bonus
Beyond Distraction: Bonus Interview with Nir Eyal, International Bestselling Author and Tech Habits Exper
It's easy to blame technology for our distractions, but the story is more nuanced. Join us for a special interview with Nir Eyal, best-selling author and tech-habits expert, as we delve into the psychology of habit-forming technologies. Discover insights from his best-selling books, Hooked and Indistractable, which have sold over 1 million copies worldwide. Nir challenges the idea that technology is the villain and offers strategies to reclaim focus. He also addresses Johann Hari’s controversial portrayal of him in Stolen Focus, arguing against the notion that we are mere victims of tech. This interview is essential for anyone aiming to enhance their concentration and engage with technology in a mature, considered way. It builds on the themes from Season 1 of The Spacemakers, deepening our understanding of how to live intentionally in a digital world.
Sponsor our podcast: www.spacemakers.au/sponsors
Resources:
Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products
Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
Spacemaker: How To Unplug, Unwind and Think Clearly in the Digital Age
Discover more:
This podcast is recorded and produced by Production Farm Studios
Keen to sponsor The Spacemakers podcast? Visit www.spacemakers.au/sponsors
Mentioned in this episode:
SPONSORSHIP PROMO
Transcript
[00:00:30] NIR: space.
[:[00:00:45] NIR: It's simply that you haven't learned how to control your emotional impulses. It's just a feeling. So, what do we do about that? The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. That if you wait to the last minute, if the cigarette is lit and it's on the way to your mouth, you're going to smoke it. If you're on a diet but the [00:01:00] chocolate cake is on the fork, you're going to eat it.
[:[00:01:14] VOICEOVER: This is The Space Makers.
[:[00:01:24] DANIEL: I'm so grateful for this opportunity to talk about technology, about overuse, about focus and distraction, and a whole lot of other things related to our Season 1. of the podcast, and we're going to also talk a bit about midlife. So welcome, Nir. Thanks so much, Daniel. Great to be here. Yeah, great. Thank you so much.
[:[00:01:46] NIR: I am writing a book, but that's not why I came to Sydney. I came, I came just for, for some R and R and, uh, really enjoying it. We've been here for about two weeks and we're going to stay for one more week. I'm with my, my 16 year old daughter, my wife as well, and we're having a blast.
[:[00:02:05] DANIEL: Oh, look, that's, I mean, it's, it's a beautiful place to hang out. And I know you came to my hometown of Hobart. I loved it.
[:[00:02:25] NIR: So, uh, uh, Waitstaff is unbelievably friendly. Uh, that's been amazing. Like I, I can't tell you how many times Waitstaff has asked us, where are you from?
[:[00:02:49] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. Yeah. No, I can, I can vouch for hospitality in Australia. I think it's something we can be super grateful for. And the coffee. Uh, the coffee, unbelievable. The coffee is good. The coffee is [00:03:00] good. Um, Hey, look, so you've written two bestselling books, uh, and, uh, one on, you know, technologies design called Hooked, uh, and the other, uh, Indistractable about how to improve our focus and, and shape our attention in this kind of digitally soaked age.
[:[00:03:37] DANIEL: So, um, but maybe, would you mind telling us a bit about yourself and in particular how you got into this space of, you know, talking and writing about tech
[:[00:03:52] NIR: Uh, and I previously, uh, taught at the graduate school of business at Stanford and later at the Hassett Platter Institute of Design at Stanford. And, [00:04:00] uh, today I work with all kinds of companies and all sorts of industries to make products. products that people get hooked to, to build healthy habits. So, uh, Fitbot is a former client that uses the hook model, uh, to, uh, uh, build these habit forming products around exercise.
[:[00:04:35] NIR: So you want to build healthy habits with the fitness app and the language learning app and the personal finance app that helps you do the things that you yourself want to do. Meanwhile, you want to disconnect, you want to break those bad habits there. To those distractions, many of them tech distractions, like too much news, too much social media, too much email, but also it can be things that are not tech related, right?
[:[00:05:04] DANIEL: Yeah, what fascinated me reading both of your books is, you know, on the one hand, you're teaching people how tech works and how to actually design tech for behavioral design and habit change.
