[Music] hi everyone uh my name is fatsa Diora um and I work in gbo in our ads policy team and I'm based in Sydney I am so excited to moderate um this discussion with near Al today near Al writes consults and teaches about the intersection of psychology technology in business he is known at as the Habit guy and invests in companies that build habit forming products that improve users lives some of his Investments are crowd favorites amongst googlet including cahoot canva and Eventbrite n has previously taught as a lecturer in marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and The hasso platner Institute of Design at Stanford near is the author of two incredible Behavioral Science focused best-selling books hooked how to build habit forming products and and um his latest book indestructible how to control your attention and choose your life I find these topics fascinating as we live in a world where so much technology and otherwise um but just so much is constantly vying for our attention and we're often giving giving it all giving our attention away without intention so n thank you for your time today um welcome to Google uh we're so happy um to have you join us um would love if you could share a little bit about these books and your work um and then we can dive into questions absolutely thank you so much for having me can you just confirm for me that you can see my slide is that on screen yet no I can't see your slide just yet here we go coming up thank you all right terrific great wonderful so welcome everyone it's so great to be with you today so what I wanted to do is to kind of give you an overview of my past decade of research into this topic of distraction and how we can finally control what I think is going to be the skill of the century and then we're going to leave plenty of time for Q&A so let me tell you about how I got into this field and when I really had to reassess my relationship with distraction I was with my daughter a few years ago when she was much younger than she is today and I remember we were sitting together and we had this perfect afternoon plan just some daddy daughter quality time and we had this activity book of all these various things that dads and daughters could do together uh make a paper airplane throwing contest do a sodoko puzzle together and one of the questions in this book was if you could have any superpower what superpower would you want and I remember that question verbatim but I can't tell you what my daughter said because in that moment for whatever reason I thought it was a good time to Che just check my phone real quick and by the time I put my phone down I realized that she was gone that she left the room to go play with some toy outside because I was sending her a very clear message that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was and so if you ask me today what superpower I would most want I would tell you it is the power to be indestructible becoming indistractable is the skill of the century there is no facet of your life your mental health your physical health your career your relationships all of these facets of your life require you to be able to control your attention because this is truly how we choose our life unfortunately I think there's a very simple narrative out there that the reason we're all distracted is because of our technology right you all are in this industry and you hear people probably every day blaming our devices blaming the internet blaming YouTube blaming whatever it is out there for our distraction and to be honest that was my knee-jerk reaction as well but what I discovered in my past 10 years of research is that this this problem of distraction is actually much deeper than just whatever Technologies we happen to be using and The Narrative of what's really going on is actually way more empowering than this Chicken Little critique that we hear about technology today that the sky is falling and our brains are melting that is just not true let me go back to the very beginning it turns out that this problem of distraction is at least 2500 years old how do I know that because we know that the Greek philosopher Plato talked about this very same problem he called it in the Greek accia the tendency to do things against our better interests and so we we know if that people have been struggling with distraction for the least the past 25 200 years before the internet it can't be that our technology is the ultimate source of our distraction problems so let me offer a new Fresh perspective on how we can all manage distraction and ultimately become indistractable starting with truly understanding what does this word distraction even mean if you ask most people what is the opposite of distraction they will tell you the opposite of distraction is Focus right I don't want to be distracted I want to be focused those are opposites right wrong it turns out if you look at the atmology of that word distraction the opposite of distraction is not focus the opposite of distraction is traction of course it is traction and distraction both words come from the same Latin root trahar which means to pull and you'll notice that both words traction and distraction end in the same letters they end in the word a c n which spells action reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us but rather it is an action that we ourselves take 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 conversely anything that pulls you away from what you said you were going to do away from your values away from becoming the kind of person you want to become those are acts of distraction so let me make this clear just because something is a a fun task something that you plan to do something that that uh maybe is enjoyable doesn't mean that it's a distraction in fact I think we need to stop moralizing and medicalizing uh behaviors like watching YouTube videos or going on social media or enjoying a video game there's nothing wrong with those behaviors as long as you're doing them on your schedule and with intent that is the difference between traction and distraction is this one word intent as Dorothy Parker said the time you plan to waste is not wasted time so if you've made time on your schedule to go enjoy these things great do them right we need to stop moralizing and medicalizing and somehow saying oh playing video games that's morally reprehensible but watching football on TV that's okay why anything that you plan to do with your time and attention in advance is traction enjoy conversely just because something is a work rated task doesn't mean it's not a distraction let me see if this sounds familiar to you for years when I was distracted versus today when I'm indistractable when I was distractable I would get into work and I'd say okay I've got this big long to-do list that I have to finish here I go I've got that big important test by the way we're going to talk about later why to-do list one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity remind me to to get to that in the Q&A but I would sit down on my desk and I'd say okay I've got this big important project I've been procrastinating on it I'm not going to delay any longer here I go I'm gon to get started right now but first let me check some email right let me just scroll that slack Channel real quick let me just do those easy tasks on my to-do list for a quick minute just to get started just to get some momentum going right and I didn't realize that that is the most dangerous form of distraction as much as we talk about external distractions like you know the social media or whatever else we might see what we don't realize is