Neera, y'all, welcome back to the IndieHackers podcast.
Yeah, so the definition of becoming indestructible,
by the way, it's a made up word.
And so the benefit of having a made up word
is that you can define it any way you like.
So I define indestructible as a person
who strives to do what they say they're going to do.
It's about personal integrity.
You know, none of us would think it's acceptable
to lie to our friends, to our family, to our colleagues.
We would never do that.
And yet we lie to ourselves all the time.
We say we're gonna do one thing, we don't, right?
We say we're gonna work out, we don't.
We say we're gonna eat right, we don't.
We say we're gonna sit down at our desk
and do that hard project that we've been putting off,
we don't.
We say we're gonna be fully present with our kids
and family and friends, but we're distracted.
And so that's really what the book is about,
is how do you become indestructible?
How do you become the kind of person
who lives with personal integrity,
who does what they say they're going to do?
Obviously, this stuff is important for everybody.
But as an IndieHacker, especially as the founder
of a very early stage tech business, it's doubly important.
If you're not able to do the things
that you've committed to doing,
if you can't do the things that you've told yourself
you're gonna do, then nobody else is gonna step in
and do it for you.
You don't have a bunch of coworkers,
there's no system in place,
you don't have a bunch of employees.
It's really just you.
And so if you consistently don't get things done,
then your company's not gonna progress.
And you know this well near, you started
and sold a couple of tech businesses yourself.
How can becoming indestructible help us
to become better founders?
You know, one of the hardest things about running a company
is prioritizing properly and then executing
on those priorities.
Because when you're in the fog of war that is a startup,
there are so many things coming at you all the time.
And so it's absolutely critical to know what to work on
and then to actually execute on those tasks.
That, I mean, as a founder, that's pretty much
your only job, that's your job in a nutshell.
Just prioritize and execute.
That's it, that's all you gotta do.
But that's, of course, extremely challenging.
And many times what we see is it's kind of one or the other.
We see a lot of founders, I do a lot of angel investing.
So you see folks who are really bad at prioritizing
or really bad at executing.
And of course we need both.
And so where distraction comes to play
is if you are constantly distracted,
we used to call this the shiny pony.
When I was at my last startup,
I've helped start two companies
and we used to call this the shiny pony of like,
oh, there's a new idea, let's all do that.
And it would be strategically,
we'd have shiny ponies distracting us
and we'd also have during the day,
whether it's office gossip or the latest thing trending
on Twitter or a flurry of emails that something's important
and now everything else has to come to a halt.
So being able to do what it is you say you're going to do,
this is a macro skill.
I mean, this is the skill of the century
that I believe that the world is becoming
a potentially more distracting place
and we're bifurcating into two groups of people.
People who let their time and attention in their lives
be controlled and manipulated by others
and people who say, no, I choose to take control of my life
by taking control of my attention
and making sure that I do what it is I say I'm going to do.
Well, to your point, Nir,
about there being two different types of people,
the indestractable kind and the kind who aren't,
I meet a ton of different founders
who progress wildly different rates.
I've met people who discovered IndieHackers
and two or three weeks later, they've got an app
and they built it and they've got a paying customer or two.
I've met people who've been telling me
for the last three years
that they can't wait to get started on their business.
They just need to sit down one day and come up with an idea.
They just need to spend a little bit more time learning,
acquire a little bit more knowledge.
How do you think about the differences
between people at these two extremes?
Well, I think the problem that most folks face,
not only in business, but also in life,
is not a problem of knowledge, right?
It is not a knowledge gap.
We all know what to do, basically, right?
If you want to have a good looking body and lose weight,
then you have to, guess what, exercise and eat right.
If you want to have good relationships with your family,
your friends, you have to be fully present with them.
And if you want to be successful in business,
you know what, you have to do the goddamn work,
especially the stuff that's not so fun to do.
You have to grind.
And so that means that if the problem isn't a knowledge gap,
then what is the problem?
If we know, basically, what we need to do,
why don't we do it?
And that's really the central question of indestractable.
