Part 1 of Indistractable is dedicated to the art of mastering our internal triggers. The author divides this Part as follows:<ul><li>What Motivates Us Really?</li><li>Time Management is Pain Management</li><li>Deal with Distraction from Within</li><li>Reimagine the Internal Trigger</li><li>Reimagine the Task</li><li>Reimagine your Temperament</li></ul>

Master Internal Triggers

For mastering internal triggers we have to understand what motivates us, what's the root cause of our hunger for distraction.We first need to diferentiate the root cause from the proximate causes, e.g. A task is boring for me (root cause) so I use my smartphone (proximate cause) to scroll over social media (proximate cause). It's me who decides to get distracted with my smartphone due to my boredom, the smartphone is just a tool which I use to get distracted.All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort and anything which stops discomfort is potentially addictive, but not irresistible.

What Motivates Us Really?

"Only by understanding our pain can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges."

Distraction cost us time, and, like all actions, they are driven by the desire to escape discomfort.As human beings, we have tendencies towards dissatisfaction and discomfort, which can play both against us or in favor.Dissatisfaction is the driving force of our species' evolution, when alligned with curiosity and creativity it moves us forward.For mastering distraction we must learn to deal with discomfort.

Time Management is Pain Management

"If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances."

With no techniques for defusing temptation, mental abstinence can backfire. Resisting an impulse can cause rumination and reinforce desire.We can deal with distractions that come from within by changing the way we think about them. It is possible to re-imagine the trigger, the task and our temperament.

Deal with Distraction from Within

"An endless circle of resisting, ruminating, and finally giving in to the desire perpetuates the cycle and quite possibly drives many of our unwanted behaviours."

We can't control what we feel and think, but we can control what we do with them. Discover how in four simple steps:<ul><li>Step 1: Look for the discomfort that precedes the distraction, focusing in on the internal trigger.</li><li>Step 2: Write down the trigger. Note the time of the day, what you were doing and how you felt when noticing the internal trigger that led to the distracting beahviour.</li><li>Step 3: Explore your sensations. What are your usual symptoms prior to engage in an impulse?</li><li>Step 4: Beware of liminal moments. Liminal moments are transitions from one thing to the other throughout tour day.</li></ul>

Reimagine the Internal Trigger

"It's a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate - but positive ones expand."

Through fun and play we can hold focus easier and combat our internal triggers of distraction. By doing it so we can transform any task into irresistible, we just need to take it as seriously as it deserves.Play doesn't have to be pleasurable. It just has to hold our attention.Curiosity is key to holding our focus and from curiosity any task can be fun to perform.Deliberateness and novelty can be added to any task to make it fun.

Reimagine the Task

"Fun is looking for the variability in something other people don't notice. It's breaking through the boredom and monotonoy to discover its hidden beauty."

Reinventing our temperament can help us manage our internal triggers.We don't run out of willpower. Believing we do makes us less likely to accomplish our goals, by providing a rationale to quit when we could otherwise persist.What we say to ourselves matters. Labelling yourself as having poor self-control is self defeating.Practise self-compassion. Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to a friend. People who are more self-compassionate are more resilient.

Reimagine your Temperament

"People who did not see willpower as a finite resource did not show signs of ego depletion."

These ideas are a summary of the Part 1 of Indistractable - Master Internal Triggers. Soon I will publish more ideas respecting the remaining parts of the book in order to go deeper as it deserves.

Reveals the hidden psychology driving you to distraction. Empowering and optimistic, this is the book that will help you design your time, realise your ambitions, and live the life you really want.

