Book Review: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
OK, OK, friends. I'm excited about reviewing Indistractable. First, it's written by DS community member Nir Eyal.
Indistractable is Nir's second book.
His first book was Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. So, yes, Nir is sort of like a heroin manufacturer who became an addict himself and is now building recovery clinics. But I guess that makes him qualified? I give it a pass since it's self-owned on the first page.
Sidebar: As an author myself, I always read the acknowledgments section. That's where you get the most important information about your author. What's important to him or her? How generous are they with their thank-yous? Who do they surround themselves with in the journey? This book is personal. I like personal books. I LOVED the thanking of all the blog subscribers. That was nice.
Habits, productivity, and focus management is day-to-day, perhaps the single most important driver of the quality of one's life.
We know this. That's why there is an infinite number of productivity hacks, articles on habits, bits on tips. Indistractable is very much in this genre and offers a great guide in the same suite as others I've read like Deep Work and Atomic Habits. Deep Work will tell you to GTFO Social Media (which I've done besides Twitter) and Atomic Habits focuses squarely on habits. Indistracable is somewhere in the middle.
Indistractable has 35 Chapters and extra appendixes of resources, hacks, tips, and tricks. All of them worthwhile. I'm not going to summarize them for you because they are short, pithy, and already have three-point bullets at the end of each chapter. So you're simply going to have to read it yourself or navigate through Nir's blog to download all his free goodies.
What's my recommendation?
There a lot of productivity porn out there. Start with one recommendation. And, do it. Implement it now. Today. Make it work for you. And, do it for the next thirty days. Then layer on more.
This newsletter is an outgrowth of a concept in Nir's book called a pre-commit. As he explains, a 'pre-commit' involves removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsivity. As you know, I've pre-committed to send you this newsletter and ship it every Friday. That, alone, ensures that I end work on Friday at an early enough to clear my head, plan out what I want to say, and produce written word to the page.
On hacking back workplace distractions, I just got noise-canceling headphones for my workspace (basically free with my external monitor) and now I can't hear anything going on around me. It's great.
The bottom line:
To be Indistractable, start with just one tip or piece of advice. Implement it immediately. Keep at it. Add to that once it's become embedded.