that the most harmful distractions are the ones that we don't even realize are distracting us so if you're checking email when you plan to work on a big important project that work email is still a distraction because you don't even realize that you're off track so just because something is a work-related distraction doesn't mean it's not just as dangerous of a distraction as you know the typical usual suspect of video games and social media if it's not what you plan to do with your time it is a distraction so now we have traction we have distraction now let's talk about what triggers us to take these actions what most people think about are the external triggers the pings the dings the Rings all these things in our outside environment that can lead us towards distraction but would you believe studies find that these external triggers these pings dings and Rings these things outside of us studies find only account for 10% of our distraction it's 10% so what accounts for the other 90% it turns out that 90% of the time that we get distracted it's not because of what's happening outside of us but rather we know that 90% of our distractions begin from within we call these internal triggers what are internal triggers internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from and is the most important and first critical step we must take in order to become indistractable internal triggers like boredom loneliness fatigue stress anxiety these uncomfortable Sensations that we seek to escape from what we have to realize is that if we don't understand the source of that discomfort we will always try and Escape it that fundamentally distraction is always an unhealthy response to an emotional trigger to something that we don't like to feel and so we escape that discomfort Comfort whether it's stress anxiety loneliness fatigue uncertainty whatever it might be with something that takes us off track so what do we do about that problem if we want to master these internal triggers so they don't become our Master we only have two potential options we can either fix the source of the problem figure out what is causing us that emotional discomfort and do something about it or we have to learn healthier strategies to cope with that discomfort starting with this understanding that blew me away when I started this line of research that fundamentally time management is pain management let me say it again time management is pain management procrastination and distraction is nothing more than an emotional control issue and most of us maybe all of us we have not been taught how to deal with that emotional discomfort in a healthy way that leads us towards traction versus an unhealthy way that leads us towards distraction time management is pain management so what do we do about this let me give you some very practical tips we're not going to be able to go through everything in my book IND distractable but I want to give you a few very actionable techniques that you can use today to start mastering these internal triggers the first thing you can do psychologists tell us is to note the sensation if you can simply write down what is that Sensation that you're experiencing right before you get distracted whether it's boredom fatigue stress anxiety whatever it is just noting it down is an important First Step then what you want to do is to get curious about that sensation not contemptuous you see people tend to divide into two buckets when it comes to distraction we have the blamers the blamers blame things outside themselves oh it was my phone it was my kids it was my boss it was the news it's all this stuff outside of themselves that they blame and of course that doesn't work because people have always struggled with distraction as we learned about earlier from Plato blaming things outside of you doesn't fix the problem then we have What's called the shamers the the shamers don't blame others they shame themselves they say silly things like oh I'm no good at time management I have a short attention span there must be something broken about me silly it's it's not true and in fact we know that shame is a very uncomfortable internal trigger and the more you feel shame guess what you're more likely to experience that dis Comfort which leads to more distraction so we don't want to be a blamer we don't want to be a shamer we want to be what's called a claimer a claimer claims responsibility not for that urge not for that sensation did you know you cannot control your emotions you do not control these urges any more than you would control the urge to sneeze if you feel the urge to sneeze it's too late you've already felt that sensation all you can do is to choose how you will respond to that sensation are are you going to sneeze all over everyone and get them sick or are you going to do the responsible thing and take out a tissue and cover your nose so it's not about changing that sensation changing that urge it's about deciding how we respond to that sensation hence the term responsibility so knowing in advance how you will respond to that sensation of boredom stress anxiety fatigue and having Tools in your toolkit ready to go is the responsible thing to do this is how we claim responsibility even when the distraction isn't our fault it's not your fault that you felt this urge but it is your responsibility to know how to deal with it so here's one tool that you can put in your toolkit right away this is called surfing the urge this comes from acceptance of commitment therapy a very well-known technique that's been studied in thousands of studies surfing the urge acknowledges that these emotions these urges these Cravings they Crest and then they subside just like waves and so it's your job to Surf that urge like a surfer on a surfboard how can you do that well one technique that I use every single day is called the 10minute rule the 10-minute rule acknowledges that you can give in to any distraction whether it's checking that email inbox when you should be working on that big project whether it's uh checking social media when you said you were going to read a book whether it's eating that piece of chocolate cake if you're trying to lose weight any distraction you can give into but not right now in 10 minutes so for me you know I'm a professional author and researcher so I'm writing every day and all I want to do when I'm writing is to go check the news or go do some research or go look into this or that and I know that those are all distractions in that period of time when I said I'm going to do my writing and research so what do I do I tell myself okay I can give in that distraction in 10 minutes I set my phone for a timer for 10 minutes I put the phone down and now I have a choice to make I can either get back to the task at hand or or surf the urge now how do I do that I close my eyes for a few minutes and I say a simple Mantra my Mantra is this is what it feels like to get better this is what it feels like to get better and just reminding myself that you know hard work is supposed to be hard if it was easy everyone would do it and so reminding myself that it's okay that a task is difficult it's okay that I'm experiencing these internal triggers and I start naming them to myself and I start reframing and I teach you exactly how to do this in the book how to reimagine the conversation you're having with yourself so that it serves you rather than hurts you and here's what happens eventually I decide to get back to the task at hand within those 10 minutes and I forget about that urge ever existing because I allow myself time to ride the wave until it subsides because we think that these