00:00:00
what's your thoughts on ADHD oh this is a big topic and I'll probably get myself in trouble here but there's something fishy going on we can get to that near
00:00:07
ayal one of the world's leading experts in procrastination named the prophet of habit forming talking about how to keep
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focused how to set the right goals this is a must listen avoiding distraction is
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the key to not living with regret 90 of the time that we get distracted it's not
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because of what's happening outside of us it's because of what's Happening inside of us if you can't sit with a friend without looking at your phone
00:00:30
every three minutes it's not the phone it's your inability to deal with the discomfort of silence or boredom all
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human behaviors driven by desire to escape discomfort it's not hard to do something you enjoy but it's how do I do the stuff that I really don't feel like
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doing it I found this technique thousands of Studies have shown this to be very effective if you don't master that everything else becomes much more
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difficult if not impossible so the first step is the number of people being diagnosed with ADHD has significantly
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risen ADHD is a very real thing that can be debilitating for people that suffer with it ADHD is real but I have a lot of
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concerns ten percent of children in the United States are diagnosed with ADHD in Europe it's one percent that's a big red flag training a generation to believe
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that Solutions come in pill bottles we do not wait how dangerous those pills can be they have consequences the whole
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chemical and balance Theory no psychiatrist will tell you that's true skills before pills and what I hate
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about a lot of people in the ADHD Community they feel like it's an identity and that is so dangerous we
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need to look at ADHD as would you like to go for dinner with me and my guests here on the Diary of a CEO we are holding dinner parties all around the world over the coming months and our
00:01:39
subscribers on this YouTube channel are invited we're inviting 20 subscribers to every dinner so if you'd like to come
00:01:45
for dinner with me and my guests here on the Diary of a CEO I have a favor to ask you all you've got to do is hit the
00:01:51
Subscribe button and I hope to see you at dinner somewhere around the world very soon foreign
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[Music] it is very good to see you again because I have to admit you've changed my life but you also changed my father's life
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you're the reason my father quit smoking I've told this story maybe once or twice before but once upon a time I came home
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from for Christmas and I left your first book hooked in his bathroom he picked that book up
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once I'd left read it understood habit loops and from that moment he took steps which led him to quit smoking so I have
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to say thank you but also you've been on this podcast once before a long long time ago when not many people were
00:02:35
listening and from that conversation there were small nuggets which have stayed with me every day since my first
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question to you Nia for people that have just clicked onto this podcast and that are thinking about whether to listen or
00:02:46
not can you tell me who should listen why they should listen and yeah what value they're going to gain from listening to the conversation we're about to have yeah so first of all thank you for having me it's an honor be
00:02:59
back for the second episode I think the reason to listen is because regret sucks
00:03:05
having regret in your life is awful and so what I want to minimize with the work
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I do and frankly I write for myself more than anyone else I try and solve my own problems is I don't want to look back on
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my life with regret not for a day not for a month not for a a year not for a lifetime certainly and so avoiding
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distraction is the key to not living with regret because we all basically know what to do right we know we should exercise we know we should eat right we know we should spend quality time with
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our family we know we should do the hard work that we have to do to move our careers forward but many times we don't do it even
00:03:43
though we know what to do and if you don't know what to do Google it it's all out there right so the problem is not that we don't know what to do the
00:03:50
problem is we keep getting in our own way and so it's really about becoming indistractible this is how we live the
00:03:57
kind of Lies we deserve you described becoming indestructible on Twitter as the single most important
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skill that anybody in the 21st century can adopt and learn yeah and I think it's the macro skill right because there's no facet of your
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life that is not affected by your ability to control your attention so whether it's learning a new skill
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whether it's getting into relationships whether it's business whether it's physical fitness all of these things
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depend on your ability to follow through and so that's why I think it's a skill the century that if you if you don't
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master that skill everything else becomes much more difficult if not impossible but if you do if you can
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become indistractable you know I made up the word indestructible it's meant to sound like indestructible it's meant to
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be a superpower it's meant to be a a trait that we want in order to achieve our dreams and so it you know my goal
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was not to tell people what to do right I'm not going to say you need to exercise you need to live right you need to do this you need to do that that's
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not my goal at all if you want to play video games uh for your waking hours that's fine with me what I want to help
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people do is do the things that they themselves want to do whatever it is that you say you want to do with your time and attention that's what I want to
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help you do so why don't we do what we want to do because as you say The information's All Out
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There we have Google we have all of these books we have podcasts like this but regardless of you know we've had loads of Health podcasts in a row on on
00:05:18
this show where we've had the best health experts from all around the world and I'm sure there's people that have listened to those episodes
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have heard don't eat sugar don't do this don't do this do this do this do this right but they're still at home
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struggling now to turn that intention into Behavior what is standing in our way what's getting in our way yeah so I
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wish I could give you a one sentence answer but let me back up and and kind of frame this a bit so the best way to
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understand what distraction is is to understand what distraction is not and to do that we have to start with what
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the where the word comes from so the word distraction comes from this Latin root trahara which means to pull
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and if you notice that the the the opposite of of distraction is not focus many people say I don't want to be distracted I want to be focused but that's not the opposite of the word the opposite of distraction is traction that
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both words end in the same six letters a c t i o n that spells action reminding us that distraction is not something
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that happens to us it is an action we ourselves take so we have traction we have distraction
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traction is any action that pulls us towards what we say we're going to do things that move us closer to our values
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help us become the kind of person we want to become those are acts of traction the opposite of traction distraction is any action that pulls us
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away from what we plan to do farther from our goals farther from becoming the person we want to become so this is
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really important this isn't just semantics because I would argue that any action that you do with intent anything
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that is planned ahead anything that involves forethought is traction so there's a lot of talk today about how
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you know social media is melting our brains and video games are bad for you I I don't I don't agree I think that
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anything that you plan to do with your time and attention as long as it's done with intent is fine that becomes an act
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of traction as long as it's planned for with intent as Dorothy Parker said the time you plan to waste is not wasted
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time now just because something is a work related test doesn't mean it's not a distraction in fact that's the worst
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kind of distraction because these distractions trick you into not even realizing you're getting distracted I'll
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give you a perfect example for years I would sit down on my desk I would take out my to-do list by the way we can talk about later why to-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity we can get to that
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I would sit down on my desk and I would say okay I've got that big project that I need to work on right now nothing's
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going to get in my way I'm going to stay focused here I go I'm going to get started but first let me check some email right
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let me just scroll that slack Channel let me just do that uh one thing on my to-do list that easy task just to get started here just to get the rhythm
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going right I'm you know it's a work related task and what I didn't realize that that is the most pernicious form of
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distraction the distraction that you don't even realize is happening because if it's not what you said you were going to do in advance within your time and
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attention it is by definition a distraction right so what we tend to do is we prioritize the easy work we prioritize
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the Urgent work as opposed to the hard and important work we have to do to move our lives and careers forward so just because the work related test doesn't
00:08:10
mean it's a distraction that's the most awful type of distractions not the video games it's not the social media it's the distractions we don't even know are
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distracting us from what we said we would do with our time so now we've got traction we've got distraction now the other two parts of the model
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involve what we call triggers triggers are these things that prompt us to action we have two kinds of triggers
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external triggers are things in our outside environment these are things that we tend to blame like cell phones
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and uh our computers and all the pings dings and rings in our life but studies find that those account for only 10 of
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our distractions only 10 percent are caused by these external triggers so what's the other ninety percent ninety
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percent of the time that we get distracted it's not because of what's happening outside of us it's because of what's Happening inside of us these are
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called internal triggers internal triggers are these uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape
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and so that's the first step to becoming instructable and answers your question around Why by and large even though
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despite knowing what to do we don't do it it's because all of these problems are an emotion regulation problem that
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in fact time management is pain management I would argue weight management is pain management money
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management is pain management in fact all human behavior all human behavior is about a desire to escape discomfort and
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that answers your question around why don't we just do what we say we're going to do it's because we don't realize that these are always
