Master Your Focus with Nir Eyal

That's the music for Dinosaur. And it's not because he went to Stanford Graduate School of Business. Literally his books are game-changing, his personal philosophies. Are those that they actually write books of Thou? I'm honored to have this guy on.

I've been a huge follower in fan of his for a very long time, so please join me in welcoming the insightful, the impact, the unstoppable, Mr. Near, a y'all. You're listening to Mick Unplugd, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where Purpose meets Power, and story-spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because,

and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged. Near, how are you doing today, brother?

Oh my goodness, one introduction, you are amazing.

Thank you so much, Mick, and so good to be here with you. Man, you are the amazing one, and every word that I said was true. I've been a huge follower, a huge fan of you and the work that you put out.

“And more importantly, the action that you put behind the work, like I think, and this isn't”

the knock on anyone, so I don't want anyone that's listening or watching to take it this way. But there are a lot of people that have been deemed because this is what society tells us as thought leaders, or maybe even influenceers. And when you go to study them and research them, it's like, there's no substance to the

things that they're actually saying, near, bro, the reason I love you is because I love substance, you make me think, you challenge me, and more importantly, like you're that resource that I'd love to break down today. So just thank you again for being the gentleman and the human being that you aren't. Oh my gosh, I mean, the lot to be coming from you.

So thank you so much. And I'm so curious, what have you read of mine or what really got your juices flowing? Was there something in particular not to put you on the spot, but was there anything in particular that you saw that?

So you do some amazing workshops, you know that hooked in beyond really taught me to

introspect on me a little bit.

“I think, you know, I'm a leader's leader is what I like to be told, but a lot of things”

that we do when the decisions that we make start with us first, and you really force me to look at me, and then indestructible, which we're going to talk about with all the challenges and the the versions that we have or the opportunities that we have, like, how do you live than in focus, indestructible, not just for you as a human, but with your business and business principles as well.

So for me, what you've done is allowed me to take personal things and to business and business and things and to personal with that. Very cool. I appreciate that. Thank you, man.

That you really made my day. Thank you. No, you were the great one, man.

And so near, I always ask my guess this opening question, and that question is what is your

be cause that thing that's deeper than your why, like your true purpose, your true reasoning, that that thing that really gets you out of bed in the morning, right? Like, we could talk about your why, but it's really your be cause that doesn't work. So if I were to say near today, 2026, what's your be cause? Why do you keep doing what you do?

So this is a relatively easy question for me to answer because it's a mantra every P to myself every single day when I tell myself, my purpose is to explain the world so that it can be made better. That's my guess. That's what I'm proficiently.

There's other aspects of my life, right? I want to be an available father, I want to be a great husband, I want to contribute to my community, but in terms of my professional aspiration, I don't need to make a lot of money. That's not my purpose, my purpose is to explain the world so that it can be made better.

“Yeah, that's, that's why you are who you are near, that's why you are who you are.”

And speaking of who you are for those that are watching you listening, man, you've co-founded and sold tech companies, then you transition into like writing and teaching, which most people can't do, especially in the tech space, right? And you've got that unique skill to have the tech, but then also the personality that people are attracted to.

It was a pivotal moment that led you to focus on that intersection of psychology, technology and business. So, my MO in doing my work these days and accomplishing my mission, my purpose to explain

you, but when I read a book that's written by somebody who just wanted to write a book,

I can tell right away, and I don't like to write books that way. I like to explore things that I want answers to. And so my mantra that I repeat in terms of when I'm having trouble writing, when I feel like I'm stuck, I repeat to myself that I just need to follow my curiosity. So I don't write books about what I know, I write books about what I want to know.

They're very personal problems, so with indestructible, I wrote that book because I kept getting distracted. I was the most distracted person you've ever met. I've been diagnosed with ADHD and I was struggling with too much phone use and too much this and too much that and I wasn't focusing on my priorities and what really matters

to be and staying true to my values.

