- All right. So life is kinda hard these
days for lots of reasons, but one of them is that we live in an epidemic of distraction. We're always surrounded
by fancy technology, firms that ping us every five seconds, and a world of games and
TV shows at our fingertips. There's absolutely nothing
wrong with this stuff, but it becomes a problem
when it's distracting us from the things that
we actually want to do. And there's probably three
reasons why we get distracted from the stuff that
actually matters to us. Number one is that it's just too boring. We're trying to do something important, but it's just really not fun, and so we're gonna get distracted by anything that comes our way. Number two, the thing we're trying
to do is just too hard. We're working on something important, but we've hit a roadblock, we can't figure out what to write next or where the missing semi-colon is that stopping the code from working, or get our fingers to do
what we want them to do while playing the guitar, as soon as a distraction
comes our way we rejoice. And number three, the distraction
is just too prominent. Most of us work with
our phones at our desk and a laptop sending us notifications for every little thing. Even with the best of intentions, it's genuinely hard to stay focused when we're being bombarded by these distractions all the time. So now that we know the enemy, let's figure out ways that we
can fight these distractions so that they don't stop us from doing the things that
actually matter to us. Tip number one is somewhat
counter-intuitive, but that is to embrace
welcome distractions. Now, I draw the distinction
here between welcome and unwelcome distractions. An unwelcome distraction
is like a notification from Instagram that
someone has, I don't know, liked my post or something that's really not adding
any real value to my life, and if I click on it, I'm just gonna end up doom
scrolling through Instagram. That would be an unwelcome distraction, but a welcome distraction is something that I actually
want to be distracting me. And so what I mean is, for example, when I was at university
studying for my medical exams, I would be studying in my room, but then I would leave my door open and I would have a doorstop wedged my door open at all times, because I would welcome the
distraction from my friends and from my med school colleagues, and they'd come in and have
a little bit of a chat. Now, the yes, those were distractions, but they were welcome distractions like, under the point of university,
yes was to pass the exam, but the bigger point of
university was to make friends and to have a nice time
and all that kind of stuff. And if I'd been distracted by a friend, maybe I would get like
0.002% less on the exam, but given that that work
was not gonna be the thing that makes me fail the exam, I would rather be distracted by my friends or by my family or in the future, hopefully if I'm working
from home and I have kids, I would enjoy, I would welcome being
distracted by the kids 'cause that's kinda the point. And the way I think about it is that, when I'm on my death
bed in a few years time, will I wish I had worked
harder and been more focused or will I wish that I had spent more time being distracted by friends and family? I don't know. Tip number two for combating distractions is to optimise for enjoyment. So you know how we talked about one of the main reasons
why we get distracted is because the thing that we are being distracted
from is just too boring. What we wanna do is try and
make the thing a lot more fun. Like we almost never get distracted if we're having a great
time watching a great film or TV show or playing a video game or hanging out with our friends, or doing something that's genuinely fun. Like it's very difficult to
get distracted from that. We tend to get distracted from
the things that are boring or the things that are hard. And so, if we focus on optimising for fun, then we can reduce the risks of us being distracted from the thing. And there's loads of ways to make whatever we're doing more fun. One of my favourite ones
involves charting progress. So, one of the reasons why
games, like video games are fun, is because you get a very
clear sense of progress. You kill the animal, the beast, the bore, whatever, like in a non mean way, and you're experienced ball goes up, and then you level up and
then you get more skills. And so, applying this
concept of gamifying stuff to whatever we're trying to do, just genuinely makes it more fun. So for example, if you're
studying for an exam, like treating it as a points tally, or like a score or like
a traffic light system, I've got more details in my retrospective
revision timetable video, which will be somewhere over there. If you're trying to make
progress in learning how to code or starting a business or whatever, then you give yourself milestones, like little milestones
that you can then take off. And that leads to that sort
of dopamine release of, yes, I've accomplished something, and that makes us feel like
the thing that we're doing is more fun because it
actually does become more fun by the fact that we're charting
our progress through it. Yeah, a bunch of other stuff, it's all gonna be in the book. I'm researching all this stuff these days, but sign up to the mailing
list to find out more as details come up. Tip number three is to