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emotion regulation problems so that's the first step to becoming indistractible is mastering the internal
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triggers then the second step we talked about traction earlier making time for traction the third step hacking back the
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external triggers and then finally preventing distraction with pacts and so that's that's the model these four steps
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and then of course we can go in as much depth as you like but if you understand these four fundamental steps and this is what took me five years writing this
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book namely because I kept getting distracted right I was very distracted with myself and I wrote the book for me as I mentioned earlier uh but it was
00:10:06
when I boiled down the the you know hundreds of studies and research and you can see there's 35 five pages of
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citations in the book uh it wasn't until I I could kind of solidify this model that I could make it practical enough to change lives it certainly did mine one of the things this podcast has
00:10:23
taught me from speaking to all these people across multiple Fields is that sometimes we can feel like our body our
00:10:30
wiring is against us especially as it relates to health right so you know we know sugar is bad so why does our brain
00:10:37
send us these Cravings to go and eat sugar and in the case of distractions and sort
00:10:43
of Behavioral psychology I know instinctively and intuitively that distractions like hanging out on Tick Tock for an hour is bad
00:10:55
but my brain is doing it what does that tell us about how we should go about adopting Behavior change
00:11:01
yeah so that's why it's really about this holistic model so that's what took me the most time to figure out was what
00:11:07
are the four mandatory components of living without regret of of doing what you say you're going to do so the first step is mastering these internal triggers figuring out why you feel this
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way right what is that underlying sensation so if you're trying to avoid that that chocolate bar well it might be hunger or it might not be hunger right
00:11:24
so I used to be clinically obese and I'll tell you what I did not eat uh to excess because I was hungry I was eating to excess because I was lonely I was eating to excess because I was bored I
00:11:36
was eating too excess because I felt guilty about how much I had just eaten it wasn't just about The Hunger right
00:11:42
very few people who are obese are just hungry all the time that's not what's going on it's because we're eating our
00:11:48
feelings that's what's happening so that's the first step we have to understand the deeper reason how did you understand that
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um a lot of work a lot of uh figuring out stuff in my life to to help me understand that I think actually that's where my fascination with what I do today in terms of it's the same exact reason that we would overdo uh our use
00:12:07
of Technology it's it's not the Technology's fault guys I hate to tell you this I wish I could blame Zuckerberg
00:12:13
and Tick Tock but these are just tools right and then before those there were other tools it was they used to call our
00:12:19
generation couch potatoes and before that it was the radio was the moral panic and before that it was comic books there's always some moral Panic around
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oh this is melting our brains because we don't want to face the facts that we are looking for escape from
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these internal triggers right time management is pain management all human behaviors driven by desire to escape
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discomfort so when you realize that that you know what I was just unable to deal with these Sensations in a in a
00:12:44
healthful way that moved me towards traction I was trying to escape them with distraction it's not until you understand what
00:12:50
Sensations you're trying to escape from that you can deal with them if you can't sit around the table with a friend
00:12:55
without looking at your phone every three minutes it's not the phone it's your inability to deal with the discomfort of maybe
00:13:02
having silence or boredom or whatever else is going on your life so that has to be the first step it's not the only
00:13:07
step but that's the first step I'm really compelled by really interested in how you figured out the thing you were
00:13:12
trying to escape from because I think that's the starting point which is a very difficult starting point for most people they can see the sort of
00:13:18
compulsive Behavior that's maybe making them live outside of their values or causing them to excessively eat or excessively watch porn or whatever it
00:13:25
might be but diagnosing the root cause of that is a difficult thing to do most of us don't know what we don't know and yeah yeah it is and it isn't it I mean I'm not you don't have to go to therapy
00:13:38
not there's anything wrong with it if it's helpful please do it but that's not a requirement it's something as simple as you know so whenever I work uh I have
00:13:45
on my desk I have a little Post-It note and a pen handy and when I get distracted or when I even feel the sense of distraction just noting now down that
00:13:57
sensation and just writing down what is it that I felt right before the distraction so I write every day and all
00:14:04
I want to do when I write you know this right when you write all you want to do is go Google something or do some research or go check email for a quick
00:14:11
sec or let me just find that one thing that might be and they're all distractions they're all taking you away
00:14:16
from the core thing you need to do which you said you would do which is right and so if I can just pause for a second and
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reflect on what was that Sensation that I was feeling right before it was boredom it was anxiety it was fearfulness it was uncertainty just
00:14:31
writing it down is an incredible first step towards gaining power over that discomfort because then you can start to
00:14:37
identify it and so what I'll do many times is just pause to reflect on wait a minute what's going on there right what
00:14:43
what is that sensation because then you can begin to do what's called reframing the trigger so now when I feel the
00:14:49
sensation of wanting to get distracted I say you know what what's going on here okay I I'm feeling the sensation because
00:14:55
I'm stressed why am I stressed because this is really important to me I want to get this right for my readers and for myself and so reframing it as not a negative but something that happens uh not to me
00:15:07
but for me that that sensation is a sign that I can listen to I think most of us we think when we feel this discomfort
00:15:13
that's happening to us right but it's not it's happening for us it's a signal for us to listen to now how we interpret
00:15:20
it is up to us and that's where the magic happens if you interpret it as something that is harmful is dangerous
00:15:26
that you need to Escape right you don't want to feel that uncomfortable sensation you look for distraction but
00:15:33
what we find is that high performers across every field when you think about the Arts when you think about sports
00:15:39
business High performers when they feel those internal triggers they experience the same internal triggers the rest of
00:15:44
us do they experience loneliness and Stress and Anxiety just like everyone else does but they deal with it by using it as
00:15:51
Rocket Fuel to push them towards traction whereas distractible people as soon as they feel that discomfort they
00:15:56
try and Escape it with distraction that's the big difference that's one of the things that you said
00:16:02
to me when we spoke last time that really has had a profound impact on my life specifically around the area of
00:16:07
procrastination you said about that which is like taking a moment to pause and ask yourself what the which
00:16:13
psychological discomfort you're trying to escape from in the moment and then that second step so you now I'm clear
00:16:19
I'm trying not to do this book because this particular chapter I just don't feel that competent on I don't feel like I've researched it it's making my brain feel a bit hot thinking about it I
00:16:31
reframe it and go okay so I've I've understood it now then what do I do yeah so Step One is understand it is yeah is
00:16:38
is under master those internal triggers yeah or they become your master yeah that's step number one there's a bunch
00:16:43
of techniques we're just covering the surfaces over a dozen different techniques that you can use to help you master those internal triggers now the
00:16:49
second step is to make time for traction okay so when you have those doubts one of these techniques that is is really life-changing is scheduling time for worry
00:17:00
scheduling time for worry that what happens is in the moment we feel these feelings we think these
00:17:07
thoughts and a distractible person will say well I I gotta deal with that sensation right now I have to I have to
00:17:14
work through whatever it is that I'm feeling right now and they stop everything to do that and that's not the right method the right method is to
00:17:20
write down that sensation and get back to the task at hand as quickly as possible we're using these these four
00:17:25
strategies then later on right now that you've written down what that sensation is
00:17:31
you're going to make time in your calendar to think about that sensation so you're processing it using the book example I've hit chapter 12 and I just I'm struggling with this chapter right
00:17:42
so so you step number one you had these tools like let me maybe I can digress for a second I'll tell you my favorite
00:17:47
tool for mastering internal triggers it's called the 10 minute rule this comes from acceptance and commitment therapy and the 10-minute rule says that
00:17:55
you can give in to any distraction any distraction maybe it's smoking that cigarette if you're trying to quit maybe
00:18:01
it's eating that piece of chocolate cake if you're on a diet maybe it's uh checking social media whatever it is whatever distraction you can give into
00:18:07
that distraction but not right now you can give in in 10 minutes don't misunderstand not for 10
00:18:14
minutes sometimes people get it wrong it's in 10 minutes okay so what does that do what that does is we talk about
00:18:20
Psychological reactants earlier and you asked how do you what do you do about Psychological reactants you're allowing
00:18:25
yourself to acknowledge that you are in control okay you decide what many people do is they have strict abstinence right
00:18:32
strict evidence says no I will not do it right I won't eat sugar I I won't get distracted I will do this I will do that as opposed to saying hey I'm an adult I can do whatever I want I choose not to
00:18:45
go off track for the next 10 minutes that's it in 10 minutes I can give in to whatever I want so now I'm in control
00:18:51
you know the whole just say no technique turns out makes you ruminate and think about and have more discomfort around
00:18:57
the thing you want increasing these internal triggers and that actually is what makes you give in to that distraction we know that with smoking
00:19:03
actually it's very interesting we're finding that nicotine is less and less part of the reason people get addicted to cigarettes it's more about the
00:19:09
rumination around I I I want to smoke but I can't I want to smoke but I shouldn't I want to smoke I want to
00:19:14
smoke I want to smoke fine I'll finally smoke now I get relief how do we know this if you ask smokers why do they
00:19:21
smoke the number one reason it's relaxing that makes no sense nicotine is a stimulant
00:19:27
makes no sense right why would it be relaxing it's relaxing because finally I can stop telling myself I don't have to
00:19:33
do it anymore I don't have to fight with myself anymore and that eases that psychological reactance ha I can finally
00:19:38
give in so when you use this 10 minute Rule and say okay I can give into that distraction in 10 minutes from now what
00:19:45
you're doing is you're establishing agency right now you're in control and we can do anything for 10 minutes and if
00:19:51
10 minutes feels like too long try the five minute rule the idea is that you're building that ability over time so the
00:19:57
10 minute rule becomes a 12-minute rule becomes a 15 minute Rule and you're learning wait a minute I can't actually delay gratification remember all these
00:20:03
problems of distraction are an impulse control issue so when you teach yourself wait a minute okay I can delay for five
00:20:10
ten minutes that's no big deal you're proving to yourself hey I'm not addicted to these things I'm not powerless my
00:20:16
brain isn't being hijacked I do have control as long as I use these practices right so the 10 minute rule is is a very
00:20:22
very effective technique now when you we were talking about budgeting that time later on okay so when you use those
00:20:28
techniques that's step number one by the way there's a dozen other techniques that you can use the 10-minute rules just one of them later on in the day
00:20:34
you're going to put time in your schedule to come back to that feeling right I want you literally put time in
00:20:41
your calendar called worry time and that's where you're going to look back at that Post-It note and worry
00:20:47
about all the things that you thought would that you thought you would normally have to get to throughout your day does that make sense so so uh I used
00:20:53
to do this all the time I would say oh I've got this worry I need to work I need to take care of that worry right now
00:20:59
and that would derail me as opposed to when I started writing down and planning for that worry time you know what
00:21:05
happened nine out of ten of those worries and emotions and fears and thoughts melted away they when I when I had a few minutes to think about them you know what actually that wasn't that
00:21:17
important that didn't have to get done that wasn't really a problem right and the one out of ten that really was an
00:21:23
issue that I did need to think about okay now I have time to actually think about it so one it compartmentalizes
