Nir And Far: Business, Behaviour and the Brain

Nir’s Note: This article is a collaboration between Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and me. He researches moral and political psychology and business ethics. He has delivered four TED Talks and written two best-selling books. We’ve been friends for years, and our daughters often played together when I lived in New York City.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Children and Technology: 3 Things Parents Need To Know https://www.nirandfar.com/children-and-technology/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Can virtual meetings be as effective as in-person ones?

It’s one thing to eliminate distractions in meetings. It’s another to do the same in virtual meetings.

Now that virtual teams are becoming a norm, many coworkers have never met each other in person. Yet, they’re expected to work every day toward a shared goal. Rapport and trust become even more crucial in virtual workplaces but also may be trickier to establish.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Banish Virtual Meeting Boredom https://www.nirandfar.com/virtual-meeting-boredom/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

You’re probably not going to fulfill all your goals this year. And if you don’t, it likely won’t be because you’re incapable; it will be because you got in your own way.

A slew of limiting beliefs will distract you from your goals and New Year’s resolutions. Below are four ways you’re likely to shoot yourself in the foot with self-limiting beliefs, plus how to get rid of them.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Limiting Beliefs: Ditch the 4 Dream Killers Holding You Back https://www.nirandfar.com/limiting-beliefs/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Noah Kagan is the Chief Sumo at AppSumo and runs a YouTube Channel with over 1 million subscribers. His new book, Million Dollar Weekend, is out now.

Airbnb began as a weekend project when the founders sent an email offering their living-room air mattress to hotelless attendees of a major design conference. Facebook started when Mark Zuckerberg built a clone of ConnectU over the weekend and told everyone in his dorm about it. Even Microsoft began with Bill Gates making software quickly for a company in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Magic of Now, Not How

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

How can we become more discerning buyers in a world that encourages us to spend?

We have to stop falling for subtle sales psychology tactics.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Sales Psychology: Why You Make Terrible Buying Choices https://www.nirandfar.com/sales-psychology/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Hindsight bias occurs when people feel that they “knew it all along” – when they believe that an event is more predictable after it becomes known than it was before it became known2 .

In other words, when we’re looking back at an event after it already happened, knowing that outcome influences our perception of the events leading up to it.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

You could feel the excitement buzzing through the WhatsApp channel. An A-list fitness guru reportedly spending millions of dollars yearly to reverse aging was in town to hold an in-person workout.

Without hesitating, I signed up. I was interested in seeing Mr. Guru in action and eager to be inspired by his approach.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Listening to Fitness Gurus is Making You Fat https://www.nirandfar.com/fitness-guru-myth/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Whenever you have a disagreement with someone you care about and who cares about you, pose this straightforward question:

“How important is this to you on a scale of 1 to 10?”

The size of the disagreement doesn’t matter. Whether it’s about dinner choices or naming your first-born child, this method helps avoid unnecessary disagreements and keeps relationships strong (most of the time, see exceptions below).

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Score Your Spats: How to Stop Arguing and Enhance Your Relationships https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-stop-arguing/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Understanding the distinction is the first step to managing your time

Because I write about distraction and how to avoid it, I often get asked the question “Aren’t distractions sometimes a good thing? Don’t we all need some distraction in our lives?”

Nope!

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Crucial Difference Between Distraction and Diversion https://www.nirandfar.com/distraction-vs-diversion/

End boring, useless meetings once and for all.

We’ve all been in a dumb meeting—one that makes you think, “This doesn’t even apply to me,” “I’m learning nothing from this,” or, worst of all, “This meeting could have been an email.”

I’m sure you’ve commiserated with colleagues over what a time suck dumb meetings can be.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: This Meeting Could have Been an Email: From Time Suck to Unstuck https://www.nirandfar.com/meeting-could-be-an-email/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Some days, the world seems intent on sabotaging your timeboxed calendar.

A meeting goes longer than expected. The daycare center calls to say that your child is ill and has to be picked up ASAP. A project you thought would take an hour to complete instead took three.

Before you know it, the end of the day arrives, and you’ve barely given time to the tasks you had wanted to do.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Scheduling for Life’s Surprises: When Timeboxing is Toast: https://www.nirandfar.com/scheduling-for-surprises/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I sit down and chat with author, Devorah Heitner about her latest book, Growing Up in Public.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Venture capital (VC) is a great opportunity for new entrepreneurs seeking to bring a product to life—but the funding is incredibly difficult to secure.

A 2021 Harvard Business Review survey of almost 900 VC firms found that they consider 101 opportunities on average for every deal they close.

Still, the benefits of VC funding are clear.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Build an Irresistible Product for VC Investors https://www.nirandfar.com/irresistible-for-vc/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Embrace doing something for just a little while

Numerous articles detail the routines of the most successful people in the world: Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at 3:45 a.m. and exercises. Actor and producer Reese Witherspoon eats the same healthy breakfast every day. Oprah meditates early. Author Tim Ferriss journals daily.

Society has become so focused on productivity hacks and packing the most into every day that we think of long-term, consistent routines as the gold standard for spending our time.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: You Don’t Have to Follow the Same Routines Forever https://www.nirandfar.com/short-term-routines/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Dreaming of retirement helps you fantasize about your ideal life—and potentially have it now

Imagine your retirement.

Are you picturing long, lazy days on a tropical beach under coconut trees? Maybe you’ve opted for a life of adventure, traveling to all the places you haven’t been to yet. Perhaps the science fiction novel you’ve always wanted to write is finally pouring out of you. You might spend all your time volunteering for a social or political cause. Or maybe you even go back to work, but in a very different field than before.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: You Can Have Your Retirement Fantasy Today https://www.nirandfar.com/retirement-fantasy/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I sit down with Peter Atwater to find out more about how social mood affects decision making, the economy and the markets.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I sit down and chat with Nick Allen, founder of the mindful drinking app, Sunnyside.

Help them make the most of it by becoming “indistractable”

The end of the school year is a magical time.

Kids have made it through a grueling year of groggy early mornings, rigid class schedules, piles of homework, and endless extracurriculars.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Craft an ‘Indistractable’ Summer Schedule for Your Kids https://www.nirandfar.com/summer-schedule-for-kids/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Become Indistractable to conquer the paradigm shift

What would it look like if the world moved toward a four-day workweek?

The organization, 4 Day Week Global, did a 6-month study of 900 employees across 33 U.S. and Irish businesses in 2022. The study was based on the 100-80-100 model: Employees received 100 percent of their pay for working 80 percent of the time at 100 percent of the productivity.

Participating employees rated the four-day workweek a 9.1 out of 10, claiming it reduced their burnout and fatigue. Businesses said revenue increased and that attracting and retaining talent was easier.

You can read the NirAndFar article on: The 4-Day Workweek: How To Do More With Less https://www.nirandfar.com/4-day-workweek/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Summary. The rise of remote work has made corporate leaders paranoid, thinking they must monitor their employees’ every digital move in order to maintain productivity. But while people often zero in on Facebook, TikTok, or Netflix as potential sources of employee distraction, in truth, we’re often more distracted by the ways in which we work today. Here are four strategies to help managers get to the root causes of what’s distracting their employees: 1) Open a dialogue about distractions; 2) Schedule-sync with your employees; 3) Don’t hold meetings without an agenda; and 4) Set an example.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Managers, Stop Distracting Your Employees https://www.nirandfar.com/managers-distracting-employees/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I sit down with Adam Alter to discuss his new book, Anatomy of a Breakdown.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: ⁠http://www.nirandfar.com/⁠

We get by with a little help from our friends

Now, more than ever, we have to be smart with our money.

Consumer prices at one point increased 9.1 percent from June 2021 to 2022, and financial experts are wary of an economic recession.

Yet navigating our personal finances and adhering to a budget can be a daunting task.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Money Buddies: Don’t Go It Alone with Your Wallet https://www.nirandfar.com/money-buddy/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Busting these myths will set you free from productivity woes

Every time I hear a productivity myth described as fact, I cringe as if listening to a snake oil salesman peddle his cures.

Let me tell you, when I was writing my second book, Indistractable, I endlessly researched productivity and time management. I tried a lot of recommended methods and techniques myself.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: 5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life https://www.nirandfar.com/productivity-myths/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I discuss the overall impact of AI with Robert Glazer, founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Uncover the real sources behind six habits secretly causing misery and learn simple ways to break them for a happier life.

You wake up in the morning irritable and groggy but determined to be productive. Yesterday didn’t go well.

It always seems as if there are not enough hours in the day. You didn’t complete even the one big priority project that would have taken just a couple of hours if you’d focused. Still, you spent all day on the computer, even leaving your partner to handle dinnertime alone and canceling pickleball with friends.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: 6 Habits That Are Secretly Making You Miserable ⁠https://www.nirandfar.com/6-habits-making-you-miserable/⁠

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

The German writer and philosopher Goethe believed he could predict someone’s future based on one simple fact. “If I know how you spend your time,” he wrote, “then I know what might become of you.”

Seeing how you spend your time reveals your values and, thus, shows where your investment of time, attention, and effort will lead you. The trouble is that too many of us spend too much time distracted rather than focused on the things that matter. Wasting time on distractions, which we’ll later regret, leads to a life filled with missed opportunities.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future https://www.nirandfar.com/one-question-to-know-future/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I visit with John Wolford about how he has utilized my tips for fighting distraction in my book Indistractable.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I visit with Jonah Berger about what is inspiration was behind his new book Magic Words.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I visit with Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and podcaster behind Grit and Beyond about her secret behind not procrastinating when she is at work.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I visit with Dr. Mike Rucker about his new book, The Fun Habit.

