Joe Sanok 00:00:00 Hey there, practice of the practice community. Are you ready to take your private practice to the next level? Then mark your calendars for September 16th through 19th, 2024, because Level Up week is back and bigger than ever. Insert rocket emoji here. Join us for four days of live webinars, interactive panels, and exclusive resources tailored just for counselors, therapists and private practice owners. Whether you’re looking to fill your caseload, hire your first clinician or scale your group practice, we’ve got you covered. This is your chance to level up while others give up. Don’t miss out on this game changing event. Register now at practice of the practice. Com forward slash level up and get ready to transform your practice. Remember September 16th through 19th Level up week your ticket to practice success. Register today and let’s level up together. Practice of the practice. Com forward slash level up This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sarna, accession number 1073. I’m Joe Cenac, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast, where we help you, the therapist, the counselor, the psychologist, the MFT, the social worker to build a thriving private practice you absolutely love. Joe Sanok 00:01:30 And we’re going to be doing that in just a little bit here. September 16th to 19th. We have level up week, level up week. We do this twice a year. And we are really excited to have you coming together with us. We’re going to be doing 16 webinars in four days. It’s going to be an awesome, live event online. and actually we’re going to be replacing that in the spring. we aren’t really releasing too many of the details, but, group practice boss conference is going to be in traverse City, Michigan in May of 2025, so more details about that to come. Check your emails and we’ll be talking about that on the show a little bit. Well, I am so excited today because we’re going to be talking about a topic that I just love and that’s, you know, distractibility, you know, you think about all the different things that distract us. It could be Netflix, it could be TikTok, it could be, maybe just even doing things in our life that aren’t moving the needle forward. Joe Sanok 00:02:26 And that’s why I’m so excited to have Nir with me. Nir ial is a writer. He consults and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology and business. Near previously taught as a lecturer and marketing at Stanford Graduates Business Graduate School of Business, and he’s also co-founder and sold two tech companies since 2003, and was dubbed by the MIT Technology Review as, quote, the profit of habit forming technology, and Bloomberg Businessweek wrote that Nir is the habits guy want to understand how to get app users to come back again and again. Then here is your man. He’s the author of two bestselling books, Hooked How to Build a Habit, Forming Products and Indestructible How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. And his books have resonated with readers worldwide, selling over a million copies in over 30 languages. Nir. Welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. Nir Eyal 00:03:18 Thanks so much, Joe. It’s great to be with you. Joe Sanok 00:03:20 Yeah, yeah. Well, how’d you get into habits? Nir Eyal 00:03:24 Well, it depends how far back you want to go. Nir Eyal 00:03:26 You know, I was a clinically obese child, and I remember, like, not just overweight. I was actually clinically obese. I remember my mom taking me to the doctor at a in my teen years and the doctor saying, hey, look, you’re not just overweight here in the in the orange zone. You’re not, you’re way over here in the red zone. You are clinically obese. And I remember, that food seemed to control me back then. And I was always fascinated by how, food manufacturers and marketers seem to influence my behavior. So that’s probably where the fascination started with consumer psychology, and then later on I was in. I started a couple tech companies, and many of my clients and colleagues were these kind of world changing companies like Meta and Amazon and Microsoft and, you know, Netflix. And so I kind of got a front row seat into watching how companies get us hooked. And so that was kind of the entree for how I wrote my first book, which became a class at Stanford around how to build habit forming products. Nir Eyal 00:04:28 And the idea there, was to steal the secrets of Silicon Valley so that we can use habit forming technology for good. Right. The companies I just mentioned, they don’t need my book. They they’re the ones I stole this material from, frankly, because of what I was looking for, were what were the common elements among these habit forming products so that we don’t have to just get hooked to frivolity, but rather we can use the same exact psychology that keeps us hooked on our devices for good. Like, for example, to learn a new language with an app like Duolingo, or to start exercising with an app like Fitbit, or to save money or to eat right. You know, so many things that we can do to change people’s habits with the very technology they use. If we understand the principles of consumer psychology. So that was book number one. Hooked how to build habit forming products. And then a few years after I wrote hooked, I found that I was getting hooked myself. And so this became almost a personal problem in that, you know, when I started writing and researching this topic, people would tell me, hey, you know what? These Silicon Valley guys, they just got lucky, right? Zuckerberg and