“And so that's why I wrote indestructible.”

And then when it came to be on belief, my new book that's coming out, it was about this

deeper challenge I had of knowing what to do. I had tons of great advice, tons of great information out there, right? If you don't know the answer to something, you Google it. You ask Chatchee PT, the information's out there. And I wanted the benefits of doing the things I needed to do and yet I wasn't doing them.

And I didn't know why and I found that many of the people that I was speaking to my readers of my work and people that I've done consulting with had the same problem. And so I wanted to understand this fundamental question. I was just curious. Why is it that some people are able to accomplish their goals and others aren't?

Is it just skill? Will skill could be learned so that can't be it? Is it information? Well, no. We're drowning information.

Maybe it's resources. And yet there are case studies after case studies of people who have every resource at their disposal and accomplish very little. And yet there's stories of people who have almost nothing and who go on to do great things. There's something deeper going on there and I wanted to know what it was.

And my conclusion was after six years of research and writing is that it's our beliefs. And so every one of all my work stems from that curiosity, from I want to know the answer.

“And so that's why I keep digging and digging.”

I talk about curiosity a lot in sales when I'm talking to sales leaders. I say the best sales people that I know are the most curious people that I know. And also because of how you write your books, the structure of your books are so phenomenal. You write seriously as well if that makes sense. It's almost like I'm reading it from your viewpoint and you're taking me down journeys.

And that's what I love about how you talk to those about just that set up. And we can start with indestructible if you want before we get into to the others. But like your process of just laying out your message. Kind of paper or, you know, and a keyboard wherever you want to do like, "Well, go through your process of how your brain works in structure." Because you're one of the elites that I've ever seen about that.

Thanks. So I mean, to be honest, it starts with a problem. And what you're not seeing, because that you're seeing the end result. But you're not seeing all the, you know, how the sausage is made. You're not seeing all the stupid stuff.

You don't publish all the rough drafts that never see the light of day.

The words that end up on the cutting room floor. That's stuff you don't see. So you're only seeing the good stuff that I let get out there. But for me, it always starts with the problem. So with indestructible, there was a very specific moment in my life that made me dive into this topic,

which was my daughter and I had some time together. Just some quality time. And I remember we had this activity book of things that dads and daughters could do together. So they had like a little Sudoku puzzle. There was a, you could make a paper airplane through and contest all kinds of little games we could play. And one of the activities was to ask each other this question.

“The question was, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want?”

And I wish I could tell you what she said, but I couldn't. Because in that moment, I just had to just check this one thing on my phone real quick. And by the time I looked up for my device, she was gone. Because I was sending her a very clear message that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was. And she went to go play with some toy outside.

And so that's when I realized that I had to do something because it wasn't just with my daughter. It would happen when I would say, oh, today's going to be the day I exercise and eat right. But I didn't, and I wouldn't. Today's going to be the day I work on that big project. I'm really going to focus on, you know, calling that lead.

I'm working on or writing that chapter in my book or doing that thing that's on my to do listen yet somehow 20 30 45 minutes later here. I am checking the news or scrolling Twitter or checking email. Everything, but the thing I said I was going to do.

I would want the power to be indestructible. I just want the power to do the things that I know I want to do.

“Right, that that that I think is the most important skill of the century is that is the world is becoming more distracting.”

And it's not going to become less distracting. It's only with AI and virtual reality and all the stuff that's happening in reality. The world is only going to become a more distracting place. So the superpower, the skill of the century is going to be the ability to follow through. Because it turns out that people want to do business with those who follow through.

People want to be in relationships with people who follow through. We hate flakes, the flaky-beatah suck. And so that's what I wanted. I wanted to exercise if I said I would. I wanted to be there for my daughter if I said I would.

To be there for my friends, to for my business associates. I just wanted to follow through on the things I know I should do. So I wanted to stop getting distracted. And so that was the impetus for writing that. So I love that.