Links mentioned in the interview:

The Epidemic of Mental Disorders in Business—How Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Spread across Organizations through Employee Mobility

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00018392211014819

Hedonism and the choice of everyday activities

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5024602

https://michaelrucker.com/thought-leader-interviews/max-taquet-hedonic-flexibility-principle

The Life-Changing Magic of the Daytime Date

https://www.wsj.com/articles/daytime-date-couples-ideas-11675446325

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nick Gray and Nir Eyal discuss why most parties suck and how you can make the most out of a party and make friends.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

A Question and Answer Session with Nir Eyal and Nick Grey.

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Bryan Gentry who writes at Idea Link about finding productivity and satisfaction in life and work. Follow him on Twitter at @brygentry for more insights and occasional dad jokes.

If you haven’t finalized your New Year’s resolutions, consider committing to binge-watch a show on a regular basis.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Make Time for Procrastination in 2023 https://www.nirandfar.com/make-time-for-procrastination/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

People make time for what they want, and we should aspire to that.

“People make time for what they want to make time for.”

Though the author is unknown, this saying has become an axiom to soothe distraught thoughts.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So https://www.nirandfar.com/people-make-time-for-what-they-want/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Practicing introspection using these methods will improve your self-awareness, confidence, and motivation in the new year.

As New Year’s Eve approaches, so does the customary exercise of introspection and self-reflection.

The practice of examining ourselves can be a powerfully healthy one. Done correctly, it leads to self-awareness, which increases our ability to exercise control over our emotions and provides a greater sense of well-being.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Kickstart the New Year with a Self-Audit https://www.nirandfar.com/new-year-self-audit/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

How will you spend your precious time in the coming year?

As one year ends and another begins, many of us won’t help but reflect on who we are and who we’d like to become.

Most people aiming to emulate their ideal selves will resort to New Year’s resolutions—but more often than not, those are doomed to fail.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: ’Tis the Season for Reexamining Your Values https://www.nirandfar.com/examining-your-values/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Productivity has many enemies: too many meetings, external triggers like interruptions from coworkers, and multitasking the wrong way, to name a few.

But more often than not, it’s mental traps that trip us up.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: 4 Mental Traps That Kill Productivity https://www.nirandfar.com/productivity-mindset/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Labeling yourself has risks. Give yourself space to change and grow.

Recently, after I gave a virtual presentation on my book Indistractable, a listener wrote something in the Zoom chat that drove me bonkers: “This is great but wouldn’t work for me. I’m a Gemini.”

Insert face plant.

You’d be surprised how often I hear this rationalization or something like it. Sure, only hard-core astrology followers would find any justification in that listener’s statement—but the sad thing is, to some degree, we all use a form of it. Most people hawk “This just wouldn’t work for me” as a valid explanation for not trying something new.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on:  Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead  https://www.nirandfar.com/labeling-yourself/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Even the most productive person can’t have it all. At least, not all at once.

You can search for the best productivity apps to make you more efficient and focused. You can implement productivity hacks and cut distractions. But you still might feel like there simply are not enough hours in the day for everything you need to get done.

Something has to give. You have to prioritize some activities over others—or else you’ll be spread too thin to dedicate yourself to anything fully.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Not Enough Hours in the Day To Slay Your To-Do List  https://www.nirandfar.com/not-enough-hours/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Here’s how to get more out of your day without overtaxing your brain.

Everyone knows that multitasking destroys productivity, right? Haven’t we all seen studies and read articles telling us that it’s impossible to do two things at once?

In some ways, that’s true. The evidence is pretty clear that humans are awful at performing two complex tasks simultaneously.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Surprise! There’s a Right Way to Multitask  https://www.nirandfar.com/multitask-the-right-way/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This article originally appeared in The Harvard Business Review

Subscriptions are hot (and not).

Companies and investors love subscription business models since they generate recurring revenue that translates to predictable cash flow. The more money a company is likely to make in perpetuity, the higher its share price.

From 2012 to 2019, the subscription economy grew more than 300%, and 75% of companies selling directly to consumers said they would offer subscription services by the following year.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on:  3 Reasons Why Subscription Businesses Fail  https://www.nirandfar.com/why-subscription-businesses-fail/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Taking a hard look at how we socialize helps us spend time the way we truly want.

The coronavirus pandemic gave us a pause to ask ourselves if we really should go back to the old way of doing things.

Asking ourselves some potentially uncomfortable questions about the way we get together could help us make important changes now that the world is entering the new normal.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Are We Really Having Fun at Bars or Just Escaping Reality? https://www.nirandfar.com/why-do-people-go-to-bars/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I once tried a digital detox. It failed miserably.

When I realized I was distracted during quality time with my daughter, I blamed my smartphone and made some extreme changes.

I replaced my smartphone with an old-school flip phone so I couldn’t be tempted to use email, Instagram, and Twitter. But I found it too difficult to get around without GPS and the addresses saved inside my calendar app. I missed listening to audiobooks while I walked, as well as all the other handy things my smartphone could do.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Skip the Digital Detox—Abstinence Won’t Work (But This Does)  https://www.nirandfar.com/digital-detox-failure/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

They’re part of the secret of becoming Indistractable.

Got a few minutes? Then why not use them to implement these quick fixes that cut distraction and aid productivity?

I uncovered these productivity fixes while researching how to combat distraction and increase productivity for my book Indistractable, and I’ve relied on them ever since.

From adjustments to your phone, desktop, email, and more, these productivity hacks all take less than 30 minutes to complete, and they’ll help you thwart those external triggers that are usually the culprit for your struggle with distraction.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: 8 Productivity Hacks You Can Do in 30 Minutes https://www.nirandfar.com/productivity-hacks/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Manifesting is bull. There, I said it.

According to Oprah, manifesting is bringing something tangible into your life through attraction and belief—i.e. if you think it, it will come.

It encourages people to bring a goal to life by making vision boards, writing in manifestation journals, chanting positive affirmations, and speaking it into existence.

Cue eye roll.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Surprising Science of “Manifestation” https://www.nirandfar.com/science-of-manifestation/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Since writing Indistractable, I’m often asked what tools and apps I personally use to get the most out of my day.

But after years of research into the psychology of productivity, focus, and the causes of distraction, I’ve learned that there is no one magic, best productivity tool.

Rather, the best tool is the one you’ll actually use,which is why I only rely on a few to be at my best.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Best Productivity Tools: 6 That Stuck With Me https://www.nirandfar.com/best-productivity-tools/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

The internet is inundated with articles that have titles like “The Best Productivity Tools of the Year” and “Productivity Apps That Will Make Your Life Easier.”

Dozens if not hundreds of apps claim to help people focus, manage their time, and stick to healthy habits. The productivity app market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 13.8% from 2022 to 2030.

If you’re not careful, the search for productivity apps can become a distraction in itself. You’re in danger of going from tool to tool thinking that all you have to do is find the right one to end your productivity problems for good.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: A Fail-Safe Trick in your Search for the Right Productivity Apps https://www.nirandfar.com/the-right-productivity-apps/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

This essay is adapted from the book Build For Tomorrow, in which Entrepreneur magazine editor in chief Jason Feifer shows how to thrive by harnessing the power of change.

The loudest voices in our culture today say yes. During a conversation about technology on his mega-popular podcast, Joe Rogan said, “We’ve got a real addiction problem in this country.” In a congressional hearing in 2021, U.S. representative Kathy Castor of Florida said that apps are “designed to be addictive.” During his 2020 presidential campaign run, Andrew Yang said, “Our kids unfortunately are getting addicted to smartphones.”

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: You’re Not Addicted to Technology. Here’s What’s Happening Instead. https://www.nirandfar.com/technology-addiction-or-not/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

My daughter had just pulled the caramel corn out of the oven, and the sticky-sweet smell was almost irresistible. Despite knowing it wasn’t going to help my diet, I was gnawing for a taste. But instead of kindly asking for a small bite, as I should have, I barked, “Damn this caramel corn!”

Cursing my daughter’s hard work earned me a scowl and, if I’m honest with myself, didn’t set a good example for how a grown-up should handle himself. It wasn’t my daughter’s responsibility to manage what I put in my mouth, and it certainly wasn’t the caramel corn’s. Still, I blamed the caramel corn for tempting me, instead of taking responsibility for my urges.

Your reaction to life events—specifically how you explain them—significantly affects your life outcomes.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Locus of Control: How It Affects Your Life, and How To Manage It https://www.nirandfar.com/locus-of-control/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

If we can’t focus, we can’t do our best work.

It seems we’re all checking our phones constantly these days. But all that time spent on our phones leaves little time for anything else.

We need time to think in order to come up with novel solutions to our business challenges.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Distraction at work is a symptom of dysfunction. Here’s how to fix it. https://www.nirandfar.com/distraction-at-work/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

They’re part of the secret of becoming Indistractable.

Got a few minutes? Then why not use them to implement these quick fixes that cut distraction and aid productivity?

