Indistractable How to control your attention and choose your life

Eyal is a business, technology, and psychology consultant who also has authored a bestselling book on how to create addictive technologies by building customer habits (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, 2018). Here, he examines how distractions such as social media, Google searches, and texting can move people away from what they actually want to be doing. He provides practical guidance on how to avoid being overtaken by technology, or by anything else. His "Indistractable Model" involves four steps. Eyal advises that employees should be aware of internal triggers such as anxiety that can lead to "Googling everything." External triggers such as unwanted emails need to be blocked. "Price Pacts" can impose financial penalties on employees found to be heavily distracted by favorite websites during work hours. Finally, Eyal promotes making "traction time" during the day or week to exclusively focus on what is important. He provides an innovative "red light" card that can be cut out of the book and voluntarily placed in front of an employee's computer, to notify him or her to stop doing the distracting activities. The appendix lists many relevant blog contributors, magazines, and journal references. The book is highly accessible, with a chapter takeaway section summarizing each of the 35 short chapters. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. General readers. --Gundars E Kaupins, Boise State University

Eyal (Hooked), a former Stanford Graduate School of Business professor, dissects the difficulties of staying on task in modern times and presents attention-strengthening strategies in this helpful guide. Using many diagrams to present action items and current research on attention retention, Eyal argues that learning to deal with discomfort must be mastered in order to overcome distraction. He explores why people become distracted and offers solutions on how to adjust one's thinking to reimagine triggers, understand willpower, and how to solidify one's identity around "being indistractable." Chapters are dedicated to what Eyal considers life's largest distractions, including smartphone use, email, and socializing with co-workers and friends. At the end of each chapter, he lists solutions for managing these common triggers and "hacks" for staying on task, such as overscheduling the day (or "timeboxing"), rearranging one's phone display screen, using peer pressure in helpful ways through "microcommitments," and concentrating on financial incentives. Eyal also suggests apps that can help with each suggestion. Eyal's insights into how one's values and daily schedule relate to distraction will be persuasive to any reader. (Sept.)