Why don't we do the things we know we should?
And why do we do the things we know we shouldn't?
Part of the problem is that we allow distraction
to trick us, that maybe it's helpful
to actually give the definition
of what I mean by distraction.
So distraction, the best way to understand distraction
is by understanding the opposite of distraction.
The opposite of distraction is not focus.
The opposite of distraction is traction.
So both words come from the same Latin root, trahare,
which means to pull.
And both words end in the same five letters,
A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action.
So traction and distraction are actions that we take,
not things that happen to us, but actions that we take.
So traction is any action that pulls you towards
what you want, things that you are doing with intent.
The opposite of traction is distraction,
anything that is pulling you away
from what it is you decided to do with your time.
And so what oftentimes happens is you sit down at your desk
and this is what happened to me all the time
before I learned this methodology.
I'd say, okay, I'm gonna work on that big project right now.
I'm gonna do that thing that's hard work,
I need to focus, I need to concentrate and do this project
right after I check email,
right after I do some research on Google,
right after I check that Slack channel.
And we don't get to doing the hard work.
I mean, I can't tell you how many companies fail
because nobody is making time to think.
Just think, sit down and think strategically.
Almost nobody puts this time in their schedule.
And we are much worse off forward
because we do nothing but react all day long.
We react to meetings, we react to emails
and we have no time to reflect.
But that reflection time is critical,
especially if you are a founder.
You need to spend time thinking critically
about the future of your business.
Where are you going?
And to just react all day long,
banging out emails and going to meetings,
you're not spending the time that you need
to think strategically and reflect on the business
in order to provide the strategic guidance for the company.
So it is a crucial skill for founders.
Okay, it's funny you mention this
because I actually take the time to schedule
self-reflection onto my calendar.
I've got a weekly recurring event for it.
And that little event is the first thing
to get eliminated anytime anything pops up.
Like something happens on the IndieHackers forum
that I need to take care of,
hop over to my calendar, press delete, perfect.
Now I've got an open slot for whatever it is
I want to handle.
You've got a whole framework in your book
that explains why we get distracted
and what we can do to avoid distractions
and do the things that we originally planned on doing.
Give us the basic overview.
Right, okay, so we talked about traction and distraction.
So you can think about that,
like if you think about a big plus mark, okay?
And you've got the four points of the plus mark
and it's almost like a compass, right?
North, east, south, and west.
So you've got on the horizontal axis on one side,
you have traction, let's say in the east, right?
The east point.
On the west side, you have distraction.
And now I want you to think about the vertical line
as two arrows pointing towards the center, okay?
Of this big plus mark.
Those two arrows represent the two things
that move us towards traction or distraction.
And what moves all of our behavior are just two things.
External triggers and internal triggers.
External triggers are things in our environment
that tell us what to do next, right?
These are the pings, dings, rings, and things
that prompt us to either traction or distraction.
It's not that these things are always sinister.
If a buzz on your phone tells you,
hey, it's time to go work out or it's time for that meeting
and that's what you plan to do, well, terrific.
That's moving you towards traction.
But if you are in the middle of a meeting
and you get some notification on your phone
and now you're not paying attention
because you're distracted,
well, then that's not a good thing.
That's moving you away from traction.
And so we have to understand that external triggers
are one source of triggers
that move us towards traction or distraction.
But there's one more, even more common source,
which are what I call internal triggers.
And if you read Hooked, you'll be very familiar
with these internal triggers.
Internal triggers spark us to do pretty much everything.
And an internal trigger is an uncomfortable emotional state.
So when we feel lonely, we check Facebook.
When we're uncertain, we Google.
When we're bored, we check the news, Reddit,
stock prices, sports scores.
All of these things cater
to this uncomfortable sensation of boredom.
And so what we have to realize is that we get distracted
because most distractions starts from within.
That we are using these tools
as emotional pacification devices.
They're emotional pacifiers.
And so that means if we wanna grow up,
if we wanna get rid of our pacifiers, like babies,
we have to learn how to cope with that discomfort.
