Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPLive: Focus is the New Productivity with Nir Eyal and Ethan Kross on Clubhouse | Uncut Version

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Join Hala for a live recorded Young and Profiting episode featuring Ethan Kross and Nir Eyal where they will share the secrets of getting a hold of your focus, increasing your productivity, and much more! **Meet the panel** Nir Eyal - Nir helps companies create behaviors that benefit their users while educating people on how to build healthful habits in their own lives. Nir previously taught at Stanford, co-founded and sold two tech companies and is the author of two bestselling books. Ethan Kross - Ethan is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. He studies how the conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions and relationships. Ethan is also an award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and a bestselling author.  Social Media: Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on ClubHouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. You can crush your fingers and all your toes during a data center migration. You can knock on wood, pluck a dozen for leaf clovers or look to your lucky stars for a successful office expansion.

You could hold your breath, shut your eyes, and say all the well wishes to help avoid cyber attacks. But none of that truly helps you. Because next level moments need the next level network. With the security, reliability, and expertise to take your business further. AT&T Business. The network you can rely on. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit.

Welcome to the show! I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests

by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhanced in productivity, had again influence the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast.

Hey everybody, you are tuning into a live episode of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast. I'm your host, Halitaha and today we're joined by two past YAP former guests and favorites, Nierielle and Ethan Cross who are here to share with you why focus is the new productivity. This is especially important in today's world because more and more companies are moving towards permanent remote work. So many of us are literally locked in a room surrounded by all of our favorite things

and then being told to focus on work for eight to 10 hours at a time. And that means for better or for worse when you're at home, the biggest animated tier productivity is yourself. The ability to focus and concentrate is a superpower in my opinion. So with that being said, I can't wait to talk about today's topic, maximizing focus and minimizing distractions to improve your productivity

with my special guest, Nierielle and Ethan Cross. Nierielle helps companies create behaviors that benefit their users while educating people how to build healthy habits in their own lives. He previously taught at Stanford. He co-founded and sold two tech companies and he's the author of two best selling books. He was featured in episode number 34 of Young & Profiting Podcast

as well as a live episode back in April. And we also have Ethan Cross. He's the world's leading expert on controlling the conscious mind. He studies how conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions, and relationships. He's also an award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and a bestselling author, and he joined us back in episode number one, 22. So in this Yap Live, we're going to discuss how to deal with distractions inside

our own mind, namely internal triggers and chatter, and how to improve focus by minimizing distractions and practical ways to improve focus by minimizing distractions and practical ways to improve your everyday productivity. Okay, so here's how it's gonna work. The first hour, we're gonna do a guided interview where I will interview Ethan and Near, and then I have a lot of podcast or friends on this app, so if they end up showing up, they can ask a question,

and Near and Ethan, I encourage you guys to conversate with each other. If you have something valuable to add, just add it even if I don't ask you directly. You guys are the experts. This is your show. Then the last 30 minutes, we are going to have open Q&A.

If you guys have a question in the audience, just raise your hand and put your question right at the top of your bio and if it's relevant, we're going to pull you up. That's how it's going to go. Let's start off with an intro question. Everybody gets familiar with your guys' expertise. You are huge names in your fields. You're both best-selling authors. You're super credible when it comes to knowing how to get in the zone.

So I want to know what first sparked your interest in the topic of productivity and self-control. Let's start with Ethan first, who is one of the world's leading experts in controlling the conscious mind. How did you get into all of this? So how did I get interested in productivity and focus? My interest began when what I started thinking about what are the negative consequences of getting stuck in a thought loop, a negative thought loop about our lives? So one of the things that scientists have found

is that when we start ruminating and worrying, that consumes our attention, that precious resource that we have, which is essential to focusing on our work, doing our jobs, and so for me, the question became, all right, it's rumination, worry, or what I call chatter, is making it impossible to focus on the things we care about, our work, our relationships, what can we do

to help people manage that chatter and do away with it so we could free their attention up to do ultimately what they wanna do to be a good listener to their friends and loved ones, to do their jobs well. That question is what I've devoted a lot of my career towards studying, and I always want to say one thing, you know, you mentioned we're alone in our offices and our rooms. So I might even call their home offices dungeons.

You know, we're spending a lot of time with all of these physical distractions, but it's not just physical distractions. It's also internal distractions, right? We've got lots of concerns about things like COVID. And if you've got kids what's going to happen when they go back to school and what if it's Delta variant takes over? All of those concerns if they go to an extreme can really make it difficult to be effective. So that's where my interest came from. I love that. And near, I know you are known to be given, you're known to give science-based insights on how to build healthy habits. You always talk about improving productivity

and focus and managing distractions. So how did you get started in all of this? So my journey into this world of the psychology of distractions started when I had an incident with my daughter several years ago, after I wrote my first booked a book about how to build habit forming products. I had this afternoon planned with her just to enjoy some daddy daughter time.

I remember we had this book of activities and all kinds of things to draw, daddies and daughters closely together. One of the activities was to make a paper airplane contest. The other one was a Sudoku puzzle, all kinds of little activities. One of the activities was to ask each other this question. And the question was, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim, but I can't tell you what my daughter said. Because in that moment, I decided for whatever reason, I don't even know why.

I started checking my phone. And by the time I looked up for my device, my daughter was gone. She had left the room and gotten the message that I was clearly sending, which was whatever was on my phone was more important than she was. And that's when I really had to reassess my own relationship with distraction, because if I'm really honest with you all, it didn't just happen with my daughter. It would happen when I would sit at my desk and I'd say, oh, I'm going to work on this big project. And yet, 20, 30 minutes later, I was doing everything, but that thing I said I was going to do.

It would happen when I would say I was going to go to the gym. I was going to exercise. I'm going to eat right. And I didn't. And I wouldn't. I love that. And why don't we stick on distractions since you brought it up near?

Like I mentioned in this intro, a lot of people are working from home. In fact, 62% of employees age 22 to 65 say that they work remotely at least occasionally. And I think that working from home leads to a lot more distractions because you have every device in your face, you've got dogs, family members, nobody's watching you. So I'd love to hear from you, near what you think, the key things we need to you. So I'd love to hear from you, Near, what you think, the key things we need to be aware of when it comes to distractions and focusing while we're working at home.

Yeah, so I think, you know, what's changed is that because we are working from home, the external triggers, the things in our outside world have also changed. So when we did surveys before COVID, before people were working from home, the number one source of distraction in the workplace was not devices, it was other people. That was the number one source of distraction. It was the boss, the coworker coming over

and telling you a bit of office gossip or asking for that TPS report when you're right in the middle of a big project, that was the number one source of distraction today. If your coworkers, they're your kids, your dog, your roommate, all kinds of things that could be distracting. So that has changed. I think another thing that has changed has to do with the internal triggers. These uncomfortable emotional states.

So now that the world is more uncertain, especially last year, it was a very scary place. And so our sense of worry, anxiety, stress, fatigue, all increased. And so therefore, there were more people looking for escape oftentimes with distraction. Yeah, I totally agree. Ethan, do you have anything to add to that? One thing I'll add to what Nier is earlier started with your daughter, Nier. You're not alone. You know, when I was interviewing people for my book, I can't tell you how many people describe

the negative interpersonal consequences that were associated with getting lost in worry and their negative thoughts and how that lets the exact same experience that you just described, sitting at a dinner table with their kids, their kids telling them about their day and then not hearing anything. So I think this is pretty close to universal experience

that many that people have. But we have a ton of distractions right now and figuring out how to manage them is really important. And the good news is that I think as near and I can both attest, there's lots of science that bears on exactly this issue. Yeah, and when we're talking about distractions, I think people usually think of like phones, pings, and rings, but it turns out that distractions can be in our own mind.

And that's what you talk about, Ethan, you talk about chatter, you wrote a book called Chatter and how to harness it. And in that book, you refer to chatter as the negative thoughts and emotions that make introspection a curse rather than a blessing. So can you talk to us about what chatter is exactly and what role chatter plays in our ability to focus and get things done? Sure. So we've got this amazing capacity to introspect, to turn our attention and word, to reflect in our lives. And this is one of our superpowers. It lets us do lots and lots of things like, like solve problems, like control ourselves, like create stories that explain who we are. You know, I get

rejected by someone or a publisher, or whomever, and I can make sense of that experience. Well, why did I get rejected? Well, maybe I didn't do my job. I could tell a story that gives rise to a sense of who I am. So, this ability and respect is great, except oftentimes it runs off track. So, oftentimes when we experience negative events, we go inside and we try to make sense of them, but we end up getting stuck in negative thought loops. So, we, you know, if it's a negative thought loop about the future, that's worry. Oh my God, what if this happens, what am I going to do? If it's about the past, we call that rumination. I can't believe I said that to that person earlier today.