I uncovered these productivity fixes while researching how to combat distraction and increase productivity for my book Indistractable, and I’ve relied on them ever since.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: 8 Productivity Hacks You Can Do in 30 Minutes https://www.nirandfar.com/productivity-hacks/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

You don’t have to agree on everything, but you do have to align values in a relationship.

Divorce sucks. My friend is going through one right now. The worst part is that he saw it coming. And he’s not the first of my friends to tell me they ignored the warning signs of an eventual breakup.

Although there isn’t a surefire way to predict which relationships will last, there are some guidelines anyone entering or in a committed relationship should be aware of. They involve having honest discussions to make sure you’re seeing eye to eye with your partner about hot-button issues.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Why Values In a Relationship Are What Make It Last (Or Not) https://www.nirandfar.com/values-in-a-relationship/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Our baseline dissatisfaction is what motivates us, but we must harness it correctly.

Do you often experience a strange malaise, that feeling of blah-ness you can’t quite explain?

The good news is you’re not alone. You may be surprised to learn that, although people don’t often admit it, everyone’s default state is dissatisfaction; it’s how we evolved.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Why People See Problems Where There Are None https://www.nirandfar.com/problems-that-dont-exist/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When it comes to friendships, quality matters more than quantity.

Thirty-six percent of Americans say they are “seriously lonely.” For many people, the solution may seem to be to go out and get more friends.

Yet one study shows that when it comes to friendships, less is more.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: 3 Ways to Filter Your Friends https://www.nirandfar.com/quality-over-quantity-of-friends/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Are you afraid of being alone? Well, you’re not alone in that.

In a 2014 survey of 2,000 adults, one in three said they fear being alone: 40% of women and 35% of men.

The world is riddled with distractions that prevent us from having to feel alone even when we aren’t in the physical presence of another person. While no study pinpoints social media as a cause of depression and feelings of isolation—in fact, social media can be a tool for combatting loneliness—it, along with texting, television, and video gaming, can distract us from embracing solitude.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Embrace, Not Fear, Being Alone https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-embrace-being-alone/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When I first started using Strava (Android / iOS), my weekly running mileage skyrocketed. Nothing had changed other than my perception of how much running was “enough.” Lots of people in my feed were clocking 40 to 60 miles a week, and suddenly my 20-mile weekly average seemed negligible.

The products we use can shape our perception of reality and, as a result, change our actions and lives—all by leveraging the much-studied yet still mysterious power of mindsets.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How Products Shape Our Mindsets and Change Our Reality https://www.nirandfar.com/how-products-shape-mindsets/?swcfpc=1

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

We’re facing a burnout epidemic that goes beyond work. Understanding its causes can help us fix it.

A 2021 Indeed survey shows 52% of 1,500 American respondents say they feel burned out, compared with 43% the year prior; 67% believe that burnout worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s not surprising.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on How to Prevent Burnout Using Timeboxing https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-prevent-burnout/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Stepping outside your comfort zone seriously improves your life.

Humans have an evolutionary need to be challenged—to feel discomfort.

That’s the main revelation of journalist Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis, a book about embracing discomfort to “reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self.”

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Get Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable https://www.nirandfar.com/comfortable-with-discomfort/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Here’s how to get more out of your day without overtaxing your brain.

Everyone knows that multitasking destroys productivity, right? Haven’t we all seen studies and read articles telling us that it’s impossible to do two things at once?

In some ways, that’s true. The evidence is pretty clear that humans are awful at performing two complex tasks simultaneously.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Surprise! There’s a Right Way to Multitask https://www.nirandfar.com/multitask-the-right-way/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Anyone can use the Indistractable Model, and it can be especially helpful for those with ADHD

Does my book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life work for the ADHD brain? It’s a question I’ve been getting a lot lately.

Though I didn’t specifically write the book for people with ADHD, I wanted to get an honest opinion from an expert. I reached out to Caitlin O’Brient Bauer, who was diagnosed with ADHD at age 8 and is now a certified ADHD coach.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Can Someone with ADHD be ‘Indistractable’? https://www.nirandfar.com/adhd-but-indistractable/?swcfpc=1

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Get the most out of your vacation—and life—with just a little planning.

When I was 13, my parents and I went to Europe on vacation.

It was miserable.

My father wanted to hit all the major sites, while my mother just wanted to relax. Because they couldn’t agree on what to do, none of us got the vacation we’d hoped for.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Planning a Vacation Is Practice for a Great Life https://www.nirandfar.com/ultimate-vacation-hack/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Good or bad, our feelings color how we see people.

In psychology, a “trapped prior” is a perception of reality that’s colored, or trapped, by past experiences.

If not treated, trapped priors can turn into debilitating phobias. For instance, someone might have an overwhelming fear of dogs because they were bitten as a child.

Though not nearly as extreme, our trapped priors can shape how we perceive others.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Why It’s So Hard to Shake the Way People Make You Feel https://www.nirandfar.com/trapped-priors-and-your-relationships/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Many authors write what they know. I don’t. I am writing to learn about what I don’t know.

For me, writing is a wonderful way to go deep on a problem I’m struggling with.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Don’t Write About What You Already Know — Instead, I’m “Writing To Learn” https://www.nirandfar.com/writing-to-learn/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Taking a hard look at how we socialize helps us spend time the way we truly want.

The coronavirus pandemic gave us a pause to ask ourselves if we really should go back to the old way of doing things.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Are We Really Having Fun at Bars or Just Escaping Reality? https://www.nirandfar.com/why-do-people-go-to-bars/?swcfpc=1

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Books are like stepping stones through a stream — they can help us through obstacles on our path. However, it’s only in retrospect that we realize which books were critical and which were superfluous.

I’m surprised I ended up an author.

I’m dyslexic, English is not my first language, and writing was always my worst subject in school.

Just as surprising as my unlikely path are the mix of books that got me here.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The 6 Books That Paved My Career as a Behavioral Designer and Bestselling Author https://www.nirandfar.com/behavioral-design-books/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Every building needs a sturdy foundation. Your daily habits are a foundation on which you are building who you are—your values, goals, personality, etc.

If you track your daily habits, you may be surprised to find a collection of suboptimal habits: you may not be reaching your full potential.

One of those suboptimal habits is being easily distracted.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The 4 Steps to Becoming Indistractable https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-be-indistractable/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

The surprising psychology of why dissatisfaction is hardwired … a good thing!

Why are we perpetually restless and unsatisfied? We live in the safest, healthiest, most well-educated, most democratic time in history—and yet, some part of the human psyche causes us to constantly look for an escape from things stirring inside us.

As the eighteenth-century poet Samuel Johnson said, “My life is one long escape from myself.” Me too, brother. Me too.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Why You’re Never Going to Be Satisfied With Life https://www.nirandfar.com/why-you-are-never-satisfied/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Overcoming the fear of being unavailable is essential to making timeboxing stick

Too often, people eschew a method of bettering their life by naming the reasons it won’t work for them.

“I can’t adhere to that diet because…”

“Using an app to find love just isn’t for me because…”

People regularly give me similar excuses about timeboxing, a powerful technique I recommend in my bestselling book, Indistractable.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Time Management Technique That Can Work For Anyone https://www.nirandfar.com/timeboxing-works-for-anyone/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Even when something is weighing on your mind, taking a minute to write it out can help you get the most out of your day. Here’s how…

Though we may strive in vain to be productive machines all day every day, unexpected life events inevitably get in our way.

Maybe you had an argument with a close friend or loved one. Or perhaps you’re figuring out how to care for aging parents, or your child care fell through.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How a Morning Brain Dump Helps You Stay on Track All Day https://www.nirandfar.com/morning-brain-dump/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Use the psychology of self-image to transform your habits for good.

One of the most effective ways to change your behavior is to change your identity. I don’t mean joining the CIA or a witness protection program, or adopting an alter ego. I mean, rather, changing the way you see yourself.

Our perception of who we are—our identity or self-image—has a dramatic effect on our future actions.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Key to Behavior Change is Identity Change https://www.nirandfar.com/behavior-change-is-identity-change/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

In this episode, I sit down for a discussion with certified ADHD and Life Coach, Caitlin O'Brient Bauer. We talk about how people with ADHD can utilize the techniques I share in my book, Indistractable, to fit their specific needs.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

SF ADHD Coach www.sfadhdcoach.com

CHADD - Children & Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

ADDA - Attention Deficit Disorder Association

ACO - ADHD Coaches Organization - Coach DirectoryADDCA - ADD Coach Academy (My training program)

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When large swaths of the U.S. population transitioned to work from home in March 2020, they lost that critical physical boundary between their work domain and other life domains. As a result, those facets of life have bled into each other, with work often taking precedence.

A September 2021 study showed Americans’ work week has gotten 10 percent longer; it determined the length of a workday based on when employees sent their first and last messages each day.

What does that mean?

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Make Sure Working From Home Doesn’t Mean You’re Always Working https://www.nirandfar.com/work-from-home-productivity-tips/?swcfpc=1

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

It may seem counterintuitive, but spontaneity often can’t happen without a bit of advanced planning

In a 2020 study, 72% of people said they feel happier after a spontaneous act. Those who described themselves as a “spontaneous person” were 40% more likely to consider themselves a “happy person.”

Of course, free time for spontaneity is hard to come by. That’s why I say the key to spontaneity is timeboxing, a powerful method for getting things done that involves planning out periods of time each day to focus on distinct tasks.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity https://www.nirandfar.com/planning-for-spontaneity/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Do you play pool? I sure don’t. But I know enough about the game to use it as a metaphor for the hidden reasons we don’t do what we say we will.