Which means that time management is pain management.
The reason we procrastinate,
the reason we get distracted by and large
is not because of our devices.
Stop blaming technology.
It's because of what's going on inside of us.
It's the uncomfortable sensations
that we do not know how to deal with in a healthy way.
And so basically we can conquer distraction
and become indestractable with four basic steps.
Step one is that we master the internal triggers.
Step two is that we make time for traction.
Step three is that we hack back the external triggers.
And step four has to be done last
is that we prevent distraction with pacts.
And it's with these four steps
that we can make sure we do what it is we say
we're going to do.
This is how we become indestractable.
Okay, so let's walk through this.
Step one is to master your internal triggers.
And your internal triggers, as you said,
are these uncomfortable sensations
that you have internally that you wanna alleviate.
So you're hungry, you want to satisfy your hunger.
You're curious, you wanna alleviate your curiosity.
If you're bored, you wanna do something exciting.
And we're constantly sort of bombarded
by this voice telling us
to alleviate these uncomfortable feelings.
I know a lot of people who subscribe
to some form of Buddhist philosophy
where they're very focused on the fact
that desire is the enemy.
That no matter what you want, it's kind of a bad thing
because the act of wanting something means
that you are in pain from not having it right now.
And so they're very focused on
how do I basically eliminate desire?
It's kind of ironic.
They desire to get rid of desire.
You take a very different approach in your book.
You're not saying that we should get rid
of our desires altogether.
But at the same time, you're admitting that,
look, there is no such thing as being happily ever after.
There is no such thing as never having
any of these internal cravings, right?
You're never gonna be completely satisfied.
But that doesn't mean you should eliminate desire.
What that means is that you should figure out a way
to get around these cravings.
And so in your book, you have this pretty cool,
I don't know how to describe it.
It's almost like a psychological judo move
that you're advocating
where you take a lot of these negative internal triggers.
You take these cravings, you take these desires
and this dissatisfaction,
and you actually flip it around and you use it
to motivate you to get things done
and move yourself towards traction.
How do we do that exactly?
Yeah, so this is where I take issue with,
I think where we've swung too far into one direction.
So I only mentioned meditation and mindfulness
one time in the book where I say I will not be talking
about meditation and mindfulness for the rest of the book
because it's overdone.
We have swung too far into thinking
that meditation solves all our problems.
And while meditation can be very useful for some problems,
it's not what we do for every problem.
I know for the hackers and founders out there,
you wanna do something, you wanna fix the problem,
which is the right thing to do.
I do agree with the Buddhist approach
that suffering is part of the human condition,
that I do not agree with the Western self-help industry
telling us that if you're not happy,
if you're not satisfied, that you're not normal.
I think that's ridiculous,
that our species evolved to be constantly dissatisfied.
The question is how do we channel that dissatisfaction
for good, for healthy behaviors
as opposed to hurtful behaviors.
And we can in fact channel that.
And the way we do that is by understanding
that we should change the situation,
the circumstances that we can change
and learn ways to cope with the circumstances
we can't change.
And so it's all about mastering your internal triggers,
which is about finding the source
of those internal triggers,
finding the source for the stress, the uncertainty,
the loneliness, the fatigue,
whatever it might be that you are trying to escape
with some kind of distraction pacification device.
When you can change the source of that discomfort, do it.
Stop meditating and go fix the goddamn problem.
But when you can't fix the source of the problem,
when it's just part of day-to-day life,
there is this just the inuit of being a human being
is that we feel these uncomfortable sensations.
And so there the answer is learning techniques
to cope with discomfort.
And it's only by coping with that discomfort
that we can make sure that we channel it
towards traction as opposed to distraction.
And so there's all kinds of techniques
I give you in the book for how to do that.
How do you cope with discomfort in a healthier manner?
So these techniques include re-imagining the trigger itself,
re-imagining the task, and re-imagining our temperament.
And so it's with these techniques,
knowing when we should change the circumstances
versus knowing when we should learn methods
to cope with those circumstances,
that's how we master our internal triggers.