And I know that there's people that are watching or listening right now. That are like near that's me too. I want to stop being distracted. What are some things that people can do in a practical sense? Sure.

To be that person or that entity that follows through. Yeah.

So let's first start with what is distraction.

We have to kind of define our terms. Okay. So what is distraction?

“Well, the best way to understand what distraction is.”

To understand what distraction is not. What's the opposite of distraction? The opposite of distraction is not focus. People think it's focused. It's not focus.

The opposite of distraction is. Traction. It's right there in the word. Traction and this traction. Both words come from the same Latin root.

Trahare, which means to pull. And they both end in the same six letters. ACTI went. That spells. Action act.

So the first thing we need to realize is that. Is that distraction is not something that happens to me. Okay. It's right there in the word. It ends with action.

Distraction is an action that I take. Okay. That pulls me away from my goals. Away from my values. Away from becoming the kind of person I want to become.

Those are acts of distraction. Acts of traction. The opposite of distraction is any action that pulls me towards. What I said I was going to do towards my values towards becoming the kind of person I want to become.

So the most important thing here is to realize that.

That what separates traction from distraction is one word. And that one word is intent. As Dorothy Parker said the time you plan to waste is not waste a time. So one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they beat themselves up because I scrolled. Facebook or TikTok or I watched a YouTube video when I shouldn't.

That's actually not the problem. It's not the medium. It's not what you're doing. That's the problem. It's why you're doing it.

“If you want to watch something on Netflix or scroll on Instagram or whatever you want to do.”

Do it. Why is playing a video game somehow morally inferior to watching golf on TV? Whatever you want to do with your time. You're grown up. You can do whatever you want.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. So we need to stop vilifying the technology. We need to stop thinking that this is the reason for the problem. It's not our phones that are causing the problem.

The problem is much deeper than all that.

We're going to get to that in a second. So that's the first step. Realizing that anything you plan to do ahead of time is traction. Anything that is not that is distraction. So one of the worst forms of distraction is when people justify to themselves. They say, well, I'm doing something I have to do anyway.

I'm checking my email because I'm at work. I need to check email at some point. I'm cleaning up my desk because that's something I got to do anyway. I got to take out the trash. I got to clean the dishes or whatever.

But what turns out if that's not what you said you were going to do ahead of time, it's just as much of a distraction. So what I used to do is to get into work. And I say, okay, I have that big important project I need to work on. I need to work on this big important thing.

But let me just check email for a minute. Let me just scroll that slack channel. Let me just catch up on industry news because I'm supposed to do that at some point. So what's the big deal if I do it now versus later? And what I didn't realize is that that is the most dangerous form of distraction.

Because you don't even realize you're off track. You're justifying it to yourself. Because you're like, oh, I'm checking email. That's a work related task. But if it's not what you said you were going to do,

it's the most dangerous form of distraction. Because you don't even realize you're off track. Because you've justified it to yourself. So you have traction. You have distraction.

Now let's talk about what prompts us to take these actions. We have triggers. We have two kinds of triggers. The first trigger is what most people think of. It's called an external trigger.

It's the pings, the dings, the rings, all these things in our outside environment. Okay. That's what we tend to blame. Turns out that studies find that external triggers, the pings, the dings, the rings,

only account for 10% of your distractions.

it's because of an external trigger. So what's the other 90%? 90% of the time that we get distracted.

“It's not because of what's happening outside of us.”

But rather it's because of what's happening inside of us. Exactly. It's those internal triggers. What are internal triggers? Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states

that we seek to escape. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. Once you realize this, that distraction is not a moral failing. It's not a character flaw. There's nothing broken about you in any way, shape, or form.

It's simply you haven't acquired the skill to deal with discomfort. It's all it is. You just haven't acquired the skill to deal with this comfort. You feel an urge. You feel discomfort.

And you think that pain means suffering. That you have to escape that pain. No. It's not true. It's a lie.

