Concept
Distraction
Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you planned to do, which means you cannot call something a distraction until you have decided what you meant to be doing instead.
Nir Eyal's definition in Indistractable is deliberately strict. The opposite of distraction is not focus but traction, action that moves you toward what you intended, and both are defined by a plan. Without one, checking messages is neither; it is simply what happened. This reframes the fight: the first job is not blocking apps but deciding, in advance and on a calendar, what the next hour is for. Then the internal triggers can be met, the external ones hacked back, and the slips seen clearly. What people get wrong is treating distraction as a character flaw or a technology problem. It is mostly the absence of a decision, and a decision is cheaper than a new phone.
A real-life example
Hakan blames his phone for a lost afternoon, then admits he never decided what the afternoon was for. The next day he writes two blocks, report until three, replies until four. The phone is the same; the checks fall to a handful, because now each one is visibly a departure from something.
How to use it
- 1Plan the next block before you start it: what, until when. Traction needs a definition.
- 2Treat every slip as data: what feeling preceded it, and what did it pull you from?
- 3Fix the plan before fixing the tools; a blocked app cannot protect an hour nobody assigned.