But that has to be the first step
because as much as we've heard in the media these days
that technology is melting your brain
and it's hijacking your brain,
it's doing this and that to you,
that even if you get rid of all the technology, as I did,
I followed the 30-day detox plans and the minimalism
and all the books that tell you
to get rid of the technology, it doesn't freaking work.
It doesn't work because of two reasons.
One, we need this stuff, for God's sakes.
We're hackers, right?
Like we need this technology.
We can't just stop using it.
Our life depends on it.
So it's very easy for some professor
to tell us to stop using social media when they don't use it.
What about us who need social media for our livelihoods
and email and Slack channels?
This stuff is how we work.
So that's not a practical solution for that reason.
And then second, it doesn't work
because these temporary approaches
are just as bad as a fad diet.
So I used to be clinically obese for a good chunk of my life.
And I would constantly go on these fad diets
of 30 days, no junk food, or 30 days this or 30 days that.
And that's exactly what people are saying to do today
when it comes to digital distraction.
And it doesn't work for the same exact reason
because when you go on a 30-day diet,
what do you do on day 31, right?
And you eat everything as I did time and time again.
So the reason fad diets don't work
is the same reason that these 30-day plans don't work
for digital detox or whatever.
Because you're not getting to the real source of the problem.
The real source of the problem is that we have to learn
to deal with discomfort in a healthy way.
That time management is pain management.
That has to be the first step
before we can move to step two.
I've always thought of you as someone who's been working
on becoming indestractable for quite some time.
I remember the last time we spoke,
you had some sort of physical device hooked up
that would automatically shut off your internet router
every night at a certain time.
Since then, you've obviously done a ton of research,
not just for the sake of the book, but for your own sake.
So you could become a better researcher,
a better writer, a better author, a better dad.
What are some of the other things that don't work?
What are some things that people are commonly trying
that you have found through your research
aren't effective at making even?
Oh my God, where do we start?
There's so many.
Grayscaling your phone or so many,
or even some of these techniques that do work
don't work in the wrong order.
So yeah, one of the first techniques
that I kind of uncovered, I didn't invent it, of course.
It's an ancient technique.
This is called using a pre-commitment device.
And pre-commitment devices have been used
for at least 2,500 years.
The first telling of the use of a pre-commitment device
is in The Odyssey by Homer.
But there's been a ton of research that shows
how effective a pre-commitment device is.
And a pre-commitment device is just planning ahead
to make sure you don't get distracted,
some kind of contract with yourself.
So for example, a 401k that has stiff penalties
if you withdraw your money before retirement.
That's a pre-commitment device.
So what you mentioned, this internet timer
that really saved my sex life.
I've been married for almost 20 years.
And I'm just happy I have a sex life after 20 years.
But a few years ago, before I figured out
the entire indestructible methodology,
my wife and I just had this real rut in our marriage
where we were not having any sex.
And the reason was is that we would fondle our iPhones
and play with our iPads as opposed to being intimate.
And so I went to the hardware store
and I got a $5 outlet timer.
And I plugged it into the wall.
And this outlet timer will turn anything you plug into it off
at a certain time of day or night.
And so 10 p.m. in my household, the internet shuts off.
And we don't use the internet timer anymore.
Now we actually have a router, the ERO router,
that comes built in with this feature.
So it used to be a problem
because we have smart home devices
and they would all turn off.
So that doesn't happen anymore
because you tell the ERO router
to only turn off some devices and not others.
Well, this is an example of a pre-commitment device
and it works great.
What I didn't know at the time
is that if you use a pre-commitment device
in the wrong order, it can backfire.
A pre-commitment device is the fourth step.
And there are three types of pre-commitments.
There are effort packs, price packs, and identity packs,
which we can get into with more detail.
But what's very, very important to know
is that this is the last step.
If you don't first deal with the internal triggers,
if you don't first make time for traction,
if you don't first hack back the external triggers,
the pre-commitment devices won't work.