Emer emotions are going to last forever but of course that's never the case and if at the end of those 10 minutes I do want to give into that distraction fine I let myself but nine times out of 10 that's not the case and so what's going to happen over time is that the 10-minute rule which pretty much anyone one can do right we can delay distraction 10 minutes anybody can do that what you're going to find is that the 10-minute rule becomes the 12 minute rule becomes the 15minute rule and you're building your agency your efficacy to prove to yourself hey wait a minute I'm not beholden to these pings dings and Rings I can decide when I will give into these distractions on my schedule not someone else's so that's just the tip of the iceberg there are dozens of different techniques you can use but let's move on to the next step of becoming indistractable making time for traction again track is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do with your time and attention which means this is very important you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from let me say that again write it down if you can you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from so if you have a calendar with lots of open white space you cannot say you got distracted because what did you get distracted from from which means unless you're a child or you're retired you have to schedule every minute of your day I'm sorry I know this is going to rub people the wrong way but I need my time to be creative but I need my time to be accessible to my team what if my boss wants me I can't possibly schedule yes you can all those excuses you hear in your head and let me tell you I've said them all to myself I've heard them over the years from all kinds of people and what we find is that by far the most effective time management technique you can possibly use after mastering those internal triggers is to schedule your days or someone will schedule them for you and that means down to the minute based on your values now this doesn't mean your day needs to be filled with work I want you to schedule time to watch videos on YouTube I want you to schedule time for video games I want you to schedule time with your family whatever is important to you and your values put on your calendar that is the only way way that we know the difference between what is traction what is on our calendar and everything else becomes a distraction so you can take those otherwise distracting things that you think are pulling you off course and by putting them on your calendar you're essentially taking distraction and turning it into traction by making time for traction what you're doing is you're planning the input our input is our time and our attention not the output we know that people who only plan output these are people who follow to-do lists by the way to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity because to-do lists are nothing but registers of output it's what we want to have done but of course without input you can't get output so it's much more important to only schedule the things that you sorry to plan for that input of the things that must go into the output and that is is again our time and our attention I want you to stop measuring Yourself by how many cute little boxes you checked off that turns out to be a very ineffective technique te for for several reasons mostly because to-do lists have no constraint you can always add more to a to-do list and this is why we come home from work every day exhausted and then we look at our to-do list and we still haven't finished everything and then we feel like losers and what does that do for our psyche if day after day week after week month after month year after year you're constantly reminded hey you didn't do what you said you were going to do loser so a much better tactic is to time box that that task and not care about finishing it what did you hear me correctly yes don't worry about finishing the task your only metric of success should be did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction that's it it's not about finishing it's not about checking those cute little boxes it's about did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction and it turns out here's the kicker people who use this method people who measure themselves simply by that one metric of did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction they finish more they actually are more productive they live out their intentions much much better than the to-do list devotees because when they simply focus on one thing at a time they have feedback to understand how long things take this is called the planning fallacy we know that people on average take three times longer to finish a task than they estimate why does that happen because I say to myself oh I'm going to finish that project I'm going to finish those slides I'm going to finish that uh that that that proposal but then I start working on it for 10 minutes and then oh I've got to check that email and oh my boss needs something and oh I better do this and that and it turns out that we never get a good assessment of how long things actually take whereas when we use a time box schedule and we only measure ourselves by did we do what we said we're going to do for as long as we said we would without distraction we can look back on that time slot and say okay I worked on that for 30 minutes and I finished about two out of 20 slides okay that means I need 10 more time boxes to finish the whole project and this is how we get a feedback loop to understand how long things take us so planning the time not the input is absolutely critical another thing we have to do is to spend less time communicating and more time concentrating you see so many of us are inundated with all these messages all these things to respond to and of course that's part of everyone's job this is called reactive work reacting to messages reacting to slack notifications reacting to requests reacting to meetings that's part of everyone's job the problem is that we become habituated to only doing reactive work right how many of us when we don't know what else to do we check our inbox our inbox will tell us what to do well that's a terrible strategy what you've got to do is to put time in your schedule not only for the reactive work but also for what's called reflective work reflective work is the kind of work that can only be done without distraction planning strategizing thinking for God's sakes can only be done without distraction so I'm not saying your entire day has to be in a cave isolated and not talking to anyone no no no but at least some part of your day has to be spent without distraction so whether that's 15 minutes maybe a half an hour maybe an hour if you can afford it that work that can only be done without distraction has to be scheduled for if you don't I promise you you're going to run real fast in the wrong direction you have to plan time for that reflective work now part of the reason it's so difficult to find time for that reflective work time is that we are inundated so many of us with these external triggers these requests from other people for our time and we know that there is one industry where these external triggers are literally a matter of life and death if I were to ask you what was the third leading cause of death in the United States of America before coid the third leading cause of death I'll give you the first two number one was heart disease number two was cancer the third leading cause of death if you would believe it the third leading cause of death before coid was prescription mistakes prescription