Oh my God, what are they going to say? Is that going to jeopardize the job? And getting stuck in these negative thought loops is a pervasive experience. It's one of the core features of anxiety and depression. And so it's a big problem that we want to figure out how to address and it relates very promptly to what we're talking about, right? Getting distracted because we only have a limited amount

of attention that we can focus on at any given time. And so if all of your attention is focused very narrowly on your worries and remunations, it doesn't leave a whole lot left over to do the things you want to do like in New Year's case and mine too. Listen, really genuinely listen to those we love or our colleagues or really focus on on a report. An example I like to give people to really try this home is to ask people to just think about a time when they try reading a couple of pages in a book, four or five pages, they are positive that they've

actually read the text, right? Their eyes have scanned over the words, but they get to the end of those five pages and they don't remember a damn thing that they've read. This is a very, if we could have people raise hands, I don't know if we can, but I'd imagine there'd be quite a few go up. It's a very common experience and what happens there is your attention is on something else and so you can't do your job. So, chatter is something that can powerfully undermine our ability to think and perform and that's one of the ways it can sync us.

Yeah, I definitely want to talk later on in terms of how we can turn chatter from destructive to productive, but before we do that, I want to stay on this theme of distraction is actually an inside job. So, near, I know you talk a lot about the difference between internal triggers and external triggers when it comes to distractions, and I'd love for you to break that down for us. First, it's important to talk about what is the difference between traction and distraction, that many people think the opposite of distraction is focus and I would argue that's not exactly right but the opposite of traction is Distraction so traction is anything you decide to do in advance something that you want to do with your time anything that's in accordance with your values and moves you towards who you want to be that's an active traction the opposite is Distraction so anything that moves you away from what it is you said you want to do with your time and attention.

And so I think it's a really important dichotomy because I think it gets us away from saying, oh, certain behavior, evil, but somehow watching, you know, football on TV, that's okay. Right? There should be no moralizing of how people spend their time. It's all fine. It's not a distraction per se if it's what you plan to do

with your time. So that being said, once you know what it is you want to do with your time, if you go off track from that task or anything you want to do with your time, if you go off track, that would be a distraction. So the question is, why do we get distracted? If we know what we want to do, and this is, by the way, an age-old problem, Plato, the Greek philosopher, 2500 years ago, so well before the internet and Facebook and all that, complained about this very same problem of distraction.

He called it a kerasia in the Greek, the tendency to do things against our better interest. And so the question is, why do we do that? Right? If we know what we want to do, why can't we just carry out that action? Why do we get distracted with something else? And so the reason is because we have two kinds of triggers. We have the external triggers. These are the usual suspects, the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment that pulls us away from

what we said we were going to do. But it turns out studies find that that's only 10% of the time that we get distracted or we distracted because of an external trigger, which is kind of counterintuitive. Most people think, oh, I wanted to work on this big project, but then my phone rang or then a slack notification or something popped up And I got pulled off track, but actually that's only 10% of the time So what's the other 90% the other 90% as Ethan and I alluded to are what we call these Internal triggers internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from So it can be boredom loneliness fatigue uncertainty anxiety stress any of these uncomfortable sensations that we seek to escape from. So it can be boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety, stress, any of these uncomfortable

sensations that we seek to escape. And so how many people deal with those uncomfortable sensations. And so this is where I think Ethan and my work kind of fit hand in glove is that I study what happens in terms of the action, right? You'll notice that traction and distraction both end in action. So I study what happens when we feel these internal triggers and then we do something that either we wanted to do or didn't want to do. And so what oftentimes people do when they feel this discomfort of boredom or loneliness, stress, fatigue is that they look for escape. So whether it's turn on the news or check Facebook or do anything other thing in that we escape that internal trigger,

that emotional discomfort. That was such a good breakdown. Even I'd love for you to add to that if you have anything to add. And if not, you can talk about how we can start to turn off that chatter in our heads. So the one other point I would add and be great to get yours take on this too,

is that we're vilifying distraction right now. And indeed in many cases, just being distracted whether via external or internal triggers, that can be very, very harmful. But there are some instances in which distraction can also be useful and productive, you know, for example, when you're tempted by, you know, I'm thinking of like classic the classic marshmallow Experiments with kids for those of you are not familiar with those studies. You give a child You bring them into a room. You sit them down at desk and give them a choice You can have one cookie now or you can have two cookies if you wait until I, the experimenter returns, and turns out

kids who can wait for the larger treat, like, do much better in life, a number of different dimensions. One of the tools that research shows that allows kids to navigate that task really well is the ability to distract themselves. So by not looking at those cookies, by looking away at that, you know, so that lets them delay gratification longer. Or even better than an external distractor, thinking fun thoughts for kids. So I'm not afraid to size it by going to the swimming pool with your buddies and your mom and having fun. Like when you get immersed in thought in that way, that lets kids delay gratification longer too. So I bring this up because I do want people to recognize that

although distraction is often not productive, there are times and places when it can be a tool to help you achieve your self-control goals. I would, if you don't mind, I would alter that a little bit and say that I think what you're describing is not a distraction. I think distractions are always bad. I would call what you described a diversion a Diversion is simply a

Refocusing of attention and diversions can be great, right when we go to a movie We like to suspend reality and get into the movie and divert our attention away from reality for a little bit and Escaping to a good movie a good book a good TV show in my book I talk about these cases where, you know, children who unfortunately are diagnosed with cancer, one of the pain treatment protocols is to get them to play a specific video game that helps them fight their cancer in this video game as they're getting treatment.

And it's proven to be very effective to get them to refocus their attention away from the painful treatment and on to this video game. It's great. And I would say to this video game, it's great. And I would say that's not distraction, that's in fact traction. That's what they want to be doing with their time and attention. So that's traction, but it's still a diversion, but diversion, there's nothing wrong with diversions of attention.

They're great. Distractions, however, are always harmful. I would say because that's when we say we're going to do one thing and now we're doing something else. You know, I don't have any problem if using that framework, I think that does make sense. So, but I think a big picture where total agreement about the ability

to strategically focus on or away things can be really helpful. You know, one thing I'd love to ask you Ethan and I was looking into your work before the call and so if you don't mind maybe, is it okay, how long if I ask a question myself? Of course, of course. You know, Ethan, one question that I get a lot from folks

as they're trying to become indistractable is, I help folks with not doing the action, right? So they feel that internal trigger and I help them harness that internal trigger to move them forward in traction as opposed to getting distracted. But what sometimes I hear, and I don't have a great answer for it, but I think you might, is what do we do when it's not necessarily an action we're taking? But that thought becomes something that crowds out the work we want to do.

Just daydreaming or slipping into a different headspace when what I really want to do is focus on a project. For example, just yesterday, I was speaking with a radiologist. And the radiologist tells me, look, I'm using the techniques in your book and I'm not getting distracted. When I'm supposed to be looking at the scans, I'm doing my work, at least I've gotten better and then I'm not checking Instagram or checking email or doing something else. But yet, sometimes I find my mind wanders.

What would you say to someone like that? Great question. So, you know, the tool that immediately jumps out of me is as potentially relevant in that situation is something called Distance Self-Talk. And what Distance Self-Talk involves is using language to shift our perspective and put ourselves in this kind of inner coaching mode, basically putting us in a position to give ourselves advice and encouragement in the same way that we would give other people advice and encouragement.