So it's really important to do these four steps in order.
Cool, so that's step one.
Assuming you master your internal triggers,
you move on to step two,
which is to make time for traction.
This is one I think should resonate
with a lot of early stage founders,
especially people trying to start a company
on the side of their full-time job.
It's hard to make time when you have a family,
you have kids, and you have all sorts of hobbies
and interests and friends and responsibilities
outside of work.
How do you make time for traction?
Yeah, so this really comes down to this fact
that most people out there don't keep a calendar.
About two-thirds of Americans keep no calendar whatsoever.
I had this experience, I used to not keep a calendar,
and I remember I had a friend who I interviewed
for the book who told me about how terrible distraction is
and how technology is melting her brain
because she can't concentrate on anything
and everything's so distracting
and what's going on in the news and her boss and her kids,
and, ah, she can't get anything done.
And so I asked her a simple question.
I said, you know, wow, that's really tough.
Can you tell me what it is you got distracted from today?
Show me your calendar.
So she took out her calendar kind of sheepishly
and she opened, you know,
she opened the calendar app on her phone
and she let me have it, and it was blank.
Corland, there was nothing on it.
It was blank.
And two-thirds of Americans go through their day
complaining about distraction when they have no idea
what the hell they got distracted from.
So we have no right to complain about distraction
unless you know what traction is for every minute of your day.
You're not just going to build that business
when it comes to you.
You're not going to spend time with your family,
your friends, your kids when it happens.
You're not gonna journal or write
or whatever it is that you wanna do that's hard work
that requires dedicated time
unless you make time for it on your calendar.
This is called turning your values into time.
I should be able to see on your calendar
what's important to you.
Blocked out.
It's amazing.
While two-thirds of Americans don't do this,
there was one group of people who all do this.
Every C-level executive that I interviewed
in the research that led up to this book,
every one of them did this.
They all use this time-blocking technique
to make a template for what their ideal day looks like,
where they're supposed to be,
when they're supposed to be there
for every minute of the day.
And a lot of people cringe at this and say,
oh, I can't do that.
You know, I need to be spontaneous
and I don't wanna plan every minute of my day.
Tough.
This is the price of living in our age
of all of these modern devices
that connect us seamlessly with people
all over the world for free
is that people can access you anytime they want.
And so if you don't plan your day,
somebody else will.
Your family, your boss, whatever Trump says,
the media, somebody is going to capture your brain
and your attention unless you decide for yourself
in advance how you wanna spend your time.
If there's one mantra I want people to tattoo on their arms
to remember from my book,
it's that the antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.
That human beings can do something
that no other species on the face of the earth can do
is that we can see the future with higher fidelity
than any other animal.
We can predict what's going to happen,
which means I don't care what algorithms
Facebook is making to distract you.
I don't care what's happening in the news.
I don't care what's going on.
If you plan ahead, this is how we fight distraction.
We take steps now to make sure
we don't get distracted later.
The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.
I used to be very anti-calendar.
It was part of my anti-hacker pride.
I don't wake up to an alarm.
I don't have a calendar.
Then I started a podcast and that changed all that.
And now I have a calendar that's very full.
But let's say I've got a calendar.
Let's say I'm scheduling my tasks.
Things still happen.
I still get distracted.
I still get emails.
I still get phone calls and Slack chats.
I still get little emergencies that pop up
that can really easily throw my day into disarray.
How do I deal with those distractions
despite having a calendar?
So that's the perfect lead-in to step three,
which is to hack back the external triggers.
So the external triggers are exactly what you described.
The pings, the dings, the rings, all of these things
that prompt you to either traction or distraction.
So news flash, we turn them off.
And there ain't nothing that Zuckerberg
or Tim Cook or anybody else can do when you turn them off.
Now I'm not saying turn them off forever.
What I'm saying is during the time in your schedule,
when you have time to do focused work,
to just focus on one task at a time,
those notifications need to be turned off.
If you don't know how to use, do not disturb on your phone.
You don't deserve to have a phone.
