Wish to focus better and be more productive? This Indistractable Book Review is just for you. So how can this book really help us avoid distractions?
Read more to find out whether you could really become Indistractable and get a taste of some of the contents of Indistractable.
But I have to warn you that this time I wasn’t summing up throughout the whole book, rather just listened to it, nonstop, almost without stopping for clarification. Maybe except for Parts 5, 6, 7 which I passed through again.
Chapter 1: What’s your superpower?
Chapter 2: Being indistractable
Chapter 3: What motivates us, really?
Chapter 4: Time Management is Pain Management
Chapter 5: Deal with distraction from within.
Chapter 6: Re-emagine the Internal trigger
Chapter 7: Re-emagine the task
Chapter 8: Re-emagine your temperament
Chapter 9: Turn your values into time
Chapter 10: Control the inputs not the outcomes
Chapter 11: Schedule important relationships
Chapter 12: Sync with stakeholders at work
Chapter 13: Ask the critical question
Chapter 14: Hack back work interruptions
Chapter 15: Hack back e-mail
Chapter 16: Hack back group chat
Chapter 17: Hack back meetings
Chapter 18: Hack back your smartphone
Chapter 19: Hack back your desktop
Chapter 20: Hack back online articles
Chapter 21: Hack back feeds
Chapter 22: The power of pre-commitments
Chapter 23: Prevent distraction with effort pacts
Chapter 24: Prevent distraction with price pacts
Chapter 25: Prevent distraction with identity pacts
Chapter 26: Distraction is a sign of disfunction
Chapter 27: Fixing distraction is a test of company culture
Chapter 28: The indistractable workplace
Chapter 29: Avoid convenient excuses
Chapter 30: Understand their internal triggers
Chapter 31: Make time for traction together
Chapter 32: Help them with external triggers
Chapter 33: Teach them to make their own pacts
Chapter 34: Spread social antibodies among friends.
Chapter 35: Be an indistractable lover.
Choice Process
Length and Subject
Was looking for a 5 hour book on self improvement again, and found another list of self improvement books, this time on Mark Manson’s blog. ( The author of The subtle art of not giving a f*ck, the book that I reviewed the latest )
Importance of Focus
Focus is a trait many of the greats possess as I’ve figured while reading ” 6 biographies by J.R. MacGregor ” which Immediately pulled me toward Indistractable. I’ve actually been paying more attention to maintaining my focus recently anyway, and so, seeing Indistractable came in the right time and spot.
Credibility of Author
Those factors as of themselves were good enough, but in addition I also was aware of the fact that Nir is a behavioral scientist, as I have listened to his book Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products, and this made him credible to write such a book for me! ( It’s just a bonus that he was born 20 minutes drive from where I live 😉 )
Reviews
After Knowing those facts, Indistractable was pretty much sold from my point of view, but I still read a few reviews, some of them on audible were actually screaming that this is a bad book because there is nothing new in this book, just meditation etc. which got me thinking a little bit.
Suggested by Mark Manson
So I went back to Mark’s blog to make sure that he suggests Indistractable, and indeed he did, so that sealed the deal for me.
The 4 steps to becoming (individually) Indistractable according to the Book
First 4 chapters explain what you should do individually to become Indistractable, while 5, 6, 7 explain what you could do to make your surrounding environments Indistractable.
Fighting internal triggers
Distractions come in two forms. One is internal, which means that we ourselves induce ourselves to look for distractions. Meaning, no external source prompted us to do so. For example, when we decide to check our mail in the middle of a task without any notifications prompting us to do so, or when we decide to eat longer rather than do what we want. The main cause for this according to Nir, is that we need to deal with some stressful task or have some problem, and we try to avoid it and therefor look for something to distract us from it, so that we could forget it and the feeling it causes us.
Creating Traction
Comes after internal triggers, critical in order not to get distracted
After you understood what Internal triggers are, and now aware that you won’t stand in your own way, it’s time to get to some traction.
According to Nir, you cannot be distracted if you haven’t been making traction in the first place.
What is Traction?