[:[00:05:38] DANIEL: with what you want to achieve, then you hit a productive middle where more technology doesn't lead to better outcomes, but then you slide down the right side of the curve into what I call digital overuse, which is what I'm seeing a lot of in workplaces where actually we need less tech or different ways of engaging technology in order to shape our life around a broader depth and breadth of activities.
[:[00:06:02] NIR: I think that's exactly the right word is, is the lack of nuance. Uh, I think we love to have simple stories. We like the good guys and the bad guys. So just tell me who to hate and that's who I'll blame for everything.
[:[00:06:29] NIR: But also we kind of forget to talk about our personal responsibility, that there's so much we can do, uh, to reassert our agency that I think that the worst thing that we can do. And I think it's, it's interesting because a lot of the criticism that tech companies get these days, it's almost like, you know, They want you to believe this.
[:[00:07:02] NIR: The word addiction comes from the Latin addictio, which means slave. And so when you tell people you're a slave, there's nothing you can do about it. The technology is hijacking your brain. Guess what people do? Nothing. Right. It's called learned helplessness. And so that is really what I'm fighting against.
[:[00:07:34] DANIEL: It's very interesting. I mean, I, I've written a book in this text space and I wrestled long and hard with the term addiction and I chose not to use that term in my book. Bravo. So I used the term digital overuse to express some of the, uh, what happens on the right side of that curve. And I, but, but addiction is a, you know, a specific narrower form of addiction.
[:[00:07:58] NIR: And I think anyone who seriously [00:08:00] looks at the scientific literature and understands what a terrible pathology addiction is, it's not a word to be tossed around.
[:[00:08:21] NIR: You know, we have a glass of wine. We're not all alcoholics. We have sex. We're not all sex addicts. So why do we think somehow technology? Oh, it's addictive. Well, for some people, absolutely, about one to three percent of the population does have a predilection towards addiction, of course, but that means that ninety nine to ninety seven percent of the population, it's not an addiction, it's a distraction, but when we talk about it as overuse or distraction, oh, no, now I have to do something about it.
[:[00:08:47] DANIEL: Yeah. That's, that's very, very interesting. Yeah, I like it. It's interesting. I like, um, Greg Lukianoff talks about, uh, uh, Word creep in, um, I think the coddling of the American mind, and I like that idea, similar idea that everything is [00:09:00] traumatic and everything is, you know, addictive.
[:[00:09:18] DANIEL: Absolutely. And we've got to be careful of that. So I think we're
[:[00:09:30] NIR: There's a 99 percent chance you will walk out with a diagnosis. Uh, and it's very dangerous in the I don't know what's going on in Australia, but in America, 25 percent of American boys are diagnosed with ADHD 25%. I mean, it's off the charts. It's crazy. It can't be that everybody Boy, has this, uh, has this, uh, uh, disorder.
[:[00:10:29] NIR: So what I advocate for, whether you have ADHD or not, is to first start with non pharmaceutical interventions, right? As opposed to jumping to, to pharmaceutical interventions, you know, pills don't teach skills. That the first thing we need to do is to start with these non pharmaceutical interventions to see, can they work?
[:[00:10:59] NIR: And [00:11:00] so the book is titled Indistractable to give people a new moniker, right? That I want, this is who I am, it's my identity. And this actually comes out of the psychology of religion, that we know that when people label themselves, when they have a certain identity, uh, it, it changes their behavior. So, uh, a devout Muslim doesn't say to themselves, Ooh, I wonder if I'll have a bacon sandwich for breakfast.
[:[00:11:34] NIR: I won't check my email every 30 seconds. It's about defining who you are as a person in order to help you reach those goals.
[:[00:11:54] DANIEL: So I think there's a similarity, which makes sense to me. Now, I should actually move to question one in my, uh, [00:12:00] plan , which I love. So I want Now we're gonna get started. Now. We're get started now. The hard stuff. No, I wanted to get started by talking about. that book fascinated me, partly because I've done, I've done years and years of reading and research and kind of focus and attention.