And don't give your kids a phone
until they know how to use it too.
And so people say, well, what if there's an emergency?
What if my house is burning down?
Someone needs to contact me right away.
First of all, very rarely is there an actual emergency.
I know emails are urgent,
but almost no emails can't wait 30 minutes,
45 minutes while you have your focused work time.
Second, there's features that come built in with our phones
that very few people use that are amazing.
For example, this feature called
do not disturb while driving.
It comes on every iPhone with the latest iOS.
All you have to do is turn on do not disturb while driving.
And if someone texts you or calls you,
they will receive an auto reply that says, I'm driving.
I can't talk to you right now.
If this is urgent, text me with the word urgent.
Now you can go in there and customize that message.
So now it's not just do not disturb while driving.
It's do not disturb while indestractable.
So when someone texts me while I'm doing my focus work time,
they'll get a message back that says, I'm indestractable.
If this is urgent, please text with the word urgent.
Now, if it really is urgent,
they just text the word urgent.
And now I get that message.
By the way, this never happens, right?
Because nothing is usually that urgent
that I can't wait for 30 minutes or 45 minutes
while I do my focus work time.
And so that's really part of the answer
is adjusting these notification settings.
By the way, that's the easy stuff.
The easy stuff, I hate people who complain
about their phones being so distracted.
Did you even try, right?
Two thirds of Americans
don't even change their notification settings.
So we got to take those 10 minutes
to just change those notification settings
first and foremost on our phones, on our laptops.
That's easy stuff.
The harder stuff has to do with the external triggers
that people don't recognize.
For example, statistically,
one of the most common sources of distraction
in our workday is not our phones, not our computers.
It's our coworkers, particularly when we work,
as many startup founders and employees do,
in open floor plan offices.
So that's been shown to be
one of the greatest sources of distraction.
And people say, well, I put on my headphones
and then that's how I zone out, not really.
It doesn't really work that well
because nobody knows if you're listening to a podcast
or watching YouTube video or whatever.
So here's the solution.
The solution is that in every copy of my book,
you can also get this for free
if you go to indestractable.com,
you can print for yourself a screen sign.
So in the book, it's printed on this nice card stock
that stands up real nice.
You pull it out of the book, you fold it into thirds,
and you put this bright red sign on your monitor
that says, I'm indestractable at the moment,
please come back later, okay?
And this signals to your colleagues
that you are not to be disturbed right now.
Now, I know what people are thinking.
Oh, that would never work in my company.
My company culture would never allow that, exactly.
Because the source of distraction is not the technology.
The source of distraction is crappy company culture.
And there's a whole section in the book.
Half the book is about things you can do yourself.
Half the book is about how we change the context
within which we work.
And it turns out that symptoms of distraction
are an indication that you have crappy company culture,
that there is no correlation between
how much tech a company uses and how distracted people are.
In fact, one of the technologies
that I heard the most complaints about
when I was researching this book was Slack.
Everybody complains about Slack.
You know, this is the largest group chat app.
People say how distracting Slack is
and it constantly tethers them to the office all day long.
Well, here's the interesting thing.
If it's the technology that's doing it to us,
well, then the people who use Slack most
should be the most distracted, right?
And who uses Slack more than the employees of Slack?
So they should be the most distracted people on earth.
But that's not the case.
In fact, Slack doesn't have a problem with distraction.
If you go to Slack, the company headquarters,
it's cleared out by six, 6.30, everybody's gone.
Nights and weekends, nobody's using Slack at Slack.
Why?
Well, they embody these three principles
of a healthy company culture.
And those three principles are number one,
they enable psychological safety.
Now there's been many studies
on this concept of psychological safety,
which simply means that you can raise problems
and concerns without fear of retribution.
Okay, that's psychological safety.
Two, they give a forum for employees
to be heard out by management.
And it's interesting, at Slack,
they actually use Slack channels.
They have these channels like others,
one called beef tweets,
where people can just post beef about the company.
And upper management will use emoji like the eyes emoji
to tell people that they've seen the problem
and they're working on it.