One can create traction by planning his time and having certain goals and schedule.
If you don’t know what you wanted to do with your time in the first place, then you are not distracted, as you haven’t been working towards anything in the first place. And so, it sort of fits your goals to be floating around , jumping from one thing to the next.
This is the reason that the book is named indistractable – in-dis-tractable
Great weekly schedule software provided
I have used one of the weekly templates he provides in the resources of the book to create a first zero-place schedule ( Apart from Saturday evening, left it blank 😀 ) and am going to try it soon, feels exciting already and sounds like a great Idea. Stephen Covey (The author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) provided a different schedule which was a bit difficult to understand, and I didn’t hold to it for long (though Covey provided a technique that helps remember all your tasks for the week), but I think this one might just be it! With a little trial and error.
Hacking back External Triggers
What are External Triggers?
Apart from ourselves distracting ourselves there is the second part of distractions that comes from the outside, which we did not plan, those are for example: A co-worker that calls us to chat, a phone call, the tons of buzzing and notifications that we receive on our phone, the feed on Facebook and in other social platforms that are designed to capture our attention, etc.
How can we deal with External Triggers?
Erradicating facebook feeds
In this part, he offers many specific strategies to deal with those External Triggers. For example he offers free apps that may help with eradicating the feeds from social networks, so that you would be able to enter them, do what you’ve planned and leave, without being captured by the feed’s design.
Sorting your mail
Another example from this chapter is hacking back email, and group chat.
Nir understands that in some organizations email and group chat might be integrated into the organization culture. Therefor he shares different tricks for coping with those consistent distractions, an example for this is to sort your mails into two categories: This week and this day, and answer only those that require attention this specific day, the others could be solved by themselves by the time you get to them.
Avoiding distraction with pacts
What kind of pacts?
It’s all in the title here. Throughout this chapter Nir elaborates on how we could reinforce our commitments to indistractableness with for example:
Pacts of no return – for example to tell someone to lock you in a room until you finish a certain task, therefor making it a no way out commitment.
Money pacts – What he means by that is to commit that if you don’t follow a certain pact you will have to part with a certain amount of money, either burn it with a lighter or give it to another person, or something of a sort.
Last step in 4 step indistractable cycle
This is extremely powerful, but should not be used before the other three principles are understood and applied, since there is no point in applying pacts of writing a book with a noisy baby in the room (External Trigger), When you have no goal and don’t know your values you wouldn’t need a pact anyway… (Traction) Or when we don’t understand why you do what you do or why you avoid the task in the first place and what causes you to avoid it psychologically (Internal Trigger)
Liked the book already?
Grab it:
US – https://amzn.to/2HKNbJW
UK – https://amzn.to/36c1jp1
Don’t forget to send me the order number for a bonus PDF worth 24 GBP or 30 USD (Info in the bottom of post)
Books 3 steps for an indistractable environment.
This part is dedicated to applying the 4 individual principles onto your environment, and also some research on those environments that will raise your awareness on the subject. ( Part 6 is my favorite 🙂 )
Indistractable workplace.
Some of the questions that will be answered
Here it is discussed
What changes could we admit to work culture to prevent Internal triggers and distraction of employees and ourselves.
How to promote collaboration
How to avoid external triggers at work, how to make sure you are synced with your manager and at the same time not distracted by him/her.
Or if you are the manager, what traits should you exemplify and what to pay attention to in the work culture.
Basically this part explains different tactics specific to the work environment that would help apply the 4 Indistractable Individual principles within the work environment.
Psychological safety.
One example is that Nir discusses factors that affect the employees concentration and collaboration and states that the most important and influential factor is psychological safety, meaning – The ability to express oneself without the fear of being judged or being labeled as lazy for talking about something that bothers you.
Teams that have this factor are far more productive than teams that don’t.
Even if the teams that don’t are of better education and are more professional at their work in comparison to the team that has this factor.
To achieve this kind of safety, that will help you achieve indistractableness and expand the explanation, get the full book 🙂
When every physical and mental resources is focused, one's power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously.