mistakes people in hospitals receiving the wrong medication the wrong dosage of medication from Health Care practitioners and by the way this isn't a us only problem this happens all over the world and it's something that is a 100% preventable human error this happens when nurses are dosing out medication and then one of their colleagues Taps them on the shoulder and asks them a question and then they get distracted and they make mistakes now I know very few of you are in the healthare profession but I'm telling you this to illustrate a point that what we found with these nurses is that they didn't realize they were making mistakes until it was too late it wasn't until they gave someone the wrong medication and then they would suffer then that patient would suffer horrible consequences so I ask you to ask yourself how many consequences do you not realize are degrading your work performance as a result of distraction you may not even realize how much better your work performance could be if you worked without distraction so thankfully this story has a very happy ending it turns out that nurses at UCSF decided to take on this problem of distraction with with uh nurses when they were dosing out medication and they found a solution that reduced prescription Mistakes by 88% they almost eliminated this problem completely and the solution was not some fancy retraining program it wasn't some new multi-million dollar technology the solution was plastic vests these cheap plastic vests that nurses wore when they were doing their drug rounds when they were Distributing medication that almost eliminated this problem completely now how could we apply this amazing lesson to our own work life I know very few of you are are nurses so why am I telling you this well what if we applied something similar to our workspaces what if we use a screen sign which is in every copy of my book there's a piece of card stock that you can tear out or you can download from my website and we put this on our computer monitors to tell our colleagues hey for a certain number of hours per day I need to work without distraction in order to do my best work I know some of you are saying yeah but that's why I put on headphones let me tell you when you put on headphones people think you're watching uh some video or listening to a podcast we need to be explicit about this message that we're sending that it's all right to work without distraction that we can't do our best work if we're constantly bombarded with requests every 30 seconds now for some of you I know you're working from home no problem in this case where the distraction is not your boss or your colleagues sometimes it's your kids and so what do we do when we're working from home so this is a picture of my wife Julie and she is wearing what we call in our household the concentration crown and when my daughter was only six years old we got this concentration crown and we told her when Mommy is wearing the concentration crown that means that she can't be interrupted for the next 30 minutes the only case when you can interrupt is if you're bleeding so if you're not bleeding go find some toy to play with go do something else because when Mommy is wearing the concentration Crown she can't be interrupted this is something we got off Amazon for I don't know I think it was like $5 $6 online you can use any silly hat because frankly our kids don't know when we're doing something important that we can't be interrupted online or when it's something they can't interrupt us this works really really well with kids it also works really well with husbands as well uh you want to send that explicit message that interrupts the interruption another thing we can do to hack back those external triggers is to use the functionality on everyone's device I know it's on Android devices it's on iPhones this is called Do Not Disturb while driving a lot of people worry that hey what if somebody needs to reach me and I'm I'm I having my reflective work time what if I have time block time to do a project but somebody might need me urgently no problem you hit one button called Do Not Disturb while driving and if someone texts or calls you during that time they will get a message that says I can't talk right now but if this is urgent text me back the word urgent and then the message will come through I've been using this feature for what four years now and I've never had anyone interrupt me because they know okay he'll get back to me very soon right the next thing you can do is to clear off all that digital clutter how many of us have home screens that look like this this is what my home screen used to look like all these files we don't have to live this way we can clear all that away I took all those files I put them into one folder called everything and of course our search functionality on our machines is so good today we can always find that file later so we know that that visual clutter whether it's in physical space or on our desktops contributes to distraction our devices how many of us are inundated with all these notifications did you know that 2third of people with a smartphone two-thirds of people with a smartphone never adjust their notification settings can we honestly say that we're addicted to our devices that it's hijacking our brains that it's stealing our focus when we haven't even taken five minutes to change these notification settings so that only the most important messages get through what we have to do is to hack back these at these external triggers by asking ourselves is this trigger serving me or am I serving it and removing those external triggers that are not serving us for example an external trigger that tells you hey it's time for that meeting or it's time to go exercise that's great it's not a bad thing technology is wonderful when it tells us to do the things that we ourselves want to do but when I was with my daughter and we were having some quality time together and I checked my phone because of some pingding or ring well now I was serving the external trigger it wasn't serving me the next thing we want to do is to leave those distracting devices outside of meetings how many of us attend what we call zombie meetings where we go to meet with other people whether it's physically or virtually and we can tell the bodies are there but the brains are something else because everyone's on their device so if we are going to meet physically in person we have to be there both in body and mind not just in the corporate workplace but also at home declare no phone zones for example in my family what really works for us is at the dining room table breakfast lunch and dinner that is a no Phone Zone that's where we want to reconnect with each other we know that children who have meals with their parents have fewer behavioral issues they have fewer uh uh uh mental health issues fewer eating issues like bulimia and anorexia you really want to make sure you have that time declared as a no Phone Zone both in the family space as well as in the work space so that we're fully present with each other finally the last step to becoming indestructible is to prevent distraction with pacts a pact is a precommitment the first recorded case of one of these pre-commitments comes to us from the story of ulyses in The Odyssey now ulyses is this Greek hero 2500 years ago he sails his ship past the sirens Island now the sirens are these magical creatures who sing this song that any sailor hears and will decide to crash his his ship onto the shore of the sirens Island and dies now ulyses knows about this threat and so he makes a precommitment he plans in advance he