Nir Eyal: commitment

Transcript context

…By the way, there's a great quote that I'll share real quick about this that I think I share often on this podcast that I think it's falsely attributed to Hemingway, but it's that, "Writing is easy. Just sit down at the keyboard and bleed." Oh my God, that's so true. It's so true, and I've not figured out how to make it suddenly easy. Every single word is hard to type out, but I got to do it right and I love doing it. I love having done it. In the process, it's very difficult. But after I make the discovery, after I create something that I think is useful, then it's a lot of fun. But doing the work is really difficult. So, here's what I do. Every time that I am tempted to go do something else, which is all the time, what I will do is I will take out a timer, I'll take out my phone and I'll say, "Set a timer for 10 minutes. " I'll put the phone down and my job is for those 10 minutes, whenever I'm ready, get back to the task at hand or do what's called surf the urge. Surfing the urge acknowledges that these emotions are like waves. They crest and then they subside. But that's not how we think about emotions. Most of us think about emotions as always being there. If I feel bored, I feel like I'm always going to be bored. If I'm frustrated, it feels like I'm always going to be frustrated, but that's never the case. Emotions are like waves. So, your job is to set that timer for 10 minutes and realize you can do just about anything for just 10 minutes. So, the idea is not to say don't do it. We know that this technique that a lot of people use of abstinence, telling yourself, "Don't do that, that's bad," actually can backfire. And we can talk about the psychology if that's interesting of why abstinence backfires. But a much healthier technique is not to tell yourself no. It's to tell yourself not yet. You're not saying no, you're saying not yet. And so, you can do just about anything for 10 minutes. So, what I tell myself is, "Okay, I'm just going to wait 10 minutes before I check email, before I scroll social media, before I Google something that is just trying to procrastinate doing the work." I can do that. I'm a grown man. I can do whatever I want. I can do that in 10 minutes. And so, for those 10 minutes, all I have to do is either get back to the task at hand, get back to writing, or surf the urge, which is simply experiencing that sensation, acknowledging, "You know what? This is hard work. That's okay. That's why I'm feeling frustrated. That's why I'm feeling bored. That's why I'm feeling anxious. That's why I have this cold start around I don't really want to do this work because it's difficult." So, what I do is I take a deep breath and I repeat a mantra that I made up for myself. You can make up your own mantra. My personal mantra whenever I feel this internal trigger is I remind myself this. I say, "This is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better." And just saying that for as long as I need to until that emotion crests and subsides and then get back to work. What you'll find nine times out of 10 is that by the time those 10 minutes are up, you will have forgotten about that sensation. You'll be right back at the task at hand. es and then get back to work. What you'll find nine times out of 10 is that by the time those 10 minutes are up, you will have forgotten about that sensation. You'll be right back at the task at hand. And so, that's what's called the 10-minute rule. And of course what you're doing over time is that the 10-minute rule can become the 12-minute rule, can become the 20-minute rule, and most importantly, you are proving to yourself that you have agency that you said you were going to focus on a task and you did. That's the most important part. The flip that we need to change in people's minds is this ridiculous belief that technology is hijacking our brains. There's nothing we can do about distraction that our focus is being stolen. It's not being stolen, we're giving it away. And so, what we need to do is to empower ourselves by showing ourselves in practice as well as in theory that we can postpone that distraction when we say we will.…

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