00:21:29
that time so it doesn't pull you away and it lets your brain relax second thing it does is that it lets your brain
00:21:34
say okay I don't have to worry about this problem right now I can think about it later we see this by the way with with children you know many parents the
00:21:41
whole section in the book indistractible on how to raise indistractible kids and so many parents asked me about you know
00:21:46
what do I do with social media and this and that and part of my advice is schedule time for your kids to play
00:21:52
video games put it in their daily schedule like sit down with them and make a schedule for the day and have that time because then
00:21:59
they don't have to worry about all day when do I get to play fortnite when do I get to you know hang out with my friends online it's in their schedule it's
00:22:04
coming they don't have to think about it all day long and so it's the same with any of these potential distractions we want to compartmentalize these times
00:22:10
when we can think about them later in the day and work on them so what happens then so I've compartmentalized it I'm writing my book
00:22:16
I'm on chapter 12. I've got a bunch of worries pop in I'm scheduling that for later and I'm going to crack on with the
00:22:22
book right um that's what I say to myself that's section two of your four-step process right right making time for traction so you're gonna finish
00:22:28
that time box yeah right so if you said I'm gonna work on this book for 30 minutes finish the time box even if you're just
00:22:34
sitting there staring into space right Stephen pressfield talks about this and the the uh the war of art it's about
00:22:40
putting your butt in the chair that's what makes a professional is you do the work right and what you find is it's
00:22:45
very boring for a few seconds I this this happens every time I sit down to write there's that pause of you know what
00:22:51
maybe I'm just not feeling it maybe I should just stop for a little bit right you feel that all the time all the
00:22:57
time right if you just sit there if you just stick with it even if it's just putting your hands on the keyboard and
00:23:03
just hanging out for a few seconds it always comes back right maybe a minute or two or Twenty later it'll come
00:23:08
back and if it doesn't that's fine just finish that time box that's the most important thing
00:23:14
step three so step three is hacking back the external triggers so this is when we do talk about The Usual Suspects the
00:23:19
pings the dings the Rings uh that's where we you know very systematically go through what a lot of people complain
00:23:25
about but it's really only 10 the problem because ninety percent of our distractions begin from within but
00:23:31
people you know do have these issues we talk about the the phone the computer what turns out to be a much bigger
00:23:36
problem is not the technology it's what the technology is attached to right so what if it's your boss that's the distraction what if it's your kids that are distraction we love them to
00:23:48
death right our kids are great but they can be a huge source of distraction meetings oh my God how many stupid
00:23:53
meetings do we have to attend that are nothing but a distraction especially now that Zoom makes it accessible so that
00:23:59
wherever you are you know people can can call meetings those are huge distractions of course uh slack channels
00:24:06
and that's what we get into more in the book in terms of okay systematically what do you do about these various external triggers
00:24:12
what would you do about that and what's your general view let's take this into the professional context now you know the design of like most offices the kind
00:24:18
of open plan format where everybody can just walk over to someone else and say oh Jenny if you've got a minute could you just take a look at this yeah yeah
00:24:25
um the same applies in you know the healthcare field and other sort of scientific Fields where you're working
00:24:31
around a lot of people who can just tap you on the shoulder and say could you just take a look at this yeah can you pass me the book yeah so every copy of
00:24:38
the book comes with oh did you tear it out already maybe oh you've had this for a while so you've toured out already so usually right here in the back there is a piece of card
00:24:51
stock that um you put is this red piece of card stock that you fold in the thirds and
00:24:57
you put on your computer monitor and it tells your colleagues I am indistractible please come back later
00:25:04
and that screen sign is is a wonderful way you know you put on your computer monitor if you work in open floor plan office that says hey I just need to be
00:25:10
indistractable for a little bit right people say well why don't I just put on headphones well people think you're
00:25:15
listening to an episode on YouTube or something they don't realize that that you're working with intent so that's one
00:25:22
easy way to do it another thing you can do is to start managing your manager and this is something that that all of us
00:25:28
can start doing if we have you know bosses who I hear this all the time says look I'm indistractible I followed all
00:25:34
your techniques but my boss keeps interrupting me what do I do so one of the things you can do one of the benefits of of step two there where you
00:25:40
can uh make time for traction is when you have a time box calendar you have an artifact you have something
00:25:47
that you can physically print out and show to other people so what I want folks to do when they say
00:25:52
look my boss isn't leaving me alone when I need to work with that distraction what do I do what you want to do is you want to sit down with your boss for 10
00:25:59
15 minutes you say boss hey can we sit down for 15 minutes on on Monday morning I want to ask you something you sit down
00:26:04
with them and you show them your time box calendar you take out the calendar for your working hours and you say hey
00:26:09
boss okay here's what I'm doing this week see here's my time for this meeting here's my time for email here's my
00:26:14
focused work time here's what I'm doing this week here's the various projects you asked me to work on now you see this
00:26:19
other piece of paper here this is where I wrote down all the things that you asked me to do that I'm having trouble
00:26:25
fitting into my schedule and what you're doing with this process is you're avoiding one of the worst
00:26:30
pieces of productivity advice that we hear all the time which is if you want to be more productive you have to learn
00:26:35
how to say no that is the kind of advice that only a tenured professor would tell you that is
00:26:41
terrible advice you're going to tell the person who pays your bills no you're going to get fired that's awful advice instead of saying no what you want to do
00:26:48
is to engage your boss in helping you do the one thing that they absolutely have to do as a manager which is prioritize
00:26:56
so you ask them how can I make sure that I do what you ask me to do based on my schedule for the week and here's what they're going to do they're going to look at them and say you know what that meeting that's actually not that important but that this project over
00:27:08
here that you put on the piece that's actually super important can you swap those out and so by doing that you're
00:27:13
doing what's called schedule syncing you're making sure that their priorities are also reflected in your schedule and
00:27:21
bosses will worship the ground you walk on they love this because every boss out there every manager we're wondering kind
00:27:27
of what our people are doing right that's what they want to know but they don't want to ask you that because they don't want you to feel like you're being
00:27:32
micromanaged so you're proactively doing that for them and you're showing them hey this is the time when I need to do
00:27:38
focused work this is what I'm going to be indistractible on that point of priorities you said that startup Founders really only have one job which
00:27:44
is to prioritize and that really did smack me in the face because that's so unbelievably true um we have a finite
00:27:51
amount of resources Founders um we have a lot of things we want to do we have more things we want to do than
00:27:57
time and time in the day and creating systems like you said where we can sit down and reflect on our priorities it's
00:28:04
so important because we might have an idea every day then we get to one month later and there's an
00:28:10
our to-do list or our teams are overcome by doing the First Things We Said not the most important things we've said exactly and a lot of the time because I don't know cognitive dissonance or Pride or ego whatever you don't want to throw
00:28:23
something out that a people have started working on or um that you've you've told them to work
00:28:29
on but going up to your team and saying okay we're just going to cancel that project we've just spent two weeks
00:28:34
working on because this is a new priority of ours sometimes um sometimes can feel difficult absolutely it's called the
00:28:40
commitment bias that when we commit to something or some cost fallacy it's also called that that when we have a sunk
00:28:46
cost in something we value it more but of course that's that's silly especially in business I mean this is
00:28:51
you know I had a professor in uh at business school who said um every business dies for the same reason businesses only die for one reason cash they run out of cash cash is oxygen
00:29:05
oxygen is life and the number one cause of a business running out of cash is doing the wrong
00:29:12
thing for too long so being able to cut your losses and saying I know it feels wrong but I know
00:29:19
it's right in my head that is an essential skill of every CEO because again you know prioritization is
00:29:26
your only job and good prior priorities people who are good at prioritization make for good CEOs and people who are
00:29:32
bad at prioritization make for bad CEOs so we're in step three of the four steps what's step number four so step four is
00:29:40
is preventing distraction with pacts so pact are these what's called a pre-commitment device so this is what
00:29:47
you do after the first three steps so you master the internal triggers you make time for traction you hack back the
00:29:53
external triggers as the last line of defense as the firewall against distraction you're going to prevent
00:29:59
distraction with a pack now what are packs it's when you decide in advance what you will do to keep yourself in
00:30:05
that task and there's three types of packs we have we call effort packs price packs and identity pacts uh an effort
00:30:13
pact is when there's some bit of friction in between you and the thing you don't want to do so I'll it's just
00:30:19
us and your millions of viewers here so I'll get a little personal okay um a few years ago my wife and I and
00:30:25
again we've been married for 22 years now a few years ago before I was writing this book uh we noticed that our sex life was
00:30:31
suffering that every night we were going to bed and I was fondling my iPhone and she was
00:30:36
caressing her iPad and me both right and we were going to bed later and later and not only were we not getting proper
00:30:42
sleep we all know how important rest is our sex life was suffering so when I started this research I came across this uh the the This research around
00:30:53
um the importance of these effort packs and I went to the hardware store and I bought us this 10 outlet timer now this Outlet time where you plug into the wall
00:31:03
and whatever you plug into that outlet timer will turn on or off at any time of day and night so what did we do with that we plugged in our internet router into this timer
00:31:15
so every night in our household at 10 pm the internet shuts off now could I turn
00:31:21
it back on of course I could but I'd have to go under my desk unplug this timer reset it and plug it back in that
00:31:27
would take effort so I put some friction in between myself and the distraction okay and lo and behold every night we all knew okay the internet's gonna shut down at 10 pm finish up whatever you
00:31:38
need to do and it gave me that bit of mindfulness to say okay do I really need to still you know check email or social
00:31:44
media or whatever silly thing I was doing or is it time to do what I said I was going to do which is get some rest go to bed and maybe be intimate with my
00:31:51
wife people might hear that and go you didn't need a timer to have sex with your wife but I did I did because look in the
00:32:00
moment you know you're you're uh you're tired you're uh you're you're just kind of drifting off we've all done this
00:32:06
right where you you're looking at something on the Internet the and it just it's kind of harmless because you know she's brushing her teeth and I'm
00:32:12
waiting and you know just one thing leads to another and before you know it it's you've gone to bed later than you
00:32:18
uh anticipated and you've given up a lot in the process so having that rule again
00:32:24
having that time box calendar that's that's step number two where you have to we have in our calendars bedtime right
00:32:30
why do we do that do I know okay I'll eventually I'm gonna go to sleep but why do I have a bedtime in my calendar and isn't it ironic for those of us who have
00:32:36
children we tell our children you need a bedtime right we're adamant about how our children need bad times but for us
00:32:42
we don't need a bedtime and my daughter called us out on this and she said Daddy what what's your bedtime
00:32:47
and she was absolutely right we've all read these books we all know how important sleep is and yet you know we
00:32:53
don't go to bed we we it's crazy to me how many I see this with with multiple domains and health and fitness we get uh
00:33:00
nootropics and we get blackout curtains and we get you know oh wait melatonin just go to bed on time that's the number one reason people don't get enough sleep they don't go to bed on time so did I
00:33:11
need an Internet timer yeah we all do because this is what keeps us awake right we do all these interesting things
00:33:16
again the price of progress is that you can find anything you want at any time of day or night on the internet so we do
00:33:23
need these packs again as the last line of defense it's not the first thing you know I don't want people to listen to me
00:33:28
and say okay fine I'll get an Internet timer then I won't get distracted no if you don't first deal with the the internal triggers that lead you to
