Indistractable
The How-To Guide for Indistractability
Sticking to goals is hard. Luckily, there are tricks we can use when we wobble off course.
This piece is part of a week-long series on how to battle distraction, co-edited by Nir Eyal, the author of the new book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
In an era of screens, few of us are immune to distraction. Our mental bandwidth is chewed up by the churn and burn of social media streams, lightning-quick news cycles, and the effort of keeping up with more people than we could possibly truly know.
As a psychologist in general practice and a researcher in cyberpsychology, I work to help people get back in touch with the stuff that really matters to them, to become aligned to their values, and build habits that draw them back to their purpose.
There’s a growing sense that digital distractions are pulling us away from the things that really matter. On your deathbed, it’s more likely you’ll wish you’d shared yourself more wholeheartedly with your family, rather than having spent hours engaging in an inane tweet war with an airline over a canceled flight.
And yet, the wholesale diversion of attention — with the pings and beeps of notifications…