ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

Forget the mindless scrolling with no end in sight. Brigid Moss has found the secrets to sidestepping distractions

The secrets to sidestepping distractions and staying focused

If you’re in a public place, look around. Whether in a cafe or a queue, on a bus or even in an office, people will be on their phones. We tend to gravitate to our screens every time we have a spare minute – and also when we don’t. Sure, we might have work emails that can’t wait, but chances are we’re reading junk emails or on social media, scrolling our feeds, passing the time without even noticing it pass. In fact, how much time do you actually spend unproductively on this kind of nothing? And do you find yourself idly checking your phone when you should be working and achieving something concrete? Now, there’s a way we can regain our ability to focus. It’s been created by behavioural designer

Nir Eyal, and he should know: in a former life, he designed some of the techniques that Silicon Valley companies use to make addictive products. And he’s spent five years fine-tuning the concentration strategies that can make you more productive. He reveals all in his new book, Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention And Choose Your Life. Oh, and his programme works: it reduced the amount of time one of his readers spent on email by an incredible 90%. Do you want all your wasted time back, too? First, you need to know that the easy lure of tech isn’t the whole story. ‘It’s too simple to say tech is ruining our brains,’ says Eyal. ‘We want to believe it. Clearly it plays a role. But even if you stopped using tech altogether, distraction would not go away.’ Have you ever made a cup of tea or chatted to a colleague instead of doing a hard piece of work, for example? That said, Eyal believes we are at a crossroads right now: we can either take charge of tech or it will continue to rule our lives. ‘We can complain all we want, but we can’t rewind the hands of time. The only solution has to be that we figure out how to become indistractable,’ he says.

The good news is that the habits most of us have fallen into with our screens are reversible. Tech companies have been blamed as the pushers responsible for our addiction. But if you call what’s happening ‘overuse’, there’s no one to blame but ourselves.

Believing you can change is the first step – and a vital one to overcome the myth that tech will always get the better of us. ‘Our brains are always changing. If you learn the piano, your brain changes. The part the tech critics don’t tell you is that you can change it any way you wish,’ says Eyal.

That’s not to say change will be easy. You will have to make a concerted effort because it’s always going to be easier, in the modern world, to give in to your five-second attention span. But it’s worth doing, says Eyal, if you care about your work, your family and your physical and mental wellbeing.

What’s most fascinating about Eyal’s theory is the idea that there is a huge emotional element behind us seeking out distraction at all times and in all places. ‘This is the idea that time management is pain management,’ he says. The brain has evolved to be dissatisfied, to focus on the negative – and the reason we seek distraction is to escape our negativity or uncomfortable feelings.

Eyal describes how, when looking after his toddler daughter, he found himself repeatedly reaching for his phone. He realised that he was trying to escape the uncomfortable feeling of boredom. Over time, picking up his phone when bored had become a habit. When he realised his habit meant he wasn’t really present with his daughter, he decided to change.

As you can see, the culprit here isn’t the phone, but the discomfort of boredom. Other triggers might be a craving, restlessness or, if you’re doing something difficult, thinking that you can’t do it.

The technique Eyal uses to learn to cope with this kind of discomfort is called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The first step is to learn to notice the discomfort that precedes the distraction – the internal trigger. You do this with a trigger diary. Write down where and when it happened, what it felt like and what you were doing. So you might write: 8.30am, planning an important work presentation, started thinking that I’d mess it up and get fired. Talking to yourself in the third person can help you to recognise what’s happening: ‘I find presenting excruciating, and there I go, reaching for my phone!’

The next step is to get curious about the sensation: what does it feel like as the feelings crest and then subside? ‘Most people feel contempt for themselves or blame themselves for the distraction. Instead, we need to sit with the temptation and be curious about it,’ says Eyal.

The final step is to be vigilant at times of transition – for example, when you’re stuck at traffic lights or

‘THERE IS AN EMOTIONAL ELEMENT TO SEEKING DISTRACTION’