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

timemanagement

Time Management

books

Books

"Indistractable provides a framework that will deliver the focus you need to get results." —James Clear, author of Atomic Habits "If you value your time, your focus, or your relationships, this book is essential reading. I'm putting these ideas into practice." —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind   National Bestseller Winner of the Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award Included in the Top 5 Best Personal Development Books of the Year by Audible Included in the Top 20 Best Business and Leadership Books of the Year by Amazon Featured in The Amazon Book Review Newsletter, January 2020 Goodreads Best Science & Technology of 2019 Finalist   You sit down at your desk to work on an important project, but a notification on your phone interrupts your morning. Later, as you're about to get back to work, a colleague taps you on the shoulder to chat. At home, screens get in the way of quality time with your family. Another day goes by, and once again, your most important personal and professional goals are put on hold. What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused? What if you had the power to become "indistractable?" International bestselling author, former Stanford lecturer, and behavioral design expert, Nir Eyal, wrote Silicon Valley's handbook for making technology habit-forming. Five years after publishing Hooked, Eyal reveals distraction's Achilles' heel in his groundbreaking new book. In Indistractable, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving us to distraction. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as swearing off our devices: Abstinence is impractical and often makes us want more. Eyal lays bare the secret of finally doing what you say you will do with a four-step, research-backed model. Indistractable reveals the key to getting the best out of technology, without letting it get the best of us. Inside, Eyal overturns conventional wisdom and reveals:    • Why distraction at work is a symptom of a dysfunctional company culture—and how to fix it    • What really drives human behavior and why "time management is pain management"    • Why your relationships (and your sex life) depend on you becoming indistractable    • How to raise indistractable children in an increasingly distracting world Empowering and optimistic, Indistractable provides practical, novel techniques to control your time and attention—helping you live the life you really want.

Nir Eyal is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Nir Eyal has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Nir Eyal's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Nir Eyal

Indistractable

What are the memories of men? How many can they be? Where are they? Who can tell them? What can they tell? Why is it worth talking about? How can they be found out? Should they be preserved? Where are they hiding? Memories are also called remembrance, they can be stored not only on the paper page, with images and symbols, but also in bits & bytes, on the digital page, which then becomes dynamic. MEDIUM is the ideal place.

Memories

Amelia and I will remember in days the memory of our wedding on August 3, 1972. It was a Thursday. Our first fifty years of marriage, celebrated in the Cathedral of Amalfi by Father Alfonso Arpino, my mother’s brother, together with Mons. Riccardo Arpino, concelebrant for the occasion.To make 50 years, half a century, it takes 600 months, 2608.93 weeks, 18.262.5 days, 26.298.000 minutes. This is the space we call time, provided we know what this space is made of.

Amelia and I

The word “time” is undoubtedly one of the most used and mysterious words in all languages. Yet its use does not explain its meaning. The word is referred to in countless contexts. The many possible synonyms make me lose myself in a forest of meanings that take me far away, but I will never be able to return to the decisive station, the one of departure: that Thursday fifty years ago at 18.00. The only thing I remember well is that there was a storm in the morning. Then came the clear.

A Mystery  Word

Saint Augustine wrote in his “Confessions”: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I don’t know   anymore." Enlightening statement.Time exists. How else would we fix our watches? Time organizes our universe both mentally and physically. Do you think it would be our world if things were always the same and there was no time to change them. The question we must rather ask ourselves is whether time is really necessary. Perhaps the questions I ask myself are too difficult and someone will say, with an easy joke, that I am wasting time. Maybe.

Time Exists

If I think about that day, I relive something and see someone still in the present, but I know well that absence dominates. All I have left is the image of a place that is still present, I miss that time that appears to be lost and I delude myself to find it again, remembering.The past and the future are real. Not everyone agrees on this point. Intuitively we can say that “now”, this particular moment, is real, while the past has somehow been “fixed”, plastered, and exists only in books, documents, papers, photos, voices recorded in vanished faces. and disappeared.

The Past & The Future

The future in this image at the exit of the Church, after the ceremony, does not yet exist because it has not yet taken place. But physics teaches us that every moment, in the form of an event in both the past and the future, implies a present moment. A difficult fact to admit in our everyday life, but it is so. Although we may not be aware of what is happening around us at all times, we live in a reality of four dimensions: length, height, depth, in a “continuum” which is time. This wedding photo is both past and future in their reality. Our reality that we are celebrating.

A "Continuum"

Each of us perceives the sense of time in a different way. This is true in both a biological and a physical sense. For Newton, time was universal and common to all. Then Einstein came and explained that instead time for a person is closely related to his moving in space and to the force of gravity. From a psychological and biological point of view, the time measured by atomic clocks is not as important as that measured by our internal rhythms and the amount of memory that accumulates in each of us. Everything happens differently, it depends on who we are, on what happens to us.