That these internal triggers are the reason we get distracted. We're lonely. So we check Facebook or maybe Tinder. We're uncertain. We Google.

We're bored. We check Sportscore is stock prices, the news. Whatever. We worry about people's problems 10,000 miles away. So we don't have to think about our own lives.

Once you appreciate that fact, once you understand that the vast majority of our distractions begin from within, you can stop blaming your technology and start finding practical solutions to deal with that emotional discomfort, so that you can master the internal triggers so they don't become your master. So to answer your question, a little bit long-winded.

The first step, master the internal triggers.

“You have to find out what am I going to do when I feel bored,”

loan some indecisive fatigued. Am I going to escape it by smoking it away by drinking it away by clicking it away by scrolling it away? Or am I going to figure out a way to use that same discomfort to propel me towards traction rather than trying to escape it with distraction? That's step number one.

Step number two is making time for traction. So whatever it is that you find important in your life. You need to define that as part of your values. What are values? Values are attributes of the person you want to become.

Okay, so if you want to know what someone's values are, don't ask them. They're going to lie. Why? Because they're lying to themselves. We tell ourselves, oh, health is very valuable.

Nothing more important than your health, right? But have you scheduled time to exercise? No. Oh, my family. My family is number one.

No, I'm a family man. Nothing. Number one, have you scheduled time to take your wife on a date or to spend time with your kids or call your siblings or your parents or be active in your community? Is it on your schedule?

No. Well, then it's not one of your values. How about education? That's very important. You've got to stay with the mind, right?

You've got to invest in your mind and read and do things like that to become more educated. Well, is it on your calendar? Is it on your schedule? No. Well, then it's not one of your values.

Because your values are determined by how you spend two things. Your money and your time. Those are your values. So just like you have a checkbook or credit card statement that accounts for how you spend all your money, your calendar is how you spend your time.

So if it's not on your calendar, it's not one of your values.

“So you have to turn your values into time.”

And so you can't say you got distracted. Unless you can tell me what did you get distracted from? You can't say you got distracted unless you know what you got distracted from. So if your calendar is open, you got lots of bunch of white space in your day. Maybe you got a dentist appointment or something.

And that's it. You have no right to say you got distracted. Because what did you get distracted from? There's nothing on your calendar. So you have to turn your values into time by putting time boxes in your calendar for what you want to do.

The third step is to hack back those external triggers.

So this is what we talked about. The 10% of the ping's things and rings. It's kind of kindergarten stuff, you know, you clean up your cell phone. That maybe takes 10 minutes. It's not a big deal.

What takes longer is what about those meetings? I don't know nothing more than a distraction. What about those stupid emails that didn't need to be sent and received? Right? Those are the external triggers that we need to hack back.

Each and every one of those external triggers that can be nothing more than a distraction. And then finally the fourth step is to prevent distraction with packs, which is where we decide in advance what we will do when we are tempted towards distraction. We create a firewall if you will against distraction. Once we do these four steps, master internal triggers,

make time for traction, hack back external triggers, prevent distraction with packs, anyone can become indestructible. Real talk. I'm always on the move.

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So, you know, when you asked me earlier, like, what specifically and I told you to look internal, like, best specifically what I was talking about. Because I have, I've had a method for 15 years now that in my companies and it's a rule for all of us,

we only check our email three times a day. I only check mine twice. All right. Because you condition people to distraction. Mainly, mirror.

You email me at 805 and I responded at 810. Right? And we do that every day. Well, then you email me at 805 and at 810 comes and I haven't responded to.

You're going to text me. Call me. Leave me a voicemail. Send me an email that says,

“did you get my call, my text, my voicemail, right?”

Like, all that. Because you condition people that your desk or your headspace is the emergency room for someone else's problem. That usually is not your problem or front or desk. It's a problem.

Someone else's priority has become your priority. Yeah. And you list. You helped me reinforce that in a much better way by not just on the email side.

