Nir Eyal is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. He is an entrepreneur who has started three companies, two of which have been acquired. He has also taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Nir didn’t plan on being an author, he actually started researching and writing to solve some of his own problems and answer questions he had. And that research has turned into his books. But it is something he loves doing, and he’s able to do it because his first two companies have provided the financial security he needs to do so. As Nir shares, “Now would I give someone advice, "Hey, you know if you want to succeed, go be an author". No. You're just bad at math. It's a terrible business, because it's, you know, the odds of success are puny. Actually the same with startups, though, right? Like the number of startups that succeed. If you start a company, let me tell you, if you start a startup, because you want to get rich and famous, you're stupid. The odds are stacked against you. You're just bad at math. You have to start a company because you have no choice. It's something that is burning inside of you. It's so much easier just to go get a job, just get a paycheck, right? To start a company is so freakin hard. You have to do it because you have no choice. Because if you don't do it, you will regret it.” Four key steps to become indistractable These days--with smartphones, social media, a pandemic, and constant connectedness-- it is so easy to get distracted. But in order to reach your full potential, especially as an entrepreneur, it is critical that we become indistractable. Nir says, “Distraction is not the opposite of focus, the opposite of distraction is traction. Traction is any action that pulls you closer to what you intend to do, things that move you closer to your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. So anything you plan to do with your time is traction, anything else is distraction.” In his years of research and writing for his 2019 book, Nir found that there are four key steps to becoming indistractable. Master internal triggers and realize distraction begins from within Make time for traction Hack back external triggers Prevent distractions with pacts The first step, which is the most important one, is realizing that we can’t blame phones, computers, or social media for distracting us. The root cause of distraction comes from within us--we are bored or lonely or anxious or tired, etc...So we have to learn how to master these emotional triggers in order to stop getting distracted. “Time management requires pain management, that if you don't understand that discomfort you are trying to escape--for entrepreneurs, most of the time, it's uncertainty, right? That as entrepreneurs, we constantly feel “what am I supposed to be doing with my time?” “What's going on with my business?” “Are my employees busy?”. But those are feelings. That's not reality. That's a perception of reality. And so if we don't get those emotions under control, if we don't know how to master those internal triggers, they become our masters. And that's when we go off track. That's when we do all kinds of stuff, working our guts out on the wrong stuff, because it makes us feel good.” Time management tips for entrepreneurs This past year has been a tough year for time management. When both parents are working from home full time, plus you have young kids at home all day as well, things can get hectic. Home life and work blend together, everyone is stressed out, schedules are out of whack. And all of these feelings and emotions that come along with this pressure are what cause us to be distracted from actually getting things done. Nir shares his advice for how to make things more manageable and less crazy. He says we have to plan our time. If you don’t plan your time down to