The Exchanges

Q We all have the same like human impulsiveness and sort of like the same, we just have better tools now or different tools, not even better tools, right? Like different things available.

A In many ways, better tools, because if you think about it, if you look at the statistics, everything that kills kids, everything that harms kids, not just kills kids, it harms kids, is down to record lows. Uh, homicide, record lows. Truancy, record lows. Drug use, record lows. Pregnancy, record lows. Uh, incarceration, record lows. All these things are at record lows. Even suicide has gone up over the past few years. But it's not at a record high. If you look at the 19 seventies and eighties and nineties, actually suicide was higher back then. It's so what they do is when they show you suicide has gone up, this is what they did in the social dilemma movie. They only showed it to you from the graph starting around 2004. But if you take the X axis back, you'll see suicide isn't at an all time high, quite the opposite. It used to be much higher in the past. So if we wanted to build a device to keep kids off the streets, off the roads and safe at home, Maybe this gadget is not such a bad idea. It seems to be having some upside.

AI assessment note: “In many ways, better tools, because if you think about it”

Q Isn't that an arms race at the end of the day? Like if, if you're doing that and then enough people do it, Facebook still needs to make money so that you can have the product. Like walk me through how you see that playing out.

A I, I don't actually, first of all, it's been around for a while. It's been around for years, and they haven't done anything about it. Uh, and second, I think the blowback would be so severe if they tried to do something about it that I, I can't see that on their radar. And, and more so, the evidence of this is that we actually see companies, tech companies, doing things to help us use their products less, right? Uh, Apple's screen time feature, Uh, Google well-being feature. I mean, they have built, the two major phone OS manufacturers have built into their products ways for us to use their products less. Why would they do that? The reason they've done that is because they realize that products, that that is a way to make their products better. And the perfect analog here is what happened in the automobile industry. So seat belts appeared in cars, 17 years before any legislation required it. You know why? Because safer cars sell better. That's why. And so that's why these companies are happy to give you these tools to use this, uh, to use their technology in a way that doesn't burn you out. We see this, the companies are doing this voluntarily, you know, Instagram, big, bad Facebook owns Instagram. Well, now they have, they've instituted what's called a stopping cue. So they tell you at the bottom, when you read all your Instagram stories that said, yep, you're caught up, right…

AI assessment note: “we actually see companies, tech companies, doing things to help us use their products less”

Q And you control your time. And what was the third type of pact?

A The third type of pact is called an identity pact, and this is actually the most powerful of the three pacts. An identity pact uses this psychology of having some kind of moniker, some kind of identity that we use to describe ourselves. This research actually comes from the psychology of religion, where we know that people who have some kind of, of, of, of identity, some kind of noun they use to describe yourself, themselves, are much more likely to do what they say they're going to do. So for example, if someone says, I'm a devout Muslim or an observant Christian, uh, or even I'm a vegetarian, uh, a vegetarian doesn't wake up in the morning and say, hmm, I think I'll have a bacon sandwich for breakfast. No, vegetarians don't eat meat. That is who they are. It is their identity, and so this is why I titled the book Indistractable, because this is our moniker, right? Indistractable sounds like indestructible. This is the, this is our superpower, right? This is the superpower I would most want per my Conversation with my daughter, having that power to do what I say I'm going to do, uh, to live with personal integrity. That's my identity. And we can all call ourselves indistractable. Even if you just listened to this podcast episode, if you are the kind of person who strives to do what they say they're going to do, it doesn't mean you never get distracted. By the way, I made up th…

AI assessment note: “The third type of pact is called an identity pact”

Q All right, let's go to number three, which is sort of the external, managing the external, how did you word that? Triggers. Triggers. How do we dive into this?

A Yeah. So hacking back the external trigger. So this is kind of the most very tactical part of the book. This is where we actually dive into how do we hack back these technologies. And I use that word hack back very deliberately because, you know, the definition of to hack in computer programmer parlance means to gain unauthorized access, right? That's what it means to hack. So a computer hacker might hack into a bank account or something. And so I use that term because, you know, we all basically know that, that Any company that monetizes through advertising is hacking our attention. Does anybody not know that? Does anybody not know that Fox News and CNN and Wall Street Journal and New York Times and Facebook and Twitter, all these companies make money on ads. They sell your eyeballs, your attention to the highest bidder. That shouldn't be news to anybody. The fact is, though, that we can hack back. We are not powerless. And so this is where we talk about, you know, the tools I talked about before, like YouTube DF, Newsfeed, uh, Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator, which is wonderful, right? As great as that Newsfeed is, I don't think people need it, right? Like, I certainly don't need it. I love Facebook. I use it every day, but I'll go to specific people's pages to see what's up with them. I don't want to see that wall of garbage, uh, called the Newsfeed, so I don't. I have a Chrome…

AI assessment note: “Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator, which is wonderful, right? As great as that Newsfeed is”

Q Wait, did that help your sex life first before we go in?