One of the things we've learned over the years is that we are so much better as a species at giving advice, right, to other people helping coach them on their problems, and we are following our own advice. And what we've learned is that language can provide us with a pretty simple way of helping us be better coaches to ourselves. And so what distance self talk involves doing is using your own name and the second person put on you to coach yourself during a situation. So if I'm really struggling, if I notice, I'm, you know, heads in the clouds, I still have access to this goal of something that I want to achieve. So in my case, for example,

I'm giving a workshop tomorrow. And earlier today, you know, my attention maybe was diverted. So I could think of as Ethan, come on, you've got to put the time in now, get the job done. Once you finish that up, you can go back to your other jobs. Essentially, I'm talking to myself. I'm giving myself advice like I give my best friend or daughter or colleague advice. And instead, as we find out, that is often really helpful for breaking people out of experiencing chatter and helping them actualize their goals. So performing better under stress and so forth. So, I think that's one thing that I would recommend given that instance. And what about when you're not conscious

of that mind-wondering to begin with, you haven't caught yourself in that daydream. Is there any advice there to become more conscious of it? Well, I think you would want to make what we call an implementation intention. So, you're in my territory. I love you would want to make what we call an implementation intention. So you're in my territory. I love you. You know, connotations in plain. Yeah, that's my favorite. You know, okay, cool. And, you know, sorry to everyone on the call, but. No, we want to know what that means, even. We, psychologists, are so good at using jargon to describe it. So, essentially, an implementation intention is a, it's a simple if-then plan. And the idea is you make this plan in advance, and that helps you implement a strategy

right when you need it without really thinking. So if I find my attention drifting, then I will instantly talk, give myself advice, coach myself to a problem like I would my friend. So you're essentially making this plan to try that implemented tool when you need it most. Now that does, of course, require you to become aware at some point that you're drifting away. I don't know what the Apple Watch app is for detecting once attention, starts going into the clouds. I don't think we have that yet. Near did you have any thoughts on how to detect that? I mean, you know, the theory

behind lots of meditation mindfulness is that you become better at recognizing when you do that, the more you meditate, but that's a different practice. Yeah, so my focus has really been around the action itself. And I guess my answer has been that without that conscious awareness that your mind is drifting off, you can't really do anything about it. But what you can do is to prevent the action that can take a mind-wondering of, you know, 10, 15 seconds and make it into 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes by going and checking email or looking at a YouTube video or whatever, by making sure that that thought doesn't, that internal trigger,

doesn't turn into action. So as you said, you know, I love implementation intentions and there's many other techniques I described in the book, indistractable. But the idea is at least, you know, if the sacrifice is, hey, hey 10 15 minutes seconds of mind wandering That's not the end of the world what really gets people is when they actually do something else Right, right when I get consumed by social media I would say you know This is probably the focus of another conversation But mind wandering can have a lot of great benefits

So I sometimes will strategically mind wander in order to be More productive at work. So, we're in the business of generating ideas and coming up with novel ways to communicate science to people in a way that makes it stick. And I'll often go for a walk and just let my mind go and free associate and find that at the end of that process, I'm a lot sharper and more productive. So, mindwondering is also something something is a tool that could be used to teach career as well. That's a really good piece of insight. I think that's fantastic because many times if we have these intrusive thoughts that we

keep thinking about, it tells us something, right? It tells us that the mind it wants to process this information. So yeah, as you said, making time for that walking your day knowing, hey, I don't have to think about this right now. I have time for this later on during my walk, during my meditation, during my quiet time, during my free writing time, scheduling that time to think about these things is a great idea. I've actually structured my day.

Well, this was true pre-COVID. I'm trying to get back into this practice now, but I've built into my day segments to allow for that kind of mind-wondering. And the way I did it was really simple. I gave up my parking pass at work. So I don't drive to work anymore, which is also good because I had a penchant for getting parking tickets quite a bit. But now I walk to work and back.

And when I walk to work, and if I'm not on the phone, that allows those thoughts to germinate. And I find it to be a really important facet of what allows me to do what I do. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free

by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who wanna run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke. Justin and Tara started from Square One, just like you and me.

They faced lows and dug themselves out of huge debt. Now they're financially free and they're sharing their hard-earned lessons with all of us. That's right, millionaire university will teach you everything you need to know about starting and growing a successful business. No degrees required. In each episode, you'll gain invaluable insights from seasoned entrepreneurs and mentors who truly understand what it takes to succeed. From topics like how to start a software business without creating your own software, to more broad discussions such as eight businesses you can start tomorrow to make 10k plus month, this podcast has it all. So don't wait, now is the time to turn your business

idea into a reality by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays, find the Millionaire University podcast on New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays. Find the Millionaire University podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Your dog is an important part of your family. Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with nom nom.

Nom nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's individual needs. Each portion is tailored to ensure your dog gets the nutrition they need so you can watch them thrive. Nom nom's ingredients are cooked individually and then mixed together because science tells us that every protein, carb and veggie has different cooking times and methods. This packs in all the vitamins and minerals your dog needs so they truly get the most out of every single bite.

And Nom Nom is completely free of additives, fillers, and mystery ingredients that contribute to bloating and low energy. Your dog deserves only the best, and Nom Nom delivers just that. Their nutrient packed recipes are crafted by board certified veterinary nutritionists, made fresh and shipped to your door. Absolutely free. Nom-nom meals started just $2.40 and every meal is cooked in company-owned kitchens right here in the US and they've already delivered over 40 million

meals, inspiring clean bowls and wagging tails everywhere. Ever since I started feeding my dog Nom-nom, he's been so much more energetic and he's getting older. He's a senior dog but now we've been going on longer walks and he's much more playful. He's to be pretty sluggish and sleeping all the time, but I've definitely noticed a major improvement since I started feeding him Nom Nom. And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk 2 week trial at trinom.com-shap.

That's trinom.nom.com-shap for 50% off trinom.com-shap. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Shopify is packed with industry leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth,

giving you complete control over your business and brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code. And Shopify grows with you no matter how big your business gets. Thanks to an endless list of integrations and third-party apps, anything you can think of from on-demand printing to accounting to chatbots, Shopify has everything you need to revolutionize your business. If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was going to collect payments and how I was going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me was just a click of a button even setting up

my chat bot was just a click of a button. It was so easy to do. Like I said, just took a couple of days and so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be and I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was gonna be a success right off the bat and enabled focus. And focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere

in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly recommend it. Shopify is a platform that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com Sush Profiting. Again, go to Shopify.com Sush Profiting all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com Sush Profiting, Shopify.com Sush Profiting

all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. I love that advice, like basically scheduling out time to let your mind wander, time to basically be distracted, time blocking that so that you don't do it when you actually need to focus. So I think that's a really great point. And Ethan, I want to go to you really quick. I was doing some research, of course, for the show. And we're talking about distractions and kind of getting into solution mode in terms of minimizing distractions and strategies to be more focused. And I came across one of your studies that you completed with several colleagues where you took a sample of four and six year old children and you invited them to complete a boring task on a computer. And you discovered the Batman effect.

So can you talk about the Batman effect and walk us through this study and what you found? So the Batman effect really builds off some of the work I was talking about earlier that involves using your name to coach yourself through a problem. So one of the reasons we find that technique effective is it gives you some psychological distance from your experience. So when you're dealing with really emotional experiences You're totally immersed in the emotions as near mentioned those emotional triggers can be really distracting Get us away from doing what we want to do so being able to step back and Way in on the situation more objectively like we could if it were a situation happening to someone else

That can be really useful. So that was how the distance self-talk stuff worked. And the question was, well, how do you do that? How do you use that tool with kids? And so what my collaborators and I came up with was, what if you were to ask a kid to basically adopt an alter ego? And in particular, the alter ego of a superhero was really good at persevering through arduous difficult tasks.

And that gave rise to this idea, this fat manifact, we had some kids try to work on this difficult task. And periodically, they would be instructed to ask themselves, how am I doing in the first person, but in another condition Uh, we had the kids don a superhero costume So they got to choose between a few different superheroes like Batman or Dorah the Explorer and they basically adopted this persona and so

During the task they would be asked to ask themselves, so how is Batman doing? Now, what do we know about Batman and Dorothexpor? I should confess, I didn't know much until I had kids and started getting into superheroes with them, but they do they persevere. And in fact, what we found is that when you ask a kid to pretend they're a superhero and actually use that superhero name to refer to themselves or really get them to adopt that identity

That can have useful Consequences for their ability to do the kinds of things that they often struggle with like homework Now there is a caveat to this effect. This isn't yet published This was a study that one of my collaborators on this work did as a follow-up and they also looked at, well, what happens if you not only ask a kid to be a superhero, but what happens if you ask a kid to be a villain? So pretend you're the Joker or, you know, whoever the foil of Doris, hollow or near, near you want to guess what happens when you ask a kid to be a villain? They start acting mean?

Yes, yes. So you don't want to f**k, you know, want to be telling your kids to impersonate the Joker or Lex Luthor. It really is about getting that mental space, getting some distance and adopting this persona of someone who's really good at doing the task at hand. So that's about Man Effect. But why does that work? Like, why does dressing up as a superhero actually work? And I heard it works for adults too, is that correct?

