Books like Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

01

Deep Work

Cal Newport · Self-help

Deep Work is Cal Newport's case that the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task is becoming both rarer and more valuable, and that people who cultivate it will thrive while everyone else stays stuck in shallow busywork.

Shares attention and focus with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

02

Atomic Habits

James Clear · Self-help

Atomic Habits is James Clear's framework for how very small changes — habits so minor they seem to make no difference on any given day — compound into remarkable results over months and years.

Both dig into behavior change.

03

The Power of Habit

Charles Duhigg · Psychology

The Power of Habit is Charles Duhigg's investigation into why habits exist and how they can be changed.

Both dig into behavior change.

04

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

BJ Fogg · Self-help

Tiny Habits is BJ Fogg's distillation of more than two decades of research at Stanford's Behavior Design Lab.

Both dig into behavior change.

05

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Nir Eyal · Business

Hooked is Nir Eyal's framework for designing products that people return to without external prompting.

A kindred self-help read.

06

The Distracted Mind

Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen · Science

The Distracted Mind brings together two distinct research traditions — cognitive neuroscience and psychology of technology — to explain why modern humans find sustained attention so difficult and what can be done about it.

Shares distraction and attention with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

07

Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport · Self-help

Digital Minimalism is Cal Newport's argument that most people's relationship with smartphones and social media is not freely chosen but engineered — the product of business models that monetize attention and design interfaces for compulsion rather than value.

Shares attention and focus with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

08

Hyperfocus

Chris Bailey · Self-help

Hyperfocus is Chris Bailey's second book, narrowing in on the attention piece of his earlier productivity triad.

Shares distraction and attention with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

09

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

Johann Hari · Psychology

Johann Hari's argument is that the collapse of attention is not a personal failing but a political crisis.

Shares attention and focus with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

10

Make Time

Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky · Self-help

Make Time is a practical guide from two former Google Ventures designers who grew frustrated watching their own attention get swallowed by the default rhythms of the modern workday.

Shares distraction and focus with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

11

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr · Science

The Shallows is Nicholas Carr's argument that the internet — and the way we habitually use it, skimming hyperlinked text, watching short videos, checking feeds — is reshaping the neural circuits responsible for deep reading and sustained concentration.

Shares attention and technology with Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

12

Better Than Before

Gretchen Rubin · Self-help

Better Than Before is Gretchen Rubin's synthesis of years of research and personal experimentation on habits.

Both dig into behavior change.