A Yes, it did. And it did. And, uh, and I get more sleep as well. So yeah, the second pack is called a price pack. And this is where we have some kind of monetary disincentive to getting distracted. Uh, and so actually this was this, a good example of the, I, I saw this research, um, when I came across a study that found that the most effective smoking cessation study in history Was a study that simply paid people to quit smoking, and not only that, it was even more effective if the person had to put some skin in the game. So in this experiment, some people had to put in a 150 dollars that they would get back if they didn't smoke for six months, and those people were more likely to quit smoking than the people who just won money without putting some skin in the game. So when you have some kind of monetary disincentive to getting distracted, That's another form of a pact.

AI assessment note: “Yes, it did. And it did.”

Q So fundamentally, um, is there gender differences too?

A I, I haven't seen gender differences, but I think the reason why we, uh, why distraction and procrastination is always an emotion regulation problem is because the root cause of all human behavior is not what most people expect. That most people subscribe to this, this pop psychology notion that has, you know, Freud actually proposed that he called it the pleasure principle, that everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Right. Uh, Jeremy Bentham said something very similar. We all know it as carrots and sticks, right? This is how you motivate. Turns out neurologically speaking, this is not true. That, uh, human motivation is not about carrots and sticks. It's not about pain and pleasure, but rather it's just about one thing. All human behavior is spurred by the desire to escape discomfort. Everything we do, we do for just one reason, the desire to escape discomfort, even the pursuit of pleasurable sensations. If you think about it, Craving, desire, wanting, lusting. These sensations are themselves psychologically destabilizing. They feel bad. In fact, the brain spurs us to action by creating this discomfort that gets us to act. So this is called the homeostatic response. We know this to be true physiologically. It's pretty much common sense, right? If you think about how, uh, if you go outside, you know, you live in Ottawa. If it's cold, Your…

AI assessment note: “I, I haven't seen gender differences”

Q Do you think it's as much blaming other people as it is just really absolving ourself? Because if it's not somebody else's fault, Uh, then it's really within our control or our responsibility. And, uh, it's so much easier just to put it on somebody else and their convenient arguments.

A Absolutely. And, and this is, I think this is a, uh, a pervasive trend when, uh, when in order to gain control without assuming responsibility, this is what we love to do. I mean, and it's, and there's many aspects of society that we do this. Uh, uh, but it just fascinates me how, you know, I wrote this book Indistractable. It took me five years to write it. Uh, my gut instinct, by the way, when I first embarked on this journey to write this book, I really wrote it for me. And I thought, you know, I wrote Hooked, and then I found myself overusing technology. I found myself, you know, there, there's, there was one seminal moment that really made me reconsider my relationship with distraction. Uh, it was when I was with my daughter one afternoon. And, uh, we had this just daddy daughter time plan, just this afternoon to play together. And I remember we had this activity book that daddies and daughters could, could, you know, play different games. So there was Sudoku make an air paper airplane. And there was to get to know each other, ask each other this question, like a conversation prompt. And the question was, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember the question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter said, because in that moment, for some reason, I decided to look at my phone and have to check something, and my daughter got the …

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. And, and this is, I think this is a, uh, a pervasive trend”

Q daughter to deal with that rather than solving her problems? How do you teach adults to deal with discomfort instead of running away from it or thinking that it shouldn't happen at all? Because a lot of people seem to grow up, at least in the Western world, where they feel like Uh, you know, it's somebody else's responsibility to make them happy or take care of problems for them.

A Right. No, I think that this is, this is, I think the, the, the, the question of our age. Um, and I think, you know, this is, this is a good place because we, I realized we jumped into the conversation without kind of defining some terminology. I think words are really, really important when it comes to this subject. So let me just back up just for a quick second and talk about what is distraction really. I mean, we use this term, but what does it actually mean? And I think the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is not. So most people will say the opposite of distraction is focus, right? I don't want to be distracted. I want to be focused, but that's not actually the opposite of distraction. The opposite of distraction. If you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction. That both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull, and both words also end in the same six letters, A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action. So traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do, things that you do with intent, things that help move you towards your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. So those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction is Is distraction. Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do. Any…

AI assessment note: “let me just back up just for a quick second and talk about what is distraction”

Q daughter to deal with that rather than solving her problems? How do you teach adults to deal with discomfort instead of running away from it or thinking that it shouldn't happen at all? Because a lot of people seem to grow up, at least in the Western world, where they feel like, Um, you know, it's somebody else's responsibility to make them happy or take care of problems for them.

A Right. No, I think that this is, this is, I think the, the, the, the question of our age. Um, and I think, you know, this is, this is a good place because we, I, I realized we jumped into the conversation without kind of defining some terminology. I think words are really, really important when it comes to this subject. So let me just back up just for a quick second and talk about what is distraction really? I mean, we use this term, but what does it actually mean? And I think the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is not. So most people will say the opposite of distraction is focus. Right? I don't want to be distracted. I want to be focused, but that's not actually the opposite of distraction. The opposite of distraction, if you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction. That both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull. And both words also end in the same six letters, A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action. So traction by definition is any action that pulls you Towards what you said you were going to do. Things that you do with intent. Things that help move you towards your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. So those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction is distraction. Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do. Anyth…

AI assessment note: “let me just back up just for a quick second and talk about what is distraction”