The object is to get balls into pockets using a big stick. However, you can’t just hit the balls into the pockets with the stick directly, you first have to get a white cue ball to smack the right ball in just the right way.

So here’s the question: What causes the balls to go into the pocket?

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: To Fix Your Problems, Find the Root Cause https://www.nirandfar.com/find-the-root-cause/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

It was 9 a.m. and Wendy, a freelance marketing consultant, knew exactly what she needed to do for the next hour: be in her office chair to write new client proposals, the most important task of her day.

She fired up her laptop and opened the client’s file on her screen, eager to win new business. As she held her coffee mug with both hands and took a sip, a fantastic addition to the proposal entered her head. “This is going to be great!” she thought to herself.

But before she had a chance to write down the idea—“Ping!” Her phone buzzed with a notification.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: One Question to Help You Get More Done https://www.nirandfar.com/one-question-to-get-more-done 

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

That magical zone is great when you can find it. But what happens when you can’t?

The idea of flow is considered by many to be the epitome of productivity. Also known as “being in the zone” or “hitting your stride,” flow captivates us with its promise of becoming so absorbed in what we’re doing that we tackle tasks effortlessly.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Pursuit of ‘Flow’ Is Overrated https://www.nirandfar.com/the-pursuit-of-flow-is-overrated/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Pursuing knowledge is great until it becomes a distraction

We live in a world of too much information, and it’s nothing less than a blessing.

Throughout most of human history, access to knowledge was limited. Power equated to how much information you had access to. Kings built great libraries, and texts were rare and valuable things.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Survive in a World of Information Overload https://www.nirandfar.com/dealing-with-information-overload/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Digital distractions can get in the way of being fully present with the people we love. Here’s how to (politely) do something about it.

Are we ever exclusively in our friends’ company? Our phones are almost assuredly present and ready to interrupt us with a poorly timed notification. Who hasn’t seen a friend divert their attention, mid-conversation, to reflexively check their phone? Most of us simply accept these interruptions as a consequence of our times.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post o: How to Get a Friend to Put Away Their Phone Without Being a Jerk n    https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-get-a-friend-off-their-phone/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Researchers believe that when a task isn’t sufficiently rewarding, our brains search for something more interesting to think about.

You have a big deadline looming, and it’s time to hunker down. But every time you start working, you find that, for some reason, your mind drifts off before you can get any real work done. What gives? What is this cruel trick our brains play on us, and what do we do about it?

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How to Tame Your Wandering Mind and Actually Get Some Work Done https://www.nirandfar.com/taming-a-wandering-mind/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Most people are stingy with their money and generous with their time. Here’s why that’s backward.

Have you noticed how we use the same words to describe our relationship to time as we do our relationship to money?

We spend time, just as we spend money.

We make time, just as we make money.

We pay attention, just as we pay with dollars and cents.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: If You Don’t Plan Your Time, Someone Else Will https://www.nirandfar.com/plan-your-time-or-someone-else-will/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Finding an accountability buddy is a simple and highly effective way to keep yourself going.

When you’re struggling to achieve your personal or professional goals, do you ever wish you could speak with a famous mentor? If only you could connect with a super successful business leader like Jeff Bezos or Meg Whitman, then you’d have the answers you’re looking for. Surely they’d point you in the right direction, right?

Think again.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: You Don’t Need a Mentor. You Need a Buddy. https://www.nirandfar.com/you-need-an-accountability-buddy/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

How I Stopped Letting Tech Ruin My Love Life

Every night, my wife and I engaged in the same routine: She put our daughter to bed, brushed her teeth, and freshened up. We both slipped under the covers, exchanged knowing glances, and started doing what comes naturally to a couple in bed: we began to lovingly caress our gadgets—she fondled her cell phone, while I tenderly stroked the screen of my iPad. Ooh, it felt so good!We were having a love affair—with our gadgets instead of each other.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Would You Rather Give Up Sex or Your Phone? https://www.nirandfar.com/give-up-sex-or-phone/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

There’s nothing wrong with some device time. Just use these tips to make sure your kids don’t overdo it.

It’s that time of year when kids have a long break from school and parents and guardians likely have some time off work.

What will we do with all that free time?

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Here’s How to Ensure Your Kids Don’t Spend the Entire Break Staring at Screens https://www.nirandfar.com/kids-on-screens-during-break/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

By Annie Graham

Many people strive to improve themselves in one way or another. Whether it’s getting more sleep and exercise, or spending more time doing the things we love, our ideal selves drive us to be better. They symbolize our belief in our own potential to live in alignment with our values.

The drive to improve is also why strategies and tools that enable us to track our behaviors are so potentially gratifying. It feels good to see ourselves moving closer to our goals.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Free Habit Tracker Template — Use this Sleek Google Doc (and download your FREE Habit Tracker there) https://www.nirandfar.com/habit-tracker/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

In fifth grade, I was the only Jewish kid in my elementary school class. This was the 1980’s in Central Florida and even though it was a public school, unaffiliated with any church and funded with taxpayer dollars, my teacher taped a poster to the wall in her classroom that read, “Jesus Is The Reason For The Season.”

I wasn’t offended per se. I’m pretty sure at ten, I didn’t know what that word meant. But I could tell the teacher was sending a message to anyone in her class who might have different beliefs—such as, say, that the tilt of the earth on its axis is the reason for the seasons.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: I Changed My Mind About Saying “Merry Christmas,” and You Should Too https://www.nirandfar.com/saying-merry-christmas

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Distractions seem ubiquitous today, but they’ve always been a part of human life. Here’s how to resist them.

Distractions impede us from making progress toward the life we want for ourselves.

To visualize this, imagine a line that represents the value of everything you do throughout your day. To the right, the actions are positive; to the left, they are negative.

The positive actions represent traction: they draw or pull us toward what we want in life. The word “traction,” in fact, comes from the Latin trahere, meaning to draw or pull.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How the Ancient Greeks Beat Distraction https://www.nirandfar.com/tantalizing-distractions/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Trying to build a habit can backfire if you fall for this trap  

These days, when someone says they want to form a “habit,” what they often mean is that they want to make drudgery effortless. That is, they don’t want to actually do the work, rather they want to have done it—past tense.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Habits Are Overrated https://www.nirandfar.com/habit-trap/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

This highly effective technique harnesses the power of “loss aversion” to help you reach your goals

Probably the only research paper I’ll ever call “delicious” is one called, “A Tale of Two Pizzas.”

In the study, researchers offered one group of people plain pizzas, plus the option to add ingredients for an additional charge. To a second group, they offered topping-loaded pizzas, with the chance to remove ingredients and pay less. Same thing, right?

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Need Motivation? Make a Price Pact https://www.nirandfar.com/price-pact/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

A pinky promise is a surefire way to make you do what you say you’ll do.

People have a long history of breaking promises, to themselves and to others. It’s not lying, per se—rather, it’s a lack of follow-through.

We say we’re going to exercise four times a week, or finish that big project, or finally write that blog post, or whatever. But when it comes down to it, we don’t do it. We get distracted and procrastinate.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Pinky Promise: Stick To your Goals–Or Lose Some Blood https://www.nirandfar.com/pinky-promise/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

From Homer to Franzen, productive people lean on precommitments as a proven way to stick to their goals.

Famed director Quentin Tarantino “never use[s] a typewriter or computer.” He prefers to write screenplays by hand in a notebook.

These methods may seem extreme, but desperate times call for desperate measures. These luminaries understand that focus requires not only keeping distraction out, but also keeping ourselves in—learning to practice self-restraint when we would otherwise fall off track.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Tame Daily Distractions With a ‘Precommitment Pact’ https://www.nirandfar.com/precommitment-pacts/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com

Contrary to the “ego depletion” theory, willpower is not a depletable resource if you know how to use it wisely.

It’s common to hear people complain about feeling “burned out” or “spent” these days. However, these terms conjure a completely incorrect view of willpower–based on a theory psychologists call “ego depletion.”

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Good News! Your Willpower Isn’t Limited–Don’t Believe the “Ego Depletion” Theory https://www.nirandfar.com/ego-depletion

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com

Nir’s Note: Author, speaker, and host of “The Hive Podcast,” Nathalie Nahai’s work explores the intersection between persuasive technology, ethics, and the psychology of online behavior. Following her best-selling book, Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion, Nathalie’s next book, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, is about the psychology behind recent changes in expectations from employees and customers about businesses and their products.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The New Norms of Business: Interview with Nathalie Nahai https://www.nirandfar.com/nathalie-nahai-interview/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Entrepreneur, speaker and consultant, Dorie Clark is a recognized leader in the field of executive education, a topic she teaches at Duke University Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School. She has developed over 20 LinkedIn Learning courses on executive education, viewed by hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Dorie is the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the top leadership book by Inc. magazine and one of the top 10 business books of the year by Forbes. Her latest book, The Long Game, delves into the challenge of strategizing for the long term in a world that prioritizes short-term gains.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How to Play The Long Game: Interview with Dorie Clark https://www.nirandfar.com/long-game-dorie-clark/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When faced with a challenge, where do you find the insight to move your life forward? Last year, over fifteen million books were sold in the self-help genre.1 That doesn’t account for the videos, courses, and workshops that fuel this multibillion-dollar industry. Include business and diet books, and that number balloons to over $1.7 billion spent on advice-seeking books.2 But there’s a secret the gurus don’t want you to know—many of the answers to life’s most important questions can be found inside of you, for free. It’s called introspection.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Here Are The 4 Simple Introspection Steps That Will Boost Self Awareness https://www.nirandfar.com/introspection/

You’ve surely heard the protest chant:

“What do we want?

