We Are Living in a Time of Epic Distraction. Best-Selling Author Bob Goff Has the Tools to Help Us Get Back to What Really Matters

Midway into my Zoom interview with Bob Goff, he receives a call—and he takes it.

“Hi, it’s Bob here!” the best-selling author, lawyer, and humanitarian says in his cheery demeanor.

This exchange between Goff and the caller, a man named Drew, lasted less than 30 seconds. (Goff told him to reach back in an hour.) It would be easy to label Goff’s picking-up as ironic given that I’m interviewing him about distractions. Or more specifically, about UnDistracted, his new book about how we’re all juggling a million things, which has pulled us far away from what matters.

Instead, Goff’s actions exemplify how he strives to live an “undistracted life”, as he defines it. Doing so includes being more accessible and open to one another—even strangers who randomly call him. (More on that later.) Part of being undistracted means loving your neighbor, “whether they're across an ocean in Ukraine or they're across the street here in San Diego.”

In UnDistracted, Goff lays out how we’ve all gotten far from ourselves. “A lot of us have gotten distracted by all the things going on around us and we forgot what was going on within us,” he says. His goal? To bring us back to a wildly authentic, attuned, mindful way of life, which he mapped out for us during our (very fun!) conversation. “I want to return people to that. Let's figure out what happened and then go back and say, ‘can we reconstruct that?’"

A Conversation with Bob Goff

Bob, the crux of your new book is about the distractions stealing us from matters. What are you seeing and how is this hurting us?

We have this myth of multitasking. We think we could do several things at once—and we really can't. We can do several things in order, but not several at once.

Do this exercise with me. Tell me the first three alphabet letters starting with A.

A, B, C…

Okay. Now the first four numbers in a row, starting with one.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Now the next two letters…

D… whoa…

Right? When you're trying to switch from this to that to this, that's what distraction does. It gets you. You can't live your life. The A, B, C, one, two, three is simple stuff, but it's the grinding of the gears in between those simple things that get us. Because you're saying: Where did I leave off? And where do I start again? So part of that is figuring out what happened around us that got us so distracted.

There's a great saying that I’ve heard in the South: Be where your feet are. Even though you might be in proximity to the people that you love, you might not be present with them. You might be thinking about this thing and this thing, or you’re on your phone. So you have to create some strategies to help you be where your feet are.

What are some signs of distraction to look for?

It’s thinking about that last bit—the A, B, C—and where you left off. If you’ve ever lost your keys, you think to yourself: Where was the last place I remember seeing them? Let's say you've lost your joy. Think to yourself: When was the last time I felt joy? If you felt distracted, ask yourself: When was the last place I felt undistracted? If your relationships have been strained: When was the last time I felt truly close, not just in proximity to people, but safe enough to be vulnerable?

What’s the cause? How do we allow ourselves to get so distracted and away from what matters?

What happens is that we make up these stories, oftentimes when we’re young. For me, eight-year-old Bobby was this happy-go-lucky kid, but some wonky stuff happened in my life—that happens in everybody's in different ways—and I made up a story because I didn't have the emotional tools to deal with it. The story was: Everybody's going to leave me. I will be left all alone. And that just wasn't true. But I made the story up and I decided I was always going to be really fun and never go deep with anyone. That was a rule I created to support the story. Cut to then 20-year-old Bobby and I have no relationships. Why? Because I have a rule to never go deep with anybody—because, again, that was a story I made up.

What I am getting to is: What was a story you made up when you didn't have the emotional tools to deal with something? Ask yourself: Was that story true? And if it was true, is it still true? What were the rules you made up to support that story, and are those rules still useful to you? I found that the rules I made up weren't helpful for me anymore. So by going back, I saw what was really going on. When you realize that, then you can be fully present. You can't be present if you haven't figured out what got you there.

I want us to go figure out what the rules were and revisit them. And maybe rewrite those rules. They invented the pencil 100 years before they invented the eraser. Well, now that the eraser is here—let's use it!

How can we begin to drop these distractions—today?

You can do an audit. To start, choose a particular letter and name some things in your life that start with that. Let’s say F. Think of your faith, your family, your finances, your fun—even philanthropy if you can't spell! Now do a bit of an audit. See if your faith is distracting you. Maybe you feel you don't believe enough or you feel you believe too much. Maybe you feel you’re surrounded by good people but they’re in your grill about everything. Sometimes even in faith communities, we can feel controlled. And with family, there may be potential distractions there.

[At this point, Bob receives a call.]

Check this out! I put my phone number in the back of two and a half million books.

It's Bob here. Hi. What's up? [A person on the other end named Drew says a few things.]

Hi, Drew. Yeah, totally. Give me a call back in an hour and we can talk about it, Drew. Okay? Awesome. I'll talk to you in an hour!

I get about 30 or 40 calls a day, all from putting my cell phone number in the back of my book.

What has making your phone number available to the world taught you?

What if we say one thing we’re going to do with our family is be more available? Maybe that [family] doesn’t end with our immediate family. Maybe we can have a broader view of what family means to include a guy named Drew. I can be available to him as I would be to other people.

These days, somebody gets a big part in a movie and suddenly they're unavailable. A pastor of a really big church suddenly has people who have people who have people. I’m not saying what people ought to do, but for me, I decided that availability was going to awaken in me to a bunch of really neat things. [Phone rings.] And here’s another one! About every four minutes I get a call.

Bob, you do a lot. You’re a teacher, an educator, an author, a lawyer, a humanitarian. You’re receiving many phone calls a day. Do YOU really not get distracted?

I'm still a student of all this stuff. But here’s something to think about: What if we find things that are bigger than the distractions that we have in our life? For me, I like to get involved. I don't want to be the guy with all the opinions about things. I want to do something about it, not just raise a fist in the air but really get some skin in the game. You don't have to go across a nation to do this, you can go across the street to do this. Find somebody on your block that needs an apple pie and make it right. I don't know if you've ever made one; I haven't. But hey, figure out how to do it, because if doing [something like that] isn't going to work at the end of your block, it isn’t going to work at the end of the earth. It can be that simple. Wash somebody's car—unless it's really expensive! It’s those small steps of kindness that are cumulative, intentional, and bigger than our distractions.

Altogether, I believe we make one really well-adjusted person. But we need each other. We really do. How have we gotten to the point of vilifying one another just because we have a different camera angle on life? That becomes a distraction. Instead, let’s make ourselves available to one another.

Bob Goff spent decades as an attorney, trying to figure out how to live a whimsical, impactful life. These days, he calls himself a "recovering lawyer" because after practicing law for 25 years, then becoming the Honorary Consul to Uganda, he gave up his law firm to pursue writing and speaking full time. He's a New York Times best-selling author, runs a popular weekly podcast, and recently turned farmer at The Oaks just outside San Diego, California. You can learn more at bobgoff.com and order his new book, Undistracted, here.