Indistractable: How to Master the Skill of the Century

Is the world more distracting? It certainly seems that way, not just when walking down the street but at work and with family and friends. In this talk from Mind the Product San Francisco 2018, Nir Eyal, author of Hooked, tackles the distraction crisis.

Eyal starts from a familiar situation: sitting down to do important work and being unable to escape email or Slack long enough to focus on the task you said you wanted to do. He then asks who is to blame. Is technology doing this to us, or is something else going on? The talk previews the ideas behind his later book, Indistractable.

For designers and product people, the talk is also a useful counterpoint to habit-forming design. The same triggers and rewards that make products engaging can pull attention away from what users really want to do, and a product team that understands both sides can design more responsibly.