Well, we haven't done the Batman effect with adults. So one of the reasons why we think this works is it gives people some psychological distance from the experience. So it lets them step back and get less consumed by the emotions that are often getting in the way of the person or the kid achieving their goals. Now for adults, using your name is sufficient to do that. So come on Ethan, here's what you've got to do. That gives you some distance. For kids, pretending that they're a superhero is a way of giving them some distance from their experience as well.

On top of that, there's also this identity piece which is, these are role models that are really often good in the context that we're studying. They, like Batman Perseveres, through difficulty sodas, door of the explorer. So if you're adopting that identity, you're also going to want a persevere. So it's that it's those two pathways. So if I can just chime in, I love this. In fact, the reason I called my book Indistractable is that Indistractable sounds like indestructible. It's meant to sound like a superpower. It's a superpower that I wanted when I was talking with my daughter. That will be the superpower that I now most wish for.

And thankfully, I can call myself indistractable. And I think we can all call ourselves indistractable. I mean, this is really the identity that we can use to have that superpower impact, that's super here, or identity. And we want to also be careful about how we adopt these temperaments, these self-images, because many times they can serve us and they can also hurt us, as you mentioned, you know, this villain aspect as well.

And there's a more subtle effect that we notice, you know, much of this research around identity comes from the psychology of religion. That when people have a moniker, they are much more likely to accomplish the goals that are consistent with that identity. So when someone calls themselves a vegetarian, right, they don't wake up in the morning and say, ooh, I wonder if I should have a bacon sandwich for breakfast. No, they are a vegetarian.

It is their identity, it is who they are. And so having that monarch or having that identity, making what I call like an identity packed with yourself by calling yourself something is incredibly effective. It can also harm us if we pick the wrong identity. Well, what does that sound like? These days, you'll hear many people who say, oh, I have a short attention span. I'm bad with time management.

I'm not a morning person. I'm a satirious, right? Pick your moniker. And we just have to be very careful about which ones we pick, because many of these identities provide self-limiting beliefs. They don't help us. They harm us. So we want to be very careful in terms of picking identities that move us forward to what we want in life, making that pact to make it easier to make the right decisions, but also dissolving those identities that do nothing but keep us back. I completely agree, Nier, that's directly consistent with what we find in these bad

and affect studies. And I think your point about being careful about the identities we choose raises another really important point about the broader set of tools that exist for managing the mind, managing our attention, and when they're useful and when they're not. I think a lot of people often are looking for simple tools that work across all situations. So what is the one thing I can do to manage my chatter or manage my distractions across the board? And I'd be curious to get your take on this, Near, but my sense is that there's a time

and a place for lots of different tools. So you really need to think carefully about how you're using different tools because any tool can be if pushed too far, become counterproductive. So I like to draw the analogy to like, you know, you use a metaphor of a hammer, right? A hammer can be the source of, you can build wonderful things with a hammer, but if you swing that hammer too hard, that can also cause destruction. And I think the same is true for tools. We have evolved the capacity to use lots of different tools to manage our minds. And I think the real challenge is to figure out when to use the different tools and what combinations and in what situations. So I just wanted to draw attention to that idea.

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. And I hear this all the time with people and technology distractions, right? What's the one life hack? What's the one app? What's the one technique I need to use? Tell me the magic bullet, right? Do I grace me, scream my phone? Do I, you know, is there some service I should use? And of course, it's yes and no. It's about using a concert of tools together. I think the one insight I think is very important to realize is that we need to focus less on the tactics, right?

Tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it. And so I think that's why it's so important for folks to understand the deeper psychology, the deeper reason why we go off track, get distracted, whatever the case might be, because then you can find all kinds of tactics that are consistent with your strategy.

But if you don't understand the underlying psychology, for example, in the research I did with indistractable and I know you're deep into this research, understanding these internal triggers. Like once you realize that, wait a minute, distraction begins from within overwhelmingly. It's not about what's happening outside of me. It's about what's happening inside my own head.

Now we can get to the root of the problem and we have all kinds of techniques that we can use and cycle through. You know, many times I'll recommend a certain technique and someone will try and say, yeah, that wasn't so great, what else you got? And they'll try the second technique, the third technique, and oh,

that's the one that really clicks. So it's really about experimentation and not settling with, that's it, this has got to work or I won't try anything else. It's being a scientist, not a drill sergeant. And I think that this is very consistent with what you were saying earlier

in terms of distance self talk and self compassion. Many people when it comes to distraction and focus, they talk to themselves not like a good friend, they talk to themselves like a drill sergeant, right? They're mean to themselves. They bully themselves as opposed to the right attitude, I think, is to be a scientist. What does a scientist do? A scientist comes up with hypothesis, they run an experiment, and then they see the results, and then they run another experiment. So that's really how we want to think about this. It's a constant cycle. You're never done being indistractable, just like you're never done being creative. It's something that we iterate upon so that we get closer and closer to that desire. I completely agree with

that. You know, I think we scientists have done a pretty good job identifying individual tools, but what we haven't yet figured out is how to give prescriptions to folks in the sense of use these four tools in this situation, but these four other ones in this other situation. Science is, I do believe I think we will get there at some point, but until we do, I think the onus is on people themselves to do that experimental work exactly as you're describing. I do want to get into some more techniques on how to mitigate distractions, how to psychologically trick ourselves to focus better. Is there anything that you guys want to cover that we haven't talked about yet that you

think is super interesting and super practical for people to use to be better focused? Absolutely. In chat, I talk about 26 different science-based visuals that exist. We've talked about through a four. Since time is waning, why don't I throw out a few different ones? Let me first explain that. So the perspective that I adopt is, if chatter is really the source of the consumption. So your worries and reminations are making it really hard for you to achieve your goal or I think in nearest language, get the traction you want.

So what I look at is, well, how do you tame that chatter? How do you get a handle on it to free up those mental resources to allow you to get back to doing what you want to do? So we talk about distance self-talk. Another very easy to implement tool is something called temporal distancing or mental time travel. So there, if you're dealing with an acute stressor that's really consuming you, you've just bomb the presentation, the date went horrible, the performance went bad, you can't stop thinking about it.

There one really useful science-based tool, science-based activity you can stop thinking about it. There one really useful science-based, tool, science-based activity you can engage in is to think about how are you going to feel about this experience down the road, a month from now, six months from now, a year from now. What engaging in that very, very simple mental exercise does for us is it makes it clear to us that, hey, how am I going to feel about that faux pas I made earlier today? I put my foot in my mouth on a call. True story, I actually did.

How am I going to feel about this a month from now? It makes me realize this is going to pass. I'm going to do something else embarrassing two days later. And so when we jump into that mental time travel machine and we think about how we're going to feel about this event in the future. What that often does is it makes it clear that what we're going through is temporary. It'll eventually pass. And that gives us hope. And hope, it turns out, is a pretty powerful tonic when it comes to this monkey chatterfilled mind.

And it helps diffuse that kind of thought looping. So that's another easy to use tool that a person can implement on their own. Let me pause there to see if Near has anything to add to that. I can move on to some other tools easily as well. Sure, thanks. So I would say that there's these four big strategies. So step number one is mastering the internal triggers. We talked a little bit of internal triggers, and I'll come back and give you a very practical technique that we can use around mastering those internal triggers. We talked a little bit of internal triggers and I'll come back and give you a very practical technique that we can use around mastering those internal triggers.

Step number two, the second strategy is to make time for traction. So this is very important because you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. So many times, you know, I hear people who are struggling with time management and focus and then I say, okay, well, what did you get distracted from? Show me your calendar and it's pretty blank. Right? There's maybe a dentist appointment or one thing or another, but you know, if you have just swastive open time in your schedule, if you're using a to-do list to run your life rather than a calendar, you're making a huge mistake. You've got to use what we call time boxing, which is basically making an implementation intention. It's setting down what you want to do

and when you want to do it. That's a critical practice of knowing what you want to do with your time, because that's the only way to know the difference between traction and distraction. The third step is to hack back the external triggers. So this is where we get very practical in terms of all those pings and dings in our environment. How do we hack back our phones, hack back our computers,

hack back our environment? What do we do when our phones, hack back our computers, hack back our environment, right? What do we do when it's our kids that are distracting us, our roommate, our spouse, our significant others, you know, how do we make sure that we can hack back all those external triggers, even though they make up a small percentage of the reason we get distracted. There are some very practical things we can do there. And then finally, we make packs. Packs are the firewall against distraction.