Newton & Einstein

As we get older we find that time passes much faster than before. And the writer knows it well. If I ask Amelia, what she remembers of that day, I discover that her memories are not mine, her time is different from mine, as is her past in this shared present that yesterday was the future.We live in the past. Each of our actions before it is received by our brain takes an amount of time to be registered and recognized. To be precise 80 milliseconds. If I touch the tip of my nose or that of my foot, it will take longer to feel the action in my brain.

As We Get Older ...

Our conscious experience takes longer to assemble the sequence of actions. The perception of the moment, of now, can therefore be said to have already passed. Therefore, we live in the past. The distance between the things that happen and their perception is about 80 milliseconds. Science says it with its instruments, but our brains, Amelia’s and Antonio’s, relive the distance of this time-space in a completely different way. A surreal coexistence has made the past become the future and we continue to relive it in the present always in a different way.

We Live In The Past

Our memory is not always reliable. When we remember an event that happened in the past, our brain uses a technique very similar to imagining the future. The process is not like playing a video, but rather like staging a text. If the text is wrong for any reason, you may have a distorted memory similar to the real one. For this reason, visual evidence is very questionable and subjective and not always convergent in a court of law. You will never find two people who see a thing in the same way.

Our Memory

Whenever Amelia tells the events of her journey to get to the Cathedral of Amalfi on time she adds something not said, not remembered, not felt then, but recognized or found today. Is such a thing possible? But, then, does memory deceive us, deceive us or even recreate what never happened?Consciousness depends on knowing how to manipulate time. Many cognitive abilities are important for consciousness and are not yet well known to us. It is clear, however, that the ability to manipulate time and its possibilities is a crucial aspect of the problem.

Does Memory Deceive Us?

Land animals, unlike those of water, manage to possess a very broad visual trend in order to have enough time to choose from a range of actions and decide for the best. Consciousness would not be possible without the ability to imagine another time. But how many humans know they have a conscience? Did Amelia and I know that we would have to find the way and the way to build a new time for us, in a space as new and mysterious as it is unexplored and dangerous? The space of these fifty years is an almost metaphysical testimony.

A Metaphysical Testimony

The clutter increases as time passes. The difference between the past and the future, memory, aging, randomness and free will, rests on the fact that the universe is constantly evolving from order to disorder. Entropy is constantly increasing in the opinion of physicists. There are many ways of being disordered, the condition of which provides for a high entropy, compared to the order which has a low entropy. The increase in the latter, therefore, is completely natural. But to understand the low entropy of past times, we need to go back to the Big Bang.

Back To The Big Bang

Scientists have not yet been able to give an answer to why entropy was low at that time and how this increase affects memory and its randomness. Fifty years later, after our Big Bang, I would not be able to assess whether the entropy of our coexistence has been elevated or reduced, whether we have proceeded from order to disorder or vice versa.Complexity comes and goes. Unlike those who consider themselves creationists, most people have no problem evaluating the difference between “order” and “disorder”, that is, between low and high entropy.

Complexity

This entropy increases but the complexity is ephemeral, volatile, increases and decreases intricately, not without surprise. The work done by complex structures is to increase entropy as in the case of the origin of life. But we are far from understanding this truly unique phenomenon. I can say one thing certain in any case, and that is this half century of life lived in common has shown that experiencing complexity is the great challenge of those who decide to choose marriage and live in a condition of “order” imposed by a law, not only of nature, but also of law.

An Experience 

Aging can be reversed. We all age and this is part of the race towards ever-increasing disorder. But it is only the universe as the whole that must increase in entropy, not just each of its components. If we reverse the arrow of time in a living organism, we make a technological challenge but not a physical impossibility. We are making progress on new fronts such as stem cells, yeast and even mice and human muscle tissue. Someone thinks of eternal life, which is not imminent, but sooner or later something will happen. Many dare to believe and hope for it. But to do what? I then ask myself.

The Arrow Of Time

Personally, I would like to have the opportunity to start all over again. I don’t know what Amelia would do if she could reverse the arrow of time and go back to that day fifty years ago. To tell the truth, I can’t say either. A return to the past? Perhaps the future is better than daring the arrow.The average time of a life is made up of one billion heartbeats. Both simple and complex organisms die. It is sad to say but it is a necessary part of the picture of the human condition: life pushes the new, eliminating the old.