00:33:34
distraction you'll find something else right someone's also going to say listen you've got 4G internet on your phone you've got cellular internet so you can
00:33:41
just go through again but now it's effort yeah yeah right if if I really wanted to lie to myself of course I
00:33:47
could that's not the point right yeah that there's always a way the point is it adds a bit of friction yeah yeah
00:33:52
right it's that bit of of uh effort that now I have to take and more than anything it's a statement you're making
00:33:57
to you and every and everyone in your social environment that at 10 pm is the shutoff time where the people adhere to that as you say there's ways to
00:34:03
circumnavigate that right it's the statement of having that shut off timer exactly and now by the way we it
00:34:09
actually wouldn't even matter because we all know the internet's going to shut off at 10. we all need to start getting ready to to stop doing whatever we're
00:34:16
doing because it's gonna now we don't even need it anymore it's become part of our nightly ritual right and by the way
00:34:22
what I want to illustrate is the concept not the practice right tactics are what you do strategy is why you do it that's
00:34:29
more important you know I think a lot of these books around similar topics around um you know dealing with with uh focus
00:34:36
and productivity it's a lot of life hacks right but what I wanted was more the the strategy the the psychological
00:34:43
principles around why we get distracted and then I'll I'll let people come up with their own tactics I give you lots
00:34:48
of tactics as well but this is just one illustration of how we can use this strategy and that's only one pack there's also uh two other packs I can I
00:34:55
can share as well there's a lot of well just before we get into the two other packs um a lot of debate over the years
00:35:00
about this idea of willpower all of you know just before we started recording I said to you I looked up all these time
00:35:06
management techniques and I've looked at these diet fads and there's so many of them because it appears that they none of them really work without this
00:35:11
underlying thing called discipline so you can have all the you know I can time books and I can the one two three four
00:35:18
technique and the abc5 technique whatever but if I don't have the underlying discipline then I'm not going to do any of these things
00:35:24
um discipline is such a interesting word it kind of catches a lot of different things a lot of psychological forces you've described but and this other theory of willpower
00:35:35
that's sort of trundled On Through the Ages that we have a limited amount of willpower and if we try and do too many
00:35:41
things at once then we'll do none of them and only take on one bad habit at once is there any truth to all of that
00:35:46
stuff no no no willpower is not a limited resource uh at least from the latest research you
00:35:53
know science is never conclusive but from what we know today it seems so a few years ago there was this concept
00:35:59
called ego depletion ego depletion exactly what you mentioned it's that uh we run out of willpower like someone
00:36:04
would run out of battery charge on their phone right that it's a depletable resource and this concept was was
00:36:10
promoted and kind of widely circulated in the popular press uh and there was some Fantastical claims made that if you
00:36:17
uh if you drank a sugar sweetened lemonade that you would boost your willpower and it turns out as often
00:36:23
happens in the social sciences when something sounds a little fishy we replicate the study we try and run the study again and Carol dweck you might
00:36:30
know from she's probably been on your show um from her book mindset she decided to replicate these studies she
00:36:36
decided to run them again these ego depletion studies and she found that the only people who experienced ego
00:36:43
depletion the only people who actually did run out of willpower like someone would run out of battery on their phone the only people who experience that were people who believed that willpower was
00:36:56
limited resource that's it so it turns out I mean this is incredibly important because it has
00:37:02
implications for all sorts of things in our life right when we believe that we are somehow deficient that our brain is
00:37:09
broken that uh uh the the world is conspiring against us to hijack our brains when we believe these self-limiting thoughts we act in accordance and so it's very
00:37:20
much the case with with this ego depletion myth that ego is that our willpower is not limited unless we
00:37:26
believe it is and on this point of did because I think the word discipline is somewhat interchangeably used with like willpower
00:37:33
it's doing the thing you said you were gonna do like and you intended to do I was trying to figure out what discipline
00:37:39
is and where it comes from why in certain aspects of my life like going to the gym now so for the last three years
00:37:45
I've gone to the gym about six days a week um before then I couldn't DJing I've started DJing and I've done that for
00:37:50
about 12 months I've been disciplined with that this podcast I've been able to do it we released two episodes a week
00:37:55
and we have done for a while now why am I disciplined in some areas of my life why can I continue to show up and why in
00:38:01
other areas of my life is it this kind of failing battle to like you know get back on the horse every other week
00:38:06
because I've fallen off I had a hypothesis where I was like well with DJing I have like a goal that means this
00:38:14
is maybe my discipline equation a goal that means a lot to me it's worth the pursuit if I attain it you know it feels
00:38:21
like it's worthwhile plus the psychological engagement and enjoyment of the pursuit of the goal so
00:38:27
like deep like I want to be a DJ um plus the psychological engagement and enjoyment I I love the process of DJing
00:38:34
it's like meditational therapy listening to your favorite music for hours doing nothing other than being in that flow
00:38:39
State minus this is where you kind of come in I guess is the psychological discomfort or
00:38:46
disengagement associated with the pursuit so for example if the DJing equipment was up in
00:38:51
the spare room and I had to load it up every day and it took 35 minutes to do it
00:38:57
and then I had to load up the software every day and it was really difficult um I might find the process not
00:39:03
worthwhile and my discipline might Wane when you look at that equation the why the enjoyment of the pursuit minus the the sort of unenjoyment of the pursuit yeah does that make sense there's a lot
00:39:15
there I mean the basics are there I think what's uh Missing is that you if so with this
00:39:21
DJing uh Pursuit you enjoy it and so it's not hard to do something you enjoy this is my problem with flow you've heard about me how chick sent me high with the concept of flow uh that you know you can get into
00:39:34
this state where time flies and it's effortless and the examples if you read the book uh that many of the examples are from Sports they're from things that you know people really enjoy doing
00:39:46
and that's you know that's like Hollywood it's nice work if you can get it how do you get into flow when it's something you really don't want to do
00:39:53
so right now you enjoy DJing because to correct me if I'm wrong it's it's you're
00:39:58
not doing professionally or maybe you are not really no so my guess is right now as an amateur it's fun Stakes are
00:40:05
low you're just enjoying the process very much what I used to do when I first started blogging right I was just writing for myself and then I got a few readers it was kind of fun just to you know pure joy pure amateur Behavior and
00:40:19
then what what happened uh when I said okay now I want to publish a book or when you if you decide to professionally DJ it's
00:40:25
gonna start getting hard right now there's all this other stuff you don't want to do around the core experience right now you got to figure out how do I
00:40:31
build my brand and how do I get people packed into you know the the uh my show and all this stuff that you have to do
00:40:37
that maybe isn't as fun and that's where flow falls down so this is exactly what's happening and happened so I
00:40:43
started DJing and then we announced I'm gonna do a show we've got three thousand people to come to this venue
00:40:48
and in the lead up to that DJing became a lot less fun right and even now so they've they've they're trying to book
00:40:54
me to do a show in Ibiza and Marbella this year and suddenly I'm getting all uncomfortable about DJing again because
00:41:00
so when I look at the equation I presented what seems to have happened in that equation is the perceived psychological cost has increased
00:41:07
suddenly because like nerves and yeah yeah there's like worry and all these other forces at play and that equations
00:41:13
now have killed and my discipline has dropped right exactly exactly and so that's where becoming indestructible comes into play
00:41:19
you don't need to be indistractible for something you love doing anyway right there's no problem with that follow
00:41:24
through is easy it's how do I do the stuff I know I need to do but I really don't feel like doing it if you ask you
00:41:31
know we talked about earlier the only reason businesses fail is because they run out of cash the only reason we fail
00:41:36
out our goals it's only one the only reason we fill out our goals because we don't feel like it
00:41:42
I don't feel like it I don't feel like going to the gym right now I don't feel like working on that book I don't feel like whatever it is it's a feeling
00:41:48
fundamentally it's a feeling of course there's outside factors of course but in terms of the number one reason we don't
00:41:54
pursue our goal is we quit right that's the the most prominent reason we don't follow through and that tends to be
00:41:59
because of a feeling so when there are these tasks that suddenly get hard right or suddenly difficult that's when we
00:42:06
need different tactics it's easy to do the stuff we enjoy it's hard to do the stuff that uh we don't enjoy
00:42:13
so what would you advise me to do then in the case of DJing I've got you know potentially two shows this summer in Europe so I I would start with your
00:42:20
values um and that's part of step two of making time for traction when people ask you
00:42:25
know how do I make a time box calendar where do you start you start with your values so what are values the definition of
00:42:31
values in my book is attributes of the person you want to become attributes of the person you want to
00:42:37
become so then what you do is you put your your values in terms of these three life
00:42:43
domains I look at them as concentric circles at the center of these three life domains is you if you can't take
00:42:49
care of yourself can't take care of others you can't make the world a better place so in that when it comes to that life
00:42:55
domain you look at the things that you want to do for yourself the time you want to spend to become the person you
00:43:01
want to become and you look at your calendar you look at this blank calendar for the next seven days and you ask
00:43:06
yourself how would the person I want to become spend their time and you put that time in your schedule
00:43:12
so time for rest time for reading time for uh video games doesn't matter put that time in your schedule the next life domain is your relationships part of the reason we have this loneliness epidemic
00:43:25
in the industrialized world is that we don't have the time scheduled for our relationships like we used to as the industrialized world became more secular
00:43:35
the church the synagogue the mosque we don't go to these social interactions where we care for
00:43:41
others and others care for us we don't have that schedule in our day anymore and I'm not saying it I'm pretty secular myself I'm not saying we have to do that
00:43:47
but that is what we have lost because we don't have these regular what used to be religious institutions doesn't have to
00:43:53
be real I mean we Robert Putnam was talking about this in the 1990s in his book bowling alone we don't have these
00:43:58
regular social interactions like previous generations did and we need to bring those back I actually think social media overuse is a symptom not the cause
00:44:05
of the fact that we don't see people regularly so you need to put in your calendar time for those relationships your friends your family your kids uh
00:44:16
your significant others you have to put that time in your schedule don't give them whatever scraps of time are left over put in your schedule then finally
00:44:22
your work domain this is where most people start it's actually I think where we need to end work comes in two flavors
00:44:28
we have what's called reactive work and we have reflective work reactive work is
00:44:34
how a lot of people how distracted people spend their days reacting to messages reacting to notification patients reacting to requests all day
00:44:40
long reacting to things and that's fine everybody's job will involve some amount of reactive work but if you're not
00:44:46
scheduling time for reflective work you're going to run real fast in the wrong direction you have to put time in your schedule to think if you want to do work that is creative
00:44:58
work that requires Focus you have to schedule that time it's okay if it's only 15 20 minutes but that time has to
00:45:04
be on your schedule so to answer your question of okay well what do I do with this this passion I have around DJing
00:45:09
it's a factor of how much time you want to put into it based on your values based on the kind of person you want to
00:45:15
become so what would the Stephen you want to become how much time time first and foremost not outcome I think that's the problem with a lot of goal planning this is one of my beef
00:45:26
with uh with to-do lists to-do lists are a series of outputs I want to do this I
00:45:32
want to do this I want to do this I want to and it has no constraint a to-do list has no constraints you can
00:45:38
always add more and so what happens you come home with your to-do list of a million things after you've worked
00:45:43
really hard all day long and most of those things you have not crossed off so what does that say to your self-image if
00:45:49
every day you come home and all these things still haven't been done after a long day of work and you haven't done what you said you would do loser so day