You know, now in phones are important. I get it. But I schedule time on my calendar when I'm going to do certain things. Right? So if I'm going to be on social media,

because sometimes my business depends on me to do that. Right? So my calendar when I'm going to do that. But then I drill down because you also taught me to drill down and be specific.

I'm not just going to say, hey, from 10 to 10, 15, I'm on social media. I'm going to say, hey, from 10 to 10 to 5, I'm going to go respond to DMs. And from 10 to 5 to 10,

I'm going to put out a new post. And from 10 to 10 to 15, I'm going to do engagement. I'm going to go like a comment back. So I'm structured.

So that now I'm creating this habit. I'm forming habits. I'm forming mental blocks. So that I know exactly what I'm doing. And so in what most people would see as distraction

is very intentional for me. And now my laser focus on my other things are there. So again, I applaud you because those are things that I got. That's fantastic. I mean, you said a lot there,

which is really worth reinforcing. One thing that you said is in terms of how we're conditioned by our companies. You know, distraction in the workplace is a symptom of dysfunction. Distraction is a symptom of dysfunction. That the reason we see people so distracted at work these days

and it is taking a huge economic toll on our productivity. We could do so much more if we could work without distraction. We all know this intuitively. How much time are we spending wasting on stupid meetings that we didn't need to go to pointless emails

that didn't need to be answered and checked. You know, spending time on nonsense. That's nothing more than a distraction. We can be so much more productive.

The problem is that it is part of the company culture

that a sick company culture where you can't raise your hand and say, hey boss, I can't do my best work when you constantly expect me to reply to every email in 30 seconds. If you can't raise your hand and say, this isn't working. I can't do my best work like this.

If you can't say that, that's the problem. It's not the technology. People love to blame technology. Not the technology. The technology is a tool.

The problem is that you have a crappy company culture where people are scared to talk about this problem. But once they do talk about the problem, they fix it. Just like any other problem.

We fix problems for our clients all day long. We can fix problems for ourselves as well. But it's the company culture where you can't talk about this problem because you're afraid people will think you're not a team player or you're not putting in the work

because you don't check your cell phone every 30 seconds. That's exactly the problem.

The second thing you said that I think was super interesting

is that a lot of people misunderstand how to time box properly. This is why time boxing is so much better than to do list. A lot of people use stupid to do lists. I like to make sure I understand the research.

I don't just go on what everybody else says to do. For example, the two-minute rule. If a task takes less than two minutes, do it. That is terrible advice. Because everything takes two minutes.

So every email is two minutes. Two minutes, two minutes. You spent three hours now checking email for two minutes. One minute piece of advice. Just say no.

“If you want to prioritize, tell people no.”

Are you nuts? That's kind of advice that a professor gives who's got tenure.

If you tell your boss no, the person who cuts your checks. They're going to fire you. You can't just say no. That's stupid. There's much better way to do it.

To do list. Another piece of stupid advice. Keep your to-do list. Turns out to do list are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity.

Why? Because to do list have no constraints.

You can always add more to it to do list.

So what do we do? When we get affirmation from, oh, look how many cute boxes I'd check off. What do we do the important stuff? No.

Do we do the hard stuff? No. We do the easy stuff. We do the fun stuff. We do the urgent stuff.

Not the hard and important work we have to do to move our careers and our lives forward. So because careers, because to do list have no constraints, there's no feedback. So what you've done and the right way to use these

time boxes is to have a feedback loop. So the goal of time boxing. This is what most people misunderstand about time boxing.

“You get it, but I think most people don't.”

Because they think time boxing is about finishing a task. Time boxing is not about finishing anything. It's not about finishing. To do list are about finishing. That's how you get reinforcements.

I crossed off a bunch of cute little boxes. No. In fact, I used to, I'm embarrassed to admit. I used to do a task. And then realize, oh, I didn't write on my to-do list.

So let me go back and write on my to-do list. Just so I can check it off. How stupid is that? Because you needed. You needed.

