However, this is the good news: we don’t need to be slaves to our negative feelings – we can also control them. This enables us to become susceptible to distraction. Currently, which is thousands of years after, that inheritance manifests in our ability to view things in a negative light, reflect on painful experiences and immediately become bored with new circumstances. Our ancestors continued learning, evolving and, eventually, surviving since they weren’t satisfied with their lot. The sad news is that we are evolutionarily hardwired for discomfort. We put the blame on our incompetence to do things and fail to consider the core issue. Distraction is essentially about avoiding something that is uncomfortable like a rumbling stomach or marital difficulties or deep dissatisfaction with your career. Actually, distraction has internal sources all the time. This is the reason why technology can’t be responsible alone for distraction. However, distraction is the opposite it takes us away from those goals. The former pushes us forward, causing us to follow our goals and determinations. Triggers can cause either traction or distraction.

Internal triggers, such as feeling bored or stressed, come from inside you. External triggers are the outside world –like pop-up notifications on your laptop. In order to know what is happening when we are distracted, we have to talk about what triggers them – stimuli that push us into action or tell us to do something. If it’s scribbling on a piece of paper or counting the books on your shelf, brains are masters at creating kinds of distraction. If you’ve ever attempted to give away your digital devices and gadgets, you’ll understand that not using them doesn’t essentially hinder you from procrastinating.

Why are we susceptible to distraction? One regular reply to that is technology. Eyal names it becoming “indistractable.” In these chapters, we’ll look at how you can learn this “skill of the century,” learn to ignore distractions and concentrate on the things that are actually important. Nir Eyal who is the bestselling author of Hooked, a study of habit-forming products like Facebook and Twitter, has discovered the solution to distraction.

Nir eyal books