00:45:57
after day week after week month after month year after year you're reinforcing the self-image of someone who doesn't do what they said they're gonna do
00:46:04
right as opposed to a time box calendar has constraints same 24 hours in the day
00:46:10
right and I don't care if you're Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk you can always make more money you can't make more time I
00:46:17
think it's exactly flipped most people are cheap with their money and generous with their time I think it should be the opposite right we should be cheap with
00:46:24
our time and generous with our money because you can always make more money you can always make more money you cannot make more time so a time box
00:46:30
calendar forces you to work with constraints and decide based on your values how much time you can afford to
00:46:38
spend on whatever you want to do right because if you put in everything you you'll get nothing you'll live in
00:46:45
regret whereas if you say look I only have four hours a week for DJing Endeavors and here's where I'm going to
00:46:50
put that in because I also want to spend time with my friends I need to take care of myself I need to take care of my business so it's not based on outcome
00:46:56
it's based on input right so if you went to a baker okay and you said hey my kid has a birthday party I need a two dozen
00:47:04
cupcakes Baker's gonna say okay I need flour I need sugar I need butter I need all these inputs I need these ingredients to
00:47:09
make the output but when it comes to knowledge work we only think about the output but
00:47:15
what's our input our input is just two things time and attention those are our ingredients that's it so you can't just
00:47:22
think about the output you can't just think about the cupcakes you have to think about the input the input is time and attention and that just like
00:47:27
ingredients for a cupcake has to be budgeted for you have to plan that ahead or it's not going to work out so I you
00:47:34
and my inspiration for starting time blocking I've called it the time boxing yeah same thing
00:47:40
um and it's really really been helpful specifically in times when I'm not in work so when I go away to write for
00:47:46
example and I don't have meetings that I like I have to do that pop in and out Etc it's been super helpful and also
00:47:51
I'll be honest during the pandemic was when I really to the point that I started developing a Time blocking app with a friend of mine oh yeah because it
00:47:58
was that useful for me the pandemic had happened we weren't meeting anybody we weren't having sort of in-person meetings so I had long days but that
00:48:05
felt a bit more empty than usual so to sort of get a grasp on them and stop them being whittled away with by Distraction I started time blocking and
00:48:12
it was amazing for me I guess one of the questions I want to ask before I get on to this is do you even so I in my
00:48:18
personal relationship with my girlfriend we've been together for about four years um pretty much ever since we first met me and you first met
00:48:24
um it's the first time I've lived with someone she's moved in we live together and one of the things that a busy
00:48:33
lifestyle can do and I think you've described it as well as it can have an impact on your sex life and relationship dates date
00:48:40
night Etc so I propose the idea to her because of you we should schedule these things because I schedule everything else that's important to me yeah so we should
00:48:51
schedule our date night and those kinds of things right because that's equally important to me too and she was a bit resistant to the idea at first because in in her rebuttal was that it kind of
00:49:01
takes the you know this spontaneity and the spice and the date night or scheduling sex
00:49:07
because some people schedule sex I don't go that far I wouldn't do as far as scheduling sex but it's really like spending time together and doing stuff
00:49:13
she like her she was resistant to scheduling it because she felt that it took the you know the like
00:49:19
but the the so there's an interesting concept okay so when I was um my wife and I met at University and we met an
00:49:26
economics class and in this class they discussed this concept of a residual beneficiary a residual beneficiary in business is the person the chump who
00:49:36
receives whatever's left over when a business is sold so first debt holders get their share then the equity holders
00:49:43
whatever's left over the residual beneficiary gets right and after we've been married for a few
00:49:49
years she sat me down she says near you have turned me into the residual beneficiary wow what a thing to say
00:49:56
right I get whatever scraps of time are left over if if you and your relationship by the
00:50:01
way my book is not for people who have a perfect life okay I don't have a perfect life I still get distracted from time to
00:50:07
time the difference is between a distractible person an indistractable person is that a distractible person
00:50:13
keeps getting distracted by the same things Paula coila has a wonderful quote he said a mistake repeated more than
00:50:18
once is a decision such a good quote a mistake repeated more than once it's a decision good right so distractible people keep
00:50:26
getting distracted by the same things again and again how many times we're going to complain about Tick Tock and
00:50:32
Facebook before we say enough I'm gonna do something about it right indistractable people say okay I got distracted once but you're not gonna let
00:50:38
it happen again and again so I'm gonna take steps today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow so when my wife and
00:50:44
I found that our schedules were getting busier and busier and we weren't making the proper time for each other it wasn't
00:50:51
happening spontaneously then we had to go to plan B and plan B for a long time the there was no plan it was just well it's not happening the problem is people interpret the fact
00:51:04
maybe you felt this that not making time not being spontaneous means that we don't love each other as much and I think that's a huge mistake that's not it at all it certain wasn't in my
00:51:16
relationship with my wife I still loved her just as much just that I was busy honey and there's this big thing happening here and I need to do this I
00:51:21
need to do that and the time would slip away and we wouldn't spend time together that's no indication that I don't love
00:51:27
my wife it's an indication that I didn't know how to prioritize my wife properly so I stopped making her the residual
00:51:33
beneficiary if we have extra spontaneous time you know sometimes uh a meeting is
00:51:39
canceled great let's let's do something together but at minimum we know on Friday nights
00:51:45
that's our date night quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans by Verizon as
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00:52:40
moment in my fitness and health Journey because because I'm training for soccer Aid which takes place in June at Old Trafford I've been training a lot
00:52:46
differently but regardless of how I train regardless of whether I'm doing strength training or cardiovascular training which is predominantly what I'm
00:52:53
doing now I need this which is Hills nutritionally complete protein product the crazy thing about this which I
00:52:59
almost find hard to achieve is that it's 20 grams of protein you get 26 vitamins and minerals and it's only roughly about
00:53:06
100 calories 105 calories and it tastes like a dream The Salted Caramel one is my favorite I've got the second favorite option of mine in front of me which is Vanilla Fudge both of them taste amazing
00:53:18
a little bit of ice in it it tastes like a fantastic healthy milkshake give it a try if you haven't already this is actually next to RTD this is my favorite product from heel try it love
00:53:31
it number one protein powder when we um when we do fall out of quote-unquote balance in some way when we maybe
00:53:39
don't have our priorities in order at least this is what people think people diagnose themselves with this
00:53:46
thing called burnout and I've been quite intentional with my words there because I have my own opinions on burnout I don't really think burnout
00:53:51
is what people think it is people think of burnout as basically doing too much work I think most people 90 of people
00:53:58
would say that burnout is when you do too much work it's a big Topic in conversation now
00:54:03
this subject matter of burnout what do you think burnout is so there's some amazing research done by uh two British
00:54:10
researchers many of Stansfield and candy and they concluded that a toxic work environment is not the work you do it's the type of work you do
00:54:23
and so they wanted to see the the study was what kind of work correlates with increased rates of depression anxiety disorders and they found two conditions that raise the rates the kind of anxiety
00:54:37
and depression they literally the kind of jobs that make you sick psychologically and those two conditions are high expectations coupled with low
00:54:45
control coupled with exactly low control so high expectations and low control if you have
00:54:51
high expectations and high control no problem people rise to the occasion but when you have a job with high
00:54:57
expectations and low control that's burnout why because it's a lack of agency I'm
00:55:03
expected to do all this and I can't right I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying but as much as I do my my I don't have
00:55:10
enough agency to meet these expectations so let's zoom in on both of those and really compelled by this idea of low
00:55:16
control um when people think of control that could mean a number of things is that
00:55:22
the ability to make decisions for myself on how to accomplish the challenge to affect the the outcome okay right so if
00:55:30
you have um uh you know your your a small Cog in a big machine but you have these very
00:55:37
high expectations but it doesn't all depend on you there are other people exactly no budgets circumstances beyond
00:55:43
your control that is hard no matter how hard you work you can't meet someone's expectations
00:55:50
why I'm trying to think from this the psychological discomfort framework why that that environment of high expectations
00:56:01
this being pulled this way but then being suppressed on this end would cause burnout and burnout I guess we have to Define it as that what is it the sort of psychological overwhelm which is giving
00:56:11
up which makes you give up yeah it's uh I think it's because it's the it's the definition of death right schopenhauer describes life as
00:56:21
anything that tries to affect its environment life is defined by something that affects its outside environment changes where it is to its benefit in some way
00:56:32
that's what a live organism is so if you cannot change your environment you cannot change your circumstances it feels like death and eventually you give up it's uh you you learn helplessness
00:56:45
where eventually it's not worth continuing to try because you can't affect the outcomes
00:56:50
I've always thought of burnout as being somewhat sort of intrinsically attached to meaning and maybe that's it that's
00:56:56
exactly what you're describing there because you're being robbed of your ability to affect your outside environment which maybe is what meaning
00:57:02
is meaning is I think the can be the relief valve so if you are toiling I mean you think
00:57:08
about the role of religion in in many people's lives historically religion tells you that even though your
00:57:16
lot in life may not change right there was reward to come so you are you have agency you have control it's just that the reward is delayed so even if your life is awful now someday it'll be
00:57:29
better that's that gives you agency so that's meaning right that gives you that that meaning that purpose of it's coming
00:57:36
someday but if you believe that there's nothing you can do to get that reward that it
00:57:41
makes no difference uh then the only logical thing to do is to quit I might be totally wrong here but I I think the reason I thought meaning was so important was because I when you when you think about people in roles that
00:57:53
typically feel that burnout it seemed to me that it was like monotonous tedious work where you know maybe like working on a production line where you're doing very
00:58:04
very long hours of work that is absent of meaning for you you don't really care about the work but you're being pressed
00:58:10
to do long hours so that was my kind of understanding of it because I tried to contrast it to areas where I never get burned out you
00:58:17
know watching Manchester United play or playing video games whatever and I thought what's the difference well it's
00:58:23
because of my sort of subjective meaning or enjoyment of the task so I thought the enjoyment and the meaning part was
00:58:29
Central somehow to but becoming burnt out um uh I don't know I'm not sure if it's
00:58:37
necessarily uh requires meaning per se I mean you see people working two three jobs uh sometimes you know when they're getting started from base level just to feed their kids
00:58:49
um it's like they can do very repetitive boring work and they do it uh because they are affecting change they have
00:58:56
agency they can see the results they need to feed their families and this idea of an agency in control is
00:59:03
fundamentally linked to our physio physiological Health as well which I find quite surprising that people that have greater degrees of control in their
00:59:09
professional Endeavors are healthier right this concept of locus of control right where it's external locus of
00:59:15
control versus internal locus of control or people who have external locus of control believe that things happen to them people who have internal locus of
00:59:22
control believe that they affect change and what's fascinating about this is that uh people who have internal locus
00:59:28
of control on every metric of well-being do better they're wealthier they have more they have better relationships they're healthier every metric of well-being having an internal locus of
00:59:41
control benefits you even when your circumstances dictate that you shouldn't think that you had that much control even when you're in a really awful situation believing you have agency
00:59:52
makes you better off even if it's not true because that mindset again back to what we were saying earlier about how mindset