Dorsey. Nir Eyal 00:05:32 Yeah. You know Bezos, they just got lucky. And I don’t hear that anymore. Because now we all know that these companies understand what makes you tick and what makes you click better than you understand yourself. And so what I found after a few years after writing hooked, is that I was starting to get distracted by my devices, and my knee jerk reaction was to blame these technologies, right? I understood how they get us hooked. I wrote the book hooked, so I certainly understood what was going on. And so my knee jerk reaction was to blame the technology as the source of distraction. But fortunately, unfortunately, I guess depending how you look at it, the more I dug into the psychology of distraction, what I actually learned is that distraction is much more interesting and much more empowering than we tend to give it credit for that. In fact, we are much more powerful than we think we are. And I think what I’m kind of fighting against is this narrative that I at first bought into, which is, oh, it’s all about the technology. Nir Eyal 00:06:28 These companies are controlling our brains, they’re addicting us. And what I really discovered is that there’s there’s much more to the story than what most people think. Joe Sanok 00:06:37 Now when we think about kind of that rest of the story, what are some of those factors that, that really are guiding our distraction. Because I think it is so easy to just say, oh man, my kid’s on TikTok all the time, or I’m on TikTok all the time or whatever. The thing is that sucking you in and, you know, it’s maybe not great for you to just blame that app. what are some of those factors that that get in the way of us just being focused and getting things done that we know we should be working on? Nir Eyal 00:07:05 Sure, sure. So let’s start 2500 years ago with the fact that Plato, the Greek philosopher, bemoaned this problem of distraction. He called it in the Greek akasha, the tendency to do things against our better interests. And so if people have been struggling with distraction for at least the past 2500 years, the real source of the problem can’t be our devices, right? Because Plato was talking about this 2500 years before the internet. Nir Eyal 00:07:29 So there must be something deeper going on. And what is in fact this this, I think, a very interesting question of why is it that we know what to do? Right? As Plato said, it’s despite our best interest. We know what to do. Who doesn’t know that if you want to get in shape, you have to eat right and exercise basically right? We know this. Who doesn’t know that? If you want to have a good relationship with your family, you have to be fully present with them. Who doesn’t know that? If you want to be successful in business, you have to do the hard work that other people don’t want to do. We all know what to do. And if you don’t know, we don’t have this excuse of not knowing because just Google it, right? Like the functionally all can figure out what to do. The problem is not that we don’t know what to do. The problem is that we don’t know how to get out of our own way. Nir Eyal 00:08:09 We don’t know how to stop getting distracted. So that’s why I say that becoming indestructible is the skill of the century. Because even though this is a problem that humankind has struggled with since time immemorial, if you are looking for distraction, it’s easier than ever to find. So I think there’s a real bifurcation happening today between people who allow their time and attention to be controlled by others and those who stand up and say no. I decide how I control my time and attention because I am indestructible. And so, so to to answer your question, it starts by understanding what is distraction. In fact, the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is, not. What is the opposite of distraction. Most people will tell you the opposite of distraction is focus. But that’s not exactly right The opposite of distraction. If you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction. They both come from the same Latin root trickery, which means to pull, and they both end in the same word. Nir Eyal 00:09:05 They both end in the word action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us. It is not that ping, ding, or ring on your phone that that distracted you, but rather it is the action that you yourself took. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do, things 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 any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your values, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become. So this isn’t just semantics. This is really important because I would argue we need to stop moralizing and medical izing how people spend their time. Why is playing video games somehow morally inferior to watching golf on TV? I don’t know why is watching TikTok. Somehow ruining people’s brains? But nobody talks about what’s happening on cable news and the terrible partisan influence that’s creating in our society. Nir Eyal 00:10:05 Right? There are people we call news junkies. We used to, at least in my generation now, we only think that only the new things that we’re around, you know, that are been invented recently. That’s the new evil technology. It’s a classic moral panic, where in fact there are all kinds of distractions out there. Because if you decide that whatever you do with your time, as long as you plan to do it in advance, as Dorothy Parker said, the time you plan to waste is not waste of time. So if you want to go on social