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How to Reduce Distraction With Nir Eyal
On being intentional with your time and other ways to become less distracted
Recently, I was roasted by my eight-year-old daughter.
While glancing at my computer screen one day, she saw that I had a lot of tabs opened on my browser. Now, if you know me well, you’d know that I have (what I consider) a major character flaw — I always have too many tabs open, because I always think, “I’m going to get to that eventually.” That ‘thing’ can be a video that I want to watch, a podcast I want to listen to, or a website with beautiful pictures that I can admire, or something related to a task that I have to do (check bank account means having the bank’s website open). If only I had more time. I tell myself, “I’ll get to that.” Every time I do so, I’m always confident that I’m right.
So when my daughter saw I had quite a few tabs, she remarked, “You have a lot of tabs open!”
“So what?” I replied.
“You say I have too many tabs on my iPad, but you have, like…” she started counting. “10!”
“Just because I have a lot of tabs doesn’t mean you should do it too,” I retorted. Monkey see, monkey do, right?
“Well, where do you think I learned it from?!” she exclaimed.