#578 How to overcome your distraction downfall

**Helen** (0:00)
Hi, everybody, it is Helen from the Squiggly Careers Podcast. And before today's episode starts, I wanted to let you know about something that Sarah and I have created for the summer. We are going to be launching a series all about a career well spent. We're going to release four episodes, one every Tuesday, and it's going to be us in conversation with an expert who can give us a different perspective on what it means to have a career well spent. We'll talk about longevity, we'll talk about relationships, we'll talk about time, and we'll talk about making a difference. We wanted this to be a community learning moment too, so on Thursdays, we're going to have a LinkedIn live where you can bring your questions, you can bring your reflections, and we'll discuss the episodes together as a community. All the links you need are going to be in the Squiggly Careers newsletter. So if this sounds like something you want to get involved in, and we really, really hope you do, it's all free, and it'll be a great learning moment, then all you need to do is sign up for the newsletter, just go to squigglynewsletter.com, that's squigglynewsletter.com, and we will send you everything you need to know to get involved. But for now, let's get on with today's episode.
Hi, I'm Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast, and you are listening to another one of our Squiggly Shortcuts. These are weekly episodes which we make deliberately short so that you can fit them into your week. And today I'm going to talk about the topic of distractions. I'm actually going to talk about an idea that was in an earlier episode, like hundreds of episodes ago, episode 253, we're over 500 episodes now. So you might have missed it, but it was one of our Ask the Expert episodes that we did with Nir Eyal, who wrote the book Indistractable. And there was a little bit of that conversation that has stuck with me, like years on from the conversation, because I think it is really useful if you find yourself struggling with distractions. So that's what I'm going to focus on in this shortcut today.
So I'm going to imagine, if you are still listening, that you are somebody who perhaps struggles with distractions, because most of us do. And what Nir's advice was, if you are somebody who wants to become more indistractable, first of all, you have to identify your distraction downfall. Now, I've asked loads of people about what their distraction downfalls are, and you get some really, I guess, obvious answers. So people will tell me email is a distraction downfall for them. You know, they're trying to do something there. I don't know, they're trying to do some of the exercises that we give them on the Squiggly Careers podcast. And as soon as they sit down, they get some emails and that distracts them. So people have said that to me. They said just their phone, like the notifications on your phone.
People have said social media to me.
I've had some random ones as well. Somebody once said cheese, like just cheese. Like as soon as I try and concentrate on something, I just think I really want to eat some cheese. So there are lots of different distraction downfalls. But if you want to become indistractable, you have to start this process by understanding what your distraction downfall is.
Then you need to think about why.
Why am I attracted to this distraction? And what Nia said was there are three reasons why you are attracted to distraction. And you have to kind of work out what your why is. Because once you know what your downfall is and you know why you are attracted to that distraction, that's when you can do something different. That's when you become, become indistractable. So here are the three reasons why that he shared with me. The first was avoidance. So the reason why you are attracted to distraction is because you are using it as an avoidance tactic. The thing you are doing feels hard or slow or not particularly rewarding or difficult, whatever it is, but you are using your particular distraction downfall as an avoidance tactic because it's easier to send an email. It's easier to scroll through Instagram or whatever app you're using. It's easier to go and eat some cheese if that's what your downfall is. But the reason you're doing that is because you are avoiding the thing that feels hard or difficult or slow to do. So maybe that's your reason why you're attracted to the distraction, it's most of the time that's mine. The second reason is your environment. The place you are trying to do this work in, whether it's something on a project or something you need to read or whatever it is, but the place you are trying to be indistractable in is not designed for that.