tells his crew to put beeswax in their ears so they can't hear the siren song and he instructs his crew to bind him to the Mast of the ship and he tells them no matter what I do no matter what I say do not let me go and you know what it works he's able to sail his ship right past the siren's island returning his crew and his ship safely home so why am I telling you this story well in this story you are ulyses there's lots of distracting stuff out there and of course that could be you there on the shore of the sirens Island as well if you don't plan ahead if you don't make one of these pre-commitments how do we make a pre-commitment we don't need to stuff beeswax in our ears we don't need to bind ourselves to the mass of a ship but we can take steps today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow for example we can use Tech to block out dist extracting Tech so two tools I use every single day on the right hand side you'll see this app for uh for your desktop called cold turkey totally free and it will block out certain websites anytime you set so you know what as the last line of defense as the fir wall against distraction when I have my working hours I don't want to check email when I'm supposed to be writing I don't want to go look at the news or do whatever so I put those distracting websites in this free technology that will block those websites During certain hours another wonderful app that I use it's so simple my daughter uses it all the time as well it's called the forest app Forest works like this you dial in how much Focus work time you want you hit the button it plants that cute little virtual tree you see that virtual Tree on the left hand side and if you pick up your phone and do anything with it during that period of time that cute little virtual tree gets cut down and you don't want to be a virtual tree murderer so it's enough a reminder say nope that's not what I want to do right now I want to stay focused on the task at hand you can also get a focus friend one of the most underrated techniques is to call a buddy and say hey look I've got this big project to work on I want to make sure that I stay focus on it hey let's let's co-work let's sit side by side or at a coffee shop or in the company canteen and and make sure that we stay on task if you're working from home no problem technology to the rescue there's a website called focusmate do.com I loved it so much I became an investor here's how it works you find a time that you want to do focused work for for me it's early in the morning I sometimes have trouble getting started but I know hey there's somebody waiting for me at 8:30 who's dependent on me as their focus mate and here on the right hand side you can see a screenshot this was a uh a medical school student and he was studying Anatomy I was working on this presentation said hello okay go and for the next 45 minutes we worked without distraction it's amazing how entering into that pre-commitment with another person is an amazing way to help you stay on track now the idea here is to reduce distractions with packs by using Tech to block out Tech there's all kinds of other pre-commitments we can make but be careful okay there's two words of warning here number one this is the last line of defense this is the firewall against distraction it will not work these packs do not work if you don't first do the other three steps we discussed of mastering internal triggers making time for traction and hacking back external triggers do those three things first and then make these pre-commitments the other word of warning has to do with the fact that some people when they fall off the wagon on the path to becoming indistractable some people have a really tough time getting back on track now who are those people those people tend to be people who do not offer themselves self-compassion we know that people who are self-compassionate are much more likely to reach their long-term goals so how do you cultivate self-compassion it's actually quite simple the way to cultivate self-compassion is to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend so if I had told you about what happened with my daughter that I was embarrassed that I was distracted when I blew this perfectly wonderful moment with my daughter would you tell me that I'm a horrible father that I'm a terrible human being not if you were my good friend you wouldn't say those things and yet that's the kind of stuff I would tell myself all the time and you know what it wasn't helpful and it wasn't true and here's what else isn't true this idea that technology is hijacking our brains that it's addicting everyone that there's nothing we can do about it that is not helpful and not true there is so much we can do we can Master those internal triggers we can make time for traction we can hack back the external triggers and we can prevent distraction with packs so what I want to leave you with is is that there's so much we can do here unfortunately we don't have enough time to get into everything that's in the book this is just a small sliver we didn't talk about how to raise indistractable kids we didn't talk about how to build an indistractable workplace very very important we get into some of that in the Q&A I'm happy to do that but the message I want to leave with you today is that we can do this we can get the best of our Technologies without letting get get the best of us we can all become indistractable and with that thank you so much I would love to ask you for a very quick favor before we jump into the Q&A on your screen you'll see a a a URL and a QR code if you have your phone handy you can take a picture of that uh URL and hopefully it'll take you to the website or you can just type that URL opinion to. us opinion 2. us it'll just take you to a quick Google form for a quick survey it's only five questions would love to know what you thought of presentation I read every single piece of feedback so if you could just tell me what you thought I'd certainly appreciate it and the reward for that if you'd be so kind is that if you fill out that quick survey you'll be given a link to my SlideShare page where you can have all the slides you just saw of course feel free to share that with whoever you like and if we don't for some reason get to your questions feel free to visit my website nearandfar.com it's there at the bottom of the slide nearandfar.com but near spelt like my first name uh there's a there's a contact link there please feel free to send me any questions if we don't don't have time to answer yours today and with that let's open it up to questions thanks so much near this was fascinating um I took so many notes I have so many questions yes um but um just starting off you know this is just an interesting um area um area of work how what led you to this field of research so for me it was a personal problem I write books uh not because I know the answer but because I need the answer and so when I was struggling with distraction for myself uh the the knee-jerk reaction was well it's Technology's fault stop using technology because that's frankly what a lot of books tell you today right they tell you that our uh our attention is being stolen that our brain is being hijacked just stop using the technology that's really easy for a 10year professor to say but I need to use technology we all need to use technology to keep our job so how do you just say stop using technology that's silly that's not a very practical solution or you're going to get fired so uh and frankly you know even when I did yeah one of the things I did before I I embarked on this research was I got myself a