[:[00:12:34] DANIEL: Yeah. And have that autonomy and self efficacy to then make decisions within that space, which is what your second book was about. So I would love, you know, I suppose the question has is, uh, if you were designing an app today to get people hooked, how would you do it? Uh, essentially, I'd love to know. You to overview your model, if that's okay, yeah, I'll give
[:[00:12:54] NIR: That would be fantastic. And it applies to all sorts of products. It's not just tech products, not just for product designers. Anybody who's building the kind [00:13:00] of product service that needs repeat use. Now, some products don't need repeat use. But if you want users to get habituated to your product, you want them to use it because they want to not because they have to the way they would use, um, you know, check, Instagram or Slack or Snapchat or any of these other, you know, uh, products.
[:[00:13:32] NIR: And so there are four steps to the hook model starts with a trigger, two kinds of triggers. We have the external triggers, which are all the pings, dings and rings, anything in your outside environment that tells you what to do next. That's an external trigger. We'll get back to the other type of trigger in a minute.
[:[00:14:04] NIR: Variable rewards are about this, this, this concept that comes from, uh, B. F. Skinner, the father of operative conditioning, this psychologist back in the 1950s who studied these. Pigeons, he gave these, these pigeons a treat every time they pecked at a disc, today we call it the Skinner box, and he found that he could train the pigeons to peck at the disc every time they receive this reward, this little food treat.
[:[00:14:41] NIR: Every time they peck at the disc, I can only afford to give it to them once in a while. So sometimes pigeon pecks at the disc no food pellet. Nothing comes out. Next time the pigeon pecks at the disc. They do receive a reward and what Skinner observed is that the rate of response the number of times these pigeons peck at the disc.
[:[00:15:11] DANIEL: So there's novelty, there's discontinuous rewards, it happens sometimes, it doesn't happen all the time.
[:[00:15:16] NIR: see it everywhere. So we said everywhere we, uh, the reason we watch a movie and find it engaging is because we want to know what's going to happen at the end when we read a great book, when we watch sports. Why do we like watching spectator sports? Some stupid ball bouncing around some grass or pitch or who cares?
[:[00:15:39] DANIEL: Even a decade ago, when I was talking about email ninja, which is where I started, you know, I'm an inbox zero guy originally.
[:[00:16:02] NIR: rewards.
[:[00:16:21] NIR: That's pretty commonplace. What I added to the equation is not only the variability, right? The Scenarion type intermittent rewards. And again, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, right? I didn't do the original research. I just put it into a model that product makers can explain to their team so they could build something useful.
[:[00:16:54] NIR: I'm talking about something that is It improves the product with use that makes it valuable. So most products and [00:17:00] services, my clothing, your car, your couch, they depreciate. They lose value with wear and tear habit forming products because of this principle that I call stored value. They should appreciate, they should get better and better, more and more valuable the more you interact with them.
[:[00:17:30] NIR: And today what's happening with the explosion of LLMs and uh, AI, every product and service Will have this expectation that it should get better with use. And frankly, if you don't do it, your competition is going to do it. Customers are not going to wait around to put their information into your product for the hundredth time.
[:[00:18:01] NIR: So it's through successive cycles through these hooks. Trigger action reward investment that eventually what happens, the ultimate goal of a habit forming product is to no longer need those external triggers, your internal trigger thing, which I found fascinating. So this is, this is also very different from any other model out there is that the external triggers for a habit forming product become unnecessary.
[:[00:18:41] NIR: 90 percent of the time that we check our phone, it's not because of a ping, ding, or ring, it's because of an internal trigger. Yeah. What is an internal trigger? And that,
[:[00:18:54] DANIEL: Yeah. But that that's fascinating. So keep
[:[00:19:16] NIR: You built that habit. Now you don't need advertising. You don't need spam and messaging. You're triggering the user to use your product. in their own heads. So every time I feel this way, your product is a solution to my problem. And what's, and what's so powerful about that, the reason that's such a, uh, a competitive moat as Warren Buffett likes to say, is that when you have a, a product habit, the consumer doesn't even consider the competition.