Life Pushes The New

There is a simple scale of values ​​in this sense and it concerns the body’s metabolism.To make fifty years of married life it takes two billion beats to challenge time and space together towards the spiritual metabolism.

A Spiritual Metabolism

What are the memories of men? How many can they be? Where are they? Who can tell them? What can they tell? Why is it worth talking about? How can they be found out? Should they be preserved? Where…

health

Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Half century. Fifty years of marriage

Reward efforts, not outcomes

<ul><li>Parents, picture this: your child has just taken a test they've been studying for. Do you usually wait for good test results before you take them out for ice cream?</li><li>Leaders, picture this: an employee has been working long hours on a report. Do you usually wait to see its final quality before you recognize their effort?</li></ul>Both examples show rewarding outcomes

Difference Between Rewarding Effort Vs Outcomes

When our performance is not judged by its 'destination', we feel more confident in pushing and pulling the 'journey' and contorting it into something unique and unplanned.

Rewarding Efforts Lead To Intrinsic Motivation

In fact, research shows that intrinsic motivation has a positive effect on creative and innovative performance.That's because when we're intrinsically motivated, we feel a sense of ownership over our work, connect deeply to its metaphysical meaning, brush up on relevant skills that will make us more competent, and feel confident in the story we're pushing for.

Intrinsic Motivation Leads To Greater Effort

Pichai is encouraging leaders and parents to tap into the deep well of intrinsic motivation

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Google CEO on How to Lead. It Also Works for How to Raise Successful Kids

Productive procrastination is when you’re busy, yet you’re still procrastinating on your most important tasks. For example:You work 8 -10h workdays, you’re always busy, and you feel that you’re productive. But you’re not as productive as you think. Is your big project done? Is it even moving in any direction? If the answer is “not exactly”, you’re presumably a victim of productive procrastination. By keeping yourself busy with a lot of to-do’s, you distract yourself from doing the work. The work that’s important and impactful still remains untouched.

Productive Procrastination

Productive procrastination is when you’re efficient and accomplish everything (except for the most important things).For example: When having a hard project to crack, you may find yourself doing:<ul><li>laundry</li><li>the dishes</li><li>cleaning the house</li><li>washing your car</li><li>organizing files on the computer</li><li>cleaning the bathroom</li><li>cooking.</li></ul>You actually worked and achieved something.  Procrastinating doesn’t have to mean “doing nothing”. You can still do low-level, unimportant stuff. Productive procrastinators are great workers. They are able to do a lot of work, provided it is not the one they should be doing at the moment.

Productive Procrastination: The Positive Side

Time blocking is a great way to procrastinate in a productive way.  You can take a few moments to plan your day if you don’t feel like starting that big project.  It will keep you on track for the rest of the day.The productive procrastination technique focuses on a specific worldview: If you can’t make it great, at least make it.  This approach doesn't perceive procrastination as the opposite of productivity. Even if you’re not working on the task you set out to do, you’re still making progress on eliminating slices of your productivity pie.

If You Can’t Make It Great, At Least Make It 

Before you know it, you are working on tasks that distract you from what you should be doing. You’re busy and you’re getting a lot of tasks done. You feel good about yourself.  In reality, you’re actually killing your productivity levels. If you are close to falling into this trap:<ul><li>Don’t use busyness to protect yourself from doing the things that you should. This way you fail to reach your dreams.</li><li>Hard work doesn’t equal success. It can be its component if you work hard on the right tasks and activities. Think about it. If hard work equaled success, all construction workers would be millionaires</li></ul>

Productive Procrastination: The Negative Side

When you procrastinate in the usual way, you almost always realize it. You hardly ever realize when you fall into the trap of productive procrastination.   Think about those days when you: answer a lot of emails, spend time on social media, or do other random to-do’s. You feel very productive. Your brain rewards you for this behavior. It produces dopamine when you’re working on a lot of different tasks. This, in turn, stimulates the repetition of this behavior. But productive procrastination is unproductive in the long run.

What’s the Trap About?