Okay, so that gives people first psychological safety,
then the forum to air concerns.
And three, and most importantly,
management needs to exemplify
what it means to be indestractable.
So when you walk into Slack company headquarters
in San Francisco,
you will see a big sign in pink letters
that says work hard and go home.
That's something you typically expect to see
in a publicly traded Silicon Valley company
of the size of Slack.
So why do they do that?
Because it is part of the company culture
from Stuart Butterfield, the CEO on down.
This is part of the company culture.
And of course, the company is rated
as one of the best places to work in America.
They have very, very low churn rate
and they make an awesome product.
And that's largely in part
because they have a healthy company culture
as opposed to a company culture
that we see all too often.
Companies where people can't raise concerns
because they're afraid of retribution.
Where management isn't listening to people
and where management is exemplifying
the opposite of being indestractable.
They're constantly spun up in this cycle of responsiveness
that makes everyone miserable.
So I have a question about procrastination,
which seems intimately related
to everything that we're talking about here.
A lot of people want to start a company.
They want to get started,
but that first step is just the hardest.
There's something about it
where even if they're really motivated,
they might really hate their job.
They might really have all the skills.
They might be really inspired by stories that they've heard
or even friends who've gotten started.
But when it comes time for them to get started,
they just can't quite get over the hell.
There's something about that first step.
They're just never quite ready and it never happens.
So what I want to know is how to apply the techniques
you're describing specifically for procrastination.
Are these techniques just for avoiding distractions
or is there a way we can use them
to help us do the things that we're putting off
for weeks or months or even years?
Yeah, so procrastination is one form of distraction,
but not all distraction is procrastination.
So procrastination is when you put off
something that you want to do,
but not all distraction is procrastination.
If you're in a meeting, right,
and you're having a hot and heavy discussion
and then someone takes out their phone
and starts checking email in the middle of that meeting,
crazy annoying, drives me crazy.
That's not procrastination, that is distraction, right?
You decided you were gonna go to a meeting
and here you are distracted on your device.
By the way, there's a whole chapter
on how to hack back meetings.
I mean, meetings are such a waste of time
at most companies because most companies
don't do them right.
They don't follow these simple rules
of how to have a good meeting,
which I described in the book,
that prevents people from getting distracted
in these meetings.
So that's one of these eight environments
that we need to hack back the external triggers.
So when it comes to procrastination
in terms of how we get started,
it really comes down to identifying our values.
I think it starts with, you know,
what values are important to us?
Not just, you know, I want to have,
a lot of people want to have built a company.
A lot of people want to have written a book.
A lot of people want a good looking healthy body,
but they don't wanna put in the work to do it.
And so part of your value system needs to be,
you know, values are defined as the attributes
of the person you want to become.
And so it's not about having the things
of a person you want to become,
it's about the attributes of the person you wanna become.
So I would ask folks, you know,
if you've been, if you've had a project in mind,
a product you wanna build,
something you wanna hack together,
the first question is to ask yourself, you know,
why do you want that?
And then if it's about, you know,
I want to be the kind of person who innovates.
I wanna be the kind of person who pushes limits.
I wanna be the kind of person who constantly tests themselves
to see what they're possible, what they're able,
I'm sorry, what they're capable of learning and doing.
Well, then great, then I love it.
Now we're talking values.
Next step is to put those values on your calendar,
to turn your values into time,
which means that the antidote to procrastination
is simply putting a little bit of time, right?
It can be 30 minutes, it's fine.
30 minutes to do something, anything related to this task
that you've been putting off.
And that's how we do it.
We put time on our calendar.
This is called an implementation intention,
also hundreds of studies.
And by the way, nothing in my book
is this folk psychology stuff
that you see in a lot of other books.
You know, this worked for me.
I took cold showers and hey, that changed my life.
Great, well, that's got no data.
You know, there's been no studies
that show that's the case for everyone else.
But, you know, so everything in my book,
it comes from peer-reviewed journals.
