I love sweets, I love social media, and I love television. However, as much as I love these things, they don’t love me back. Overeating a sugary indulgence after a meal, spending too much time scrolling a feed, or indulging in a Netflix binge until 2 am were all things I once did with little or no conscious thought—out of habit.
Just as eating too much junk food leads to health problems, the overuse of devices can also have negative consequences. For me, it was the way I prioritized distractions over the most important people in my life. Worst of all was what I let distractions do to my relationship with my daughter. She’s our only child and, to my wife and me, the most amazing kid in the world.
One particular day, the two of us were playing games from an activity book designed to bring dads and daughters closer together. The first activity involved naming each other’s favorite things. The next project was building a paper airplane with one of the pages. The third was a question we both had to answer: “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”
I wish I could tell you what my daughter said at that moment, but I can’t. I have no idea because I wasn’t really there. I was physically in the room, but my mind was elsewhere. “Daddy,” she said, “what would your superpower be?”
“Huh?” I grunted. “Just a second. I just need to respond to this one thing.” I dismissed her as I attended to something on my phone. My eyes were still glued to my screen, fingers tapping away at something that seemed important at the time but could definitely have waited. She went quiet. By the time I looked up, she was gone.
I had just blown a magical moment with my daughter because something on my phone had grabbed my attention. On its own, it was no big deal. But if I told you this was an isolated incident, I’d be lying. This same scene had played out countless times before.
I wasn’t the only one putting distractions before people. An early reader of this book told me that when he asked his eight-year-old daughter what her superpower would be, she said she wanted to talk to animals. When asked why, the child said, “So that I have someone to talk to when you and mom are too busy working on your computers.”
After finding my daughter and apologizing, I decided it was time for a change. At first, I went extreme. Convinced it was all technology’s fault, I tried a “digital detox.” I started using an old-school flip phone so I couldn’t be tempted to use email, Instagram, and Twitter. But I found it too difficult to get around without GPS and the addresses saved inside my calendar app. I missed listening to audiobooks while I walked, as well as all the other handy things my smartphone could do.
To avoid wasting time reading too many news articles online, I purchased a subscription to the print edition of a newspaper. A few weeks later, I had a stack of unread papers piled neatly next to me as I watched the news on TV.
In an attempt to stay focused while writing, I bought a 1990s word processor without an internet connection. However, whenever I’d sit down to write, I’d find myself glancing at the bookshelf and would soon start flipping through books unrelated to my work. Somehow, I kept getting distracted, even without the tech that I thought was the source of the problem.
Removing online technology didn’t work. I’d just replaced one distraction with another.
I discovered that living the life we want requires not only doing the right things; it also requires we stop doing the wrong things that take us off track. We all know eating cake is worse for our waistlines than having a healthy salad. We agree that aimlessly scrolling our social media feeds is not as enriching as spending time with real friends in real life. We understand that if we want to be more productive at work, we need to stop wasting time and actually do the work. We already know what to do. What we don’t know is how to stop getting distracted.
In researching and writing this book over the past five years, and by following the science-backed methods you’ll soon learn, I’m now more productive, physically and mentally stronger, better rested, and more fulfilled in my relationships than I’ve ever been. This book is about what I learned as I developed the most important skill for the twenty-first century. It’s about how I became indistractable, and how you can too.
The first step is to recognize that distraction starts from within. In part one, you’ll learn practical ways to identify and manage the psychological discomfort that leads us off track. However, I steer clear of recommending well-worn techniques like mindfulness and meditation. While these methods can be effective for some people, they have already been written about ad nauseam. If you’re reading this book, my guess is you’ve already tried those techniques and, like me, found they didn’t quite do the trick for you. Instead, we’ll take a fresh look at what really motivates our behavior and learn why time management is pain management. We’ll also explore how to make just about any task enjoyable—not in the Mary Poppins way of “adding a spoonful of sugar,” but by cultivating the ability to focus intensely on what we’re doing.
Part two will look at the importance of making time for the things you really want to do. You’ll learn why you can’t call something a “distraction” unless you know what it is distracting you from. You’ll learn to plan your time with intention, even if you choose to spend it scrolling through celebrity headlines or reading a steamy romance novel. After all, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time.
Part three follows with a no-holds-barred examination of the unwanted external triggers that hamper our productivity and diminish our well-being. While technology companies use cues like the pings and dings on our phones to hack our behavior, external triggers are not confined to our digital devices. They’re all around us—from cookies beckoning when we open the kitchen cabinet to a chatty coworker keeping us from finishing a time-sensitive project.
Part four holds the last key to making you indistractable: pacts. While removing external triggers is helpful in keeping distractions out, pacts are a proven way of reining ourselves in, ensuring we do what we say we’re going to do. In this part, we’ll apply the ancient practice of precommitment to modern challenges.
Finally, we’ll take an in-depth look at how to make your workplace indistractable, raise indistractable kids, and foster indistractable relationships. These final chapters will show you how to regain lost productivity at work, have more satisfying relationships with your friends and family, and even be a better lover—all by conquering distraction.
You’re welcome to navigate the four steps to becoming indistractable however you like, but I recommend you proceed in order through parts one to four. The four modalities build on each other, with the first step being the most foundational.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to learn by example, and you want to see these tactics in action first, feel free to read parts five and on, then come back through the first four parts for a deeper explanation. Also, there’s no requirement to adopt each and every technique right away. Some might not fit your current situation and only become useful in the future when you’re ready or your circumstances change. But I promise you that by the time you finish this book, you will discover several breakthroughs that will change the way you manage distraction forever.
Imagine the incredible power of following through on your intentions. How much more effective would you be at work? How much more time could you spend with your family or doing the things you love? How much happier would you be?
What would life be like if your superpower was being indistractable?
REMEMBER THIS
• We need to learn how to avoid distraction. Living the lives we want not only requires doing the right things but also necessitates not doing the things we know we’ll regret.
• The problem is deeper than tech. Being indistractable isn’t about being a Luddite. It’s about understanding the real reasons why we do things against our best interests.
• Here’s what it takes: We can be indistractable by learning and adopting four key strategies.