[:[00:19:44] DANIEL: And it's almost like their identity is part of the product though, isn't it? Or at least, at least, at least in the habit loop, I
[:[00:19:56] NIR: Why does Coca Cola spend so much money on advertising? Because they want to [00:20:00] brand you, right? When you see an ad for Coca Cola or Pepsi or whatever, it's not about the people who haven't decided what they should drink. People think advertising like that is about, well, I could choose between Coke or Pepsi, which one am I going to choose?
[:[00:20:21] DANIEL: And they're keeping them hooked. Okay, so I, I drink coke because it makes me feel like I have a community.
[:[00:20:34] NIR: small. So that's what's called a fathead industry. So if you look at, uh, uh, uh, fast food, for example, if you look at food and beverage, if you look at the alcohol industry, Okay.
[:[00:20:50] DANIEL: as well, right? Gambling industry as well. The whole industry is based on that fat head.
[:[00:20:57] NIR: It's not for the average person who's choosing what they should drink. [00:21:00]
[:[00:21:06] NIR: like Coca Cola had to spend billions upon billions of dollars over over 100 years to create that impression in your mind.
[:[00:21:38] NIR: Why is it that Coca Cola spends billions and these tech companies spend almost zero? Because in their case, It is the product itself that creates the habit. It's not the mere exposure effect. It's the usage of the product itself that gets you hooked.
[:[00:22:00] DANIEL: And then he doesn't have the investment in the product. Exactly. So I can, you know, I liked how you described the Ikea effect as one simple example that when you. You know, by IKEA and then create your piece of furniture, it actually has more meaning to you because you have participated in the creation of it.
[:[00:22:36] DANIEL: Uh, variable reward, but then I add something of myself through maybe sharing comments, putting in photos. You know, in my email example, I've been using Gmail for over a decade and the idea of moving would be so complex because I've got like 10 years of data, right, and I need to search for it. So I can't move because I've inputted so much into Google and to Gmail that now I'm kind of hooked.
[:[00:22:58] NIR: Exactly.
[:[00:23:04] NIR: you nailed it.
[:[00:23:20] DANIEL: Where. You have an internal thought, an internal desire, a feeling, a sense of boredom, wanting to escape fear or something that makes you feel uncomfortable, and then you automatically associate opening the product as your way of escaping that pain or experiencing that Pleasure. So there's no advertising.
[:[00:23:39] NIR: That's right. So, yes, the only small correction is that it's not about pursuing pleasure. Okay. It's only about escaping pain. So, so is that a change in your Hooked book versus Nope. It's always been the case with Hooked. Okay. Yeah. So, so Okay.
[:[00:24:14] NIR: Okay? The carrot is the stick. How is that so? Wanting, pleasure, pursuing a good feeling, right, hunger, lusting, desire for something good to happen, is itself psychologically destabilizing. So the only thing that causes you to do anything and everything you do. Everything you do, every product you buy, every action, everything you do is about the desire to escape discomfort.
[:[00:24:58] DANIEL: But it's for business. You know, I don't get [00:25:00] hooked on it. Uh, but I must admit I'm not that good at email. And the irony is I teach people how to not get hooked on email and yet I still look at it way too much. More than I'd like to. I don't use it on the weekend. I've got a habit of that where I have no tech on a Saturday.
[:[00:25:31] DANIEL: pressing that Gmail button. I mean, because essentially this moves into your indestructible model where we actually need to understand our internal motivations and triggers ourselves. If we are to then shape our behavior differently than the design of the tech we're using.
[:[00:25:42] DANIEL: And so I was like, well, uh, should I do five wires on why do I put my hand on that Gmail button?
[:[00:25:51] NIR: from your product. No, no, no, for me, for
[:[00:25:53] NIR: identifying why I do this personally. Okay. So let's go into the realm of indistractable. Yes. Um, so the same internal [00:26:00] triggers, external triggers, uh, that go into making a habit forming product.
[:[00:26:18] NIR: You're not broken in any way. It's simply that we haven't learned techniques that help us deal with discomfort. That distraction is a desire to escape discomfort. That's all it is. Because all behavior is about the desire to escape discomfort. So time management. is pain management. Money management is pain management.