“[Insert social change here.]”

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

But imagine walking by a protest and hearing this:

“What do we want?”

“We’re not really sure!”

“When do we want it?”

“Whenever you get around to it is fine! Thank you!”

Doesn’t have the same ring to it.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Can’t Seem to Stick With Your Commitments? Try Making a Pact. https://www.nirandfar.com/making-accountability-pacts/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Recently, as I was clearing the dinner table, I asked my daughter if she could wash the dishes.

“I was going to, Dad,” she said. “But now that you’ve asked me to, I don’t want to anymore.”

I should have known better. This was a classic example of psychological reactance.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Real Reason Why You Sabotage Your Own Goals https://www.nirandfar.com/psychological-reactance/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

To-do lists are supposed to keep us on task. It turns out they do the opposite. I’ve written about the many reasons why.

To regain focus and be more productive, it’s far better to create a weekly schedule using a technique called “timeboxing“. You can’t say you got distracted unless you know what you got distracted from. That is, without knowing how you want to spend your time, there’s no way you’ll spend it intentionally.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How to Stay on Schedule Even When You Go Off Track https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-stay-on-schedule/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

There’s a much more effective way to conquer your vices.

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, there’s a scene where a magical plant called Devil’s Snare captures Harry, Ron, and Hermoine. The vines wrap around their bodies like hungry pythons as they struggle to escape.

“You have to relax,” Hermione tells the other two. “If you don’t, it’ll only kill you faster.”

“Kill us faster?!” shouts Ron, suddenly struggling even more. “Now I can relax!!”

Kudos to J.K. Rowling for this brilliant illustration of a psychological phenomenon called ironic processing, in which deliberate attempts to avoid certain thoughts make those thoughts even more persistent.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Stop Thinking About Your Bad Habits! [Do This Instead.] https://www.nirandfar.com/thinking-about-bad-habits/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

You can create some powerful motivation hacks by learning techniques from the persuasion business.

The reason why you hate being micromanaged by your boss is the same reason why, as a kid, you refused to put your coat on when your mom told you to bundle up. We’re all wired with a knee-jerk “don’t tell me what to do!” response called psychological reactance—and it can kick in even when it’s you telling yourself what to do or trying to motivate yourself.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Steal These 3 Advertising Secrets–To Use As Motivation Hacks https://www.nirandfar.com/motivation-hacks/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I interview psychologist Jocelyn Brewer, founder of Digital Nutrition.™

In my review of The Social Dilemma, I challenged the filmmakers’ rather extreme view that huge swaths of people are “addicted to technology,” that social media is like a dangerous drug that’s hijacking people’s brains, and that big tech companies are trapping people in something akin to The Matrix movie.

In response, I got some colorful comments, such as (paraphrasing): “Nir, check your intellectual privilege: you and I are smart enough to escape the trap of social media, but everyone is addicted, and it’s destroying the world.”

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Can We Please Stop Calling Everyone "Addicted"? https://www.nirandfar.com/stop-calling-everyone-addicted/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When I recently came across the headline “The World’s Most Influential Values, In One Graphic,” I couldn’t help but click–a good data visualization is like catnip for me. The chart, compiled by global research company Valuegraphics, shows the results of 500,000 surveys, across 152 languages, about what people think are common values. A few of the answers on the list: freedom of speech, leisure, financial security.

I was disappointed. Not because any of those things are bad, but because they aren’t actually values. For the survey, the authors defined values as “what we care about,” which is the definition that a lot of people probably have. The thing is, what we care about changes every day–every minute, even–and that’s why it’s hard to agree on common values. When your kid is throwing a tantrum, you care about getting some peace and quiet. When you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with an empty fuel tank, you care about whether there’s a gas station nearby. But these things are not your values.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: 20 Common Values [and Why People Can’t Agree On More] https://www.nirandfar.com/common-values/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

People are always saying “there aren’t enough hours in the day” to get stuff done. And yet research suggests that the average working American has four hours of leisure per day.

If we have so many hours to play with every day, why do so many of us feel like we don’t have time to accomplish our big goals?

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How to Escape the Vicious Cycle of Distraction https://www.nirandfar.com/vicious-distraction-cycle/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Timeboxing is the nearest thing we have to productivity magic, yet most people don’t utilize it. Here’s how to overcome the top 3 reasons why.

“I can’t seem to get enough done.”

“I’m always distracted.”

“Why can’t I focus?”

I hear these complaints from my clients and readers all the time.

But when I recommend perhaps the most effective technique ever devised to help people stay on track, most of them balk.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Timeboxing: The Most Powerful Time Management Technique You’re Probably Not Using  https://www.nirandfar.com/timeboxing/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

The evidence is overwhelming: we are far more powerful than the technology that is supposedly mind-controlling us. It’s not even close.

As I’ve discussed in other articles, we need to give ourselves more credit. Instead of passively accepting the idea that we’re all being puppeteered by some sort of menacing tech bogeyman, we can hack back distractions.

To be clear, too much social media can be harmful. No one disputes that too much of all sorts of good things can be bad, whether it’s too much news or too much booze.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Why Do People Believe the ‘Social Media is Mind Control’ Myth? https://www.nirandfar.com/social-media-and-mind-control/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: this article is a collaboration between myself and Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Jon researches moral and political psychology and business ethics. He has delivered four TED Talks and written two best-selling books.

Recent research in social science has parents concerned about whether deep immersion in digital technologies is bad for their children.

A variety of studies find that rates of teen anxiety, depression, and self-harm have risen since 2012 in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada, although the evidence that this rise was caused by smartphones and social media is hotly debated.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Children and Technology: 3 Things Parents Need To Know https://www.nirandfar.com/children-and-technology

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: What do Bill Nye, break dancer Crazy Legs, cyber illusionist Marco Tempest, and economist Nouriel Roubini have in common? They’ve all been guests at a little-known “Influencers dinner” regularly hosted by behavioral scientist Jon Levy at his New York apartment. Jon is the author of You’re Invited: the Art and Science of Cultivating Influence, a New York Times bestseller about the value of creating meaningful connections and building trust with the people that can most influence your life. Jon’s dinner parties and his decade-old club of “Influencers” have been featured in Forbes and Business Insider.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Influencers Dinner: An Interview with Jon Levy https://www.nirandfar.com/influencers-dinner-jon-levy

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Try schedule-syncing instead.

You’ve probably read this advice before: “The best thing you can do for your productivity is to say no more often.” By freeing yourself from unnecessary tasks, the thinking goes, you can spend more time working on the things that really matter.

At first blush, this sounds smart. Many things people ask of you aren’t really necessary or can be accomplished more efficiently by someone else. But in practice, this advice often backfires.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: “Just Say No” Is Bad Productivity Advice https://www.nirandfar.com/productivity-and-saying-no/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

‘Dark patterns’ aren’t always malicious mind control. They’re often a symptom of disjointed company culture. Will the Times change?’

A recent New York Times op-ed, titled “Stopping the Manipulation Machines,” derided the use of dark patterns: design tricks that push people to do things online by confusing or deliberately inconveniencing them.

Kudos to the writer, Greg Bensinger, a member of the Times’ editorial board, who does a laudable job calling out obnoxious dark patterns.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The New York Times Uses the Very Dark Patterns it Derides https://www.nirandfar.com/cancel-new-york-times/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Social networks can help addicted users while leaving the rest of us alone. If they wanted to.

About five years ago, I sat down in a series of meetings with leaders from Reddit, Snapchat, Facebook, and other social media networks. My goal was to discuss social media addiction and how companies might self-regulate to curb it.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on Can We Regulate Social Networks To Curb Addiction—Without Making Them Suck? https://www.nirandfar.com/social-media-regulation/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Jackie Bavaro about her latest book, Cracking the PM Career—a complete guide to the skills, frameworks, and practices you need to become a great product manager. Jackie serves as the Head of Product Management at Asana and has held senior product manager jobs at Microsoft and Google, where she launched Google Place Search and Geo-IP Based Local Search. Based on her experiences hiring other product managers, she wrote her first best-selling book, Cracking the PM Interview, with co-author Gayle McDowell.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on So, You Want To Become a Great Product Manager? [Q&A with Jackie Bavaro] https://www.nirandfar.com/becoming-a-product-manager/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

A classic survivor test shows us how the illusion of control can sidetrack us from our mission when things get uncomfortable

Let’s try something. Imagine you’ve just crash-landed somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, deep in the American Southwest. Though the aircraft is now a smoldering wreck, you miraculously survived, uninjured and now find yourself all alone as the sole survivor. Temperatures are topping 110 degrees, and you’re stranded.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on Why the Illusion of Control Is Hurting Your Goals https://www.nirandfar.com/illusion-of-control/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Can we create a future where people no longer have to work at jobs they hate?

In 100 years, some things we consider normal today will make people say, “Wow, how barbaric—I can’t believe people did that! How were they okay with that?”