We talked about some of those earlier like identity packs. We can also use what's called an effort pack where we put some friction in between us and the distraction. We can also use what's called a price pack where there's some kind of financial disincentive to going off track. And so that's the last line of defense. It's not something we want to do first. It's something we do after the first three techniques. Let me talk about one technique that I use almost every day in that first strategy of mastering the internal triggers. This is called the 10 minute rule.

And I can't take credit for it. This comes from acceptance, it can mimic therapy. It's been around for decades. But it's a really effective technique because as we talked about earlier, many people, when it comes to distraction, when it comes to focus, when it comes to trying to steer clear of temptation, whether it's eating that piece of chocolate cake, if you're on a diet or smoking that cigarette or checking your newsfeed when you want to do work, they tend to go towards abstinence. We tell ourselves, don't do that, right?

And it turns out that this research around abstinence for many people it can backfire, especially when the triggers are so prominent, right? We can't escape food. We have to eat. We can't escape technology. We depend upon it for our jobs. So rather than telling yourself, no, you want to tell yourself not yet. Because telling yourself, no, is like pulling on a rubber band. You pull, pull, pull, pull until you can't pull anymore. And then eventually when you let go, to tell yourself not yet. Because telling yourself no is like pulling on a rubber band. You pull, pull, pull, pull until you can't pull anymore. And then eventually, when you let go, the rubber band doesn't just go back to where it started, it ricochets across the room. And so that process of telling yourself, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't

do it, don't do it, don't do it. When you finally do it, the brain registers that relief as a reward. And so you're doing nothing but reinforcing the very behavior you're trying to not do. So what we want to do instead is to use a 10-minute rule. The 10-minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction, right? Anything you want to do, you want to eat that piece of chocolate cake, go for it. You want to check email, go for it. Whatever it is you want to do, but not right now. So you're telling yourself not yet instead of no. Okay. So you can do that thing, but in 10 minutes, so what do you do for those 10 minutes? You do what's called surfing the urge that's simply stepping back for a second, closing your eyes, using some of these

self-talk principles and self-compassion principles that you can talk about earlier to surf the urge because these sensations while we feel that in the moment, they feel like they're going to last forever with that craving, that desire, that's not how it works. They don't last forever. They're like waves. And so if we can simply tell ourselves, I'm going to surf the urge and then when I'm ready, I can get back to the task in a hand. Or when that clock runs out and the 10 minutes are up, yeah, I can give into distraction. No problem. I can do that thing that I said I wanted to do. that thing that I said I wanted to do. Now the magic here happens that nine times out of ten, when you do this technique and I use this almost every single day because writing for me I've written two best sellers countless articles, it still sucks. Writing is always hard work. It's never going to become a habit. But what we can do instead is to write out that urge for just

10 minutes and if we still desire it we can give in at the end of the 10 minutes and what tends to happen is over time is that the 10 minute rule becomes the 12 minute rule becomes the 15 minute rule. And so we're building our capacity and most importantly, our self image and our belief in our own self efficacy to be able to withhold from giving into distraction with every whim. Oh my gosh. I love that. The 10 minute rule.

That was awesome. Even before I move on to the next question, I want to give you an opportunity to respond if you'd like to. Well, Near, you know, I don't know what's wrong with you if you hate writing. I mean, I think it's just so easy to do. So maybe we should talk just just just joking. It is it is very challenging. You know, I think the one comment I would make is I think you mentioned when you were talking about surfing that those blips don't last forever. And you know, that can be useful to recognize. If I understood you correctly here, and mental time travel

is something that I think can be incorporated into your practice or anyone's practice to really make that awareness pop in the moment. I mean, I'm often, I use mental time travel, temporal distancing all the time when I find myself stressed out, filled with chatter about, you know, an upcoming, let's say, big present day, oh my god, I self so much to do. And then rather than just coming up with this epiphany, oh, well, you know what? It will eventually. And I'm just strategically putting myself in a position to recognize that as awful as what I'm experiencing is right now is, I will feel better about it

in a few hours or days. And that can be really empowering. Let me just give, and you're giving you a framework for thinking about how to manage these distractions. Let me give you another kind of framework for thinking about how to manage these distractions. Let me give you another kind of framework for thinking about how to manage chatter in particular, which is a particular kind of potent internal distraction. And I think this framework is really useful

for just organizing a lot of what we've talked about and what maybe we will talk about with respect to where you can find these different tools. I think you can find them and the way I organize them in my book is there are three different buckets or categories of tools. There are things you could do on your own. Simple cognitive shifts or behaviors like engaging in a ritual that can be useful for managing chatter. So lots of things you could do on your own, useful for managing chatter. So lots of things you could do on your own,

then there are ways of, there are tools that exist in our relationships with other people. So other people can be an incredible resource to us when it comes to figuring out how to work through our worries and ruminations. But the take home is not any other person will do. So just talking to any person in your life turns out that's not always helpful.

There's a particular way that you wanna talk to other people. There's some people who are really good at being chatter advisors to us. And so you wanna really think clearly about who those people are in our lives. Sometimes the people that care most about us are not particularly good at helping us work through our chat and can actually make them worse. So there are lots of tools that exist in

our relationships with others. And then the final category of tools that exist are what I call environmental tools, ways of interacting with our physical spaces that can help us regulate these conversations that we have with ourselves that run off course. And things you could do here are enhancing your exposure to green spaces. So going for a walk in nature, even if it's a short walk, there's a ton of data shown how restored that can be to our attention when we find it waning. You could seek out experiences of awe, so try to experience the emotion of awe, which is an emotionally experienced one where in the emotion of awe, which is an emotion we

experience when we're in the presence of something vast and indescribable, like seeing an amazing sunset or walking down a New York City street and looking at a skyscraper. When we feel awe, what ends up happening is it leads to something called a shrinking of the self. We feel smaller when we're contemplating something vast and indescribable. And when we feel smaller, so do our worries. And then the last thing you could do when it comes to your environment is something that my wife absolutely loves, which is cleaning and organizing. I should say that my wife loves it when I clean and organize, which I don't typically do. I'm a pretty, you know, free-spirited guy, but when I

find myself experiencing chatter, I'll find myself organizing my office and washing the dishes and putting them away neatly. And we know that that is another tool that people possess that can be useful for helping provide people a sense of order and control when the world inside feels anything but. So things you could do on your own, relationship tools and environmental tools, those are three places you can look to find tools to help you regulate your mind. So, Ethan and Nier, I have one last question

that we're gonna move along to Q and A. And that is how do we maintain focus when we don't like the activity that we're doing? So for example, when we're bored or when we feel drained by something, I think that's when our mind starts to wander and we start to lose focus. For me personally, I will like create a game, you know, if I have to do, I hate doing proposals. I have a marketing agency and that's the one thing that like I procrastinate and procrastinate and I hate doing those

proposals. They're so boring. And I have to play a game like, okay, you're going to do 10 proposals in two hours and that's your game. And if you complete it, you win, you know, and that's how I get through it. So do you guys have any cool hacks in terms of how we can focus better when it comes to things that we don't like? And I'll kick it over to near. Sure, yeah. so this is where I think this work is so important, because when something is fun, we don't have a problem, right? So a lot of folks use a couple different techniques that I think are troublesome.

So one concept is this concept of flow. Just get into flow and suddenly doing your taxes or preparing that RFP is going to be effortless and fun. And I call bullshit on that one I don't know how to get into flow when I'm doing a proposal I really don't feel like doing or doing my taxes, you know flow is great for when you're you know surfing or playing basketball That's what you people get the flow another tactic that I think doesn't work is trying to make everything into a habit I love habits my first book was about how to build habits for me products,

but let me tell you, we have reached peak habit. Everything today, people want to make into a habit. I want to make a writing habit. I want to get into an exercise habit. I wanted to get into a meditation habit. I'm here to tell you, don't. Because what people don't understand is what a habit really is. The definition of a habit is a behavior

done with little or no conscious thoughts. So when you hear people saying, I want to turn something into a habit really is? The definition of a habit is a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. So when you hear people saying, I wanna turn something into a habit, you can substitute the words, this sucks so much, I don't wanna do it, I want to have done it. The problem is, the reason that I'm so adamant about this is that when people think that they can turn

any behavior into a habit and think that somehow it's gonna become easy and effortless and mindless and it can be just something that's done automatically. And then 30, 60 days later, they're like, wait a minute, this still sucks. I still hate exercising. Writing is still really hard. Meditation, I'm not getting it. It's still really difficult for me.