[:[00:26:55] NIR: internal trigger that you are trying to escape.
[:[00:27:00] NIR: you tell me, first of all, nothing to feel ashamed of. Research is me search. It took me five years to write Indistractable because I kept getting distracted while I was writing it. Yes. So complete, you know, we, we, we do these things to help ourselves.
[:[00:27:14] DANIEL: for that. I appreciate that Nia.
[:[00:27:19] DANIEL: really. And now I started my book saying I struggle with space and overwork and therefore, I mean, I like, um, uh, who wrote, uh, you know, the quote, I teach best what I most need to learn.
[:[00:27:31] NIR: what I do. I only write books about problems that I have so I can solve them. Yeah. But when it comes to this problem, I have to tell you, I've, I've, I've, I've solved it. I'm super. My life is better in so many ways. I, I exercise it when I say I will. So I'm in the best shape of my life.
[:[00:27:52] DANIEL: how do you help me work out what to do? Pain or uncomfortable feeling I'm trying to avoid by clicking that email.
[:[00:28:01] NIR: No, but we'll do something else. That's that's building product. Okay, so counseling. Yeah, so take me back makers. Exactly. Exactly. So take me back to the last time that you remember getting distracted. You want to do a and yet you're checking email instead. When was the last time that happened?
[:[00:28:21] DANIEL: you plan to do? Ah, look, I would probably rather Simply sit and look out of the window and think okay and reflect. Okay, because I checked my inbox 15 minutes before
[:[00:28:32] DANIEL: and I don't really need to check it every 15 minutes Okay, I pull out my phone and check it again And maybe there's one or two emails, but I don't need to check it every 15 minutes Because I only have to respond every 24 hours.
[:[00:28:44] NIR: Fantastic. So let's, let's, okay. So let's take step one for a second and put it on the side. And let's actually, I want to jump ahead to step two, which is making time for traction, which is about turning your values into time. So had you ever said to yourself, you know what I want, uh, from this time to this time, I want to stare [00:29:00] out the window or, uh, every time I'm on the train, I want to, enjoy the scenery and not check my phone.
[:[00:29:09] DANIEL: Yeah. Uh, had I said it as in, as I got onto the train?
[:[00:29:20] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I do have an identity as someone who values deep thought.
[:[00:29:41] NIR: So the point is, it can't be spontaneous. Yes. It has to be planned ahead of time. So you have to turn your values, there's two ways you know what someone's values really are. Because people talk a good game. They say, oh my values are to be, you know, to be a good father and to take care of my body and to be devoted to God and all this stuff.
[:[00:30:16] DANIEL: So I very much like your time blocking or time boxing focus and I time box so much of my life. Time boxing meaning when you have, you plan your week, you plan your day, you have a sense of scheduling the things that matter. So in a work sense, I time box deep work, I time box meetings, I time box thinking time, I time box inbox.
[:[00:30:35] NIR: time to work? Watch the, look out the window.
[:[00:30:41] NIR: on
[:[00:30:42] NIR: So if you said, look, my time is B on the train and get from point A to point B, that's what you timeboxed.
[:[00:30:49] NIR: Right. And you did that.
[:[00:30:50] NIR: made
[:[00:30:50] NIR: here.
[:[00:31:07] NIR: Now if you said to yourself, I'm going to be on the train and I need to do something else like I'm going to look out the window, now you've stated an intention. And that's the big idea here. The difference between traction and distraction, right, those are opposites. The opposite of distraction is not focus, the opposite of distraction is traction.
[:[00:31:40] NIR: I walk. at least 20, 000 steps. I love walking, especially in Sydney. It's such a great city to walk in. And so I really enjoy, as I'm exercising, I like listening to podcasts. Sometimes I'll check an email. That's fine because that's what I said I was going to do in advance. So it's not the evil technology.
[:[00:31:57] DANIEL: Yeah, that makes sense. Look, there's very few [00:32:00] situations in life where I don't do the things I was planning. Well, let's go back to email because we're doing a therapy session. Yeah, yeah. So take
[:[00:32:09] DANIEL: Uh. Uh, possibly when I'm doing a deep work time block or I'm doing concentrated work, it happens less and less because I have little time and I have a lot of content creation. But, you know, that would be a situation where I just don't feel like doing that hard concentrated task that I said I'll do, uh, and therefore I might decide to chip away at email and do small things.
