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Concept

External Triggers

External triggers are the cues in your surroundings that prompt an action: a notification, a ping, a colleague at your desk, an open tab. Each one deserves the question of whether it serves you or you serve it.

Nir Eyal splits the causes of distraction in Indistractable into two kinds. Internal triggers are the feelings that make you want to escape a task; external triggers are the cues around you that offer the escape or demand a response. The important finding is that most external triggers are not neutral information. They are designed by someone whose interest is served when you respond, and they arrive on that person's schedule, not yours. Eyal's test for each one is a single question: is this trigger serving me, or am I serving it? A calendar reminder for the deep block serves you. A badge count on a messaging app mostly serves the app. Triggers that fail the test are "hacked back": turned off, batched, moved to a time you choose, or given enough friction that responding becomes a decision rather than a reflex.

A real-life example

A designer in Izmir counts the interruptions in one afternoon: forty-one, of which three needed an answer that day. She turns off every notification except calls from two people, moves Slack to a fixed check at 11:00 and 16:00, and puts a small sign on her desk that says "deep block until 12" so colleagues wait. The next afternoon has four interruptions and one finished report.

How to use it

  1. 1List every notification that reached you yesterday and ask of each: did it serve me, or did I serve it?
  2. 2Turn off the ones that failed; batch the ones that matter into two fixed checks a day.
  3. 3Tell the people around you when your protected block is, so their interruptions can wait for its end.