Indistractable by Nir Eyal is a self-help book on distraction, the reasons behind our impulsive behaviours and their costly consequences. Recommended to professionals and parents looking for strategies to better manage their time and focus.
Short Review
Author: Nir Eyal
Genre: Self-help
Year Published: 2019
Review Date: 2025/02
Rating: 4 stars
Recommended: Yes
Writing Style: Persuasive, explanatory, practical
Why Read This Book
When facing self-doubt, we may not be able to control the outcome, but we can control the time we put into a task.
This book talks about why we behave the way we do and the importance of planning ahead to help ourselves. Here, Eyal offers practical ways to overcome our internal and external triggers of daily distractions.
Five Key Takeaways
The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.
Success is measured by whether you did what you planned to do. Eyal suggests using timeboxing as a method to help one gain traction — in essence, you decide what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it.
Time Management = Pain Management
Distraction is the brain’s way of handling pain and discomfort. To effectively manage time, we must first learn to deal with the internal stress, boredom, anxiety, fatigue or hunger that drives us to distraction; to escape from answering the tough questions.
Stop doing the wrong things.
Living the life we want requires not only doing the right things, it also requires that we stop doing the wrong things that take us off-track.
‘Urge surfing’, ‘leaves on the stream’, ‘creating an imaginary playground’ and ‘pre-commitment’ are mental-skill building exercises to help us act more mindfully.
Willpower acts like an emotion.
Willpower ebbs and flows based on what’s happening to us and how we feel. Just like how we don’t run out of joy or anger. Willpower is mental energy that acts like an emotion. It has the ability to delay gratification, resist short-term temptations to meet long-term goals. It also has the capacity to override unwanted thought, feeling or impulse.
Behaviour = Motivation + Ability + Trigger
Motivation is having a motive for action. Every now and then, we face a lack of motivation due to feeling defeat. According to Eyal, the lack of motivation is temporary. Instead of rewards and breaks, sometimes all we need is a reminder to self that “I am on my way,” and “this is what it’s like getting better at something.