Group Chats As Saunas
One of the most notorious places to get distracted is in the group chat. I love sharing this analogy concerning group chats. When in a group chat, you want to treat it like a sauna. Meaning you just want to get in and out. It’s bad for your health to stay in a sauna for too long. By the same token, groups chats follow the same logic. Here are some hacks to manage them.
It is not want to have your Slack channel up all day long. Normally, people say, “well what if I need that. What if somebody needs something urgent?”. Regardless, Slack, or whatever group chat, is not the appropriate forum for urgent messages. In fact, it is a time-wasting distraction to constantly leave it open. Therefore, use it as a sauna. You get in and you get out. Designate a time on your calendar to check your Slack channels. Here are some other tips:
- Use group chats like a sauna.
- Schedule check-ups on your group chat channels.
- Be picky about who is in the select channels and then use it selectively.
Environmental Hacks and Four Big Strategies
Also, in my book, I talk about 8 different environments that you can hack back. They are not all digital. Some examples that you can hack back are meetings, desktops, and group chats.
The phone is another hack back environment. However, I want to be very clear, this is the most tactical part of the book. Here, I give you the best apps to use.
Besides environmental hacks, there are other strategies called the four big strategies of Indestractable. These strategies are meant to be taken in order and are designed for you to become indestractable on your tasks.
- Master internal triggers
- Make time for traction
- Hack back external triggers
- Prevent distraction with packs
A common mistake is that most people just want to hack back external triggers. However, I must emphasize that just using the third strategy will not work. These four strategies are part of a larger model. Therefore, it is essential that you also use strategies one and two. Otherwise, your efforts will be meaningless and you will still be easily distracted.
If you’re interested in Indestractible, you can go to indistractible.com. If you go there, there are all kinds of resources and tools whether you buy the book or not. You can also check out my blog nirandfar.com for more content. There are all kinds of things you can download for yourself to help you become indistractible.
About the speaker
Nir Eyal is a bestselling author whose first book - Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products - focused on teaching design behavior in Silicon Valley product teams. His next book - Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life - provides a guidebook for getting the best of technology without letting it get the best of us. Prior to publishing these titles, Nir served as CEO at AdNectar and Sunshine Business Development. In addition, Nir lectured at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and Institute of Design. Nir holds an MBA from Stanford University and currently lives in NYC.