00:59:59
affects what we do if you believe willpower is limited you will act as such right I used to come home uh after
01:00:05
a long day of work and say oh you know what I've had a hard day uh I don't have any more willpower my willpower's been
01:00:11
exhausted like we talked about earlier give me that pint of Ben and Jerry's I'm gonna sit on the couch and eat my ice cream
01:00:16
because I believed I I was spent right but it was in my head whereas people who believe that they have agency they do
01:00:24
have control live much healthier Better Lives this raises the point of our responsibility which is quite a
01:00:29
controversial point for some reason funny that that is right why is it so controversial do you think I think it's
01:00:35
this this idea rightfully so of not victim blaming but I don't think that that is incongruous that you don't have
01:00:42
to blame victims as well as saying that we should take as much responsibility as we possibly can
01:00:49
um so in my line of work you know I I'm fairly controversial because I wrote hooked how to build habit-forming
01:00:55
products and then I wrote indistractible about how to control your attention and choose your life and many people see
01:01:01
those as as opposites right but I didn't write hooked and unhooked I wrote indistractible Because it's about having
01:01:08
our cake and eating it too it's about having both we can have the best of both worlds that we can build apps we can
01:01:15
build technologies that help us exercise and learn new languages and and stay healthy we can use these these amazing Technologies for good but we can also find ways to not get distracted from the
01:01:27
from the devices or whatever the distraction might be that lead us away from what we really want
01:01:32
um but yeah sometimes people will say yeah but that's uh you know you're you're blaming the victim here that
01:01:37
we're all victims of these Technologies the technology companies are doing it to us right the social dilemma movie tells us that our brains are being hijacked
01:01:44
and uh they interviewed me for the social dilemma movie did you see it by the way I did yeah okay so they
01:01:50
interviewed me and I know you've had Johan Hari on the show and I have big issues with with his whole thesis
01:01:55
because it's a line around it's not your fault it's being done to you and look there is no doubt that
01:02:02
these companies design their products to be engaging that's the point right do we
01:02:07
want hey Netflix stop making your show so interesting uh uh Apple your phones are too user friendly right that's ridiculous that's the point of these products we want them to be engaging we
01:02:18
pay for the privilege of having them be engaging so it's ridiculous to think that somehow they're going to stop doing
01:02:23
that uh it's also ridiculous to think that the government and all its brilliant wisdom is going to figure out
01:02:29
how to regulate these companies properly right we see every time I come to Europe I can't use the internet because these
01:02:34
stupid gdpr rules that I have to constantly click acceptance I don't even know what I'm clicking on they're so annoying we see what happens when government tries to regulate these
01:02:41
companies most of the time they're incredibly ham-fisted so do we just sit here I'm not I'm not saying I'm anti-regulation I'm for smart regulation
01:02:48
but in the meantime what are we doing we're just gonna sit here and wait right please Zuckerberg stop addicting me it's
01:02:55
ridiculous there's so much we can do starting with not thinking we're powerless in all Realms of our life
01:03:01
again even when circumstances are beyond your control it benefits you it behooves
01:03:07
you to believe you do have agency you do have control you're going to be better off as opposed to saying well there's
01:03:12
nothing I can do because what do people do when they believe they're powerless correct nothing yeah
01:03:18
it's so interesting because I had a conversation with a friend of mine last night who um is single been single for a while and
01:03:25
we were we were huddled around there was a couple of us and everyone was single um in the circle I'm I'm currently not
01:03:31
single um and I saw some of that I saw some of that well it's just it's the nature of the
01:03:38
modern dating world right you know like you hear a lot I don't want to be on these dating apps and social media
01:03:44
doesn't work and I can't meet anybody so it's just the way it is and you can see in that moment like
01:03:50
it's almost like declaring defeat well there is agency in that as well remember if life is defined by something that changes is outside environment that's a great way to say well I have agency I
01:04:01
decide to quit it's in my control to to say it's it's impossible I guess so even if it is self-defeating it it feels good to say it's impossible but it's going to reduce your chances of
01:04:13
finding something of course if you just say okay well I can't and you blame accidental factors right on that the
01:04:20
Mark Zuckerberg has become a villain in society you know people have really portrayed him as being the source of so
01:04:26
much evil destroy people's mental health because of these apps and all of these kinds of things I sense you have a slightly different
01:04:33
approach to that or you think that's a little bit too simplified am I right which part the the kind of I saw
01:04:38
something yesterday where Mark Zuckerberg was playing Jiu Jitsu have you ever played yeah I saw the video you
01:04:44
should say playing Jujitsu he was doing Jiu Jitsu do you see the video yeah and like the top
01:04:49
the person who would quote retweeted it had said he's destroyed our generation's mental health but he's pretty good at
01:04:55
jiu jitsu you know he has been attacked for the last decade yeah um because people think
01:05:01
that you know he bought these apps and these apps have now made our lives significantly worse but the framing that you present seems to say
01:05:08
if it wasn't those apps it would be something else and it's not necessarily the apps itself it's our relationship to the apps because of emotional regulation
01:05:14
in other parts of our life you said something super interesting earlier which we kind of moved on from where you said that you don't believe
01:05:21
um you believe that the apps are a symptom of a wider social issue is that is an accurate representation of your views
01:05:34
yeah yeah I mean I think look I'm not uh saying these companies are guilt-free by the way I have been asked many times to
01:05:41
work for them and with them and I I always refuse because I don't want any conflict or appearance of conflict of
01:05:46
interest so I don't have any I don't get paid by these companies in any way but I think there is absolutely a moral Panic
01:05:53
around social media we already see it now fading right it was last week it was uh social media this week it's going to
01:05:59
be AI there's always a moral panic and if you look back at the the history of mankind we have always had moral panics
01:06:05
of one thing or another uh especially with media uh media that hijacks the brain of of a population that's always
01:06:12
been a big fear I think uh in general it's it's way overblown I mean if you actually look at the research uh in terms of of the effects of mental health um look overuse of any media is going to
01:06:26
have deleterious consequences right when my daughter was into Harry Potter and she was reading Harry Potter five hours a day I say hey honey that's too much
01:06:33
Harry Potter right like that's gonna have some diligars consequence as well you need to go outside you need to see your friends you do other things so yeah
01:06:39
any extremes uh are bad now I do think there is room for regulation for two protected classes of people one we currently protect which
01:06:50
is children so children you know there's my daughter can't walk into a casino and start playing blackjacks you can't walk
01:06:56
into a bar and Order gin and Tony she's too young for that right so there's certain protections for children I think we should have those protections for
01:07:02
social media I think 13 is probably too young the current regulation at least in the states is 13. that's probably too
01:07:08
young the other group of people who don't have protection who need protection are
01:07:13
pathological addicts so addiction you know we toss around this word Addiction so much these days uh my my wife got a a
01:07:21
box of shoes from DSW and the the box says danger addictive contents inside okay it's shoes right but we use this word Addiction we throw it around addiction
01:07:32
is a disease it's a pathology and just because something is addictive doesn't mean addicts everyone clearly right many
01:07:39
of us have a glass of wine with dinner we're not all alcoholics we have sex we're not all sex addicts right so it's
01:07:45
ridiculous to think just because something is addictive to some people it's addictive to everyone but if you are addicted and the company knows this
01:07:53
might be the case and I've been advocating this for years this is the kind of legislation I do support then I
01:07:59
think the government then the company has a responsibility right if an alcohol company they don't know who's addicted how would
01:08:06
they know how would they know who the alcoholics are they wouldn't know the online companies they do know they
01:08:11
have personal identifiable information and they know your time on site so they could reach out and this is what I'm advocating for I call it a use and
01:08:18
abuse policy that if you are using this product give me a number 30 hours a week 40 hours a week whatever number is in
01:08:24
the you know several standard deviations of of use we're going to reach out to you with a very respectful message that says we see that you are using your pro our product in a way that may indicate
01:08:35
you are struggling with an addiction can we help can we help right very respectful if they say no fine right but
01:08:42
offer to help can we uh help you use uh blocking tools so that you're you know yourself select out uh well here are resources I think you have a responsibility now that's about three to
01:08:54
five percent of the population that struggles with addiction the problem is there's this popular narrative and a lot
01:09:00
of people are selling a lot of books telling us that uh our attention is being stolen
01:09:06
right stolen from us if you're addicted you could argue that that pathology of addiction okay
01:09:12
everybody else if you're not a child or you're not addicted this is a personal responsibility issue it's not an
01:09:17
addiction it's a distraction but we don't want to call it that right because if it's a distraction ah I
01:09:24
gotta do something about it that's no fun can't I just blame Zuckerberg no I gotta take some personal responsibility you know what I I have to learn how to
01:09:31
manage my internal triggers I have to schedule my time I have to hack back these external triggers I got to put in some packs in place this is not hard
01:09:37
stuff folks right the book isn't that long thinking maybe an hour and a half two hours to read it and you will be
01:09:43
indistractable you'll look it back at this and think this is a joke we were complaining about this being addictive come on it's a few simple techniques
01:09:48
right so to sit here and complain say our attention is being stolen our focus is being stolen it's not being stolen
01:09:54
we're giving it away give me a break we're just not stolen we are willfully giving it away because
01:09:59
we're not doing anything about it so I think yes is there room for regulation of course I think there's a lot we can do but let's start with personal
01:10:06
responsibility that's the first line of defense wouldn't that make sense first let's see what we can do and then we can also figure out uh while the politicians
01:10:13
figured out we can you know find ways to regulate as well one of the things I found compelling was the role that our psychological trauma
01:10:21
and our childhood trauma can have on us because one of the psychologists I sat here with
01:10:26
described as Gremlins and goblins he said sir Steve Steve Peter said that we have some of us
01:10:33
have goblins these are the hard to move hard to budge traumas usually happen below the age of 10. that will just stay
01:10:40
with us the whole time you know like really severe traumas and then after that generally speaking their Gremlins
01:10:45
where you can do work to kind of overcome them when people are thinking about taking those steps in relationships or in a gym
01:10:52
or whatever you know you talked about obesity being clinically obese sometimes we have these goblins at the heart of us
01:10:58
that limit us from taking that first step that just act as a gravitational force against the behavior we want to
01:11:04
take right how do we can we overcome that is that is it relevant well it's a severe trauma is kind of out of scope
01:11:11
for for what I work on but I would say for the Goblins as you describe them that is where I think it is very helpful
01:11:17
to realize that they're just feelings they're just feelings right they're but feelings can be very convincing but feelings don't happen to us that happen for us so if we can leverage that if we
01:11:31
can learn from that if we can use it like Rocket Fuel to propel us towards what we want to do if you look at you
01:11:37
know amazing artists or athletes it's interesting how many of them have some kind of trauma
01:11:43
right have you ever noticed that like they're they're they're running away from something just as much as they're running towards something they're trying
01:11:49
to prove something to their their alcoholic father they're trying to uh prove something to to somebody because
01:11:55
of what happened to them so you know we have post-traumatic stress we also have post-traumatic growth depending on how
01:12:02
we frame that and what we do with that discomfort there's a lot of people who do amazing things driven by these same
01:12:09
goblins that other people run away from it's about how we reframe that uh that discomfort every successful person outside here in fact the last person that sat in the chair said I asked them and they said they were basically
01:12:22
running away from um their trauma and actually they actually got diagnosed many years later
01:12:27
in therapy with post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD they are the number one in their industry I'd say right I mean it's it's so common and many of the people I interviewed for the book they that was