<ul><li>Learn to identify your most important activities: write them down.  If you have more than 5 tasks that you think are important, take a few minutes to identify your top 5. If you work on any other task before spending time on your identified top, you’re falling into the trap.</li><li>Tackle your most important activities first thing in the day. Don’t work on anything else before you finish your work on your most important activity.  Most people work on low to mid-value tasks first because it’s easier. As we go by during the day, our mental resources, like willpower and our ability to focus diminish. </li></ul>

Tips to Avoid Falling for Productive Procrastination

“All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important”

Productive procrastination is when you're efficient but not effective. You accomplish everything, except for the most important things.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

Productive Procrastination: How to Avoid Falling Into the Trap

The phrase ‘the early bird catches the worm’ isn’t lore–it has very real-world repercussions. Most millionaires (and, naturally, billionaires) get their game face on as early as 5:30am.

Start The Day Early 

The biggest marker of a person slated for success? The desire to keep learning. Only the arrogant truly believe they know everything there is to know. The people who know the most, however, always believe there is much more they don’t. Example: Former chairperson and chief executive officer of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi believes that no amount of questions is too many to ask. “I spend so much time on details that from the outside it can seem crazy,” Nooyi told Huxleў in a 2021 interview. “But the details are most important in the management of the organisation. So dig deep. Be curious.

Stay Curious

Even though they might seem like risk-takers in every possible way, most millionaires are creatures of habit. Their day usually follows a format; one that optimises for their time and productivity. From an early start to a set bedtime, to designated time for exercise, emails and down-time, most super-successful folks have their day charted out in advance.Mark Cuban has specified times for everything; from cardio to TV. Warren Buffet goes to bed at 10 pm every night, reading for about 30 minutes before sleeping at 10:45pm.

Make–And Follow–A Routine

‘Dream’ is a buzzword that is bandied about a lot in motivational speeches, but the most successful people know that the real distinction is not to have dreams, but goals. A dream is a general idea, a wish for something that you desire personally or professionally.A goal, however, is a clear feat you want to accomplish; and it comes with a path to getting that you need to create. Equally important is setting goals for yourself that are a challenge; that push you a few inches further out of your comfort zone each time.

Set Clear Goals

It takes a village to make a person successful, and anyone who’s got to the top of their field will back that statement up. Not to take away from the hard work of the millionaires that have risen through the ranks, but success is never a single-player game.As Dr. Majid Kazmi, CEO of uGen Group puts it, “It may sound paradoxical, but strength comes from vulnerability. You have to ask the question to get the answer, even though asking the question means you didn't know.”

Ask For Help

There’s a lot less that separates you from the average millionaire than you think. I mean, sure, it's a few zeros in your bank balance and a few vintage cars in your garage, but a lot of the people you admire right now started out not too far from where you are. 

Rewiring your thinking could be what makes you rich

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

5 mental habits of millionaires that will help you become successful

You have to realize that sometimes it is procrastination and sometimes it is just you allocating time in a more effective way. You must realize whether you are actually procrastinating or do you genuinely don't have enough time One suggestion is saying that it doesn't count as procrastination unless you planned to do the activity

1. Not Knowing the Difference between real or fake Procrastination

We as humans naturally procrastinate because we are always thinking of benefiting ourselves in the short term rather than the long term. So when we realize that we are procrastinating it makes no sense to be mad at ourselves rather we should acknowledge we are procrastinating and make the conscious decision whether we are going to continue procrastinating or rather go and accomplish our life goal.

2. Beating Ourselves Up

If we realize that we are not doing what we are supposed to do rather than just saying "I need to try harder" and " This isn't good enough" We should instead focus on changing how we go about doing things. We need to learn to make things easier for ourselvesTrying harder is rarely ever the solution

3. We Press The Try Harder Button 

If we have the mindset that, I am a human I can just try harder and accomplish anything I set my mind to we will undoubtedly fail here are some steps that we should take instead<ol><li>Make it easier for ourselves to accomplish the goal that we want by telling other people, making a reward system or many other ways.</li></ol>

4. We Treat Ourselves As Humans Rather Than Systems

If you already don't want to accomplish the goal, or you hate doing the task and you feel like you have to do it. The chances you will fail will be very highHumans only have a limited amount of willpower available to them each day, so make sure that you figure out ways to enjoy the tasks that you have to do.