[:[00:32:47] DANIEL: Okay. Um, it's probably more just recognizing this is a bit dumb. Why am I checking 15 minutes at a time when I'm on the train when it doesn't really tell Do anything
[:[00:33:02] NIR: You said, it's this things that I just don't feel like doing at the time. And now I check email. Yes. So you've, you've actually sparked on something that I think we, we need to talk about. We don't spend enough time thinking about, which is the real reason back to what we were saying earlier, is always about escaping a feeling.
[:[00:33:36] NIR: Two minute rule is awful. He, when David Allen wrote the two minute rule, which says whatever takes less than two minutes, just do it. He was thinking before email, but now every email takes less than two minutes. Exactly. And,
[:[00:33:48] DANIEL: I recognize that. Your whole day is two minutes. Yeah. So, I mean, I, I look at both methodologies and I've done a lot of work with people looking at time blocking as opposed to doing the thing that matters. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So what you're saying is I'm essentially avoiding [00:34:00] the uncomfortable feeling of doing the work that I want to do.
[:[00:34:08] NIR: of traction, right? So the idea is so so step you've already done step number two, which is planning the activity you want to do. So where we need to start is with step number one of what is that feeling you're trying to escape?
[:[00:34:31] NIR: And you're going to keep doing it again and again and again, unless you put a practice in place that says, ah, whenever I feel that discomfort, I have a different action that I will take. That makes sense. That will, that will satisfy that discomfort in some way. And so there's a dozen different techniques you can use that talk about in the book.
[:[00:35:05] NIR: You have a practice in place that says, Nope, I'm not going to do that. I have this practice.
[:[00:35:21] NIR: That's right. So to, to, to satisfy that sensation with an alternative that leads you towards traction rather than trying to escape it with distraction. Great.
[:[00:35:40] DANIEL: It might be a bit more personal, I don't know. But, um, I read a book a while ago, Stolen Focus, by Johan Hari, and I know you've heard of him, and I'm sure you've heard of his book. Uh, and there was, you know, he sold a million copies. Uh, it was a popular book. It is a popular book. And, uh, it really tried to, I think, frame at a broad sociological level.
[:[00:36:19] DANIEL: It's in the public domain. It's in the public, there's a chapter in the book. Uh, and, you know, In all honesty, he probably painted you as the tech villain or the anti hero of the book. Uh, and, and really, um, I went back and listened to the original interview between you and Hari. It is on the public domain.
[:[00:36:56] DANIEL: So really what I heard is he was critiquing [00:37:00] the idea that you were suggesting that individuals have a positive expression of how they can focus, uh, and really individual autonomy versus environmental factors shaping us. When I heard the interview, I don't think you got a fair rap because I don't, I don't think, I don't believe you're actually saying, well, you're, you clearly didn't say that environment and legislation and the designer tech isn't a factor in, in our focus.
[:[00:37:48] NIR: Focus.
[:[00:38:10] NIR: Irony number one. Irony number two, the fact that he uses, you know, he, he berates that these tech companies are using psychological manipulation against us, that we're powerless to resist. And funny enough, he uses psychological manipulation in his writing, right? It's called the plot line. When you have mystery, when you have uncertainty, when you have a storyline, right?
[:[00:38:50] NIR: Very ironic, right? There was a similar, um, uh, critique that you could level with the film, The Social Dilemma, right? That told everybody about how terrible tech was and how [00:39:00] awful social media was. And where did you watch this? on Netflix. Yeah, and look, there's the irony
[:[00:39:08] DANIEL: I agree with that.
[:[00:39:27] NIR: Please stop making your shows so good to watch. Uh, Apple, stop making your phone so user friendly. I want to engage with them all the time. What the hell are we complaining about? If you told our grandparents who were dying and starving in World Wars, etc. that our big struggle today was that products are so good that we want to use them a lot, they would laugh in our face.