01:12:39
what was so fascinating it wasn't trauma or trauma free everybody has trauma and from these high performers they all had
01:12:46
it uh something and we all do in some way we've all suffered in one way or another and and of course there's you
01:12:52
know it's very difficult it's very touchy but uh you know it's very much subjective to us how we deal with it how
01:12:58
we will grow from it uh I think that's the big lesson I think uh the psychology Community as well we'll we'll teach that
01:13:05
it's about learning how to deal with that discomfort in a way that is adaptive right as opposed to maladaptive something that hurts you that these experiences are neutral it's how we
01:13:18
interpret them that matters that's a really key point that I've learned from doing what I do here the point about
01:13:24
trauma being neutral it's a subjective thing you know someone snatches a toy off you and you're a kid
01:13:30
now you might interpret that as being a fun game or you might interpret it as I can't trust anybody and it's like it's the same incident but it's interpreted in two entirely
01:13:41
different ways and then that child might then go on to be incredibly successful because they were low in trust right you
01:13:49
know but that might hurt their personal relationships and the other child who had the same thing happen to them might just be you know
01:13:54
and it's it's not only psychologically true but also physiologically true I don't know if you've read uh Mind Body prescription uh it's an old book but it
01:14:02
basically is is a lot of people read it for back pain it's incredible I had a um
01:14:08
my last my last company uh business partner of mine she would be on the floor in pain in the
01:14:15
middle of the day she would have to go to a back office because she just could not move she was in so much pain
01:14:21
and uh her husband had incredible carpal tunnel he would wear all kinds of devices and uh you know stuff to try and immobilize his hands and he really suffered and then they came across this
01:14:33
book the mind-body prescription which basically talks about how you don't want to uh stop doing the painful actions
01:14:41
that most pain is chronic type pain after the healing has occurred of course as a window right if if you still have
01:14:47
pain I think what is it six months if you still have pain then it's called chronic pain that the body has already healed within
01:14:53
that time period we're sure the body is healed why is there still pain that there isn't necessarily pain does not mean physical trauma per se and I think
01:14:59
this is relevant to psychological trauma as well the pain happens because we focus on our attention on the pain you
01:15:07
can't have pain without attention do you notice that you can't have pain without attention uh so it there's these cases
01:15:13
by the way of in the world war one where soldiers would drag their buddies to the medic
01:15:19
and say medic you know my buddy's dying you need to help him and the medic would look at the soldier and say soldier your arm is gone and look and you wouldn't
01:15:25
notice that half his arm is missing because pain requires attention so when we over focus on our pain when all we
01:15:31
pay attention to is our pain and I'm saying here physiologically as well as psychologically the pain becomes worse
01:15:38
the pain becomes worse when we say and and more so when we try and not do the thing that caused us pain so now the advice is not you know if you have a back pain issue it used to be okay well immobilize
01:15:51
don't move uh you know don't stretch don't just you know rest rest and now the advice is really changing same with
01:15:57
carpal tunnel it's not you know get all the wrist braces and don't move your wrists it's the opposite if you feel back pain do whatever caused that pain
01:16:04
three times because you want to regulate the the brain to learn that this is not a threat
01:16:10
again emotions pain don't happen to us they happen for us it's a it's a lesson for us to learn from it's just a signal
01:16:16
now we can interpret that signal any way we want so when we hyper focus on something that was painful
01:16:22
physiologically or psychologically when we don't do the thing that causes discomfort right when we want to go to
01:16:28
Safe spaces with trigger warnings and we're not exposed to the things that make us uncomfortable that only makes it
01:16:34
worse and worse and worse because we're paying more attention to it and we don't have the exposure we we know the the way
01:16:40
to treat phobias how do you treat a phobia exposure therapy right so when someone's scared scared of a dog right
01:16:46
when someone has severe uh reaction to a dog what do you do well first you show them a picture of a puppy then you show them a picture of a full-grown dog then you show them a video then eventually
01:16:58
you put them in a room with the puppy out the other side of the room 20 feet away then you you expose them to the
01:17:04
threat until their brain down regulates and teaches itself Not to cause this reaction this emotional reaction to this potential stressor and so it's the same way with many of the the potential
01:17:17
discomforts in our life isn't it the same way with just belief itself like self-belief you think about how our
01:17:23
beliefs form people always you know ask me questions and one of the most popular questions anyone wants to know in the sort of self-development community is
01:17:29
about how we become confident and confidence is a belief and one of the ways that I've become confident in my
01:17:35
life is by exposure therapy I guess yeah you know how you learn to speak on a stage is by doing it like there's no other you can't read a book on it to get it overcome the nerves
01:17:46
um have you thought much about confidence and the role it plays in everything we've discussed today and how to build confidence funny you should say
01:17:52
uh getting on stage so uh I'm a professional public speaker let's let's do that a lot good shows thank you very
01:18:00
good well okay well let me back up a few years so when I when I first started out I wrote the book first and then I
01:18:06
started speaking about it and when I would get on stage I would have incredible stage fright
01:18:11
and at first this is with my first book hooked and uh I would tell myself this this script of when I felt my heartbeat when I would get you know sweaty pits
01:18:22
and I get very nervous and I tell myself I can actually it's funny just talking about I can actually
01:18:28
feel it uh I would tell myself you know if I was a real public speaker I wouldn't feel this way I'm gonna mess up
01:18:33
I'm gonna stumble over my words I'm gonna fall flat and people are gonna laugh at me and I would do worse on stage and then
01:18:40
when I started researching indistractible I found this technique called reimagining the trigger and
01:18:46
reimagining the trigger is when we take the same exact physiological reactions and we reinterpret them so now when I go
01:18:53
on stage and I feel my heart racing I don't use the old script I have a new script the new script says my heart is
01:19:00
beating fast because it is pumping oxygen to my brain so I can deliver the best possible talk
01:19:06
that's where confidence comes from is reframing the triggers what used to scare you should embolden you should
01:19:12
strengthen you someone that's low confidence what are they are they lacking in something are they are they lacking in positive evidence or are they
01:19:20
abundant in negative evidence I guess it can be either hmm I think they're stuck to a script
01:19:25
okay I mean this is why we see uh Mike and Michael polin's book how to change a mind where why psychedelics are so
01:19:31
interesting for for treatment of depression anxiety in various conditions it's not the drug itself right there's
01:19:37
no healing taking even the whole concept of the broken brain and uh uh chemical imbal you know this whole chemical imbalance theories turns out it's rubbish nobody believes that anyone in Psychology Community it's only the
01:19:48
public that thinks that there's a brain chemical imbalance it's not being it's not fixing anything in the brain it's simply showing you
01:19:55
that a different perspective exists that's all it does it simply shows you that a different perspective exists and
01:20:02
that can snap you out of this what we call a trapped prior a trap belief around how things are and says wait a minute I don't have to think that way so when it comes to confidence I mean
01:20:12
what do actors do actors inhabit completely different characters uh On Demand right and that's that's a
01:20:20
skill I think we could try on for size we should actually once in a while say well what what would it be like if I acted
01:20:27
different right do I have to stick to my obelis no there's no law that says you have to act the same way every day it's
01:20:32
simply that our our sense of self our our self-image is based on what we did previously a topic that's actually emerged a lot in public Consciousness and conversation since we last spoke is
01:20:44
and it's very much linked to all the work you do is attention deficit disorder he wrote a
01:20:50
book about not being distracted what's your thoughts on ADHD add oh this is a big topic and I'm probably gonna get myself in trouble here but um let me start by saying it is not up to me uh or
01:21:02
anyone you would listen to on a podcast to tell you whether you have or don't have a diagnosis go to a physician and
01:21:08
and get a diagnosis one way or the other I will say that I think um There's Something Fishy going on when it comes to ADHD I have a lot of concerns
01:21:19
one the discrepancy between what's happening in the states and in Europe is weird right 10 of children in the United States are diagnosed with ADHD in Europe it's one percent
01:21:33
something strange there right there's something about the culture of the United States that I believe over diagnosis and it
01:21:41
over diagnoses because I don't think there's a great check and balance to disincentivize the diagnosis
01:21:50
meaning if a teacher says uh this child is a pain this child can't sit still and we're talking about you know many times five six seven year olds where
01:22:02
it's funny I I I a lot of people say how technology is this and technology is that you know public education is also a technology it's only about 150 years old it's not that old we haven't done it for
01:22:13
that long and so there are negative repercussions also to putting a bunch of kids in a in a box and expecting them to sit still and be quiet and listen to
01:22:21
some boring person lecturing on on the front of the classroom so I think there's a there's a clear
01:22:27
incentive for teachers and parents to try and calm kids down and I don't I don't know if there's enough of a check and balance to say look is this is this really necessary to
01:22:40
diagnose especially when there are Pharmaceuticals involved so I like to repeat and I'll repeat it again and again skills before pills skills before pills ADHD is real he's
01:22:55
diagnosed and for many people medication is the appropriate course of action but
01:23:00
I have talked to so many people in the field who just don't have the resources to teach skills and so all they can do is prescribe and it's the first thing they'll do the kid will get diagnosed
01:23:13
here's here's some pills and I think those pills we do not properly um weight how dangerous those pills can be not only look these you know these things are amphetamines right they have
01:23:25
consequences they have uh side effects and many times we will give pills to take care of the side effects of the pills we just diagnosed and more importantly they are training a
01:23:36
generation to believe that Solutions come in pill bottles and I think that has some very severe potential
01:23:42
consequences especially when for many many people adults and children the skills are here right if you have tried
01:23:53
the skills and they still don't work if you've taken you know a day or two just a day or two to learn some of the skills
01:23:59
that I talk about indestructible and then if you find you know what it's still not working okay got it but to
01:24:06
jump straight to the Pharmaceuticals I think is a big mistake because they all come with with side effects so skills
01:24:12
before pills the justification that I got from one of my my friends that was diagnosed um was
01:24:17
that his brain doesn't make enough dopamine that's not true there's we don't know that that's uh
01:24:24
that's pure conjecture this science doesn't support that we the whole chemical imbalance Theory no
01:24:30
psychiatrist will tell you that's true it doesn't that's just scientifically false where did that come from it came
01:24:36
there were it was a theory that has since been discredited with with further research we we
01:24:43
actually you cannot find ADHD in the brain there's no brain scan to say there's no blood test you go to a doctor
01:24:49
they will ask you questions you'll take a little assessment and then if you get whatever it is six out of eight of these
01:24:54
criteria uh by the way very gamble completely gamable um you'll get a diagnosis and of course many Physicians unfortunately
01:25:07
will cater to what they think the patients want because they don't want a bad review on Google that says this doctor didn't believe me right so they
01:25:14
they're they fear a bad review and they'll they'll do what the patient wants furthermore I think a big problem
01:25:19
okay again this isn't black and white I'm I'm very much for a proper diagnosis I'm sure that ADHD is absolutely absolutely real let me say that again but if you go to a physician that does
01:25:32
not also give you an undiagnosis plan everybody thinks about diagnosis what about undiagnosis
01:25:38
right when you go to the doctor and you have a broken arm they put on a cast and they say come back in a few weeks we'll take the cast
01:25:45
off and you'll be healed where's the undiagnosis planned for ADHD it should exist it should exist we should be able to help people overcome
01:25:56
and we see this all the time when people want to I I in my family I've seen this
01:26:01
people in my family have been diagnosed with ADHD they go on medication they suffer from
01:26:08
the consequences of the of the some of the side effects they go off the pills then they get to the skills they learn
01:26:13
the skills and they functionally don't have it anymore remember it is not I I what I hate about uh a lot of people in the