Wage slavery, I hope, will be one of those things.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post: Are You a Wage Slave? https://www.nirandfar.com/wage-slaves/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Here’s what the Covid-19 lockdowns have revealed about teen depression.

What do bicycles and social media have in common? Soon after being adopted, each of these technologies brought on a tsunami of unjustified moral panic. Let’s start with bikes.

When bicycles burst onto the Victorian scene in the 1800s, they were a big deal. This cool contraption made it possible to travel much further and faster than you could ever go on foot. Better yet, bikes were a lot cheaper than horses (not to mention simpler to maintain).

You can read the NirAndFar blog post: Maybe Social Media Isn’t Making Teens Depressed, After All. And Here’s What Likely Is. https://www.nirandfar.com/social-media-and-teens/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

In my research and consulting work, I’ve heard countless people tell me how difficult it is to manage their time.

Yet, when I ask them what they got distracted from, that is, what they planned to do with any given moment in time, they have trouble answering the question.

What is a “distraction” anyway? The best way to understand what distraction is, is to know what it is not. What is the opposite of distraction? It’s not “focus.”

You can read the NirAndFar blog post: What is the Opposite of “Distraction?” The Single Word that Will Change Your Life This Year https://www.nirandfar.com/opposite-of-distraction/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

To find your focus, learn to resist this self-sabotaging excuse.

Imagine this: You’ve been diagnosed with a rare and serious disease. In hopes of keeping you alive, the doctor recommends a new, experimental course of treatment. It works for some people—maybe 60%. But it’s covered by your insurance, and if you are in the 60%, you’ll be successfully cured in six months. What do you do?

Of course, you say yes. Maybe you’ll get unlucky and it won’t work for you, but it’s worth a try. You’d probably try the treatment even with only a 10% success rate. The reality is that even the best drugs don’t work for everyone, and yet we still take them. But when it comes to finding our focus, so many of us are unwilling to apply the same logic.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post: Don’t Fall for This Excuse Trap: Why “That Won’t Work for Me” is Self-Sabotaging https://www.nirandfar.com/mental-blocks-to-productivity-techniques/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Maybe you’ve heard the buzz around Clubhouse, the drop-in audio chat app. It’s a bit like Twitch for conference calls. If you have no idea what “Twitch” is, you’re probably over 40. In your case, the closest analog might be those 1–900 party lines you saw advertised on late-night TV in the 1990s—but a bit less sleazy and in app form.

The Clubhouse app is the new new thing, and it’s got many people hooked. The app is the latest example of a habit-forming product taking the world by storm.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Will Clubhouse be a Habit or Has-Been? https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked-on-clubhouse-app/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

In 2017, I decided I’d had enough of my smartphone and the companies that make the apps that were robbing me of my time and attention. I thought I found the perfect solution: the card phone.

The card phone is what it sounds like: It’s a $18 tiny phone with no social media, no internet browser, and no email. In fact, the card phone has no apps whatsoever. It has only the ability to make phone calls and send text messages. (It even has an FM tuner too. Take that, iPhone!).

At first, it was edgy and interesting to be the one friend with the “weird phone.” But the edginess wore off, and I began to miss my smartphone. I missed the convenience of navigating with GPS. I missed listening to audio books and reading articles I’d saved in Pocket. And I admit: I sort of missed the connectedness to friends I felt from using social media. I liked being “liked.”

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Smartphone Too Distracting? Here's How to Reclaim Your Focus https://www.nirandfar.com/hack-back-phone-distractions/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

By promoting the idea that technology is hijacking our brains and getting all of us addicted to our devices, techno-fearmongers elevate the exception rather than the rule.

Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, introduced the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, which—beyond its forced acronym—was remarkable for how aggressively it would regulate the design of certain tech products.

Among other provisions, the law would ban auto-play videos on sites such as YouTube. It would require sites such as Twitter to deploy a mechanism that “automatically limits the amount of time that a user may spend to 30 minutes a day.” It prohibits sites such as Pinterest from automatically revealing content when the user scrolls to the bottom of the page, instead “requiring the user to specifically request … that additional content be loaded and displayed.” The SMART Act would do all this, according to its preamble, to protect unsuspecting people from FOMO, doom scrolling, and other “practices that exploit human psychology or brain physiology to substantially impede freedom of choice.”

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: “Tech Addiction” Is the New Reefer Madness https://www.nirandfar.com/hack-back-phone-distractions/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Babies. They’re such jerks, aren’t they? They wake you up in the middle of the night. They make huge messes for you to clean up. And let’s not forget to mention the inevitable diaper blowouts that happen at all the wrong times. Who do they think they are?

Of course, this is a pretty awful way to think of infants. We were all babies at one point, and if other people hadn’t given us some grace, we wouldn’t have made it to our first birthdays.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Love is Measured By the Benefit of the Doubt https://www.nirandfar.com/secret-to-kindness/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

There are various ways of classifying lies: by their consequences, by the importance of their subject matters, by the speakers’ motives, and by the nature or context of the utterance.

Perhaps the most useful way to classify lies is by to the people who tell them. Understanding lies and liars can help us avoid getting duped as well as protect us from drifting into dishonesty ourselves.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Ultimate Guide to Liars and Lying: Everyone Falls Into These 4 Types https://www.nirandfar.com/types-of-liars/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post was written by Cheryl Maguire

The laundry hamper was overflowing with dirty clothes. Lacking the motivation to throw it into the wash, I pushed the clothes down deeper into the bin so I could fit more clothes. This occurs almost every other day. When you are married and the mother of three kids, the laundry is a never-ending task especially since we are all active in sports or working out that often require multiple clothing changes in one day.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How to Finally Find the Motivation You’ve Been Missing https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-find-motivation/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I once worked with a person we’ll call “Dick.” Dick always told me he’d get things back to me “today or tomorrow,” but he seldom did.

Dick didn’t have to tell me he’d get things to me that soon. He could have said, “next week” or “as soon as I can,” and I would have been fine with that. Instead, Dick had a habit of promising to deliver by a certain date, but he wouldn’t follow through.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Hypocrites: How to Survive in a World that’s Full of Them https://www.nirandfar.com/hypocrite/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Over the past few weeks, people have asked me for my review of the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma. It’s no surprise. One of the film’s central themes is that social media is like an addictive drug, and I wrote the book on habit-forming technologies: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. I also have a personal connection to the film.

In August of 2018, I sat with the filmmakers for a three-hour interview. We discussed everything from the subject matter of Hooked and my second book, Indistractable, to the ethics of social-media use and how we can learn to live with the digital tools that pervade our lives. I was glad to share my perspective; it was a rich and engaging discussion.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Here’s My Review of The Social Dilemma: No, Social Media Is Not “Hijacking” Your Brain https://www.nirandfar.com/social-dilemma-review/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Society’s fear of technology destroying our children’s future has reached a fever pitch and many parents have resorted to extreme measures.

A quick search on YouTube reveals thousands of videos of parents storming into their kids’ rooms, unplugging the computers or gaming consoles, and destroying their devices.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Screen Time for Kids: Give Them What They Need https://www.nirandfar.com/screen-time-for-kids/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Imagine you bought a new phone, but at the end of each day, every day, the operating system crashed. Would you keep using the faulty phone? Of course not. You’d take it back to the store, complain, and get a new one.

And yet, many people run their entire lives on a faulty operating system. It’s called the to-do list. Have you ever met someone who runs their day using a to-do list and actually finishes everything they said they’d do? Me neither.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Be a Schedule Builder, Not a To-Do List Maker https://www.nirandfar.com/todo-vs-schedule-builder/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Hindsight bias occurs when people feel that they “knew it all along” – when they believe that an event is more predictable after it becomes known than it was before it became known2.

In other words, when we’re looking back at an event after it already happened, knowing that outcome influences our perception of the events leading up to it.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Hindsight Bias: Why You Make Terrible Lie Choices https://www.nirandfar.com/hindsight-bias/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

What stresses you out? How do you deal with that dreaded feeling? And did you know there’s a bullet-proof method for disarming stress?

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: How to Turn Off Harmful Stress Like a Switch https://www.nirandfar.com/handling-stress/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Which of the following is true?

    A. Screen time is the leading cause of anxiety and depression amongst teenagers

    B. Studies have found that screen time shrinks people’s attention span to less than that of a goldfish

    C. Studies show screen time causes addiction

    D. None of the above

The correct answer: D.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: This is How the Media is Misleading You on “Technology Addiction” 

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com

Society’s fear of technology destroying our children's future has reached a fever pitch and many parents have resorted to extreme measures.

A quick search on YouTube reveals thousands of videos of parents storming into their kids’ rooms, unplugging the computers or gaming consoles, and destroying their devices.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Screen Time for Kids: Give Them What They Need https://www.nirandfar.com/screen-time-for-kids/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Be a Schedule Builder, Not a To-Do List Maker https://www.nirandfar.com/todo-vs-schedule-builder/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

In 1967, a catchy tune by The Beatles, “All You Need is Love,” became the anthem for the Summer of Love. The Flower Power culture embraced the song and its message, “love is all you need.” If someone had asked humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers what the song meant, he might have said, “Unconditional Positive Regard!”