basically throw away the phone. Like, even if we're having fun and the phone is bombarding
us with notifications, oh, like on Hinge or like on
Tinder or that kind of stuff, it's generally very hard to stay focused, even if we're like super
focused and in the flow and having a great time. What I normally do, if I'm
really struggling with a phone, I just chuck it behind me
onto the sofa or whatever. More often than not what I do, I'll just have it face
down and on aeroplane mode. So, yeah, if it's an aeroplane
mode, it's not gonna ping, and if it's face down, that I'm not even gonna see the screen. And then when I'm taking
my breaks, I'll pick it up, take it off aeroplane
mode and then be like, oh, hello, lots of notifications. Ignore all of them, put it back
down and start kind of doing the thing that actually matters to me. Tip number four is to
control your environment. Now, like at the moment,
my desk is pretty messy, and it's very easy to get distracted when there is a messy desk
with a lot of stuff going on, because, as soon as the thing
that I'm doing becomes boring or becomes challenging, I can be like, oh, I wonder what this
lens is doing on my desk, or, I'll play with my deck
of cards a little bit, or I'll open that box that
I haven't unboxed yet. And like the more crap
that I have on my desk, the more likely I am to get distracted. And so, an easy tip for
not getting distracted is just to have a clean desk. This is actually not very hard. I personally find it very
hard to maintain a clean desk, which is why I've, a few months ago, signed up to a WeWork
coworking space in Cambridge, link and video description,
if you wanna check it out, it's really good. So I go there basically every day, and it helps keep me focused, because then I'm sitting at a table with only my laptop and my AirPods, and I have nothing on
the desk to distract me, whereas I get distracted all
the time when I'm at home. And so, going to a library,
going to a coffee shop, going to a co-working space, going somewhere outside
of your own environment, where you're less likely to get distracted because there's no stuff all around you. That is often, at least I find for me, a really good way of
combating distraction. Now, as a quick aside, do you
know how we talked about that, If a thing is fun, you're less likely to be
distracted while doing it. One app that takes us to a
whole new level is Brilliant, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. If you haven't heard by now, Brilliant is a fantastic
platform with online courses in math, science and computer science, and they're genuinely
really fun and interactive, and they teach stuff to
you in a very engaging first principled kind of way, where it has just the
right amount of challenge and just the right amount of fun that is genuinely like
it's hard to be distracted when you're doing an
online course at Brilliant. My favourite courses on Brilliant are the computer science ones, and if you're interested
in learning how to code, they've got a fantastic
introduction to algorithms and introduction to Python. And they've recently
released a brand new course on scientific thinking, which is all about how we
can solve interactive puzzles using science, which is A, fun and B,
helps level up our brains. If that's on the pure street and you want a genuinely
enjoyable learning experience then head over to brilliant.org/Ali, and the first 200 people to use that link will get 20% off the annual
premium subscription. So thank you so much Brilliant
for sponsoring this video. And finally, tip number five is to deliberately manage your time. Now, there is a book
called "Indistractable" by Chap Gordon and Nir Eyal. And then in that, he's
done all the research around what makes things distracting. And he says that, often you can tell by looking
at someone's calendar, how prone to distraction they are. Because, like, if your calendar, let's say it's 11:00 a.m. and you feel like you're
getting distracted, and you look at your calendar and there's nothing in
the 11:00 a.m. slot, then you have nothing
to do in that time slot, and therefore you have
nothing to be distracted from, if that makes sense. And so it's very easy to
like pick up the phone or pick up the PlayStation or whatever, because we don't have a default action that we're gonna be doing in that time. And so what Nir Eyal says, and what I completely agree with is that, if you time block the things
that you actually want to do earlier in the day... So the first thing I do each morning is I set my daily highlight, which is the one thing
I wanna get done today, and then I make sure
I stick in my calendar exactly when I'm gonna do that thing, so that when it comes to
the time of doing the thing, I know what it is I have to do, and therefore I'm actually less likely to get distracted from it
because I know what I have to do. Whereas, it's when I
have a big to-do list, and I don't know what to start with, or I don't have clarity, or it just feels a bit vague, like I don't know where to get started, that is when it becomes super
easy to just get distracted by picking up the phone
or turning on Netflix. If you found this video useful, and you're interested in more
tips for time management, check out this video over here, which is 10 other tips
on how I manage my time. Thank you so much for watching. Do hit the subscribe button
if you aren't already, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.
