Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

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We are bombarded at every turn with persuasive design that exploits our psychological weaknesses and often leads us into temptation, habituation and distraction.

Empowering and optimistic, Indistractable provides practical, novel techniques to control your time and attention - helping you live the life you really want. I loved the the very personal elements, for example the superpower story at the beginning and the end, which emphasise the arguments in a very gentle and kind way. This setup also gave the book the feeling of being rushed, like the author didn’t thoughtfully flesh out the content of this book in favor of meeting a deadline. So far, the closest thing to a bible for designers who have been enlisted in that war for our attention – those tasked with hacking human psychology to increase “engagement” with their products – has been Nir Eyal’s bestselling 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.A distraction tracker is the only way to help you figure out which of those is causing you to get distracted so you can do something about it. The rest was a very high-level introduction to behavioral adaption and change, with easy-to-use pointers to remember at the end of every chapter. They can compete with other players and view their relative rankings on tournament-style leaderboards. I do not plan to stop using Apple News but am defiantly being more selective and delaying my reading to a later time. I do love non-fiction reads be it belongs to self-help books, business reads, biographies or autobiographies, books on mind or life.

Today, people find themselves attached to their mobile phones, but they are only the latest potential hindrance. It's not the screen, it's the parenting and there are some brilliant ideas on how to achieve a better outcome.I missed listening to audiobooks while I walked, as well as all the other handy things my smartphone could do. I found a lot of positive reviews of the book online, so some of you might like the book, but it wasn’t a great read for me. And Eyal can make people who get distracted by adversarial design less inclined to demand more from their technologies, and more inclined to demand “superpowers” of themselves that their all-too-human limitations render them unable to meet. In Part One, you'll learn practical ways to identify and manage the psychological discomfort that leads us off track.

But I promise you that by the time you finish this book, you will discover several breakthroughs that will change the way you manage distraction forever. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to preserve islands of focused attention – and good personal relationships – at a time when digital devices pull us away from our priorities and our loved ones. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve read Indistractable a dozen times and still struggle with distraction or barely had time to skim— Becoming Indistractable is the ideal combination of activities and support to make sure you’re able to take back control of your time and attention forever. However, because all human behaviour is motivated by the desire to minimise discomfort, the “root cause” of distraction therefore lies within us. The ancient Greeks thought this was just part of the curse of being a fallible mortal and used the story to portray the power of our incessant desires.Dissatisfaction and discomfort dominate our brain’s default state, but we can use them to motivate us instead of defeat us. For example, the reminder that allowing yourself to fall into distraction means you’re taking away time that can be spent on things you value makes a good mental note to tell yourself when you find yourself reaching for a distraction when you should be doing something else.

International bestselling author, former Stanford lecturer, and behavioral design expert, Nir Eyal, wrote Silicon Valley’s handbook for making technology habit-forming. What you want to do can include critical tasks like taking medicine, necessary tasks like writing a report, or fun tasks like watching a movie.Nir Eyal understands the modern technologies of attention from the inside, and in this practical and timely book, he shares the secrets to regaining and sustaining the capacity to focus on what matters. And the lessons in each chapter mostly rehash generic productivity advice - plan your day, set aside enough time for family, etc.