And this technique of setting an implementation intention
is one of the most well-studied techniques
that we can use to make sure we do what it is
we say we're going to do.
And it's just a fancy way of saying,
planning out what we're going to do
and when we're going to do it.
And then we can use these other techniques
like the pre-commitment device,
the PACS we discussed earlier, to make sure we do it.
So for example, let me give you a very personal story
of procrastination.
So I've been researching Indistractable for four years,
and I finally had this breakthrough with the model,
and I knew what I wanted to say,
and I had all the research.
I've been doing it for four years.
And most importantly, it worked.
Like I finally discovered the right four steps
to actually help us conquer distraction.
And now I needed to actually write the book.
So I used this stuff on myself.
And one of the things I did was, you know,
to prevent procrastination
and to actually get me to write the book
is I used a pre-commitment device that I call a price pact.
And a price pact is simply where we inflict
some kind of financial cost to not doing what we want to do.
So in my case, I made a bet with my friend Mark
that if I didn't finish my manuscript by January,
I would have to pay him $10,000.
Guess what happened?
Do you think I lost my money?
Of course not.
I kept my money and I had my finished manuscript.
So this is a really simple technique
that we have to ask ourselves.
Like if you really want to do something,
put some skin in the game, right?
You really want to finish writing that blog post.
You really want to finish that code.
You really want to do whatever it is you want to do.
Put some skin in the game.
See what happens when you actually put
a painful amount of money at stake.
Guess what?
You'll do it.
Now, most people don't want to take that bet.
Why?
Because they know they'll actually have to
move their butts and do the work.
But isn't that exactly the point, right?
So if that scares you,
I would back up a step and ask yourself whether,
wait a minute, if I'm not willing to put money down,
if I'm not willing to take some risk here,
then what am I escaping from?
Because of course, if you do the work,
you get the benefit of your work as well as your money.
You keep both.
So why would we pay Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig
and all these folks money to get something
that we can essentially get both?
We could keep our money and get the results
we're looking for.
And that applies to food as well as distraction.
But again, those pre-commitment devices,
I have to warn, I have to say this again,
has to come last.
It's the fourth step.
If you don't do the other three first,
it can in fact backfire.
I love this idea of not wanting to be
the kind of person who has written a book
or who has started a company,
but wanting to be the kind of person
who's actively working on it.
Like if you're gonna be jealous of somebody,
don't be jealous of the person who succeeded.
Be jealous of the person who's in the middle of it,
because that's the step that's in front of you.
There is no option to just magically lead towards success.
The only option is get started.
So that's what needs to be exciting to you.
And a pre-commitment device is not only
a good way to actually get started,
but it's also kind of a good litmus test.
Like if you're not willing to put up
a little bit of money to get started on this thing,
then do you really wanna get started?
Right, right.
I mean, if you can't make a bet that,
hey, I'm gonna fly to the moon with my own two arms.
Okay, well that's, you know,
that defies the laws of physics.
So, you know, if it is a task you can do,
if it is humanly possible, why not take the bet?
Take the bet, right?
You're gonna get what you want out of the bet,
which is to keep your money and have the output.
And if you're looking for someone to pay all that money to
in case you don't reach your goals,
courtlandatndhackers.com.
I'll take any of your bets.
Happy to be on the receiving end of that.
There you go.
Nier, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's been a pleasure talking to you as always.
Can you tell listeners where they can go
to read your book, Indestractable,
and become better founders?
Absolutely, so my blog is nearandfar.com.
Nier is spelled like my first name, N-I-R,
so that's nearandfar.com.
My first book is Hooked,
How to Build Habit Forming Products,
and my next book is called Indestractable,
How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
And Indestractable, there's tons of free resources
and tools, like a schedule maker,
as well as a distraction tracker,
a free 80-page workbook that I couldn't fit
into the actual book,
but I give out complimentary on my website.
That's all at indestractable.com.
That's spelled I-N, the word distract, A-B-L-E,
so indestractable.com.
All right, thanks so much, Nier.
Thank you very much.
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