Indistractable

Eyal, who wrote Hooked about building habit-forming products, addresses the user side and argues that distraction is not caused by technology but by the desire to escape discomfort, and that technology is the most available means rather than the cause.

His central distinction is between traction, meaning action that moves you toward your intentions, and distraction, meaning action that moves you away. Both are pulled by triggers, and he argues that the opposite of distraction is traction rather than focus.

The four-part method addresses internal triggers, external triggers, time and pacts. Mastering internal triggers requires identifying the discomfort that precedes the distraction, since Eyal argues all behaviour is motivated by escape from discomfort, and using techniques including a ten-minute delay, reimagining the task and reimagining the trigger itself. Making time for traction requires timeboxing the calendar according to values rather than working from a task list, and treating an unplanned activity as a distraction even if it is productive. Hacking back external triggers requires interrogating each notification, meeting and interruption to determine whether it serves you. Preventing distraction with pacts covers effort pacts, price pacts where money is at stake, and identity pacts, in which a person adopts a self-description that makes the behaviour inconsistent.

Eyal rejects the addiction framing of technology use and argues that it removes agency, which some readers and researchers dispute strongly given the deliberate design decisions he himself documented in his previous book. The research is secondhand and some claims rest on contested evidence. Timeboxing according to values and the definition of distraction relative to intention are the practical contributions.