media, if you want to watch Netflix, if you want to, whatever it is you want to do is fine, as long as it’s done on your schedule and according to your values and not someone else’s. Certainly not some media companies. Conversely, just because something is a work related task doesn’t mean it’s not a distraction. Let me give you a great example. For years before I wrote this book, I would sit down on my desk and I would say, okay, I’m going to get to work now. Nir Eyal 00:10:58 Nothing’s going to get in my way. I’m not going to get distracted. I’m going to work on that big project. Here I go. I’m going to get started right now. But first let me check a few emails, right? How many times does that happen to us? And we justify it thinking, well, I got to check email sometime today. I’m being productive. It’s okay if that big important project can wait a few minutes because, you know, email is part of my job, right? Well, if it’s not what you plan to do in advance, it is just as much of a distraction as, you know, watching YouTube or doing whatever else might distract you because it’s not what you said you were going to do. So just because it’s a work related task doesn’t mean it’s not a distraction. So now we’ve got traction and we’ve got distraction. Now, what prompts us to take these actions here? We have our triggers. We have two kinds of triggers. We have external triggers and we have internal triggers. Nir Eyal 00:11:44 External triggers are the usual suspects the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment that can lead us off track. Now, this can also be our boss, our kids, our colleagues, anything in our outside environment that leads us towards traction or distraction. Now, studies find that external triggers are only 10% of our distractions 10%. So 10% of the time you check your phone, is it because of a ping, ding or ring? So what’s the other 90%? It turns out that 90% of the time that we check our devices, it’s not because of an external trigger, it’s because of an internal trigger. What is an internal trigger? This will be very familiar to your audience. An internal trigger is an uncomfortable emotional state. And so it’s it’s the boredom. It’s the loneliness. It’s the fatigue. It’s the uncertainty, the anxiety that is the source of 90% of our distractions. So the the big takeaway here when it comes to distraction is that distraction is not a moral failing. Nir Eyal 00:12:39 It’s not a character flaw. It’s not even. And I know I’m going to ruffle some feathers. For the vast majority of people, it’s not even a medical a medicalized diagnosis, right? The vast majority of people out there do not have ADHD or some other attention deficit disorder. It’s it’s not that for the vast majority of people, it’s simply that we haven’t learned the skill to deal with discomfort in a way that leads us towards traction rather than trying to escape it with distraction. And so step number one has to be master the internal triggers or they will become your master. And unfortunately, we’re not teaching people the skills, we’re just giving them pills. Unfortunately, by, you know, not everywhere, of course, but in large part, you know, the burdens on many clinicians are such that they don’t have time to teach these skills. And so that’s exactly what I’m trying to change. So many. The book was not written for people with ADHD specifically, but hundreds of counselors around the world use indestructible as the first course of treatment, so to speak, the non-pharmaceutical intervention to help people build skills before they start taking pills. Joe Sanok 00:13:45 man, I love that. Joe Sanok 00:13:46 I think what I, what I like about it is that normalizing of choosing what you’re going to do. I try with my schedule, to put in everything I’m doing in the day. And if I know I have a presentation in a month, then to put in work on that presentation for an hour, you know, two weeks before, three weeks before that. When I look at my week, I really know what’s happening. And that intentionality, even around recreation time and and even talking about being a news junkie, you know, can be the same level as being sucked into TikTok or video games and being intentional or not. Not intentional in those areas. Now, when you think about skills, I especially want to dig into that feeling of discomfort because I think that’s something that you’re just, just yesterday, my partner and I, we went out for a date, without the kids, and we went to this place that we love, that it’s on a farm, and they grow 90% of their food right there. Joe Sanok 00:14:43 And it’s just like this cool, fun place. For whatever reason, that night, a third of the people there were kids. And, you know, I have kids, but my kids weren’t with me. And it’s like, we’re doing this super nice date night and there’s like kids running everywhere. And we got in this discussion around how much has shifted between, you know, Gen X, millennials and the current kids, how, you know, it’s like when we watched TV as kids, it was whatever was on, that we didn’t have a curated playlist. You know, we had to listen on the radio for 20 songs to hear the song we wanted to hear. And so there was a certain patience and, and, just putting up with the world that now the world around a lot of these kids, my kids included, is so curated. So as a dad and someone that, you know, often, you know, I have friends that have kids, you know, I know a lot of our listeners are working with kids. Joe Sanok 00:15:31 When you specifically think about kids and building that discomfort or that ability to handle those internal feelings, I’d love to start there. We can go into kind of regular business professionals. but just as a dad, I’m like, I got to selfishly ask this question of nir around what what techniques I can build with my own daughters Yeah. Nir Eyal 00:15:51 Yeah. So so this is actually, I think, the most important chapter of the book because it deals with the next generation. And, and, you know, I’m a dad, I’m a father of a 16 year old girl, wonderful girl. And, you know, so, so I understand this challenge, very, personally, and I think, by and large, we have it all wrong that we blame the devices. Just so I’m clear, by the way, on your question, you’re asking, how do we help our kids become indestructible? Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Great. So that’s exactly the title of the chapter in the book on how do we help our kids become indestructible. Nir Eyal 00:16:25 That’s exactly right. How to raise indestructible kids. And so I think we see the symptom and not the root cause. We see the proximal cause, not the real source of the problem. The proximal cause is my kids always on their device. But why? Why are they using their devices so much? And I think to answer that question we need to look at the again, this is not going to be a surprise to your audience, but for the layperson has never heard of self-determination theory and self-determination theory. Just as a quick refresher, the most widely studied and most widely understood theory of human motivation and flourishing, which says that all human beings need these three what I call psychological nutrients, if you will. Just like our bodies need carbohydrates, fat, and protein, our minds need autonomy, mastery and relatedness. We all need these three things in order for psychological flourishing. And when we look at our children, this this generation is starved of these three psychological nutrients. And so what happens if you are not getting what you need nutritionally for your body, for your mind in one place, you look for it somewhere else. Nir Eyal 00:17:28 And so this is called the needs displacement hypothesis. This is exactly what’s happening. So when you look at competency for example, one thing that happened around 2008, well, two things happened in 2008. One is the Apple iPhone came out. Another thing was that we had this No Child Left Behind act in the United States, which which dictated that in many areas that the federal funding would be tied to standardized testing for children. And we saw this massive shift away from time spent doing, activities that were paramount to childhood, like free play, etc., and and now starting this curriculum of teaching towards the test and federal funds were tied to test results. And so we have a generation of kids, that are constantly assessed, that are constantly told you’re not good enough, that you constantly need to meet this bar on some standardized test. And so what does that do to our sense of competency? If you are constantly told you’re not good enough, you, that doesn’t feel good. We all need to feel the sense of competency according to self-determination theory. Nir Eyal 00:18:32 So if you don’t feel that offline, guess what? There are companies out there that are happy to give you that feeling online. And so when they go to, you know, to, to, World of Warcraft or mine, or Roblox or any number of other games out there they’re happy to have this feeling of competency. Now let’s talk about autonomy. We all know that autonomy is one of these core psychological nutrients. We need this sense of freedom in our lives. Well, this is the most scheduled generation in history, right? There are only two places in society that you can tell people how to dress, where to go, what to think, who to associate with and what to eat. And that’s school and prison. And so is it any surprise that when our kids come home from being told what to do all day, they want freedom, they want autonomy. You know, us as adults, have you ever tried living a life of following all the rules that our kids need to follow? It’s miserable. Nir Eyal 00:19:28 You couldn’t do it. It’s really tough being told what to do all day. And so where do they go again? If they don’t get their needs met offline? They go online. They go play games where they feel like God, they feel in control. That’s what they’re so desperately in need of. And then finally, relatedness. We know that relatedness is absolutely critical for psychological well-being. If you look at the work of Doctor Peter Gray. He’s done these amazing studies where he shows that this generation has less time for free play than ever before. You know, when we were kids, the neighborhoods across the country were filled with the sound of kids playing off, kids having fun. And you know what? You don’t hear that anymore. Kids are trapped indoors or, well, partially, they’re trapped indoors because the media has told us that kids are are in danger all the time, right? Stranger danger. If you look at the statistics, that’s absolutely false. This is the safest time to be a child in America. Nir Eyal 00:20:18 Or if you have the money, we’ve hyper scheduled our kids to the extent what they’re, you know, they’re going to their test prep lessons and the Mandarin lessons and the swimming lessons. And so they have no time to be kids. And so that takes a severe psychological toll. So so, you know, we need to bring back that time for free play. And unfortunately we just don’t have enough of it these days. And so again where do kids go? You know