5. Trying To Push The Bolder Up The Hill

Procrastination is a very interesting topic, with a lot of information about it here are 5 things that many people mistake about procrastination<ol><li>Not Knowing the Difference between real or fake Procrastination</li></ol>2. Beating Ourselves Up3. We Press The Try Harder Button 4. We Treat Ourselves As Humans Rather Than Systems

Summary Of Post

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Finding it difficult to get out of procrastination station? These are the five mistakes I found myself making a lot with work that might help you too. 00:00 Intro 00:09 Real vs. Fake Procrastination 01:40 Beating Ourselves Up 03:00 Pressing the "Try Harder" Button 04:08 People vs. Systems 05:56 The Uphill Boulder MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO: ✍️ My friend Neel Nanda's blog: https://www.neelnanda.io/ 🏋️ Try the app Strong: https://www.strong.app/ 💌 For weekly insights of what I've learned from navigating life, sign up to my email newsletter: https://go.aliabdaal.com/sundaysnippets MY FREE ONLINE COURSES: 🚀 Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity 🎬 Video Editing with Final Cut Pro X - From Beginner to YouTuber - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/video-editing 🎓 How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying MY FAVOURITE GEAR: 🎥 My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal ⌨️ My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard 📝 My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike 🎒 My Desk Accessories + Todo List - Ugmonk - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ugmonk MY FAVOURITE SOFTWARE: ✍️ The best summaries of books (Shortform) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/shortform 📚 How I remember what I read (Readwise) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise 🎵 Where I get my Music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

product

Product & Design

Finding it difficult to get out of procrastination station? These are the five mistakes I found myself making a lot with work that might help you too. 

00:00 Intro
00:09 Real vs. Fake Procrastination
01:40 Beating Ourselves Up
03:00 Pressing the "Try Harder" Button
04:08 People vs. Systems
05:56 The Uphill Boulder

MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO: 
✍️ My friend Neel Nanda's blog: https://www.neelnanda.io/
🏋️ Try the app Strong: https://www.strong.app/

💌 For weekly insights of what I've learned from navigating life, sign up to my email newsletter: https://go.aliabdaal.com/sundaysnippets

MY FREE ONLINE COURSES:
🚀  Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity
🎬  Video Editing with Final Cut Pro X - From Beginner to YouTuber - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/video-editing
🎓  How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying

MY FAVOURITE GEAR:
🎥  My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal
⌨️  My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard 
📝  My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike 
🎒 My Desk Accessories + Todo List - Ugmonk - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ugmonk

MY FAVOURITE SOFTWARE:
✍️ The best summaries of books (Shortform) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/shortform
📚  How I remember what I read (Readwise) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise 
🎵  Where I get my Music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound

PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

📚 Check out my first book Feel-Good Productivity here: https://www.feelgoodproductivity.com/

Hey, I'm Ali, a doctor turned entrepreneur, and the world’s most followed productivity expert 😜 

On this channel, we explore evidence-based strategies and tools that can help us be more productive, and build a life that we love. 

If that sounds interesting, consider subscribing! See you in the next video x

Ali Abdaal

5 Mistakes Procrastinators Make (And How To Avoid Them...)

All the stress, all the frustrations and disappointments, all the busyness and rushing … we create these with attachments in our heads. By letting go, we can relax and live more simply.

1. We create our own struggles

For example, if you are attached to sentimental items, you won’t be able to let go of clutter. If you are attached to living a certain way, you will not be able to let go of a lot of stuff. If you are attached to doing a lot of activities and messaging everyone, your life will be complex.

2. Become mindful of attachments that lead to clutter and complexity. 

We don’t need any of these habits, but they build up over the years because they comfort us. We can live more simply by letting go of these mental habits. What would life be like without constant switching, distraction and busyness?

3. Distraction, busyness and constant switching are mental habits

Imagine that everything you do — a work task, answering an email or message, washing a dish, reading an article — goes into full-screen mode, so that you don’t do or look at anything else. You just inhabit that task fully, and are fully present as you do it. What would your life be like? In my experience, it’s much less stressful when you work and live this way. Things get your full attention, and you do them much better. And you can even savor them.

4. Live in Full-Screen Mode

Add padding to everything. Do half of what you imagine you can do. We tend to cram as much as possible into our days. And this becomes stressful, because we always underestimate how long things will take, and we forget about maintenance tasks like putting on clothes and brushing teeth and preparing meals. . What would it be like if we took a few minutes’ pause between tasks, to savor the accomplishment of the last task, to savor the space between things, to savor being alive?

