Raising Indistractable Children with Nir Eyal | RachReflects Episode 12

This week, I’m back with Part 2 of an illuminating conversation with Nir Eyal on how we can all free ourselves from distraction. In other words, how can we become indistractable so we may create the life we truly desire and become a version of ourselves that’s living at full potential every day? In Part 1, Nir unearthed for us the root of our distraction and generously shared the essential tools to help us reclaim and master our attention. (If you haven’t yet listened to it, I highly recommend that you do.) If you, like me, are a parent — or plan to be one — then you definitely won’t want to miss this episode, where we delve into what it means to raise indistractable children in a distracting world. The four fundamental steps apply: 1. Scheduling time to be “tractable”, whether that’s time for homework, free play, or screen time. 2. Teaching kids from a young age to master internal triggers or uncomfortable sensations that lead to distraction. 3. Removing external triggers. Some of the negative consequences of social media doesn’t come from the social media per se, but what it displaces — primarily, sleep, which is known to contribute to mental health issues. 4. Make an effort pact: Engage your children to use technology to block out distracting technology. The Forest app, for example, is one way of teaching kids how to be accountable for their own time. “If we’re going to raise indistractable kids, we have to be indistractable parents,” says Nir, an advocate for leading by example. He also introduced me to what he calls “the three psychological nutrients”: Autonomy, Competency and Relatedness that all humans need. How can we then ensure that our children are sufficiently nourished in these areas offline so they won’t see the need to seek them out online? Nir is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and the critically acclaimed Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. He is also an investor who backs habit-forming products he believes improve lives, such as Eventbrite and Canva. He has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, and his writings have been features in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and Psychology Today.

Chapters

• 00:00 - Episode introduction
• 00:50 - Helping children master their focus and attention
• 03:35 - Excessive use of screen time
• 05:15 - 3 Psychological nutrients for our child’s well-being
• 05:57 - Autonomy and why children need it
• 08:05 - Free play and it's nourishing effects
• 13:11 - The importance of sleep and eliminating distractions
• 15:33 - The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought
• 17:03 - Outro

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