when when a kid plays Fortnite. Fortnite isn’t a video game. Anybody who’s actually played Fortnite, you’ll figure out it’s not a video game. It’s a place to hang out with your friends. That’s what they’re doing with these games. And so we have to understand the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is not just the device that’s the proximal cause, the root cause. The problem is that kids don’t get enough of these psychological nutrients of as, as stated by self-determination theory. So that tackles the internal trigger part. Nir Eyal 00:21:09 Now, there’s other things of course, as well that we can do for our kids. So just to get down in the weeds in terms of okay, practical application, step number one, kids and adults, is to master internal triggers, which we talked about. Step number two is to make time for traction. So scheduling the time for distraction. This this takes parents by surprise. This is this kind of overturns some Apple cards. One of the best things we can do for our kids is to schedule that time for what we would previously call a distraction. Remember, if you plan for it, if you do it with intent, you turn it into traction rather than distraction. So this has two big benefits. Number one, you can involve the child. You can give the child autonomy. And we did this with my daughter when she was only six years old. You can have a conversation around, hey, how much time do you want for this device, for this video game, for whatever it is that that was a previous distraction. Nir Eyal 00:22:01 And involve them. Give them autonomy, give them some control to decide how much is good for them. You’d be surprised they don’t want to spend all day on these devices. It seems like they will, because why? Because this has to do with the second point. They’re constantly thinking about it. When can I play, when can I play, when can I play? And so for adults and for kids, by scheduling the time for social media or video games or whatever it is you want to do now, your brain doesn’t have to constantly ask itself, when can I play? When can I do it? Why can I do it? You know when you’ll do it, it’s in your calendar. So that’s step number two. Make time for traction. Step number three hacking back external triggers. This advice is good for adults and for kids. Anything that interrupts sleep does not have a place in the bedroom okay. That includes our devices. That includes televisions. How many of us sleep with a television set in the bedroom. Nir Eyal 00:22:48 Big mistake. Anything that lights up, that makes noise, that associates entertainment and excitement in the bedroom should not be there, right? So phones, radios, televisions, computers, all that stuff needs to be put outside the bedroom for children. And I think personally for adults as well. So that’s removing the external triggers I’m giving, by the way, a very, very short synopsis. There’s a lot more than just these techniques I’m giving you. And then finally, the fourth step preventing distraction with pacts. And the good news here is that there are myriad tools that any of us can use. Most of them are absolutely free technologies, many of them built into our phones already that help us block out distracting technology. So one app that my daughter uses, I use as well is called Forest and Forces. This beautiful little app is very simple. You open up the app, you dial in how much time you want to do focused work for, and when you hit one button, a cute little virtual trees planted on your screen. Nir Eyal 00:23:42 Now, if you pick up your phone and do anything with it during that time when you said you were going to do focused work, that cute little virtual tree gets chopped down. So it’s just enough of a reminder. It’s a pact. You made a promise to yourself. No, no, no, that’s not what I want to do right now. And so as the last line of defense, it’s a firewall against distraction. So the point here is, if you do one thing in each of these four areas, this is this begins the path to becoming an abstraction. I’ll say one more thing that applies to parents. It applies to managers. Right. How many people, are working in practices where they are a manager and maybe they’re struggling with distraction. Maybe their employees are distracted and not focusing on what’s important. The most important thing I should have said this earlier, the most important thing is to set a good example. If you want to raise indestructible kids, you have to be an indestructible parent. Nir Eyal 00:24:33 I can’t tell you how many parents I’ve talked to over the past decade dealing with this, this question, who are telling me, you know, my kid’s always on TikTok, they’re always on Fortnite, and they’re they won’t get off their devices. And meanwhile as they’re telling me this, they’re checking email on their phone. Our kids. I don’t know if you know this with your kids, that all children are born with these invisible antennae. This is called the hypocrisy detection device. No, I’m kidding here, of course, but you know what I’m talking about. They have these little invisible antenna where they’re always scanning to see when you screw up. And so we cannot be hypocrites. We have to raise indestructible kids. Now, that doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. In fact, I advise parents to be a little vulnerable, to tell parents or to tell their children. Look, I’m struggling with this as well. We don’t scare them. I think a lot of parents say, oh, devices are bad for you. Nir Eyal 00:25:19 They’re melting your brain. They’re not going to buy that. And frankly, we don’t want to scare them because the jobs of the future require them to be comfortable with technology. So we want to show them, hey, look, I’m struggling with this as well. Let’s do this together. We can all become indestructible. Joe Sanok 00:25:33 Man, so much great advice. definitely going to check out that app forest. with my kids It’s never too early to start thinking about tax season. That’s why I’ve partnered with my friends over at herd. Herd serves as the financial back office built specifically for therapists in private practice. They’re an all in one financial solution that combines software with human support to handle bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, and more. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or in your first year of your practice, Hurd will identify growth areas and streamline best financial practices for your business when you sign up with Hurd. You’ll connect to your bank accounts so your transactions will be automatically pulled in and categorized. My favorite thing about Hurd is their allocation guide, which helps you decide how much to pay yourself each month and how much to set aside for taxes. Joe Sanok 00:26:37 You’ll also receive financial insights such as profit and loss statements and monthly reports. You can say goodbye to poring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments. Focus on your clients and heard will take care of the rest. Sign up for a free consultation today at Join heard. Com forward slash Joe and get one month free with promo code Joe. Again that’s join heard.com/joe. Now you you train entrepreneurs you taught at Stanford all these things. we’ve got a ton of entrepreneurs listening. let’s take it home for them. what are some things that business leaders need to do to have less distractions? Focus on what matters most, even determine where they should be spending their time. what advice do we have for them? Nir Eyal 00:27:30 Yeah. So so the the big picture are the four strategies. So a lot of people want tactics, right. Tell me the the magic bullet. What do I do? You know, what’s the app I need to install. What’s what’s the what’s the secret formula? And the secret formula is that you have to. Nir Eyal 00:27:43 You have to understand the strategy before you do the tactics. Tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it. So if you understand these four basic strategies, number one, master internal triggers, that’s that’s to me what was most important when I finally understood why I was looking for distraction. And when we study high performance, when you look at people top of their game, entrepreneurs, athletes, people in the arts, it doesn’t matter what field. These people have the same exact trauma as the rest of us. They have the same exact internal triggers, sometimes much worse. Actually. If you look at many of the people who are very accomplished in their fields, they also have all kinds of crazy psychological baggage that they’re carrying around. The difference is that they have used those internal triggers. They still feel bored and lonely and lost and uncertain, just like the rest of us. They’re just like us, except for the fact that they deal with that discomfort in a healthy way that propels them forward, like rocket fuel towards traction rather than what too many people do, which is trying to escape that distraction. Nir Eyal 00:28:44 I don’t like this feeling of boredom. let me click something or scroll something or drink something or smoke something because I can’t deal with the feeling. And so that is step one. We need tools in our toolkit ready to go so that when we feel this ugly distraction urge, bubbling up, we know what to do with it. We have a toolkit in place, and I give over a dozen different things that you can do, from acceptance and commitment therapy to CBT, all kinds of different techniques that I’ve plucked from these, these very various pedagogies so that everyone has this toolkit ready to go whenever they feel the urge towards distraction. That is the most important step. Step number two make time for traction, meaning you have to turn your values into time. You have to turn your values into time. There’s only two ways to understand what someone’s values really are. It’s not what they say. People will blab on about all kinds of things. It’s not what they say, it’s how they spend their money and how they spend their time. Nir Eyal 00:29:38 That’s how you figure out what your values are. And so we have to turn our values into time by consciously sitting down and asking ourselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time? And so I give this framework around these three life domains that you can use with your clients. You can do for yourself to figure out, hey, is the way I’m spending my time tomorrow, the way the person I would want to become would spend their time, and I don’t. I’m not a big fan of these vision boards and long term plans and all that. Let’s start with tomorrow. Right? How do you want to spend your time tomorrow? And then that starts to expand out. You can do that for about a week. 80% of the people I work with find that about a week’s time, is the right amount of time to plan out. And the idea here is that you’re planning out what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. This is called setting an implementation intention, just a fancy way of saying that you’re planning out what you’re going to do. Nir Eyal 00:30:27 And this is the most widely studied, most powerful time management technique out there, by