Although it didn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way, Rogers introduced the concept nearly a decade before the Beatles song, it has the same basic message: empathy invokes change.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Surprising Benefits of Unconditional Positive Regard https://www.nirandfar.com/upr-unexpected-benefits-beyond-therapy/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When Harvard’s Leslie Perlow began to study The Boston Consulting Group, she was well aware of the firm’s round-the-clock reputation. After conducting interviews with BCG’s staff, Perlow found that this reputation was coming at a major cost.

Employees were leaving the elite consulting firm, in part because they lacked control over their schedules. To address the issue, Perlow offered a simple proposition: If everyone who worked at BCG hated the always-on lifestyle, why not try to give consultants at least a “single predictable night off a week”? This would give people time away from phone calls and email notifications and allow them to make plans without the fear of being pulled back into work.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: This is How to Repair a Toxic Work Culture https://medium.com/the-mission/this-is-how-to-repair-a-toxic-work-culture-24fa03fdb138

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

What are the ethical responsibilities of companies that are able to manipulate human behavior on a massive scale? It’s a question one hopes technologists and designers ask themselves when building world-changing products — but one that hasn’t been asked often enough.

Operant conditioning, intermittent reinforcement, the search for self-actualization — the techniques used by product managers at the world’s largest companies are equal parts psychology and technology. As Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook, recently acknowledged, the company has long been engaged in the business of “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Want to Design User Behavior? Pass the 'Regret Test' First https://www.nirandfar.com/regret-test/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

As parents, we all want to raise kids who are smart and focused, especially in a world where digital distraction seems to be inescapable. (Even tech titans like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have strategies for limiting their children’s screen time.)

Why? Because in the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: Those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves “indistractable.”

You can read the post on: This is the No. 1 skill parents need to teach their kids https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/stanford-psychology-expert-biggest-parenting-mistake-is-not-teaching-kids-this-important-skill.html

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir's Note: This article is part of a series on "The Hooked Model in Action." Previous analyses have included Slack, Fortnite, Amazon's Echo, Tinder, and The Bible App. Note, I never take compensation for writing articles on my blog.

Could there be a behavior more antithetical to human nature than exercise? Our caveman ancestors, if they could observe our workout habits today, would think we’ve lost our minds. We lift heavy objects into the air and return them to the exact spot where we picked them up. We buy ridiculous gadgetry to get in shape (Shake Weight anyone?). We elevate our heart rates as if we’re being chased by a hungry predator. And for what? Not to escape danger, but to undo the negative consequences of our overindulgent and underactive modern lifestyles.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The One Fitness App That Hooked Me for Good https://www.nirandfar.com/fitness-app-hooked-me-for-good/

NirAndFar, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Email is the curse of the modern worker. Some basic math reveals just how big the problem is. The average office-dwelling professional receives a hundred messages per day. At just two minutes per email, that adds up to three hours and twenty minutes per day. If an average workday is nine to five minus an hour for lunch, then email eats up nearly half the day.

Realistically, though, that’s a very conservative estimate, since those three hours and twenty minutes don’t include the wasted time needed to get back on task between checking emails. In fact, a study published in the International Journal of Information Management found office workers took an average of sixty-four seconds after checking email to reorient themselves and get back to work. Given the hundreds of times per day we check our devices, those minutes can add up.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Email Management: How to Hack Back an Cure Inbox Insanity https://www.nirandfar.com/email-management/

NirAndFar, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Why would the companies that make your phone want you to use it less? If tech is “hijacking your brain” with their “irresistible” products, as some tech critics claim, why are these companies now acting against their own interests? Perhaps the tech giants have had a change of heart or have been persuaded by public pressure to change their ways? Hardly.I studied the sophisticated psychology these companies deploy to keep people hooked and wrote a book about how they do it. At first glance, it appears their business model would benefit from addiction. The more you use your phone, the more money they make through the apps you buy and the ads you view.

However, the addiction story falls short when considering the long-term interests of these companies. Apple and Google are making it easier for consumers to cut back on phone use because it is in their interest to do so. In this case, what’s good for the user is also good for these companies’ bottom lines. Apple and Google don’t want you to get addicted. Addiction is a compulsive harmful behavior. Rather, they’d prefer you form healthy habits with your digital devices.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Real Reason Apple and Google Want You to Use Your Phone Less https://www.nirandfar.com/google-apple-less-phone-use/

NirAndFar, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Many parents are concerned with their child’s seemingly obsessive video game play. Fortnite, the most recent gaming phenomenon, has taken the world by storm and has parents asking whether the shooter game is okay for kids.

The short answer is yes, Fortnite is generally fine. Furthermore, parents can breathe easier knowing that research suggests gaming (on its own) does not cause disorders like addiction.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Kids' Video Game Obsession Isn't Really About Video Games. It's About Unmet Psychological Needs https://www.nirandfar.com/kids-video-game-obsession/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Habits are hot. Self-help articles extol the power of habits and books on the topic sell by the millions. Yet, like many pop psychology topics, the conventional wisdom about the effectiveness and application of habits is frequently outdated, misapplied, or flat out wrong. Building habits to change behavior the right way can be a wonderful tool to improve your life. But false notions about what habits are and what they can do can backfire.

The idea of building a habit is very appealing. The popular notion that tasks can be put on autopilot makes habits sound effortless. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply make a habit out of doing tasks like exercising, journaling, paying bills, or running a side business? Unfortunately, you can’t. Habits don’t work that way.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Stop Confusing Habits for Routines: What You Need To Know https://www.nirandfar.com/habits/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I know how distractions work from the inside. For over a decade, I’ve helped tech companies build products to keep you clicking. In fact, I wrote the book about it in 2014: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. I wrote Hooked for companies who wanted to help their customers build healthy habits, like going to the gym regularly and eating right. But in the process of researching the book, I found that some products drew some people in too much, including me.

I remember sitting with my daughter one afternoon doing activities from a book written to help daddies and daughters bond. One exercise consisted of asking each other the following question: “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” Between the moment I asked the question and when my daughter could answer, I felt a buzz in my pocket. A work email diverted my attention.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: The Most Important Skill of the Future is Being 'Indistractable' https://www.nirandfar.com/skill-of-the-future/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This post part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored with and illustrated by Lakshmi Mani. Discover other reasons you make terrible life choices like confirmation bias, hyperbolic discounting and distinction bias.

It’s New Year’s Eve. There I am on the dance floor - it’s teeming with people and there’s hardly space to breathe. Loud thumping music pierces my eardrums and I have no idea where my friends are.

Then, the guy next to me takes a misstep, spills an entire cup of beer down my shoulder. I gasp as the cold brew winds its way down my back. But he’s too drunk and the music is too loud for him to notice. Is this supposed to be fun? What am I doing here? I hail a ride to get out of there.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Peak-End Rule: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices https://www.nirandfar.com/peak-end-rule/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

From comic books and radio programs to TV shows and Atari games, the world has always been full of things that distract us. Today, most of us blame our phones or, more specifically, social media, Words with Friends, or Netflix as the reason we can’t get anything done.

Yet these aren’t the real culprits. Instead, our distraction is usually driven by our desire to escape discomfort, including boredom, fear, and anxiety. When you binge on The Office rather than doing your taxes, watching Michael, Pam, and Dwight is your (understandable) way of avoiding an activity you deem to be a tedious task. The secret to staying focused at times like these is not to abstain from The Office — you’ll just find another distraction — but to change your perspective on the task itself.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: This is How to be Less Distracted By Having Fun in Tedious Tasks https://www.nirandfar.com/tedious-tasks/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Everyone struggles with dwindling or misplaced motivation from time to time, and I'm no exception. Thankfully, I've learned to overcome my penchant for procrastination: getting what I want done, even when I don't feel like it. Learning the difference between the two kinds of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic, made all the difference.

Take the dirty work of household chores. Today, I'm generally pretty good at keeping things tidy. As a married dad, I clean the dishes, take out the trash, and make sure the shower drain stays unclogged. Don't be fooled though. I wasn’t always this way.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: Extrinsic Motivation: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices https://www.nirandfar.com/extrinsic-motivation/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Is your email inbox taking over your work-life? Are you unable to get any “real” work done because you’re too busy responding to emails? Do you feel stressed, distracted, and overwhelmed when you see new emails pop up in your email inbox? You’re not alone. The average office-dwelling professional received 100 messages per day.

Researchers have found that when people are interrupted during a task, by checking email for instance, they tend to subsequently make up for lost time by working faster. However this comes at a cost — higher levels of stress and frustration.

You can read the NirAndFar blog post on: 1 Thing You Need to Know to Save You From Your Email Inbox https://www.nirandfar.com/email-inbox-office-hours/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

It doesn’t so much matter what you do with your time; rather, success is measured by whether you did what you planned to do. It’s fine to watch a video, scroll social media, daydream, or take a nap, as long as that’s what you planned to do.

To create a weekly timeboxed schedule, you’ll need to decide how much time you want to spend on each domain of your life. How much time do you want to spend on yourself, on important relationships, and on your work? Note that “work” doesn’t exclusively mean paid labor. The work domain of your life can include community service, activism, and side projects.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Get the Most Out of Your Calendar https://www.nirandfar.com/your-calendar/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I had just finished giving a speech on building habits when a woman in the audience exclaimed, "You teach how to create habits, but that's not my problem. I'm fat!" The frustration in her voice echoed throughout the room. "My problem is stopping bad habits. That's why I'm fat. Where does that leave me?"