Maybe not you, but people that do this and there's someone. Dear to me and I'll just say that. So I'm not saying, hey. Like sequinified busyness by what's on it. To do list has been marked off.

And it's like at the end of the day, I don't care. I don't need. I don't need to know that it took 15 steps to get this one thing done. I don't care how it got there. Right, right, right, but why does do that?

Perfect. Exactly. Exactly.

“But people do this because that's how they measure their productivity.”

Right.

But rather, what here's what happens when you keep it to do list.

And you run your life. There's nothing wrong with getting things out of your head and onto a piece of paper. That's fine. The problem is when you run your life on it to do list. That's the problem.

Because here's what happens. You look at a task and you say, okay, I got to make this presentation. All right. Well, let me prepare the slides for this presentation. So I start working on it.

I'm working on it for five minutes. And then I get some email notification. Let me just check that real quick. And then I get some my Slack notification. And then I got to, you know, let me go get a cup of coffee.

And then, oh, Janet's at the water cooler. Hey, Janet, how you doing? Wait, what was I working on again? I totally forgot. Right.

And so now I have to get back into, well, what was I doing? I don't even remember.

Here's what happens with someone who keeps a time box calendar rather than to do list.

The goal of a time box calendar is not to finish anything.

“What? It's not to finish anything. What does that mean? What's the goal of a time box calendar?”

The goal of a time box calendar is to work on or do whatever you said you were going to do. Whatever you said you were going to do, whether that's that big presentation, making those sales calls being with your daughter doesn't matter. Whatever you said you were going to do for that time period without distraction for as long as you said you were. Why is that so much better?

Traction and action. That's exactly right. So what you're going to do by doing that is by saying, hey, I'm going to work on this presentation for 30 minutes. Okay, that's it. I'm going to work on it no more and no less 30 minutes. Nothing else am I going to do.

Then I can say, hey, I worked on this presentation for 30 minutes. The slide presentation needs to be 30 slides long and I got done three slides. Well, that means I need nine more time boxes to finish the entire task. So for the first time, you know how long things take you. So what you've learned over time is that, hey, it takes me five minutes to respond to my DMs.

It takes me 10 minutes to do this, 10 minutes to that. But you've only learned that by having time boxes so that you can assess how long things take. Most people never figure that out because they work in a test for five minutes. Get distracted. Forget what they were working on.

Do something else checking email because email will always tell you what to do next. And then they have no idea how long things things take. And then at the last minute before the deadline, they stay up all night and do a crappy job at the last minute. That's what most people do. We don't have to live that way.

There's a much lower stress way to be which is to become indestructible to learn how long things take you by time boxing by using this is fantastic technique. And what that did for me near and and we're going to talk about the next book. I'm going to go promise. I just I just love. Indestructible so much so it's become way life for me.

But. People use the term multi tasking like it's a badge of water. I'm great at multitasking. I can do 10 things at once and I tell people this, now you can't. You're switch tasking, but you're never multitasking. And you know, I guarantee there's somebody that's listening to this episode right now that has multiple screens or tabs and one of those tabs.

I promise you is email or slack or something that's a communication channel and your eyes are just right there most of the time. And when that alert goes off like near talking about switch what you're doing. And you go over there. You were not responding to an email talking to a client and doing a purchase order all at the same time.

That's right. Now what you can do that's absolutely right. You can't multitask at the same thing at the same time. So you can't do two math problems at the same time. You can't listen to two podcasts episode at the same time. You can't watch two television shows at the same time. You can't answer two emails at the same exact time. What you're doing is exactly described is called task switching.

You're going back and forth and you're losing something in that process. You're losing focus, you're losing concentration. What you can do, there is a small hack here. You can do what I call multi channel multitasking. So that's when you engage different sensory channels. So for example, you can absolutely listen to a podcast while you're driving.

“No problem because one is, you know, the physical channel where you're driving the car and you have to pay attention with your eyes.”