the way. It eats to do lists for breakfast, to do lists are awful for most people’s productivity, a much better technique. And there’s all kinds of reasons why I go into the book about why to do lists are pretty bad for your productivity and not very well researched, whereas making a time box calendar is a game changer. Then step three. Joe Sanok 00:30:51 I want to pause it right there. you know, I as well hate to do lists. I frame it as I have a to become list and looking at those actions that lead into what I want to become. So, for example, a year ago I wanted to dive more into real estate investing. And, you know, I already had an Airbnb. And so it’s like to become that, I need to learn more than what I knew a year ago. And so then saying, if I’m going to go on TikTok, which I do find fun, I’m going to look at real estate people talking about stuff and how they think about things and like, okay, there’s these loans that I’ve never heard of. Joe Sanok 00:31:24 There’s these ways of investing and finding investors like these things that I just didn’t know. And so I love that you also push back on to do lists, because to me, it’s similar to when someone opens their email and they think that all emails are equal. But if I have a podcast sponsor that’s going to drop 50 or 100 K, that email needs more attention than someone that’s just like, hey, I can’t find this podcast on your website, you know? So it’s like that same idea of like, to do list just makes things feel equal when really they’re not. Nir Eyal 00:31:50 That’s so true. That is one of the biggest problems with to do list is that they have no constraints. You can always add more to your to do list. Now I’m not rallying against getting things out of your brain and putting them on a piece of paper in an app. That’s a wonderful idea. What I’m advising against is if you run your life based on this list of things to do, if that’s how you wake up in the morning, you look at your list of tattoos you’ve already lost. Nir Eyal 00:32:12 Why? Because when people look at that to do list, this infinite list of things that they want to have done, they don’t really feel like doing, but they want to have done, do they do the important stuff? No. Do they do the stuff that’s going to move their life and career forward? No. They do the easy stuff. They do the urgent stuff, and so they constantly get distracted from what really matters. So it’s okay to take these things out of your brain and put them on a piece of paper. But that’s step one. You have to then make time for them, because one of the worst things about to do list is what it does to our self-image. You know, I would get home from work and I would look at this to do list of all these things I still hadn’t done after I’d been working my butt off all day long, and all these things I still hadn’t accomplished at the end of the day. And so what does that do to your self-image? If day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you still didn’t do what you said you were going to do every day? Loser. Nir Eyal 00:33:03 And so I thought I was broken. I thought there was something wrong with me. There was nothing wrong with me. It’s this stupid time management technique we can’t be using that’s wrong. Whereas time boxing forces you to have a constraint, it forces you to say, well, I only have 24 hours in the day. How am I going to spend it? More time with my kids means less time with TV. More time at work means less times in the gym. It forces you to make this trade off, which when you decide what you’re going to do now, you can finally be one of these few people in the world who enjoys the bliss. I mean, I’m telling you, I think it’s it’s ecstasy. It’s one of the best feelings when you live your life according to how you said you were going to spend your time. So few people have experienced it and you got to try it because it is a complete game changer. Joe Sanok 00:33:45 Well, I’m going to let us go over a little bit, in our time, we’ve got two more steps left, number three and four. Joe Sanok 00:33:52 can we go through those and then, land the plane? Nir Eyal 00:33:55 Sure, sure. So, so super quick. step number three. Hacking back external triggers. That’s where we do the kindergarten stuff I play. I spent about a page in the book talking about hacking back your phone, hacking back your computer. It’s very easy. I can teach anyone how to make their phone a computer indestructible in about five minutes. The much deeper source of these external triggers that leads to much more distraction are stupid meetings that didn’t need to be called or attended, emails that didn’t need to be sent or received. Right. That’s where we go into the nitty gritty. Our kids, our kids. We love them to death, but they can also be a huge source of distraction. So I go into these, I think, deeper and more important external triggers than just, you know, stop checking your phone. You know, that’s not very helpful. so I went into these other external triggers and show people, step by step how to hack back each and every one of these external triggers, and then finally preventing distraction with pacts. Nir Eyal 00:34:46 And so this is where we use identity packs, price packs, effort packs, all of these pre-commitment devices that we can use as the last line of defense, the firewall against distraction if you will. Joe Sanok 00:34:59 So awesome. Well clearly reading your book and digging in I can see why therapists are using this with their clients. I can see why entrepreneurs find it so valuable. near the final