Why isn't it a habit? They don't think, oh, that guru who told me this technique gave me a bad technique. No, they blame themselves. They think there's something wrong with them. And there's nothing wrong with them. They just use the technique inappropriately. So it's very important to understand that not every behavior can become a habit, that if a behavior requires conscious thought, writing, I don't know how to write without conscious

thought. I don't know how to meditate without conscious thought. Meditating is about the practice of being conscious, of being fully aware. If you're not conscious, thought, you're sleeping there, right? You're not meditating. Exercise, if you're trying to get stronger, you have to be fully present. You have to push yourself and you know what? It's going to hurt a bit.

And so part of the process, I think, what's so important is to have this mindset, is to understand that many behaviors will never become habits. They're going to stay routines. And that's okay because what it prepares us to understand is that the discomfort is not necessarily something we should run away from. That I think many folks think that feeling bad is bad. And it's not necessarily the case that discomfort can be used. Those internal triggers can be used as rocket fuel to

propel us towards traction, that escaping them can itself be a form of distraction. So leaning into that discomfort, telling yourself, you know what, this proposal is really hard to write because I have this rare skill that other people don't want to do this and that's why it's difficult, that's okay, it's part of the process. And preparing yourself to know that that discomfort, that those internal triggers, the boredom, the uncertainty, the stress is part of the process and is what makes what you're doing worthwhile, I think is an important mind shift

and not expecting every behavior to be easy and effortless and something that you can turn into a habit necessarily. And then we can incorporate other techniques, right? For one, I think what you're doing, how is fantastic. I call it learning how to play anything. And Ian Bogos, a professor at Georgia Tech, espoused this technique as well,

where we can learn to use play not necessarily to have fun. That he says play doesn't have to be enjoyable. And many people say, wait, what do you mean? How can play not be enjoyable? He says, Ian Bogos says play doesn't have to be enjoyable. And many people say, wait, what do you mean? How can play not be enjoyable? He says, Ian Bogos says that play just needs to be used as a tool to help us refocus our attention long enough to finish the task. So you're doing exactly the right thing, adding constraints, saying, hmm, okay, I'm going to work on this proposal for 15 minutes without distraction.

That's my challenge. Go. Or I'm going to see how I can do this task in a new way, add some variability, add some uncertainty to the task. Those are the kind of things that we can use to play the task, but it's important to realize that we don't necessarily have to enjoy hard work. Sometimes hard work is hard work very much

for the fact that it requires us to be effortful. I love those tips. Thank you so much, Near. Ethan, I'd love to hear your perspective on how we can stay focused on the activities that we dislike doing. You know, I just want to echo a lot of what Near said. I completely agree with. We can experience negative emotions for a reason. They are elegantly adaptive in small doses. We just don't want them to consume us, but they can be really useful. And you know, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy a life free of all negative emotions, because

I think that would not be a very successful life. And so I think that's a really important insight that near articulated, that's worth keeping in mind. I think it frees us up quite a bit. If our goal is to never experience negativity, that's a really high bar we're trying to achieve. So I think we could take it easier on ourselves in that regard. You know, I think my go to for the kinds of boredom that you're experienced with those proposals is to try to transform the situation which near hinted at too. So to reframe what it is we're doing, you know, it's so easy to focus on

the awfulness of the act itself, but thinking about the bigger picture, right? So why are you working on this proposal? What's the long-term goal you're hoping to achieve both with respect to this particular document that you're working on, but then even broader with respect to your company and what you're trying to do in the world, right? Shifting our focus in that way, so those slight mental transformations with how we think about these experiences,

that can be really powerful for motivating us and sustaining our attention in the face of really, you know, boring things or upsetting things. I mean, I did this all the time when I was working on my book. Like, as near hint to that, writing can be painful, like enormously painful. It's hard to get the words out the right way.

There's a gazillion other things that can go wrong. We spend years sometimes working on books. Why would we do this? Well, you know, think about the bigger picture, the opportunity to really communicate science to lots of people to make a difference in their lives. Those are really motivating ways of thinking about this situation that can in turn take

it unpleasant experience and make it a lot more tolerable. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to New Heights, break through to the 6 or 7 figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of NotOne, but 6th thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach show.

Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur, and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on young and profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework. It was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done. All Kelly has built in the corporate world. Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there.

She was working in I to five. And at the same time, she built her eight figure company as a side hustle and eventually took it and made her full time hustle. And her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire, she's earned a life-changing wealth, and on top of all that, she maintains a happy marriage and a healthy home life. On the Kelly Road Show, you'll learn that it's possible to have it all. Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already

a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, yaap fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now.

Yap media blew up so fast. It was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently had best-selling author Kim Scott on the show and after previewing her content in our conversation I just knew I had to take her class on master class tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer and now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give and solicit feedback to cultivate a more inclusive culture and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework and I'm so happy because I really needed this class. With Masterclass

you can learn from the best to become your best anytime anywhere and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do better is just a few clicks away. On masterclass, you'll find courses from many appa-alster guests like Chris Voss and Daniel Pink. I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real

shark lately. I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best? A lot. But with Masterclass annual memberships, it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising thing about Masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value. For the quality of classes, instructors, the platform itself is beautiful, the videos

are super high quality, you can't beat it. Gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone, your computer, tablet, smart TV, and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com slash profiting. That's masterclass.com slash profiting for 15% off an annual membership masterclass.com slash profiting. Awesome. Well, we've had such an amazing conversation so far and we're going to move it along to Q&A.

So if you are on stage and you haven't yet, make sure you put your question at the top of your bio. We're going to kick it off with Avi. I hope I said your name right. What is your question for Ethan and Near? Thank you. And yes, it's Avi. Yeah, I even you, I think you're getting into this with your last thread talking about kind of asking the why and remotivating yourself and doing that temporal class forwarding and to kind of what matters to you. And I'm curious both as it relates to internal triggers and you know, maybe any kind of distracting chatter how much are these driven by a lack of gold alignment where what the task at hand is not aligned or not reconciled with. Is it just me or did she get cut off? No, I was hearing her okay.

So let me, do you want to just finish the question, Abby, what I heard last? How much are some of these issues of function of the tasks that we're working on not aligning with our goals? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, or even more broadly, like having your goals well defined. I think having knowing what motivates you is really important. There's a really simple way of thinking about self-control.

And I think of self-control really broadly as the ability to think, feel, or behave the way we want to think, feel, or behave. And there are two pieces to that puzzle. One is motivation. So having a particular set of goals or desires for how you want to think for a little bit, and then having the tools to actualize those goals, to actually bring them to life, to make them happen.

Really simple way of thinking about self-control. And I think you want to have both of those. You have some people who, they know all the tools, right? They know exactly what they can do. Take someone who's trying to exercise in these ways. They can know about pushups and high intensity, interval training, and what's the extension diet where you don't eat for you starve yourself.

I've tried that not fun. In any case, right, there are lots of these different tools out there and technologies that people can be aware of. But if they're not motivated to do the exercise or engage in the right kind of dieting, nothing is going to change, right? Then on the flip side, you have some people who are really motivated to be healthier, to eat healthier or to act healthier, and they don't know what they actually should do. So, it doesn't work there either.

So, you really need to have both pieces, the motivation and the tools. Near, is there anything you want to add to that one? I would add a third component, because I think the framing is good in that we need to have the desire for what we want, the motivation as well as the knowledge of what to do. But I think there's a critical third component, because I think the problem today is not that most people

don't know what they want or don't have the motivation. I think we all have these aspirations of, oh, I wanna exercise more, I want to be a higher performer in my job, I wanna have better relations. We have the motivation to do these things. And I would say that today more than ever, we know how to do these things. I mean, heck, if you don't know how to do something, just Google it.

Right? Previous generations really didn't know. But today, if you don't know how to do it, it's all there at your fingertips. I think the third missing component is that many people don't know how to stop getting in their own way. That despite having the motivation, despite knowing what to do, they just don't do it. And I think that's the core of this research around distraction of, you know, how do I make sure that when I know what I want, when I have my values straight and I have the

knowledge, how do I get out of my own way? How do I make sure that I don't get distracted? And I think to obvious question, if you have many, many days where you keep working on the same thing and it feels miserable and you're full of these internal triggers that are pulling you towards distraction like boredom and fatigue and stress and anxiety. That's also an important signal, right? I think we need to listen to those sensations that if after a while the techniques that we're using still aren't effective, we're still slogging through, that's a good time for

introspection to actually ask ourselves, wait a minute, what are our values? And values I think are one of these words that we don't think about critically enough. I think values, to me, are attributes of the person you want to become. Attributes of the person you want to become. So sitting down and asking yourself, wait a minute, how would the person I want to become spend their time? Is this really important to me? Is this something I value?