01:26:20
ADHD Community they feel like it's an identity right it is who they are and that is so
01:26:26
dangerous we need to look at ADHD as something that is treatable okay it's treatable sometimes through medication it's treatable through behavioral practices we can learn to
01:26:39
overcome many of these things because if it's not functionally hurting you you shouldn't have a diagnosis anymore but
01:26:45
for you know I think if if you go to a physician that doesn't give you some kind of undiagnosis plan which could
01:26:50
take years it's not an instant solution but there needs to be some kind of plan to how do we make sure that this functionally doesn't debilitate you uh
01:26:58
without you know medication as as a constant course of treatment especially when it has side effects that's a big
01:27:04
red flag the treatment is based on what people believe the cause is so if I if I think
01:27:11
the cause is a chemical imbalance or your brain is broken in some way I can't create an undiagnosis plan
01:27:17
right that's the problem it's not look people are cured of addiction addiction is a pathology you have it for a while while your circuit so addiction is a Confluence of three
01:27:28
things the person the pain they're going through and the product that they are addicted to but when any of those three
01:27:36
things change they're no longer addicted I don't believe in this I'm an addict for life I think that's incredibly
01:27:41
harmful and oh you will be very hard-pressed to find someone who's in the addiction treatment Community who
01:27:47
calls people addicts we don't call them addicts anymore we call them people struggling with addiction because we don't want to stigmatize them to believe
01:27:53
that's who I am what people do when they have an identity they conform to that identity that's that's terrible you
01:27:59
struggle with an addiction for a while and then you are treated and then you recover why do we think that ADHD would
01:28:05
be any different the BBC wrote an article this week which is what spiral sort of causes this
01:28:10
discussion amongst my my close friends with the BBC said they were they kind of presented the the idea that Tick Tock
01:28:17
had been really driving and over diagnosis because on Tick Tock you'll see a lot of videos that say things like
01:28:23
you know if you have this problem this problem you can't focus on this where you like lose your keys a lot and you forget what you've put them
01:28:28
that's ADH that's ADHD it's kind of simplified the the ailment um and the BBC wrote this piece sort of saying that is it driving an over-diagnosis in culture
01:28:41
um and I've seen I mean if I go on if I go on my social media that's what I see I see so much content around saying well
01:28:47
if you've got this this and this if you've got this habit then that's ADHD and that does concern me a little bit
01:28:52
because we both know that ADHD is a very real thing that can be debilitating for people that suffer with it um but
01:28:58
trivializing it into small small little right and it's and if you look for it right it's recency bias when you are looking for something you'll find it so
01:29:09
if you you know do do do people who everyone who loses their keys from time to time have ADHD of course not but if you're looking for and you say Okay I I lost my keys it must be this or you know
01:29:20
I was having difficulty reading a book it must be this when that's repeated ad nauseum in the popular press we I think
01:29:26
that's part of the demo whether whether the if the media is Tick Tock or traditional media uh there has been
01:29:34
um I I think a popularization of the diagnosis and the more people hear about the diagnosis the more they potentially
01:29:40
will look for it I think we I think the pendulum should swing the other way now I don't think there's anything wrong
01:29:46
with teaching the skills that could make ADHD functionally not a problem but what's wrong with that there's no problem I think the problem comes in when we a uh get people to identify you
01:29:58
know we hear this all the time you say oh I have undiagnosed ADHD well you haven't you haven't gone to the doctor you haven't taken any kind of assessment
01:30:04
how do you know right and even then if you did want there's also okay there's some gray area there too or people say
01:30:10
oh I'm so OCD OCD is a is a terrible pathology right it's not uh I like to wash my hands more than others I like to keep my room clean no no that is a serious pathology so when we addiction I
01:30:22
think is probably the most overused phrase addiction is a terrible pathology but when people say I'm addicted to this
01:30:29
I'm addicted to that it has two terrible consequences one it's I think great offensive to people who actually struggle with this disease of addiction that's one big problem or the pathology
01:30:40
of addiction two you are you are creating this identity for yourself as someone who is powerless addiction the word Addiction comes from addictio in Latin which means slave so
01:30:52
you're a slave to something so when you call yourself a slave to something you're basically saying you're you're
01:30:57
Palace against it so using these these medicalized terms and moralizing these terms I think is a really bad path who stands to gain from this I I've sat here with so many Health experts and they
01:31:09
tell me about the sugar industry and the smoking industry that you know Pub published a lot of sort of media back in
01:31:15
the day saying that sugar was good for us and cigarettes were good for us and and I think about this um this
01:31:21
conversation around ADHD now who who stands to gain from an increased diagnosis of people with ADHD well I
01:31:27
don't want it to sound like the tobacco industry that you know was sitting in smoke-filled rooms plotting but there
01:31:33
are systems in place which benefit some groups over others for sure I mean the the I think the
01:31:39
psychology industry the pharmaceutical industry benefits quite a bit again I don't think they're sitting there
01:31:44
thinking oh we're gonna convince people that there's uh that they should be diagnosed but of course there's
01:31:50
incentives and and more importantly there's no disincentives I'm not I'm not so worried
01:31:55
about the incentives I don't think there's I'm not pointing fingers at unethical practices uh in Psychiatry or
01:32:01
in the pharmaceutical industry per se what I'm worried about is where are the disincentives who is saying you're
01:32:07
diagnosing too many people here it can't be that 10 of American children have ADHD how can that be something fishy
01:32:13
going on where where are the breaks who says this doesn't seem right what's that what's the most important
01:32:19
thing you think we haven't talked about today that we should have talked about so we didn't talk about how to build an indestructible workplace oh okay yeah I
01:32:27
read I read a stat that you tweeted a couple of years ago that said um nurses had managed to reduce the rate
01:32:34
of mistakes when they're giving subscriptions by like 80 just by wearing like a vest that said do not disturb me right exactly the Staggering so that's where I got the idea of that uh that
01:32:46
screen sign that comes in every copy of the book is so these nurses uh in the UK actually uh
01:32:53
this huge problem of prescription mistakes that patients were being prescribed the wrong medication or the
01:32:59
wrong dosage of medication it turns out that in almost all cases it was caused by a distraction they were you know on
01:33:06
their dosing rounds and somebody would tap them on their shoulder and disrupt them and then they would make mistakes
01:33:11
and the solution was that they had these nurses wear these bright red vests that
01:33:16
says drug round in progress do not disturb and they reduce the percentage of prescription Mistakes by 88 they almost eliminated the problem and so I tell the story I know that you
01:33:26
know not everybody who reads the book is in the medical profession but I tell the story to illustrate one how we too don't
01:33:33
realize the problem is happening until it's too late right we think we're doing our job we're doing great everything's fine and just like these nurses and not
01:33:39
until they came back to work the next day did they realize hey did you realize you gave Mr Johnson the wrong medication you almost killed the man right in that
01:33:46
case they got that immediate feedback and it's awful life-threatening for us we don't realize how much better we
01:33:51
could be at our jobs or at life when we work with that distraction the when I I did there's a whole section of the book on uh building an indestructible workplace we found that there's three
01:34:02
characteristics of an indestructible workplace the first is that there is a uh a play Sorry a sense of psychological safety this comes from the work of Amy Edmondson and at Harvard and she's
01:34:14
identified that psychological safety is this ability to talk about your problems without fear of Retribution so if you
01:34:20
can't raise your hand and talk about the problem of distraction hey boss you know I I'm really having trouble finishing my
01:34:27
work because I constantly feel I am interrupted if you can't talk about that problem that is the problem it's not the
01:34:34
technology it's that you can't talk about the problem so number one trait psychological safety the ability to talk
01:34:40
about the problem second is a forum to talk about the problem so a little sidebar slack was one of these products that a lot of people complained about when I
01:34:51
was researching the book and I said you know what do you find most distracting and slack kept coming up or other group messaging services but slack uh is the
01:34:57
biggest or was the biggest at the time and uh so I went to visit slack I went to slack headquarters in San Francisco
01:35:05
and I expected if slack is this super distracting technology well nobody uses slack more than slack I expected to see an office
01:35:15
full of people who were constantly distracted but that's not what I found at all that at Slack
01:35:21
the parking lot clears out at 6 pm and if you use slack on nights and weekends you are reprimanded you are told that is not what we do at our company right and
01:35:31
what I found was that they exemplified these these traits those other another company I profile in the book but slack
01:35:37
is one of them so they have psychological safety they give people a form that's the second trait they give people a forum to talk about the problem
01:35:43
and so they created slack channels where people it was called beef tweets they had a slack Channel where people could
01:35:50
post complaints or suggestions about the company and so what was important about this as
01:35:56
a practice it doesn't have to be on slack some companies I profile Boston Consulting Group as well they had a massive turnaround as well when it comes
01:36:01
to their company culture they went from one of the hardest places to work it was my first job out of college it was
01:36:06
really rough from a work-life balance perspective to now it's one of the best places to work according to uh they got
01:36:12
an award for one of the best places to work in America uh and they did that by creating a forum by creating a place to talk about the
01:36:19
problem so slack has a slack Channel where people can talk about things that they want to improve of the company and the important thing here is not that
01:36:25
everything has to be acted upon right management can decide what's important what's not important but employees need to be seen so what does slack management
01:36:31
do in order to make sure that people felt heard they would use Emoji they would send like if somebody had a complaint they would post the eye Emoji to show them okay we saw that or the
01:36:43
check Emoji to show them it's been taken care of right so it's a form for people to talk about the problem and feel like
01:36:48
they're heard the third trait and the most important is that management needs to exemplify
01:36:54
what it means to be indestructible so when you walk into slack headquarters there's a huge pink neon sign I also
01:37:00
have a picture of it in the book a huge pink neon sign in the company canteen that says work hard and go home
01:37:08
it's part of the company ethos that people do their best work when they're fully focused and then after work they
01:37:14
need time to be with their families to do other things so and that's that was part of the company culture so psychological safety a form to talk about these problems and making sure
01:37:25
that management exemplifies what it means to be indistractable so much of that I'm going to implement
01:37:31
and here we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving a question before it's a new tradition since you
01:37:38
last came on and the question that's been left for you is what is one idea that is important that most people would
01:37:44
disagree with you on that you feel needs to be said oh the Peter teal question okay you asked me what I changed my mind on uh and I mentioned it a few times in passing but I've really changed my mind
01:37:56
on uh the importance of religion in that I'm I'm secular I don't believe in anything Supernatural but uh I think we as
01:38:09
Skeptics I would say to describe us whether you call yourself agnostic or atheist or whatever we get we give up a
01:38:16
lot we give up a lot and I've changed my mind on um the fact that organized religion has a lot to offer us and and this is something I'm really struggling with because I have such a problem with
01:38:28
accepting the supernatural elements of religion but the benefits are amazing right
01:38:34
taking care of people who uh you may not know directly but are part of your community having a place to go to that you know you will be taken care of as well having rituals that Mark the
01:38:46
year um higher purpose higher purpose uh forced disconnection and reflection meditation prayer there's so many things I think we miss out on that I've I've I have a newfound
01:38:58
respect for the benefits I think a lot of a lot of people get stuck with you but I can't believe the Hocus Pocus
01:39:03
right to write the writingly said but we miss a lot and I think we we should acknowledge that thank you for writing such a great book thank you for coming back onto the podcast um you're an incredible person and I
01:39:16
can't wait to buy whatever you write next I appreciate that so much it's a huge honor thank you so much thank you
01:39:24
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