean by that is all these things that
we're talking about, they're tools, right?
And every tool is like the optimal use of time boxing for
you is going to be different than it is for me and it's going
to be different than it is for Drew.
And the same thing any list that we make or any e-mail
organization, inbox organization that we do like everything, the
optimal point is always going to look different for everybody.
And, and so I think it's, there's a certain amount of
flexibility that has to be brought to whatever tool you
choose to use. And I think that gets lost a
lot. Like whenever I see productivity
advice online, it's just like it gets lost.
People get very religious about it.
Or a particular tool. Oh, you have to use this
software and only this software that.
That's ridiculous. There is no magic tool, right?
It is about iterating and and and adapting.
Everybody's different and, and, and to your point, your original
point is like everybody's internal triggers are different,
right? Your productivity system and
whatever tools you use in the way ways you use them should be
catered towards your personality, your particular
internal emotional triggers, the your weak points and strong
points, etcetera. The original question was, how
do I get myself to do the things that I know I should do?
What if we change that slightly? Would you change your answer if
it were? How do I get myself to feel like
doing the things I should do? Isn't that the real question?
So, you know, we have all these
strategies and these tools and these, all of this.
The real question is why do I not feel like doing the things I
know I should do, right? Would you change your answer or
or is this also the same recipe? It's, it's a great point and I
don't, I don't think that we know frankly.
I mean, we have some some approaches which I think have
some real disadvantages. For example, you hear people
saying a lot about, well, just get into flow, right?
Just just make it into flow or, or even better, make it into a
habit, right? You know, a habit has become
code for I know I should, but I don't want to yes, right.
I want to get into an exercise habit.
I hate freaking exercising. But if I create a habit, I'll
have this this autopilot button that will just make it easy to
do. I don't like writing, but I know
I really want to write a novel, and so can I just turn that into
a habit? Well, no, you can't, right?
Because what's the definition of a habit?
The definition of a habit is the impulse to do a behavior with
little or no conscious thought. How exactly do you write with
little or no conscious thought? That doesn't sound like
something that's going to be actually very readable.
Or if you go to the gym and you're exercising with little or
no conscious thought, you're not going to beat any PRS.
You're not going to get much stronger.
It requires effort. It requires hard work.
So part of, you know, if you can find an activity that gets you
into flow and is and and and is fun and you can turn into a
habit, wonderful, do it. How exactly do I do my taxes in
flow? I don't.
How do I do my taxes habitually? It sucks.
It's no fun. And so that's the kind of
behavior that people get distracted from.
Nobody gets distracted from doing the stuff they like.
That's easy. That's you can get in the flow
when it comes to stuff you like doing, it's the hard stuff you
don't like doing. But of course, pretty much
everything worth having in life is on the other side of
discomfort. And so that's where we need a
different approach. We don't need to try and ignore
the discomfort, but rather we want to lean into that
discomfort to know how to deal with it so that we can use it as
traction to propel us towards traction rather than trying to
escape it all the time with distraction.
So the problem with I think some of these strategies that tell us
to make the thing fun, right, to add the spoonful of sugar is
that when that doesn't work, when that invariably fails and
it's hard and uncomfortable, people start thinking, well,
they're messed up, right? That there's something broken
about them. There's nothing broken about
them. It's this stupid technique that,
that this lie that everything can be fun.
No, some work is gonna be hard. And so the strategy should be to
deal with that pain that as I said, time management is pain
management and expecting it to be difficult.
Let me let me give you one concrete example so everybody
can take away. So when I'm writing, and this is
writing is always hard work, right?
I've written two books, I've written countless articles.
It's always hard. All I want to do when I'm
writing is go watch one of Mark's videos on YouTube or or
go do something else, right? Go check e-mail.
That's all I want to do. When I'm writing or or do
research, I need to do research, right?
Which is just more procrastination.
So what I've, what I've implemented now is a technique
that comes from exceptions to commitment therapy, which is
called the 10 minute rule. The 10 minute rule acknowledges
that these uncomfortable internal triggers, they Crest
and they they subside, but that's not how we feel them in
the moment. We think it's always going to be
there right When you're bored, Oh, I'm always going to be
bored. When I'm uncertain, oh, I'm
always going to be uncertain. When I'm anxious, I'm always
going to be anxious. That's not the case.
That emotions come and go. And So what acceptance of
commitment therapy teaches is that if you can ride that urge
like a surfer on a surfboard for just a few minutes, that that
emotion will Crest and subside. So, so here's what I do.
So when I feel that urge, and this comes back to identifying
what is that feeling, right? Is it bored on loneliness,
fatigue, uncertainty, if I can name it.
And then just take a minute. And I, I, I do what's called the
10 minute rule. I set a timer for 10 minutes, I
take a deep breath and now I have a choice to make.
I can either get back to the task at hand whenever I'm ready,
or I can use these techniques to surf the urge.
And one of the techniques that I use to surf the urge is a
mantra. And so my mantra, you can steal
it, you can borrow it, you can, you can make up your own.
My mantra when I feel this urge is to tell myself, this is what
it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to
get better. And I'm acknowledging that it's
not supposed to be easy, that if it was easy, everyone would do
it. And so I'm not trying to escape
that discomfort. I'm leaning into the discomfort
by saying, yeah, bring it on discomfort.
That's part of the process. And what what I find is that if
I just repeat that mantra and I try and just wait for 10 minutes
until I can give in to that distraction until that alarm
rings, what I find is that 9 times out of ten, way before the
10 minutes are up, I'm back to the task at hand.
And So what you're doing over time is that you're increasing
yourself efficacy. If you're saying, hey, I'm just
going to work on this task for 10 minutes, OK, I'm not going to
check my phone for 10 minutes. And if that's too long, make it
5 minutes or whatever it is. But over time, the five minute
rule becomes a 10 minute rule becomes a 15 minute rule.
And what you're doing is building your agency.
Remember that sense of control that we talked about earlier
that's so important. That becomes your control valve
is, yeah, these things don't control me, I control them.
I can wait 10-15 minutes until I decide to do something else.
Viewing that pain management, as you put it, it as it's a skill
that can be built and developed. It's a muscle that you grow over
time through consciously increasing it.
We do we have a wisdom of the week.
Do we have a wisdom of the? Week we do have a wisdom of the
week. It's by near eye all actually.
Wait, I thought of one actually while he was talking.
OK. And it actually.
Fits perfectly given one of the things that he said.
OK, OK, so Blaise Pascal once said all of humanity's problems
stem from people's inability to sit in a room quietly alone.
OK. That's pretty good.
So you're so unimpressed. I was so excited about that
because. I'm so impressed by the one I
have for the that Near said in one of his books.
Alright, say nears, and then we'll let the audience decide
which ones better near Pascal. The the cure for boredom is
curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
I thought that was a pretty good one.
Great. But that's not even my quote.
That's actually Dorothy Parker. Oh, that's Dorothy Parker.
That is Dorothy Parker. I'm pretty sure that was Abraham
Lincoln and then before that it was Einstein.
Yeah, before. Before Lincoln.
Can I add one more? Let's add one more.
So yes, please. Please save this please.
It is a good one. So Puelo Coelho said a mistake
repeated more than once is a decision.
I like that, right? That's a good.
So the point here is that like, OK, let's say social media is
rotting our brains. Let's say all the are right.
OK, fine, let's give it to them. And now what, right?
How many times do we say God damn Facebook, Instagram, TikTok
before we freaking do something about it?
If you're not doing anything about it, you're making a
decision to constantly be distracted, whereas an
indistractible person says, uh huh, you got me once, you're not
going to get me again. Well said, Nir.
It's been a pleasure, Sir. Thank you so much for coming on.
You're so well spoken. You're so smart.
I miss you dude. Like I hope one day you come
back. I hope one day I see you again.
Yes, I know we. Had a lot of fun together.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure I'll be in LA soon, or
hopefully you come out to Singapore and visit.
And yeah, great to see you, as always.
Miss you buddy. Yeah, you too, man.
You too. All right.
Thank you, Nier. Thank you, Nier.
Talk to you soon. My pleasure.
Thanks, guys. Take care.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew
Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura.
Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer.
Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.