[:[00:40:04] NIR: You take responsibility for it. You realize that this is a blessing. This isn't a problem. This is what we call progress. We want products to be better than us. So we're going to sit here and say, Zuckerberg, stop doing that. And Tim Cook, stop doing that. You're, you know, if you, if you hold your breath, you're going to suffocate.
[:[00:40:35] NIR: That's not what his book is about. I agree we need better privacy controls. I agree we need special regulation for children, but he's specifically saying that our focus was stolen. That's the title of his book. Excuse me, sir, your focus was not stolen. You gave it away. Did it, did it hurt when he wrote that?
[:[00:41:15] NIR: I imagine, I
[:[00:41:26] NIR: Okay. Was it okay? I mean, it's, uh, thankfully I have a thick skin, and, you know, I think where it would hurt, uh, is if I, if I screwed up, like if he brought it, it would be, it'd be for the better.
[:[00:42:04] NIR: You know, what's going on? It's gone too far. Like, we need a book to help us get unhooked. And then when I started digging into the research, like what you were talking about, actually, it's not addiction, guys. Like, it's not, it's not the same thing. We're talking about something else. I just saw that it was such a low road.
[:[00:42:32] NIR: It's how much. You're using these devices. It's what you're doing with these devices. And most importantly, what would you be doing instead of using these devices? Do we really think, Johan, do you really think that if you got rid of social media, people would, uh, read Chaucer and Shakespeare in their spare time?
[:[00:43:01] DANIEL: ever. Can I ask one last question about, uh, what we call the Roadrunner effect?
[:[00:43:26] DANIEL: Uh, some of us, you know, are more successful at catching the Roadrunner than others. And, uh, I have heard a number of people suggest that once they actually catch the Roadrunner, it's like, well, what do I do now? You know, and I know that you're someone who has, you Certainly had a certain level of success, you know, so a lot of books you've spoken on the biggest stages around the world.
[:[00:44:01] NIR: I mean, I, I think, um, there's been things that I haven't succeeded in that, uh, uh, I stopped chasing, uh, like I thought it was going to be a startup founder.
[:[00:44:39] NIR: I had a friend who said, you know what you need to do? Just do whatever you would do if money was no object, like, just do that for a little bit. And I, I just started writing and I, I, I, I really enjoyed writing. Uh, and so that's what, And then it turns out that actually I could make more money being a writer and be much happier as a writer than trying to chase this dream that turned out wasn't really for me.
[:[00:45:26] NIR: Like what, what, what, what, what? You know, for me, it was professionally, uh, and of course, I have family, I don't want to disregard those. Of course, I have familial obligations to my parents, to my wife's parents, to my family, to my nuclear family. But I really professionally, I want to know, like, what am I supposed to be doing with my time?
[:[00:46:01] NIR: That serves me.
[:[00:46:16] NIR: Yeah. I say it every day. My purpose in life is to explain the world so they can be made better.
[:[00:46:31] DANIEL: Because you're not trying to chase like external, you're actually chasing, how would you describe, a value? A mission. A mission.
[:[00:46:38] NIR: That's never going to be done. I will die with that mission not accomplished, not finished. Yeah. And so that's, That to me is, is, that's something that kind of can't be taken away, right? And can't be accomplished.
[:[00:46:59] NIR: Well, [00:47:00] that's a great question. I mean, maybe I'd love to hear your answer on that. I, so something that I've recently found researching my next book, uh, again, I, you know, I was kind of raised in a secular family and I, I, I haven't really believed in anything supernatural growing up, but something that I've really come to respect is, is the power of prayer.
[:[00:47:37] NIR: Uh, because I was always stuck on, well, I can't pray because I can't, I don't believe it, right? Like, I don't believe all the stories actually happen that way. And so. I'm just going to toss out everything and, um, I don't think that served me. And I think in my life, when I have stopped, and it didn't make sense to me because I always thought prayer was about asking God for something.
[:[00:48:16] NIR: What are you saying? And boiled down over hundreds of interviews, I kind of learned that that my favorite type of prayer is the prayer that doesn't ask for things. It's not, you know, give me this or give me that or heal this or help that. It's show me how. Yeah, I think that's just that's so powerful because it brings focus to what you really are looking for.