You know, money is something you value. Money is not a value because not an attribute of the person you want to become, it's something you value, you value money, it can be taken away from you, but your values can't be taken away from you. So if, obviously, if you're thinking to yourself, you know, day after day, this stinks, this isn't really aligned with my values, then that would be a good time to stop and ask yourself, you know, are these goals even something that really weren't? Awesome. Avi, great question.

We are in the Q&A portion of this live Young and Profiting podcast episode. I've got some podcast or friends, some clubhouse friends here on stage. Adam, I know you have a question for our special guests. Feel free to ask your question. Thank you, Hala. I absolutely love your show. And yes, I recommend everyone in the audience. Please follow the club and the speakers up here on stage.

Now, my name is Adam Socklitch. And near, I have a product question for you. I work with Jason Piper. He's the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and also the host of Build for Tomorrow's podcast. In one of our recent episodes, it was called, Are We Add addicted to technology? We quoted you in a conversation with Ezra Klein

and the brief clip, it's where you're asking, do you think companies' responsibility to make products that are less engaging? She said yes. And then you said, are we gonna shake our fists at Slack and Netflix and these companies and say, hey, your product is too engaging. And so, near my question for you is,

as these companies, for billions of dollars, are innovating and rapidly building products that are becoming more habit-forming and to grab our own attention, how can we in parallel innovate and improve our own methods and habits for focusing on ourselves rather than these tools that are just becoming more and more and more habit forming.

So again, to say they're growing, they have billions of dollars who are trying to catch your attention, and we can use the habits and tools that we're hearing here and eating the book. But in parallel, are we innovating? Are they getting better and better to overcome those strong billion dollar companies? The way we frame this problem is very, very important. That if we think that we are powerless, it becomes so. That if we think we are addicted, it's the case.

If we believe that there's nothing we can do, it's hopeless, they're hijacking our brains. Of course, we act accordingly. You know, look, my first book was called, hooked, how to build habit forming products. I know all their tricks, I know all their techniques, and I will tell you they're good. They're not that good. We're talking about apps on our phones here. We're not free-basing Facebook,

we're not injecting Instagram, we're not snorting Snapchat here, people. These are good products that are engaging, that are in fact designed to be engaging. But here's the thing, the price of progress is when you live in a world where we have such amazing technologies. When here we are, people all over the world write this minute calling into this free service exchanging information

in ways we never could before. And oh, by the way, it's free. The price of this miraculous world, I mean, how many devices do you use every day that if you time travel back 20 years ago would be science fiction, and we totally take them for granted today, the price of all these amazing products and services, the price of a world

that we live in with so many incredible things, is that you know what? We gotta figure out how to use them properly. We have to take some personal responsibility and realize that there is so much we can do, that we are way more powerful than they are. What I'm asking folks to do is to learn a few techniques to manage their internal triggers. Hey, how about scheduling your time so you know the difference between traction and distraction. Here's a news flash. Turn off those goddamn notifications that

keep interrupting you every five minutes. Is that something everyone can do? Zuckerberg can't come into your phone and turn those off. So while we blame these big tech companies and we shame each other for using them, we need to stop moralizing and stop medicalizing and start realizing that we have way more power than they do. There is nothing that they can do if you declare yourself to be indistractable.

And so that means doing some things ourselves and none of this stuff is rocket science, right? I spent five years going through the academic literature, making a how-to guide that anyone can use to become indistractable, but it also comes down to holding each other accountable. When we go out to lunch with a friend, and a friend starts tapping on their phone

as opposed to being fully present, we need to make that kind of behavior unacceptable. We need to spread what we call social antibodies so that when a population begins to have these anti-social negative behaviors, what happens eventually is that people wake up and they learn from these behaviors and they change their behaviors accordingly.

And the good news is we've been here before. When I was a kid, I remember growing up in the 1980s and everybody born after the 80s is gonna think this is crazy, but let me tell you, I remember this, in my household, in my living room, we had ash trays, right? Because back then in the 1980s, believe me, okay, this really happened, people would walk into your home

and they would light up a cigarette, and they wouldn't even ask. That's what people did, everybody had ash trays in their living room. Today, if somebody walked into your living room and lit up a cigarette, you'd kick them out. That would be incredibly rude. Well, what changed? Was there a law that says you can't smoke in someone's private residence? Of course not. What changed is that people like my mom who didn't, who never smoked, stood up one day, threw out the

ash trays. And when someone came into her home and lit up a cigarette, she said, Oh, I'm sorry, we are non-smokers, right? That identity we I'm sorry. We are non-smokers, right? That identity we talked about earlier. We are non-smokers. If you're a smoker, if you kindly go outside. And so we just start holding each other accountable as well to say, Look, I am indistractable. Okay. I decide for myself how I will control my time and attention.

I am indistractable. And we invite others on that journey as well. Amazing. Near such a great response, Adam such a great question. I love that social antibodies. I've never heard of that before, but it's so true. We're going to move over to Avi with the blue background. What is your question for

our guests? Thank you, Hala. Near I love, love, love when you were talking about strategies versus tactics or tips or even tools and I also love your suggestion of staying in the discomfort of some situations. I think it's so refreshing that so thank you for that. My question is you mentioned about internal distractions in the form of unpleasant emotions. I don't like to label emotions positive or negative, so we'll say unpleasant. What are your suggestions in terms of strategies for navigating these situations? The way we would master these internal triggers, there's three big buckets that I would put

the strategies in. One is to reimagine the trigger itself. So, I love that you don't label them as good or bad because you're absolutely right. That discomfort can help us propel ourselves towards traction. That we can use that bored on the stress the anxiety to drive us forward. That's one of the things that makes our species special is that we want that disquietude, that perpetual dissatisfaction. It's not a bad thing. If you think about there was ever a race of homo sapiens who was contented all the time, right, who was at peace, who was in Nirvana, if our ancestors would have met them,

they would have killed and eaten them. It's evolutionarily beneficial. It's adaptive to have this disquietude. And so if we can harness it, we can use it to our advantage towards traction rather than distraction. So it's about reframing and rethinking how we imagine those internal triggers that actually they can serve us rather than hurt us. And the second step is reimagining the task itself. And so Hala talked about this a little bit earlier around how she

thinks about the tasks she does differently. She turns them into play. And that can be a very, very effective technique by re-imagining the task itself. And then finally, it's re-imagining our temperament that understanding how we, we talked about this earlier, the identity that we have for ourselves, that we stop thinking that we're addicted to technology. We stop telling ourselves we're incapable. We stop telling ourselves that we're bad at things.

We stop telling ourselves that we are a certain thing, and we free ourselves from the shackles of these identities that really don't serve us. So those are the three big techniques. And there's of course a lot more here in terms of practical steps, but those are the three big buckets. Thank you, Nier. Even anything to add before I move on to the next question. Yeah, I would just add that I think you do the good job describing tools you can use on your own internal tools.

We as a reframing the way you think about your circumstances that can help you deal with the unpleasantness of your internal triggers. But then there are also of course those tools that reside in our relationships with other people, ways that they can help us deal with those implicit emotions and then also in our environment as well. So there really is a broad set of potential tools that can be harnessed to manage those unpleasant states. Awesome. Dimpal, I know you have a question for Ethan and Nier.

What is your question? Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, Ethan touched on this before. So my question is for Ethan and me. What is your question? Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, Ethan touched on this before. So my question is for Ethan. What happens if you have a couple of tasks or projects, you know, you're going to work on say for the next two or three hours. And instead of working on one and finishing it, you switch between different tasks and projects. What are your viewpoint on, can you still be productive, even if you're not finishing a particular task? However, you're still finishing everything you need

to buy the deadline that you've set for yourself. Prior to this conversation with Nier, I would call that a productive distraction. I think Nier would probably have a different way of labeling that, but I think that can be quite effective actually. So when you find your attention waning, shift to something else that will allow you to be equally productive and it can be within the same domain. So if it's going from report A to presentation B, but it can also be across domain.

