Book Review - Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
Our world is designed to distract us.
If you have a smartphone and have not intentionally disabled alerts, you are interrupted many times each day. If you have an Apple Watch or something similar, you have added dozens of new opportunities for distraction. If you are active on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, you have an endless supply of dings and buzzes to take you off task. Beyond these are more mundane distractions like email, group chat, and online newsletters.
How can you get work done with all of these distractions? Become indistractable. Nir Eyal teaches us how to do so in his new book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
Three quotes are helpful in understanding Eyal's purpose in writing this book.
In the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves "indistractable."
The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. Planning ahead ensures you will follow through.
I discovered that living the life we want requires not only doing the right things; it also requires we stop doing the wrong things that take us off track.
How do you and I become indistractable? Eyal teaches us how to master internal triggers, to make time for traction, to hack back external triggers, and to prevent distraction with pacts.
This book is full of short chapters, thirty-five in all, easily read in ten minutes or less. These chapters are divided into seven parts around specific issues. If you have children in your home, Part 6: How to Raise Indistractable Children is worth the price of the book. You will want to stick around for the final chapter: Be An Indistractable Lover.
Chapter 9 may be my favorite: Turn Your Values Into Time. Eyal says, "A value is like a guiding star; it's the fixed point we use to help us navigate our life choices." Two questions help us to schedule our values. First, "When in my schedule did I do what said I would do and when did I get distracted?" This helps us reflect on the past week to assess our distractions.
Second, "Are there changes I can make to my calendar that will give me the time I need to better live out my values?" When we know what did not work in the last week, we can proactively plan to gain traction for the week ahead.
You do not have to highlight or otherwise make notes on key ideas in the chapters. Each chapter has a REMEMBER THIS section at the end with the big ideas you want to take with you. There is also a section called Chapter Takeaways at the end of the book. Here you will find a one-sentence summary of each chapter.
This is not a book of Thou Shalt Nots. There are plenty of those, for sure. However, there are many more helpful Thou Shalts.
Everyone needs this book. Enjoy it for yourself and pass it along to someone you know who needs it at least as much as you do.
 | David Bowman, (DMin, PCC) is the Executive Director of Tarrant Baptist Association in Fort Worth, Texas. He also serves as a Multiplying Trainer for Future Church Co. Learn More » |
More on Book Reviews
- Book review: Building a Storybrand (by Richard Blackaby)
- Book review: He Leadeth Me (by Richard Blackaby)
- Book review: Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead (by Richard Blackaby)
- Book review: Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting, by Derek Prince (by Richard Blackaby)