5. Create space between things

For me, those include writing, reading/learning, walking and doing other active things, eating simple food, meditating, spending quality time with people I care about. Most of that doesn’t cost anything or require any possessions (especially if you use the library for books!). I’m not saying I have zero possessions, nor that I only do these few things. But to the extent that I remember the simple things I love doing, my life suddenly becomes simpler.

6. Find joy in a few simple things

We are rarely very clear on what we want. When we see someone post a photo of something cool, we might all of a sudden get fixed on doing that too, and suddenly the course of our lives veer off in a new direction. What If we knew what we wanted to create, how we wanted to live … we could say yes to these things, and no to everything else. Saying no to more things would simplify our lives.

7. Get clear about what you want, and say no to more things

Just sit there and do nothing. What happens is you will start to notice your brain’s habit of wanting to get something done — it will almost itch to do something. This exposes our mental habits, which is a good thing. However, keep doing nothing. Just sit for awhile, resisting the urge to do something. After some practice, you can get good at doing nothing. And this leads to the mental habit of contentment, gratitude without complaining.

8. Practice doing nothing

habits

Habits

8 Key Lessons for Living a Simple Life - zen habits

Western work culture has been like this:<ul><li>80-hour work weeks.</li><li>High-pressure environments.</li><li>Little time for rest and recovery.</li></ul>Why do people waste an entire day and only have a few hours for themselves that also includes preparing for the next day?This has been a talking point for a long time now. 4-hour workdays, singular focus, and meaningful work are becoming the norm in our little pocket of Twitter — and we are creating a future of passionate individuals that produce world-shifting creations.

The Premise

Ancient Romans, Ancient Greeks, Steve Jobs, Charles Darwin, and an infinite list of visionaries, strategists, and innovators attributed their success to surprisingly low “work” times.Writers from multiple domains, like Hemingway and Tarantino, would spend the majority of their days lounging by the pool, spitting games with girls, and doing everything aside from what they deemed “work.”

Less Work Is More

Imagine going to the gym for 8 hours trying to be as “productive” as possible. You would try to max out on main exercises like the nervous system taxing deadlift, then go on to do accessory movements. In one day, you would run out of exercises to do. Would you be able to come back and give it your all the next day? How about 5 days in a row? Would you be able to tough it out until you can use your paid vacation time to recover and do it all over again?Your body would be decimated without rest and recovery.

Importance Of Rest And Recovery

While corporate culture is handing you a pretty paycheck to incentivize sustained intensity, we must push back.Intensity isn’t sustainable. It’s not rocket science. Sustainability, consistency, and creativity must be prioritized before we even mention the word “productivity.”

Push Back From Capitalist Demands

Fill your brain in the afternoons with books, learning, and socialization.Empty your brain before bed with journaling, planning, and meditation.Use your brain in the morning with creation, output, and focus.

Your psyche is wired for survival. If you have attachments to the external world — relationships of any form — that threaten your identity when the relationship is challenged, then you will not be able to act authentically. That is to say, you will have difficulty opening your mind to reality to leverage nature. Your attachments — or perceived needs — will act as obstructions that slow the flow of your productive and creative energy.You cannot be your true, authentic self if you need something that you do not already have.

A Word Of Caution

Productivity is related to the balance and degree to which you engage in deep play, deep rest, and lastly deep work.For value creators, those that intend to put good out into the world, you must adopt the habit of conscious study. Without expanding your worldview, mind, and knowledge through exposing yourself to novel perspectives; how do you plan to create? Creativity, in some aspects, is about pulling from multiple sources and mashing them together. Like deconstructing a topic, learning about its parts through study, and building your own creation as you would playing with legos.

Fill Your Mind

When aligned with your vision, values, and goals you can consume information with the intention to understand and apply. This can begin to act as a vessel for raising your consciousness. You start to gain clarity on your life’s work through exposure to the information that aligns with you the most. If you don’t know where to start, re-read the book that changed the way you think, it will do it again.