flip phone from Alibaba right so one of these like $12 phones and all I did was send calls and text messages and no apps on it whatsoever and I still got distracted right I would still find oh I need to check out that book or I need to clean my desk or let me take out the garbage I kept getting distracted because I realized it wasn't just the technology it was that I didn't deal with the real issue the real core of distraction which is the fact that I didn't know how to deal with these internal triggers and I didn't have these other practices in place so it was only when I was so frustrated with all the other books out there that tell you how to manage your time and attention that really weren't working for me that I needed to to start with first principles and go into the psychology research and understand what works and what doesn't um that's fascinating I mean I think this is a problem that many of us face and like honestly that that one sentence like time management is pain management is super interesting because when I like going through Fitness or something we're like okay trying to do this because it's going to help me get better but I I've never thought about connecting that to attention and traction so one of the things that I struggle I think many of us struggle with is like we come out with these best intentions like we plan our day or we plan our week and um you know we start uh on a Monday we'll be super into it and be very energized but then slowly through the week we'll kind of taper off um how do you does that happen to you and then how do you kind of stay motivated and committ yeah so the idea of a Time boox calendar is that you don't set it and forget it you're you're uh you're changing it uh not in the day never in the day you're changing that time box schedule to make it easier to follow over time that's the idea behind this time box calendar so what you're going to do at the beginning of every week for me it's Sunday nights 8m I have that in my schedule I sit down and I look at the schedule for the week that passed and then I try and figure out how do I make the week that is coming easier to follow and that's when you can change things around so if you saw you know what uh I'm much better doing my uh my reflective work early in the morning versus in the in the afternoon no problem you can change that around uh maybe I need time for a walk in the middle of the day maybe I need to take an early lunch or or more time with my family or less time with doing email whatever the case might be I want you to sit down and ask yourself how can the person you want to become spend their time that's the key question you're turning your values into time so you can change your schedule from dayto day and week to week that's totally fine but once you set that schedule for the day now you have to follow it right you have to stick with what you said you were going to do because anything that is not that thing becomes distraction so if you see you know what I'm I'm losing energy I'm losing steam uh towards the end of the day maybe that means you need to plan some more breaks in the future or you need to adjust your tasks accordingly that's totally fine as long as you don't adjust them in the day yeah that's a really good that's a really that's a really good point and then what about like well the other thing is like I I think a lot about is you know when do I get my bursts of creativity or when do I get my bursts of inspiration like you know in many of our jobs we have to do a lot of problem solving and like pushing mous problems forward and I struggle with how I say okay this is my whiteboarding or whatever it is so often it's in the shower or when you're running or something so how do you think about creating avenues for creativity yeah let me give you a very very highte solution okay this is it the idea here is that I always have this with me right is I have a a piece of paper and a little pen at my desk at all times the idea here is that when I have an idea or a worry this happens much more for me at least many more worries than creative ideas what used to happen is every little spark of creativity every worry every concern oh let me just go take care of that real quick and then of course that would totally pull you away from executing your great ideas the the hard part about doing great work is not coming up with great ideas great ideas are cheap as hell everybody has great ideas nobody's that special we all have great ideas it's doing them and doing them requires you to focus it requires you to work without distraction so you are giving up so much every time like me I used to do oh okay I I have to take care of that one thing let me go take care of that for 30 minutes and now I didn't even finish the the the task I was working on I didn't give that appropriate time instead what I do now is every time I have a creative idea or I have a worry I jot it down okay I put down a few words and then I have time in my calendar to worry I literally have time in my schedule for worry time here's what's amazing about that number one my brain can refocus on the task at hand because opposed to me saying oh I might forget I might forget I might forget I won't forget it's right here and knowing that I will have time later on to deal with with it lets my brain relax and truly focus on what I'm working on right now the other great part about that is that nine times out of 10 when I sit down for my worry time or my whiteboard time I think about it say actually that wasn't even that important right like what was I worried about that's not that important right so the thing you think about in the moment that oh my God it's such a great idea or oh my God that's an important concern if you give it some time to marinate what you often times find is ah there's something else that's more important that takes the time so by putting it on a quick piece of paper just three words don't act on it don't betray yourself and get distracted at the moment put that time in your schedule for whiteboarding time and and uh and worry time and you know a lot of people say oh but I need to be creative I need to be spontaneous that's your amateur voice talking professionals what Pros do they sit down and do the work they are able to to to to sit down and actually create and if you think okay I need to be creative whenever I feel like it that's just not true that model tends to really not work for people unless your whole day is spent that way right like some people are just artists all day but in the modern Working World you've got meetings you've got emails you've got kids you've got tasks it's just not feasible but if you plan time for hey here's my hour and a half or whatever it is for that creative work time that's when you really turn pro is that you're able to sit down be like okay here's my list of ideas here's the things I need to think about okay now is the time for it yeah that's actually that's really interesting and like when you spend your day like this you know your your day A Time boxed you every kind of hour is accounted for how do you feel at the end of the day when you get to kind of that every single day um yeah yeah it's a great no it so very few people uh these days have experienced what Leisure actually feels like especially High performers like people who work at Google very few of you have actually have any clue what Leisure is like here's why because if you use the to-do list mentality if you use that method ology uh of I've got these things that I got to get done even when you give yourself time to breathe you go out with your friends you sit down with your kids you're having a nice meal you're still thinking about all that stuff you haven't done yeah right I know I used to be there too so even when you're trying to have fun when you're trying to relax you can't because you're thinking about all the stuff left undone as opposed to a person who uses a time box calendar has on their schedule time to play with my kids time to exercise time to meditate and that's all you can do hey time to play video games great do it time to go watch YouTube videos awesome and now you can do those things without guilt because that now becomes traction anything else even doing work becomes distraction yeah that's actually really good point because you're always kind of not present otherwise to your initial um anecdote uh um okay so I know we have um a bunch of questions from the audience as well um so I'd love to turn over and see so the first is from snep giri in your research how does one train differently for concentration versus contemplation versus open non-judgmental awareness thanks for the question and yeah I'm not I'm not I'll give it my best shot my guess is with with training right that like anything if you want to get better at something you practice uh the problem is that you know that that things worth having in life take effort take work and take Focus right if you want to have a a wonderful relationship with somebody you can't just say oh I'm going to take you to a fancy dinner and we're going to be in love no you got to put in the daytoday relationship to work to to have a close relationship if you want to start a great business if you want to be have a wonderful career you have to put in the diligent work day after day after day right if you got want to get rich you have to acrew money over a long period of time there's no you know get rich quick scheme that works we have to do that effort so whether it's anything that's difficult that's worth having in life we have to put in that digit that diligent work over time uh one of my life mantras is consistency over intensity that many people think that there's like one quick way just let me take a pill let me flip a switch and boom I'll have the thing I want I'll feel the way I want to feel but that that's pretty fleeting right the real things worth having in life require consistency over intensity so whatever type of workstyle you want to cultivate whether it's a high degree of focus and attentional that comes from practice but we can only get in that practice when we make the time to do it without distraction thank you uh next we have a question from Sean in Tech we need to task switch a lot what should we do if our jobs require us to constantly switch in between tasks or are very reactive for example needing to be responsive to to clients thanks Sean absolutely yeah absolutely so I see this a lot in Tech now we know just let's go to the other side when it comes to reflective work so you know very few jobs require 100% reactive or reflective work so everybody's job has some mix of the two some sometimes that's not the case like for an engineer for example almost their entire day is spent doing uh reflective work and we know that the number one source of bugs in code is distraction right it's somebody saying oh I need that TPS report meanwhile the engineer was deep in thought and now they've they've messed it up they have difficulty getting back to where they were so the one of the best things you can do as a manager is freaking leave your employees alone give them time to work without distraction it it it's amazing the productivity killer of stupid meetings that didn't need to be called dumb emails that do nothing but circulate uh Superfluous information it's and we talk about all this in my book exactly how to uh hack back email hack back meetings there's a lot you can do there but when it comes to how do you find that time for reflection itive work one of the best things you can do is to do a schedule sync a schedule sync is part of a practice that I call managing your manager or managing up now H how does this work one of the worst pieces of productivity advice that we hear all the time is if you want to be more productive you have to learn how to say no right how many times have we heard that learn how to say no better what kind of stupid advice is that you're going to tell your boss you're going to tell your manager the person who pays your bills you're going to tell that person no thanks no I'm not going to do it you're going to get fired that's terrible advice what you want to do instead is print out that time box calendar we talked about time boxing earlier during the presentation one of the benefits is that now you have a physical artifact you can literally print out your schedule for the week ahead you book a 10minute meeting with your boss 10 minutes it's all you need say hey boss I just want to show you something here's my schedule see here here's my Monday through Friday for how I'm going to spend my time at work this week here's that meeting you asked me to attend here's I'm giving two hours to work on this project without distraction here's where I'm going to go to XYZ meeting whatever the case here's my week ahead okay now you see this other piece of paper here on this other piece of paper I wrote down all the things you've asked me to do that I'm having trouble prioritizing can you help me prioritize that is your boss's most important job your manager or supervisor's most important job is to prioritize and so when you show them your time box calendar they will worship the ground you walk on because they're wondering what the heck you're doing all day so by showing them hey here's what I'm doing help me reprioritize this stuff you asked me to do that I'm having trouble prioritizing you're not saying no you're saying Help Me prioritize and so here's what's invariably going to happen they're gonna say oh you know that meeting you really don't need to go to that meeting what you really need to work on what's way more important is that thing on this piece of paper over here that's way more important let's swap those out so you're giving your manager exposure to how you spend your time and this to answer the the the person's question just now about constant interruptions you're showing them when you are working without distraction so you say okay here from 9 to 11 that's when I'm in distractable see okay it's in my schedule we talked about this right that's when I can't be interrupted if that's a problem let me know I'll move it around so by giving them transparency into your schedule that's that's a huge resource another thing you can do by the way if you work in the kind of job where you feel like you need be responsive the first thing I would do is to ask yourself Is that real or is it your fear that you will be needed right the vast majority of people I work with they think oh I need to constantly be on call it's just an excuse their brain is making up from that prevents them from doing the hard work they know they need to do what if somebody needs me what if an employee what if a customer what if a client they might need me but when they actually sit down and work without distraction they realize it's just a feeling it's not objective reality it's completely subjective they just think they need to they that people need them all the time and they don't but let's say you're in a kind of industry where you do constantly need to check no problem put in 30 minutes of focused work time and then 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever amount of time for reflective or for reactive work time that's totally fine you can structure your calendar whatever way you want the idea here though is to work that schedule to decide in advance how you will spend your time because if you don't other people will Design decide how you spend your time for you yeah I'm a manager and I would love that conversation from everyone so the problem is as a manager by the way it's kind of difficult because if you tell employees to do this they feel like you're micromanaging them yeah so this is really an empowerment strategy to manage your managers right you could do this with your manager as well and you know of course if people read this and see it's working for other folks then hopefully this becomes an Institutional practice no absolutely um next question from Kareem can you share tip tips on how to tweak these techniques so kids can use them great question thanks kareim yeah absolutely so there's a whole section in the book and I could do a whole another hour presentation just on how to raise indistractable kids but I'll give you a few quick tips the best thing you can do if you want to raise indistractable kids is to be an indistractable parent we cannot tell our kids oh stop know get off fortnite and stop doing this and that when Meanwhile we're checking email or whatever on our phones right so the best thing you can do is to set a good example for your kids you you can't raise indistractable kids unless you're an indistractable parent and tell your kids you're struggling right that that's totally fine right these tools are made to be engaging it's no wonder we struggle to put them away that's totally fine put you know let them know that you're struggling with it as well and then we can simply work around the very same four steps so understanding what those internal triggers are there's a there's a much more in-depth conversation around kids and the internal triggers the internal triggers that kids face are different from what adults face right so that's a whole I encourage you to to check out that section in my book around the internal triggers that kids are suffering from from there's there's What's called the needs displacement hypothesis that when kids or adults aren't getting what they need offline in the real world they look for those psychological uh vitamins if you will those psychological nutrients online so if you're not feeling competency autonomy and relatedness these three psychological nutrients in the real world you're looking for them online so that's a big part of why kids overuse technology is that school today is is in many for many kids in many cases a prison and so they're looking for competency autonomy and relatedness online but that's another subject number one internal triggers help your kids have these tactics to deal with these internal triggers in a healthy way the next way is to schedule the same way we would for ourselves turning your values into time now for kids if they're in school most of the day is already scheduled but after school one of the best things you can do for your kid is to schedule time for the things that you think are distractions right so scheduling time for video games put it on their schedule how much time do you think is for you how much time given all the other stuff you need to do homework chores playing with friends how much time works for you this is a conversation I had with my daughter when she was just six years old and now she has that time in her schedule she doesn't have to think about oh when do I get time to go on YouTube when do I get time to do these things it's in her schedule she knows exactly she doesn't have to think about it all day packing back the external triggers one of the best things you can do for your kids is removing any external trigger that that interrupts sleep in the bedroom so kids should not have anything that beeps buzzes or Loops in the bedroom very very important quick tip there's a lot of other things you can do as well and then finally preventing distraction with packs so I showed that app Forest that helps you uh you know you set the time that you want to do Focus work for and then there's that cute little virtual tree my daughter loves it every time she has to do homework she uses that tool I use it as well and that's a wonderful way to make a pack to make sure that you stay on track so it's really around teaching your kids these very four same for strategies to becoming indistractable themselves that's fine and the age of six that's great like I feel um you know we often think that oh they're too young they're too young but the fact that you can start very early absolutely absolutely and and remember you know the goal of parenting is not to raise a child it's to raise a future adult so this is the skill of the century I mean there's every it doesn't matter what knowledge is in a book if you don't have the focus and attention to read the book so we've got to teach our kids how to become indistractable so that they can pay attention long enough to absorb these amazing lessons that the world has to teach them so so it's it's absolutely critical we teach them how to do this and and and if they they don't learn now they're going to have trouble in in middle school and high school and of course in college when they're outside of the home uh it's it's GNA come back to bite them so we we really have to teach them how to do this totally um I think you have time for one more uh hi n thanks for the talk from Alan you mentioned that to-do lists were a negative influence on productivity could you elaborate thanks Alan sure there's a few reasons why to-do lists are dangerous for your personal productivity uh number one is that there's no constraint right we talked about it a little bit earlier in the presentation you can always add more to that to-do list where as opposed to a time box calendar you only have 24 hours in a day so it's a force constraint when you have a time box calendar it forces you to make trade-offs the problem that people have is that they want to do everything all at once well you can't you have to make tradeoffs based on your values and so that's a much healthier system a time box versus a to-do list that you'll never be able to finish everything the other thing that's so bad about to-do list is that it doesn't account for the input I can you know write a novel start a business uh you know fall in love like I can write to do list all day long but that's output there's no register of input that register of input again for knowledge workers is time and attention and so that has to be on your schedule and then finally the last point we talked about a little bit I think in an earlier question around how when you use a to-do list methodology you have no sense of leisure because you're always thinking about the things left undone as opposed to a time box calendar when you when you say oh what I'm supposed to be doing right now is exactly what's on my calendar I'm supposed to be enjoying time with my family I can do so without guilt so those are a few reasons why uh time boxing uh beats to-do list hands down thank you oh wow this this hour is just um it's just flown by really so uh near um I think on behalf of everyone um at talk at Google thank you for your time and invaluable insights during this fight chat um your research is so insightful and I've got like a page and a half of notes and I know that um I and many others on the call will be trying these strategies ourselves at home and at work so thank you again for your time um and we're excited to read it that indestructible thank you so much I appreciate it and of course if anybody has any questions I didn't get to today please visit nearandfar.com thank you [Music]