Strategies for becoming less distracted and improving focus | Nir Eyal (author of Indistractable and Hooked)

I went to Alibaba and I bought myself one of these flip phones from China, you know, like we used to have in the nineteen nineties with no apps, no internet connection. And then I got myself a word processor off of eBay so that I, you know, I had I could just sit down and write and do the important stuff. And even when I stopped using all the technology, even when I got rid of all the apps, I would sit down on my desk and I'd say, Oh, you know what? Um, there's that book that I've been meaning what to do some research in, or let me just clean off my desk real quick. Or you know what, I should take out the trash. And I kept getting distracted. Because the problem is not our technology. The problem

is our inability to deal with discomfort. So what I have adopted for myself and what I'd advise anyone who finds themselves in this situation is is to always identify what is that Internal trigger. Itch that you are looking to escape.

when you get distracted, because that is the source of ninety percent of our distractions. It's not the pings, dings, and rings. It's the feelings. But to me that's incredibly empowering because once you realize wait a minute Just a feeling. It's all it is. It's just an emotion. then you can have tools ready to go. You can have arrows in your quiver ready to take out as soon as you feel that discomfort

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