I have not written a book review in a while, one downside of working remote is the loss of a commute with a forced downtime of no internet. I used to do the bulk of my reading and podcast listening during my train rides. The impetus for this review came from a 1729 task.
Your challenge is simple: read Indistractable and write a review, ideally (a) focusing on a particular distraction you’d like to overcome and (b) using one or more of the techniques from the book.
…
Our goal is to see what kinds of distractions people would most like to overcome and how individuals empower themselves with the Indistractable Model.
(A) The Distraction
My distraction is all the notifications I get throughout the day, working behind a screen I get a constant barrage of notifications.
Checking those notifications comes at a high price. External triggers can rip us away from our planned tasks. Researchers have found that when people are interrupted during a task, they tend to subsequently make up for lost time by working faster, but the cost is higher levels of stress and frustration. – Chapter 13 p.83
(B) The Technique
In Chapter 19: Hack Back Your Desktop Nir shows an easy way to silence the buzz.
“I turned off all desktop notifications and set my laptop to perpetual Do Not Disturb mode.” -p.120
Step by step instructions here Permanently Silence Your Mac’s Annoying Notification Center.
The aftermath is I’ll check email at regular intervals, and Slack will still show when I have a DM. “Checking email isn’t so much the problem; it’s the habitual rechecking that gets us into trouble.” Which is related to Chapter 15: Hack Back Email, advocating for using the Unsubscribe button at the bottom of emails. I haven’t been on a unclutting spree in a long time and after finishing this book I unsubscribed from half a dozen marketing emails that I don’t know why I didn’t do earlier. This is a great book in digestible chapters with easy to read “Remember This” cliff notes at the end of each chapter. If you are Indistracable you can finish in a sitting or two.
All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort.
From the Sefer Chasidm, (the Book of the Pious) composed in the Middle Ages which gives an ethical and legal guide to everyday life, “Do not seek to know everything nor pursue the latest news,” When I read this in the Chok L’Yisrael’s Korach For Wednesday, I instantly thought of Doomscrolling – “the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news.” In the time of covid social media use has skyrocketed with people waking up and trying to catch up on the “infinite scrolling” of twitter feeds.
“Our most precious asset—our time—is unguarded, just waiting to be stolen. If we don’t plan our days, someone else will.” In Chapter 21 – Hack Back feeds, Nir brings up he has scheduled social media time, and in the next chapter how we “must learn a powerful technique called a “precommitment,” which involves removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsivity.” We can use extensions like strict workflow which limits social media while on a work timer, and set limits on a mac.
It’s easy to default when bored or stuck on a problem to open a new tab and look at twitter. Who knows what new dopamine hit we will get next. We may even trick ourselves in way like I would have never have known X first or hear about Y opportunity had I not spent so much time on twitter. The really important news will make itself known. Spending a 5 minutes in the morning, afternoon, and evening on “dedicated” social media time can cut down on checking sporadically during the day saving hours.
Child Rearing
I did not expect to get child rearing advice in this book, but seeing younger and younger kids start to stare at screens I’ll take the help. These two passages stood out to me.
“While such a restrictive environment isn’t every American student’s experience, it’s clear why so many struggle to stay motivated in the classroom: their need for autonomy to explore their interests is unfulfilled … “We’re doing a lot of controlling them in their school environments and it’s no surprise that they should then want to turn to an environment where they can feel a lot of agency and a lot of autonomy in what they’re doing.”
“Studies demonstrate that children who eat regularly with their families show lower rates of drug use, depression, school problems, and eating disorders. … Hence, it’s better to set aside an evening, even if only once a week, for a device-free family meal.”
Growing up my family did not eat together often, but one night a week for Shabbat it was a device free family meal. People that are not even religious can see the importance of a Shabbat meal. or taking a screen free day.
On the Tim Ferriss Podcast with Julie Rice (An entrepreneur best known for co-founding the fitness phenomenon SoulCycle).
“I find that because I’m so busy, it’s a lot of integrity for our family. We all have to be at the dinner table at 6:30 on Friday night and we put our phones away and we light candles and we don’t take out our phones till the next morning and it’s the one thing we do in our house that really reframes our time together.”
As well as another Tim ferriss episode with Brad Feld — The Art of Unplugging
How often does brad partake of a digital Sabbath — going without phones or email from Friday night to Sunday morning? [1:32:06]