question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? Nir Eyal 00:35:15 So the message I’d love to convey, because practitioners work with their clients in such an impactful way, the message I would like to convey to them, and them to hopefully convey to others, is kind of what I learned in the five years it took me to write this book. By the way, it took me five years because I kept getting distracted. It wasn’t until these techniques for myself that I could actually finish this book. and it’s changed my life, by the way I’ve never been in better shape in my life. Nir Eyal 00:35:40 I’ve never been more productive at work. I’ve never had a better relationship with my family because I simply do what I say I’m going to do. So the the big takeaway if you want it to summarize my work in, on this topic of distraction, it’s this that the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. I’ll say it again. The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. Meaning if you leave it to the last minute, you will lose, right? If you’re on a diet and you’re trying to take that piece of, you’ve got that piece of chocolate cake and it’s on the fork on the way to your mouth, you’re going to eat it. It’s too late if you’re trying to quit smoking, but the cigarettes in your hand, it’s too late. You’re going to smoke it. If you sleep next to your cell phone every night, it’s going to be the first thing you reach for in the morning before you even say hello to your loved one. It’s too late. You’ve already lost, but there is no distraction we can’t overcome as long as we plan ahead. Nir Eyal 00:36:30 Because the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. distraction is not a character flaw. It’s not a moral failing. It’s simply an impulse control issue. But once we learn how to control those impulses and we take steps today, there is no distraction we can’t overcome tomorrow. Joe Sanok 00:36:47 So awesome. Joe Sanok 00:36:48 Well, if you, if people want to connect with you, if they want to get your book, all of that, where should we send them? Nir Eyal 00:36:57 Absolutely. Yeah. So my website is near and far, but near a spelt like my first name. So that’s near and far.com. And the book is titled Indestructible How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Joe Sanok 00:37:10 Near this has been awesome. Thank you so much for being on the practice of the Practice podcast. Nir Eyal 00:37:14 My pleasure Joe, thanks for having me. Joe Sanok 00:37:24 You know, I think it’s so interesting. You know, when we think about creating the life that we want because there is this, over optimization of our lives that can happen. And I love what Hunter talked about being intentional and thinking through like, yeah, if you want to watch Netflix, like make sure that’s something you want to do instead of just defaulting to it. Joe Sanok 00:37:45 I think that that’s the big takeaway for me is just don’t default to things. Start to evaluate, you know, what are the things that you really want to do. I remember one of the first classes that I taught a required reading for the class was, first things first. And, it’s a book that kind of says, you know, figure out those big things first, in your schedule, even look for ways to overlap. So, for example, if you want to exercise and you want to spend time with your family, try to find ways to do both those things, like go for a walk as a family, you know, a certain number of times a week. and just that idea of being intentional and similar to the book, the one thing I love that is just like, what’s the one thing that if you keep doing that, and you achieve it in your business, it’s going to make everything else easier or not needed non-existent. and so sitting back and allowing myself, you know, my one of my takeaways too, is allowing myself to evaluate those internal triggers. Joe Sanok 00:38:40 So when I reach for my phone when I am eating lunch, how do I want that lunch to be? Do I want that lunch to just be quiet and meditative? Do I want to catch up on the news? Is that something that fills me up? If so, why? so, so really being just more and more intentional with my time, you know, talking about being intentional with your time. You shouldn’t be doing your own accounting at all. if you DIY that, you’re going to screw something up. I did that for years, and I when I finally met with an accountant, they’re like, if we had switched you over to an S Corp and did all these things, we’d have saved you. I think the first year was 15 grand. that it saved me by me just doing it on my own, that I had been losing every year. it’s like relying on a self-help book instead of getting therapy. there’s a reason accountants go through tons of schooling and exams like people at third do and heard is my go to referral for therapists that need bookkeeping, tax prep, payroll and all that financial back end stuff. Joe Sanok 00:39:38 Make sure you reach out to them. We’re getting closer to the end of the year. so now is the time to make sure that you have a good accountant that can look at all the year end tax planning. just head on over to join. Heard that’s heared join heard com slash Joe and they’ve got some promos for you when you use promo code Joe at checkout. So make sure you join her com forward slash Joe to go get that tax stuff in order. I know a lot of you maybe I haven’t been thinking about that. So thank you so much for letting me enter your ears into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silences Sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.