But then you can also listen to something have a conversation, let's do a podcast, have a phone call while you're driving. So you can do multi channel multitasking. So what I do is I'll engage the physical channel. For example, in the gym, I'll listen to audiobooks.

So I'll check two boxes off at once. I check my value of educating myself of always learning more.

As I'm doing it, one of my other values which is taking care of my health or maybe if I go on a walk with a friend. That you can't actually do, but you can't do the same sensory channel at the same time. You're absolutely right. Good stuff. All right, near. I dominated because selfishly I just wanted to talk about, uh, indestructible. You can see how much I might get, right? I love it. It's my favorite book, I'll get it.

“But the floor is yours now. What is near when I talk? What do you have going on?”

What's going on in near's world? Well, I've been, um, after six years of working hard on, uh, trying to uncover another layer deeper, right?

So here's what happened after indestructible is published. You know, I do these office hours where anybody can call me in for 15 minutes.

We can talk about whatever you want to talk about. If you've read one of my books, I'd love to hear reader feedback. And I love to help people with whatever challenges they might face that I might have done some research into. And, um, every once in a while, maybe like one out of every 20 calls. Somebody would call me and say, hey, I read indestructible. I really loved it, but here's the problem. You see, it didn't work. I said, oh, wow, it didn't work. Tell me more. You know, I spent five years writing it. There's 30 pages of citations to peer reviewed studies.

I know it changed my life and sold half a million copies. I hear from people all the time why it works. But I'm so curious to tell me more. Like I want to learn what didn't work for you. Let's talk about step one. Had it step one go mastering internal triggers. Tell me how that went for you. Ah, you know, you know, near I read it. I read it. They tell me. I just, um, I didn't do it. Was the problem. Okay, I'd say no problem. That happens. Maybe you skipped a step two, right? Making time for traction. Had that go tell me about the how that went.

You know, I also read that too. I just didn't, I just didn't do that either. And so people would wait for months to tell me that the book that they read, but didn't implement didn't work for them.

“And I thought for a while, like, wow, what's wrong with me? Like, what did I do wrong in this book? And what's, you know, what?”

And then I realized actually, I do this too. I have books on the shelf that I've read, but haven't put into practice. I've paid gurus and experts to give me advice that I haven't done anything with. So why is that? Like, isn't that super interesting that we know what to do? We know the behavior. We know the benefit we want. And yet we don't do it, right? Like, so what's going on? What's deeper there? And so what I realize is that motivation is something that we don't understand well. That I certainly did. And I thought that motivation was, if I know what to do, and I want the benefit, I just do it.

But there's clearly something else here that what's missing are beliefs, that I can know what to do. I can know the behavior. And I can know the benefit. I can know why I'm doing it. But if I don't believe in the outcome, I won't sustain my motivation. And it turns out that that is the crucial element of who succeeds and who fails. It's about who persists. And in order to persist, we have to believe that we are doing the right thing and that we will get the benefit. So for example, if you're working for a boss, who you don't believe has your best interest at heart.

Well, how motivated are you going to be if you don't believe you're going to get that benefit of that promotion and that raise, because you don't trust your boss. You're not going to sustain your motivation or conversely, what if I know I need to exercise or whatever the case might be, I know I need to persist at this job. I know I need to make those sales calls, but I don't believe that I can do it.

But I don't believe I can do it. I'm also going to lose motivation. So knowing what to do, even if I know it conceptually, here's what I need to do.

And I want the reward. I want the benefits. It's not enough. I have to have that belief. So motivation is not a straight line. It's a triangle. You have to have the behavior, the benefit, and the belief.

I was looking for where's the book to tell me how to engineer my beliefs? How do I figure out what beliefs to adopt in which ones to let go of?

“And all I found was a lot of gobbledygook around positive thinking and manifesting, and none of it's really supported by good research.”