Indistractable children
The life of kids these days in two words - "Technology addiction".
This Part applied to me more than 5 and 7. As I have a little 11 year old brother who is a bit like a Son to me.
This Chapter summed up his life and the life of many other children these days which is definately not indistractable.
If you thought that It is impossible to reduce your kids time around the screens, think again.
Discovering underlying psychological reasons and overcoming them
Nir explains the underlying reasons why kids are so attracted to technology, and teaches us how to make those reasons go away, by satisfying the children’s psychological needs, making a schedule together with them, and making them a hell of a lot more responsible person or in other words Indistractable. Sounds far fetched? Difficult to do? Well, he even explains the exact steps you could take in the attached workbook that he provides with the resources of this book.
Weekly schedule for your kid?!
Nir provides Ideas and place in the workbook for you to plan the dramatic 180 possible turnaround of your kid’s life into indistractability (If you still don’t do the things mentioned in the book). By helping your kid make his/her own weekly schedule, for example. Yes, I was stunned by this Idea too… A weekly schedule for a kid? But Nir explains exactly how you could do it, step by step and presents it as an interactive game for you and your kid.
I decided to first be able to maintain a weekly schedule myself and only then teach it to my brother, so haven’t tried it yet, but it sure looks promising!
Other awesome activites for your child to supply him with the psychological nutrients
Apart from the schedule, he offers other things that you could do Today, to improve your kids life, things you have long forgotten about, or didn’t even think about the significance of!
I am glad I re-read it. This knowledge may prove very useful, and this is an awareness that so many parents lack to become better. If you are a parent and your kid is stuck on his device the whole day long, just like my brother, and maybe you don’t even see anything wrong with it, then you should get this book just for the sake of this chapter. It provides Ideas for very psychologically beneficial activites, some of a lot faster and simpler than a weekly schedule 😉 .
Indistractable Relationships
I personally do not encounter those situations usually
To be honest, I myself do not attend to social meetings almost at all, therefor it was hard for me to recall those situations or find application for them ( Well maybe in one on one meetings only.. But then tech use is more rare ).
Shortest part, it is about being present in conversations.
This Part is probably the shortest in the book and quite concise, It is about commiting to be present when you’re in a conversation, social situation or with your partner, and how to overcome your friend’s distractions and your own.
If tech overuse or other distractions harm your relationship, this is for you
The partner explanation is just about the 4 part model and timeboxing time for you together, yet if you use the workbook it could prove very effective for reprograming yourself!
The social meetings part contains a little trick or two in addition to the 4 parts, don’t expect anything too big though, after all it’s the shortest part.
My experience
Concluding and writing freely, I’d say that after listening there are some things I became more aware of, some techniques for concentrating I acquired, for example sorting my desktop, phone screens .
Also there are a few useful resources Nir provided for the people who purchased the book from which I used the weekly schedule, the workbook, and am planning to use the do not disturb sign.
Also at work, syncing working schedule with the boss is a great Idea or with your family for that matter .
Time will tell how much of this I shall apply, and how much of this will help my awareness and becoming indistractable, but I already started with application of the weekly schedule, and some things in part 6. ( as 5 and 7 almost don’t apply to me 🙂 )
P.s. I also probably should have simultaneously used the workbook for the full experience, it would have been more intense. (Used it only for parts 5 6 7, when re-listened it).
Acquiring options
Good luck on the way Indistractableness 🙂
I send the bonus manually so please do forgive me for the delay, usually will be sent within 24 hours.
Video Review
Related Articles
The Boron Letters Analysis For Data Nerds (Video)
Was The Boron Letters Video and its ads successful? How could it be improved? Main Goal and Results of The Video YouTube ad Goal: 1+
The Boron Letters Analysis and Improvement (Blog Post)
Was the Boron Letters blog post and its ads successful? How could it be improved? Main Goal and Results of TBL Goal: 1+ Leads from
Should You Read Lazy Mans Way To Riches? (82/100)
Should you read/listen to this book? Rating (6 Parameters) Narration I only listened to a little bit of the book in audio format and read