Consume Information To Raise Your Consciousness

Aside from movement and exercise being great for your health, there is something unique about walks. Ancient masters swore by it, industry leaders took them religiously, and the world’s most respected creatives made them a part of their everyday routine.The ideas flow in a steady stream. From the  subconscious to conscious. Sometimes you just need that one word, letter, sound, example, anecdote, or story to bring up a thought that leads you down a rabbit hole of questioning and exploration.

Going For A Walk

When you get out of the house you become less prone to familiar distractions that will impact your study just by being in that environment. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to block out the distractions. You know they are there and they will occupy creative energy.Filling your mind can be done at any time, and may be scattered throughout your day, but for the sake your own experimentation and clarity; start with doing this in the afternoons. If you do not have time to do this in the afternoon, sprinkle it throughout your day. I will give personal examples below.

Reading In The Sun

In psychology, there is something called the Default Mode Network. From the book Rest, this default mode network is “a series of interconnected sections that activate as soon as people stop concentrating on external tasks, and shifts from outward-focused to inward-focused cognition.”When “activated” through restful, meditative, or open activities the brain is not any less active than it would be when engaged in something like focused work, or something that demands narrow focus and concentrated attention.

Empty Your Mind

When your focus is open, your subconscious mind is still working hard and munching on problems. Many programmers understand this well. They will often work on a project, encounter a bug, struggle to fix it, “give up,” and go about their day. At the most unexpected time, the perfect solution will pop into their head and the excited programmer will rush to open their code base to test it out. Shower thoughts is another example of this.

Shower Thoughts And And Open Focus

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

How do you empty your mind?By immersing yourself in the present moment. Flowing with the river of life and the highs and lows that it presents.There are many ways to make this easier on you to grasp, but understand that all of these means lead to the same end:<ol><li>The Gym</li><li>Nature</li><li>Meditation</li><li>Physical mediums</li></ol>

The Present Movement

Gym bros talk a lot about “mind-muscle connection” and other things that are just short for anchoring your attention in the present. When you are at the gym, be a silent observer. Observe the voice in your head that tells you to quit. Observe how the muscle feels as it contracts. Observe the blood flowing quicker through your body.This works for any exercise, not only the gym. Elevated bodily functions that are easily observable make it easier to treat the gym as a meditation practice.

1. The Gym As A Meditative Practice

From a psychological lens, nature presents the perfect formula for flow. On a hike, you order your consciousness by having a vision of how you want the hike to go. You construct a hierarchy of goals in your mind that allow you to gain clarity on the climb. You may have a water intake goal, distance goal, health goal, or just the goal to have a good time in nature. From there, you begin your ascent up the trail and are faced with a challenge. Even better, you planned the hike to match your skill level and you don’t have to incessantly think. Hiking becomes an art form and you kick into flow.

2. A Hiking Trip In Nature

Conscious meditation (obviously), conscious walks, conscious listening during a conversation, conscious writing, and conscious creating.When you are just starting out, and even when you are deep into the space, you are just doing the activities that people tell you to do. Most people are meditating unconsciously, which is a funny example. They are mechanically going through the motions because it has become habitual. They aren’t getting the benefits they would get if they simply prioritized consciousness at any given moment — not just during meditation.

3. The Always On Meditation: Being Conscious

Everything that is not absolute truth (unknowable or unspeakable with words alone) is relative. Relative means that there is a relationship. Cause and effect. Polarity. One thing cannot exist without the other. During meditation, can you follow a thought to another thought to an event until the lines are blurred and you glimpse into Infinity?

Everything Is Relative

Another way to order consciousness or create clarity is to express the unorganized thoughts that are in your head. This is done through writing or speaking.One such method is brain dump journaling. How do you brain dump journal? First, by writing out every single thing that you can bring your attention to in your mind. Once you have all your thoughts, reactions to feelings, emotions, and tasks written in a chaotic fashion on your paper — you can start to organize them.This is where connections are made and clarity is gained.

4. Physical Mediums

Using your mind comes last as we have filled and emptied our minds. By filling our minds we have expanded them, broadening our awareness and allowing The Law of Inspired Action to come into play. This gives us fresh creative firepower for when we use our mind. By emptying our mind we have allowed the Default Mode Network to come into play. Our subconscious mind will deliver insight to our conscious mind and we can order said consciousness through brain dump journaling.

Use Your Mind

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