So people often report, for example, productively distracting by like taking care of some things around the house that need to get done. And then our time sensitive, giving themselves a break from work, doing those things, and then coming back to work. There's actually, there's research which supports the benefits of diverting your attention in those ways. So I think that can be really useful. It's funny that you said that I think,

because that's exactly what I did today all day long, because I was like, hmm, you know what? I think I'm gonna go put the dishes in the dishwasher now. Okay, now I'm gonna go back to working on this, and you know, just switch it up, because it made it easier, just made the day more fun, instead of just sitting glued to my computer, and I think I was like, yeah, I think I'm going to do this now.

I'm going to do this. And then I'm like, wow, I'm exhausted because I did so much. I'm glad the other bonus to that. And then you're, I assume you want to get in with the terminology there. So I will let you know that sometimes shifting from a particularly thought, like a task that requires deep thought to one that is more procedural like doing the dishes or the laundry, that other kind of task can often be useful for allowing your mind to work on the other problem outside of your awareness and to you know instigate free associations that can be really useful to coming back to a task really fresh.

This is why lots of great thinkers, they go for walks, they take a break when the writing gets stale. So I'm glad it worked. Near all yours. So the one thing I would warn against is that even these so-called productive tasks can themselves be distractions. And I used to do this all the time, right? When I was writing my book, I would sit down and I would have a particularly difficult part of the book that I'm working through.

And suddenly, oh my goodness, look at my desk. It's so dirty. I really should spend about 20 minutes now reorganizing my desk. And you know the dishes need to be washed. Oh, the laundry needs to be folded. And what happened was, is that I would get distracted by these banal tasks because I was looking to avoid doing the hard work of writing.

So we want to be very, very careful when it comes to doing this. So what do we do here? What the option? So remember that when we say we are going to do something, we put it on our calendar when we decide that's how we're going to spend our time according to our values and our schedule, we've got to do it. But there's a psychological phenomenon

that rears its ugly head many times when this happens. And this is called psychological reactants. Reactants is this tendency that we have that when we are told what to do, we rebel. It's the feeling you got when you were a kid and your mom told you to put on a coat because it's cold outside and you said, don't tell me what to do, we rebel. It's the feeling you got when you were a kid and your mom told you to put on a coat because it's cold outside and you said, don't tell me what to do.

It's that feeling when your boss micro-manages you and you feel, you know, you're like your autonomy is stifled. That's psychological reactants. And one of the weird phenomenon of our psyche is that psychological reactants can happen even when it is ourselves telling us what to do. How weird is that? By telling yourself what you will do, you also can elicit psychological reactants and want to rebel against yourself. How strange is that? But that's

what happens. And so many people find that time boxing can be stifling for this reason. So what do we do? How do we disarm it? Well, one simple thing that you can do is to give yourself choice. That we know when people have an option, when they have some degree of autonomy and freedom in their decision making, they become much more likely to carry out the task.

So for example, when I asked my daughter to do a task, I say, hey, do you want to put away your laundry or do you want to wash the dishes first? As opposed to put away the dishes and do the laundry, right? So giving yourself some kind of choice can all it can be very effective. What might that look like? Maybe you put a bunch of different little admin tasks that you can do in that time block and it's up to you to decide which one you want to do in that time period. So now you're consistent with deciding in advance the tasks that would be traction without using those tasks as an escape that leads you towards distraction. Oh, that was such good advice. I love the advice about giving yourself options. So you don't

feel forced. I think that was super awesome. I'm gonna kick it over to Ella for our last question of the night. Hey, yeah, this has been awesome. My question is, so I was diagnosed with ADHD and I find especially with work, I go through these really intense periods of hyperfocus where I'll be on something and I'm good. It can last anywhere from like three to eight days generally. And then I go through a pretty big crash.

And it's almost like the thing that I was hyper focused on like, discuss me. Like I'm like, oh, I can't even look at that. I can't deal with it. And obviously I've been on different types of medications, etc. But I found that's almost like a cyclical, do you have any methods for regulating that and getting some sort of consistency? So I need to pre-emble a little bit that this is not medical advice, I'm not a medical doctor

and I'm not prescribing anything, I'm a lecturer, so I'm lecturing here, but I will say that using some of these techniques as non-pharmaceutical solutions should always be the first line of tactics, right? The first thing that we can try to see if it can help us in these type of situations, whether we're struggling with ADHD or not, all of these tactics, you know, these are all non-pharmaceutical solutions. So, you know, always a good idea to put them to practice.

One thing I would suggest is if you're seeing this pattern, and I think anybody can apply this, that if we notice a certain pattern, we can make a schedule that accommodate that pattern. So, for example, I find that I do my best writing in the morning. It just happens to me. I just feel like I have more energy. It's more interesting. I find that I can focus a little better. So, instead of trying to force myself to write in the evening when I feel kind of tired and I want to do something else, hey, you know what? I adjust my calendar so that it accommodates that fact. That tends to be what I enjoy. And if after. Hey, you know what? I adjust my calendar so that it accommodates that fact. That tends to be what I enjoy.

And if after a while, I don't like writing in the morning anymore, okay, I can change it, but never change it in the moment. Don't do it in that day because then what you're doing is trying to escape those internal triggers with a behavior that you later regret. So if you find that you know what, I can focus really intensely for three weeks and then I need to break, all right? I need to do something else. No problem. That can focus really intensely for three weeks and then I need a break.

I need to do something else. No problem. That can be accommodated for you. You can put that in your schedule. You can put that in your calendar to give yourself that break knowing your past experience. Amazing. Thank you so much, Ella, for your awesome question. Okay, guys, we are going to wrap this up.

Before we do so, we have a super fan who is on stage. So Padma, I want to give you the mic for a quick second so you can give your flowers. Like I promised. Thank you so much, Hala. This is an amazing session and I'm so glad that I came here and I discovered Ethan. I'm definitely going to follow him. And there, I actually took indestructible through mind valley and you just changed my life. I mean two things that actually changed me were one if you don't plan your day then someone else will.

And the second one is the time that we plan to waste is not waste of time. These two things you have no idea every day I tell myself this and time box my calendar. And with this two things, you have no idea every day I tell myself this and time box my calendar. And with this, two things, major things happen. One is being a full-time job holder. I'm still sharply launching my own business of helping in employment with my online courses and coaching. And second biggest thing is I'm a mom of four-year-old and I know more fight with my son for a screen time because I negotiate with him.

I give him the power to negotiate with me and we agree on a common ground. Literally these things just changed my life. So I just want to thank you so, so much for that. Thank you, guys. Oh, wow. You can literally give me goosebumps hearing that because the gift you're giving your son right now is a lifelong skill. You are teaching him how to become indistractable. And let me tell you, that is the skill of the century. So you're giving him a tremendous gift. And thank you so much for the kind words. It means so much to me. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, this was just an amazing discussion. Ethan, here. Thank you guys so much. I'd love for you guys to share where everybody can find out more about you. I'm sure you guys have dozens of new fans from this room. So Ethan, where can people go find you and out more about you. I'm sure you guys have dozens of new fans from this room. So Ethan, where can people go find you and learn more about you and learn more from you? Thanks everyone for coming and thanks to you, Hall of Fame, inviting me and me and me here for a partner in this fun conversation.

If you want to learn more about chatter or me or my lab, you could go to my website, www.ethincrosswithacay.com, and you can also check me out on social media, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Thank you. Ethan, near where can everybody find you? Yeah, thank you so much, Alan. Ethan, this was tremendous. I learned so much. I really enjoyed it. If you want to find out more information about me, I'm at nearandfar.com. Near is spent like my first name, so that's n-i-r-n-far.com, near and far.com near is spelled like my first name so that's N-I-R and far.com near and far.com and there's an 80-page workbook we actually couldn't fit it into the final edition of the book so we decided to make it completely free no strings attached if you go to the site you can download this 80-page

workbook on how to become indistractable. Amazing thank you to everybody who was on stage with me today everybody who had the courage to ask a question. Everybody who tuned in in the audience, I see maybe 50 people who've been in here the whole time. Everybody who DMed me for the replay. And today we had an amazing conversation. We discussed how to deal with distractions inside our own mind.

We talked about internal triggers, external triggers. We talked about chatter, how to improve our focus by minimizing distractions. And every day ways how to improve our focus by minimizing distractions, and every day ways we can improve our productivity. So it was an amazing discussion. Again, thank you, Ethan and Near. And with that, this is Hala and friends signing off. Have a great night, everybody. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben

podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose

a one word theme for the year, or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourselfself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. all the outs. We want you to spend more time outside our doors in there. Try it out, check out, think it out. RBI COO. All out. Visit RBI.com.