[:[00:48:48] DANIEL: There's a beautiful, um, interview with Mother Teresa, and she was asked, I can't remember the interviewer, you know, what do you pray for, which is a similar question that you're asking.
[:[00:49:19] DANIEL: But I've certainly experienced that. I, you know, you've heard my, um, episode about first, second and third born faith. And I think the first born faith, the Santa Claus faith, the faith where, you know, everything's black and white and easy. And that is the, that's the faith where you ask for stuff all the time.
[:[00:49:57] DANIEL: It's about who you are as a friend. [00:50:00]
[:[00:50:01] DANIEL: I think with, I mean, and I didn't expect that obviously as an answer from, from you, but it's a fascinating idea that prayer might be linked to your, to getting unstuck and prayer might be linked to actually discovering the mission that you have, which has certainly been my experience.
[:[00:50:30] NIR: Your is a great prayer because you're, you're, you're asking for, um, the fortitude to avoid not doing the wrong thing, right? We, we, so often we think about how I have to do the right thing all the time. We don't think about actually, if you can just not do the bad stuff that you yourself know you don't want to do.
[:[00:51:09] NIR: You don't want to be controlled by, you're asking for that strength.
[:[00:51:25] NIR: I'm sorry.
[:[00:51:36] DANIEL: Well, look, I, I, I pray like a conversation. Yeah. So, I mean, look, I have the faith in Jesus.
[:[00:52:11] DANIEL: So there's a sense where, you know, I like the Italian word, um, Papa. It kind of denotes respect, but also, you know, respect. As opposed to, hey, my mate, who I go and have a beer with. And so that's the kind of relationship I have. And so I just talk. Um, but, you know, I would ask for things. I am often thankful.
[:[00:52:50] DANIEL: Can you help me with this meeting? You know,
[:[00:53:03] DANIEL: Yeah, it looks like I don't necessarily see prayer as something I'm trying to progress. I write a little prayer every day.
[:[00:53:40] DANIEL: I talk about it with others because I believe that discernment and discernment. direction needs to be in community, not just by yourself. And I always commit to a plan of action, which I'm accountable to. So it's almost like there's a chorus, which is a moment in time where I discern or recognize this was important and it was different or [00:54:00] it woke me up or it was uncomfortable or it was joyful, but it's a spiritual moment if I want to make it that way.
[:[00:54:28] DANIEL: That can't be a coincidence. There is a direct line between that, right? So, so listening to those moments has given me that mission and that guidance. So that's, that's probably my process, but.
[:[00:54:39] DANIEL: Oh, I do my journaling in the morning. In the morning, but as, as you said, just, you know, I was walking upstairs today and I'm just like, Hey, God, let's not start up this interview.
[:[00:55:24] NIR: Yeah, okay, so I think if you're, that's a kind of two part question, so if you're feeling stuck, I think the thing that has served me, your mileage might vary, but the thing that has served me is writing. So I think for many people, I'm starting to appreciate it. It's, it's prayer. It's a very similar process of just making time to think, to ask what are, what's in your way and giving yourself time to answer that question.
[:[00:56:05] NIR: So it's not your problem. Think about your friend comes to you and tells you your problem and your writing to your friend. Here's what I think you might want to try. Right? Incredibly effective. Like just that process of writing. Very, very effective. And then in terms of struggling with distraction, I think if I could summarize, uh, my over a decade now in this space, uh, it would come down to this, this mantra that the antidote to is for thought, the antidote to impulsiveness is for thought, meaning that distraction is nothing more than an impulse control problem.
[:[00:56:51] NIR: It's just a feeling, just a feeling. So how do, what do we do about that? The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought that if you wait to the [00:57:00] last minute, if the cigarette is lit and it's on the way to your mouth, you're going to smoke it. If you're, uh, if you're on a diet, but the chocolate cake is on the fork, you're going to eat it.
[:[00:57:22] DANIEL: That is fantastic.
[:[00:57:41] DANIEL: Thank you. Appreciate it. Make space. Thanks so much.
[: