right so life is kind of hard these days for lots of reasons but one of them is that we live in an epidemic of distraction we're always surrounded by fancy technology phones that ping us every five seconds and a world of games and tv shows at our fingertips there's absolutely nothing wrong with this stuff but it becomes a problem when it's distracting us from the things that we actually want to do and there's broadly three reasons why we get distracted from the stuff that actually matters to us number one is that it's just too boring we're trying to do something important but it's just really not fun and so we're going to get distracted by anything that comes our way number two the thing we're trying to do is just too hard we're working on something important but we've hit a roadblock we can't figure out what to write next or where the missing semicolon is that's stopping the code from working or get our fingers to do what we want them to do while playing the guitar as soon as a distraction comes our way we rejoice and number three the distraction is just too prominent most of us work with our phones at our desk and a laptop sending us notifications for every little thing even with the best of intentions it's genuinely hard to stay focused when we're being bombarded by these distractions all the time so now that we know the enemy let's figure out ways that we can fight these distractions so that they don't stop us from doing the things that actually matter to us tip number one is somewhat counterintuitive but that is to embrace welcome distractions now i draw the distinction here between welcome and unwelcome distractions an unwelcome distraction is like a notification from instagram that someone has i don't know liked my post or something that's really not adding any real value to my life and if i click on it i'm just gonna end up doom scrolling through instagram that would be an unwelcome distraction but a welcome distraction is something that i actually want to be distracting me and so what i mean is for example when i was at university studying for my med school exams i would be studying in my room but then i would leave my door open and i would have a doorstop wedged my door open at all times because i would welcome the distraction from my friends and from my med school colleagues and they'd come in and have a little bit of a chat now the yes those were distractions but they were welcome distractions like kind of the point of university yes was to pass the exam but the bigger point of university was to make friends and to have a nice time and all that kind of stuff and you know if i'd been distracted by a friend maybe i would get like 0.002 less on the exam but given that that work was not going to be the thing that makes me fail the exam i would rather be distracted by my friends or by my family or in the future hopefully if i'm working from home and i have kids i would enjoy i would welcome being distracted by the kids because that's kind of the point and the way i think about it is that you know when i'm on my deathbed in a few years time will i wish i had worked harder and been more focused or will i wish that i had had spent more time being distracted by friends and family i don't know tip number two for combating distractions is to optimize for enjoyment so you know how we talked about one of the main reasons why we get distracted is because the thing that we are being distracted from is just too boring what we want to do is try and make the thing a lot more fun like we almost never get distracted if we're having a great time watching a great film or a tv show or playing a video game or hanging out with our friends or doing something that's genuinely fun like it's very difficult to get distracted from that we tend to get distracted from the things that are boring or the things that are hard and so if we focus on optimizing for fun then we can reduce the risks of us being distracted from the thing and there's loads of ways to make whatever we're doing more fun uh one of my favorite ones involves charting progress so one of the reasons why games like video games are fun is because you get a very clear sense of progress you kill the animal the beast the boar whatever like in a non-mean way and your experience bar goes up and then you level up and then you get more skills and so applying this concept of gamifying stuff to whatever we're trying to do just genuinely makes it more fun so for example if you're studying for an exam like treating it as a points tally or like a score or like a traffic light system i've got more details on my retrospective revision timetable video which will be somewhere over there if you're trying to make progress in learning how to code or starting a business or whatever then you give yourself milestones like little milestones that you can then take off and that leads to that sort of dopamine release of yes i've accomplished something and it that makes us feel like the thing that we're doing is more fun because it actually does become more fun by the fact that we're charting our progress through it yeah a bunch of other stuff it's all going to be in the book i'm researching all this stuff these days but sign up to the mailing list to find out more uh as as details come out tip number three is to basically throw away the phone like even if we're having fun and the phone is bombarding us with notifications oh like on hinge line contender that kind of stuff it's generally very hard to stay focused even if we're like super focused and in the flow and you know having having a great time um what i normally do if i'm really struggling with a phone i just chuck it behind me onto the sofa or wherever more often than not what i'll do i just i'll just have it face down and on aeroplane mode so yeah if it's on airplane mode it's not gonna ping and if it's face down that i'm not even gonna see the screen and then when i'm taking my brakes i'll pick it up take it off airplane mode and then be like oh hello lots of notifications ignore all of them put it back down and start kind of doing the thing that actually matters to me tip number four is to control your environment now like at the moment my desk is pretty messy and it's very easy to get distracted when there is a messy desk with a load of stuff going on because as soon as the thing that i'm doing becomes boring or becomes challenging i can be like oh i wonder you know what this lens is doing on my desk or you know i'll play play with my deck of cards a little bit or i'll open that box that i haven't unboxed yet and like the more crap that i have on my desk the more likely i am to get distracted and so an easy tip for not getting distracted just to have a clean desk this is actually not very hard um i personally find it very hard to maintain a clean desk which is why i have a few months ago signed up to a wework co-working space in cambridge link in the video description if you want to check it out it's really good so i go there basically every day and it helps keep me focused because then i'm sitting at a table with only my laptop and my airpods and i have nothing on the desk to distract me whereas i get distracted all the time when i'm at home and so you know going to a library going to a coffee shop going to a co-working space going somewhere outside of your environment whereby where you're less likely to get distracted because there's no stuff all around you that is often at least i find for me a really good way of combating distraction now as a quick aside you know how we talked about that if a thing is fun you're less likely to be distracted while doing it one app that takes this to a whole new level is brilliant who are very kindly sponsoring this video if you haven't heard by now brilliant is a fantastic platform with online courses in math science and computer science and they're genuinely really fun and interactive and they teach stuff to you in a very engaging first principled kind of way where it has just the right amount of challenge and just the right amount of fun that is genuinely like it's hard to be distracted when you're doing an online course at brilliant my favorite courses on brilliant are the computer science ones and if you're interested in learning how to code they've got a fantastic introduction to algorithms and introduction to python and they've recently released a brand new course on scientific thinking which is all about how we can solve interactive puzzles using science which is a fun and b helps level up our brains if that sums up your street and you want a genuinely enjoyable learning experience then head over to brilliant.org forward slash alley and the first 200 people to use that link will get 20 off the annual premium subscription so thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this video and finally tip number five is to deliberately manage your time and there is a book called indestructible by a chap called near eol uh and then in that he's done all the research around what makes what makes things distracting and he says that often you can tell by looking at someone's calendar how prone to distraction they are because like if your calendar if you know let's say it's 11 a.m and you feel like you're getting distracted and you look at your calendar and there's nothing in the 11 a.m slot then you have nothing to do in that time slot and therefore you have nothing to be distracted from if that makes sense and so it's very easy to like pick up the phone or pick up the playstation or whatever because we don't have a default action that we're going to be doing in that time and so what nuriel says and what i completely agree with is that if you time block the things that you actually want to do earlier in the day so you know the first thing i do each morning is i set my daily highlight which is the one thing i want to get done today and then i make sure i stick in my calendar exactly when i'm going to do that thing so that when it comes to the time of doing the thing i know what it is i have to do and therefore i'm actually less likely to get distracted from it because i know what i have to do whereas it's when i have a big to-do list and i don't know what to start with or i don't have clarity or it just feels a bit vague like i don't know what i don't know where to get started that is when it becomes super easy to just get distracted by picking up the phone or turning on netflix if you found this video useful and you're interested in more tips for time management check out this video over here which is 10 other tips on how i manage my time thank you so much for watching do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already and i'll see you in the next video bye