Concept
Traction
Traction is any action that pulls you toward what you said you would do, while distraction is any action that pulls you away from it, however productive it looks.
Most of us judge a day by how busy it felt. In Indistractable, Nir Eyal offers a sharper test. In English, "traction" and "distraction" share a Latin root, trahere, which means to pull. The test doesn't ask whether an action is good, useful or virtuous. It only asks which way the action pulls you. Clearing your inbox during an hour you blocked for deep work is distraction, even though it looks like work. Watching a show during an evening you set aside for rest is traction. This means the test has a precondition: you must have decided in advance, on your calendar, what you intended to do. Without a plan there is no direction to measure, and everything passes as productive motion. The same action can be traction on Monday and distraction on Tuesday. What decides it is your earlier commitment, not the action itself.
A real-life example
Leila blocks 9 to 11 on Thursday to draft a grant proposal. At 9:20 she answers a client email "quickly," then tidies her shared drive, then reads an industry article that seems relevant. By 11 she feels busy and has written one paragraph, so most of that block was distraction. On Saturday she spends two hours cooking with her kids, exactly as planned. She does no work at all, and that time is pure traction.
How to use it
- 1Before the day starts, put tomorrow's hours on your calendar as blocks for work, rest and people. You can't measure traction in time you never committed.
- 2Before starting anything, ask one question: does this move me toward what this block is for? Ignore whether the task is useful.
- 3At day's end, spend three minutes noting where you drifted and what pulled you. Those notes show you your triggers.