Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

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We spend a lot of time, money and energy in stoping people stealing our car and our house contents, but don’t apply time and effort into stopping people stealing our time. I don’t intend this to come off as an old guy, “BACK IN MY DAY WE ATE WEASELS FOR BREAKFAST BECAUSE THAT’S ALL WE HAD AND WE LIKED IT AND THEN WE USED EVERY PART OF THOSE DAMN WEASELS FOR SOME USEFUL PURPOSE, INCLUDING TURNING THEIR GUTS INTO BOWSTRINGS SO WE COULD HUNT MORE WEASELS FOR FOOD AND BOWSTRINGS AND YOUNG PEOPLE ARE ALL AWFUL SO LET’S IGNORE THEM” kind of screed.

Have you ever gone out with friends or family and there is that one guy who is constantly checking out of the conversation and checking into his phone? Yet the essential rhetorical move, for which Eyal gives no justification, is his separation of inner motivations from external factors and his conception of them as root causes.I found a lot of positive reviews of the book online, so some of you might like the book, but it wasn’t a great read for me.

It’s a claim that, in any event, seems unfalsifiable – can’t any desire for change be framed as “dissatisfaction” with some status quo? However, I think I was intuitively trying and applying most of them just because of the knowledge I got from "Hooked. We agree that aimlessly scrolling our social media feeds is not as enriching as being with real friends in real life. The book covers a lot from being more focused at work to parenting to relationships and I learned several new ideas. If we don’t deal with the root causes, we’ll continue to find ways to distract ourselves and will remain “helpless victims in a tragedy of our own creation”.These final chapters will show you how to regain lost productivity at work, have more satisfying relationships with your friends and family, and even be a better lover — all by conquering distraction. Kamenetz strongly advises that 'screens and sleep don't mix' and implores parents to keep all digital devices out of kids rooms at nighttime and to shut down screens at least an hour before bedtime. Of course, it heavily focuses on social media given it is one of the habits most of us seem to have that takes our attention away from more important issues; I must admit that I rarely use social media as it simply doesn't hold my interest for very long, but I can see that this would help those who have let social sites take over their lives and could be applied to other situations easily too. Why have we packed our lives with so many empty interactions with technology and virtual people that we have to forcibly schedule time in our lives to just sit and think, or to talk to other real people, and or to just NOT respond to some dopamine-inducing ping? Even the written word was blamed for creating "forgetfulness in the learners' souls," according to Socrates.