In fact, a lot of it shows that a lot of the stuff that people are doing these days are is actively backfiring, just thinking positive or even manifesting. Most people are doing it completely wrong in a way that actually hurts you. And so I really wanted a science back to approach to figuring out how do you break through your limitations, so that you can achieve break extraordinary results.

Love it, brother. I freaking love it. You know, near I also want to give you the floor really quick too, because you have some of the most amazing workshops that you put on.

“How can people find out about those and what are a couple that you have going on or that people can go just go either purchase or yourself study on their own?”

I appreciate it. So yeah, so at the moment, it's just the books, not doing any workshops at the moment, I probably will at some point, but you can the most important thing is if it is an interesting topic, if you found that, you know, you have aspirations in your life that you know you're capable of that you can do more, but for one reason or another, it's not happening. Maybe their relationships in your life that aren't repaired, maybe you have goals that you haven't met, you know, that New Year's resolution that keeps coming up year after year and you say, okay, next year I'll do it next year. I'll do it. What's underlying that? What's what's what's what's, can I tell a quick research study real quick that blew my mind?

I love this study. So this was the one that really blew my mind. So in the 1950s, there was a biologist by name of Kurt Richter and Richter wanted to pay out a very simple question. He wanted to figure out how long a wild rat could swim. Okay, pretty simple. So he took a rat, put it in a cylinder of water, he sat there with a timer, turns out 15 minutes, 15 minutes before the rat gave up and died and drowned under water, 15 minutes. Then he had an idea for another experiment. He wanted to see what would happen if he took a new group of wild rats, put them in the water, and this time right before the 15 minute mark when he knew they were starting to struggle and would soon give up.

What would happen if he reached in, pulled out the rat, dried it off, let it catch its breath, and then plunk, put it back inside the water. Now he did this a few times.

And he wanted to see how much longer the rat would swim for. What would happen if the rat knew that salvation might be possible that this hand might reach in and save it? How much longer would the rat swim for? Started with 15 minutes, 15 minutes, it gave up and died. How much longer would the rat swim for when it was conditioned to be hopeful to think that maybe something would save it? What do you think, how much longer would the rat swim for? Maybe you already know this study, I don't know. Tell me.

What do you think? Take a guess. I have no idea. How much longer would the first trial? How much longer after he saved the rats? 30 minutes. That would be amazing, right? If it could double the persistence of the rat, that'd be incredible. Higher, keep going. An hour. An hour. Oh my goodness. If I could give you some kind of intervention, that could make you four times more persistent, right? You're working on that hard project. I can make you work four times harder. You're making those sales calls. I can help you sustain, make four times the sales calls. That would be incredible, right? The unbelievable.

Keep going. Four hours near. I'll tell you the answer. They didn't swim for double. They didn't swim for 60 minutes. They didn't swim for two hours. They didn't swim for four hours. They swam for 60 hours, Nick. They went from 15 minutes to 60 hours of straight swimming. Why? What happened? What changed? Same bodies, right? They didn't all of a sudden become super rats, same exact physical strength, same exact environment, same experiment that didn't change. We can't ask the rats what changed in their minds, but the only variable left is that something was unlocked in their brain. They suddenly had a hope, a belief that something might say that if they kept trying, if they kept persisting.

“This is the lesson for us, that when we change our beliefs, we become more persistent, we unlock something that is always there within us, and we can achieve things that we never imagined. That's what becoming beyond belief is all about.”

I love it. I love it. I can't wait. Super excited. Near, man. This has been a true masterclass. Again, selfishly I asked the questions because there are some things I need it today. You have no idea what that meant. We can go much deeper for sure. We didn't scratch the surface. There's so much to be unbelief, but it was fun. We should do it again.

Whenever you name me, you just know I'm here for you, brother. I appreciate that very much. Great to see you, Nick, and reach out any time as well. Looking forward to talking again soon.

“You got it to all the viewers on this news, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.”

That's another powerful conversation on Mick Unplug. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen, share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave it review.

Some more people can find there because I'm really rushed, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay unplugged.