I deeply sympathized with the woman. "I was once clinically obese," I told her. She stared at my lanky frame and waited for me to explain. How did I hack my habits?

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Can't Kick a Bad Habit? You're Probably Doing It Wrong https://www.nirandfar.com/bad-habits/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Distraction is a curse of modern life. Between our cell phones and computer screens, not to mention our kids and coworkers, our attention is constantly being diverted. It can become difficult to focus on any one task—or any one person—for very long.

If anything, the world is becoming a more distracting place. Technology is becoming more pervasive and persuasive. But hoping tech companies change their ways and your boss finally learns to respect your time may take longer than you’re willing to wait. Better to equip yourself to manage distraction with strategies you can implement right away. After all, although distractions aren’t necessarily your fault, managing them is your responsibility.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Learn How to Avoid Distraction In a World That Is Full Of It https://www.nirandfar.com/distractions/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is written by Dr. Todd Snyder. Dr. Snyder is a Psychologist and Productivity Coach at ToddSnyderCoaching.com

The world is full of self-help myths and half-truths. One bit of folk psychology that won’t seem to die is the idea that we can “visualize” our path to success by imagining the life we want. In fact, studies find visualizing our personal goals as if we’ve already achieved them can hurt our chances of ever making them a reality.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: What You Need to Know When Visualizing Your Goals https://www.nirandfar.com/visualizing/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

How Slack’s culture kills distraction by building psychological safety, telling employees to go home, and using lots and lots of emojis.

If there’s one technology that embodies the unreasonable demands of the always-on work culture that pervades so many companies today, it’s Slack. The group-chat app can make users feel tethered to their devices, often at the expense of doing more important tasks.

Over 10 million people log on to Slack every day. Slack’s own employees, of course, use Slack—they use it a lot. And if distraction is caused by technology, then they should surely suffer the consequences. Surprisingly, according to media reports and Slack employees I spoke with, the company doesn’t have that problem.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: If Tech is So Distracting, How Do Slack Employees Stay So Focused? https://www.nirandfar.com/slack-use/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

While we can’t control the feelings and thoughts that pop into our heads, we can control what we do with them. Research of smoking cessation programs performed by Dr. Jonathan Bricker, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, suggests we shouldn’t keep telling ourselves to stop thinking about an urge; instead, we must learn better ways to cope. The same applies to other distractions like checking our phones too much, eating junk food, or excessive shopping. Rather than trying to fight the urge, we need new methods to handle intrusive thoughts.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Disarm Internal Triggers and Improve Focus https://www.nirandfar.com/internal-triggers/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Note: This post originally appeared in Techcrunch. I’m proud to have co-authored this post with Katy Fike, PhD.  Dr. Fike is a gerontologist, systems engineer and Partner at Innovate50, a consulting firm helping companies create products and services for the 50+ market

As web watchers, entrepreneurs, and investors search for the next big thing, they’d be wise to focus on innovations that can be easily adopted by technology novices. A recent string of companies, including Groupon and Pinterest, have found success outside the early-adopter digerati by building products simple enough to be used by just about anyone. Designing with tech novices in mind can mean the difference between staying niche and going mainstream. Here are three principles for how to design software for people Silicon Valley too often disparagingly calls “normals.”

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Design for 'Normals' https://www.nirandfar.com/go-ask-grandma-how-to-design-for-normals/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Many people bristle at the idea of keeping a schedule. They don’t want restrictions and prefer the freedom to tackle things as they come up.

While an open day is wonderful on a vacation when you have nothing to do but relax, vacations eventually end. In the real world, there is work to finish, people to meet, and a family to nurture.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How to be More Productive and Focus (+ Free Schedule Maker) https://www.nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

It feels impossible to tell if the technology our kids use should be celebrated or feared. A few years ago I wrote a book, Hooked, about how technology can be used to change our habits. I intended the book to teach startups how to build healthy habits, but now I’m not so sure. With headlines telling us technology is hijacking our brains, I started second guessing the impact of our devices, especially when it comes to our kids.

How alarmed should we be? Is this a crisis or a fear frenzy? I wanted to understand what the studies really tell us about the effect personal technology is having on our children.

You and read the Nir and Far blog post on: How Bad is Tech Use for Kids, Really? https://www.nirandfar.com/social-media-depression-potatoes/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir's Note: This guest post is written by Jeni Fisher, a London-based Googler who consults startups on applying behavioral insights to achieve business and user goals.

Early on in my role as an Apps partner manager at Google Play, I was drawn towards the Self-Improvement apps space because their persuasive influence transcends screen-level interactions. Their mission is to persuade people to take real-life actions that lead to long-term behavior change and ultimately shape how they live their lives.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How Apps Can Shape Your Future Self https://www.nirandfar.com/apps-shaping-future-self/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Patricio O’Gorman, technology consultant and professor at Universidad de Palermo.

If you have kids, you’ve likely heard about Fortnite. The wildly popular online battle game has amassed over 125 million players and hosts more than 3 million concurrent players. The game “has brought in more revenue in a single month than any other game of its kind,” according to industry watchers, grossing over $1 billion so far this year.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Here's How Fortnite 'Hooked' Millions-Nir&Far https://www.nirandfar.com/fortnite-hooked-millions/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When faced with a challenge, where do you find the insight to move your life forward? Last year, over fifteen million books were sold in the self-help genre.1 That doesn’t account for the videos, courses, and workshops that fuel this multibillion-dollar industry. Include business and diet books, and that number balloons to over $1.7 billion spent on advice-seeking books.2 But there’s a secret the gurus don’t want you to know—many of the answers to life’s most important questions can be found inside of you, for free. It's called introspection.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Here Are the 4 Simple Introspection Steps That Will Boost Self Awareness https://www.nirandfar.com/introspection/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

You come home after a long day of work and you immediately curl yourself up on the couch and binge the latest Netflix craze for hours, while you scroll and scroll through your social media feeds and snack on potato chips even though you're "on a diet." You look around and see that the garbage needs to be taken out, laundry needs to be folded, and your child's toys are strewn across the living room floor. The list of productive things you could be doing seem endless, yet you can't seem to find the willpower to peel yourself off of the couch to do them.

Is this a regular occurrence for you? Do you realize that you are in this rut but can't seem to find the willpower to overcome it? You're definitely not alone in this situation. This is called ego-depletion. Ego-depletion is a theory that willpower is connected to a limited reserve of mental energy, and once you run out of that energy, you're more likely to lose self-control. This theory would seem to explain your post-work defeat.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: This is What Most People Get Wrong About Willpower https://www.nirandfar.com/about-willpower/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Our fears about what technology and smartphones are doing to our kids has reached a fever pitch. Articles with headlines like “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and “The Risk Of Teen Depression And Suicide Is Linked To Smartphone Use” have, ironically enough, gone viral online.

“It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades,” writes Dr. Jean Twenge in The Atlantic. “Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.”

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Is Tech Ruining Kids? How to Safely Manage Screen Time https://www.nirandfar.com/manage-screen-time/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This post part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored by Nir Eyal and illustrated by Lakshmi Mani. Discover other reasons you make terrible life choices like confirmation bias, hyperbolic discounting and distinction bias.

There I was, sitting in a packed movie theatre. I waited two years for this sequel and I’ve got enough popcorn and diet soda to last me a full three hours. Fifteen minutes into the movie, the hero and villain are facing off for the first time when a lady bursts into the theater. Trying to find a seat, she awkwardly tries to squeeze into the middle of the row in front of me blocking the best part of the movie. “What a rude and inconsiderate person!” I think to myself as I dodge her body when she scuffles by.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Fundamental Attribution Error: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices https://www.nirandfar.com/fundamental-attribution-error/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote that “few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it.”1 Why don't we do what we know needs to get done? Why is it so hard to concentrate and finish what we start? In our digital age, is there any hope of “mustering enough energy” to stay focused on what really matters so we can live the lives we want? In this article, you’ll learn tools and strategies to finally get, and stay, focused. This guide is for people who want to harness the power of focus, but don’t have a lot of time.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: [Focus Guide] How To Make The Most Out Of Your Time and Your Life https://www.nirandfar.com/focus/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This post part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored with and illustrated by Lakshmi Mani. Discover other reasons you make terrible life choices like confirmation bias and hyperbolic discounting.

There I was, looking at an enormous wall of television screens. Each one flashed the exact same scene  —  a beautiful flower slowly blooming to reveal each petal, pistil, and stamen in exquisite super high definition detail. It was downright sexy. But now it was time to make my choice.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Distinction Bias: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices https://www.nirandfar.com/distinction-bias/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Does repeating a falsehood make it true? It seems so, at least when it comes to the myth that technology is addicting us all. While a reassessment of the role our gadgets play in our lives is healthy, many people are buying into a self-defeating fallacy that ironically makes it harder to dial back.

Not only does the idea that technology “hijacks” our brains smack of the same moral panics leveled at previous pastimes—Novels corrupt women’s minds! Pinball machines create an unstoppable compulsion!—it also miscategorizes what addiction really is.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: "Addicted" to Technology? Why You Need to Turn The Tables And Hack Back! https://www.nirandfar.com/addicted-to-technology/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

If you make web or mobile products, you’re actually in the business of task management. You’re counting on your product to become a recurring part of your customers’ lives. In order to accomplish that, you have to motivate your users to build a new habit.,

Sometimes software companies forget that what they’re building isn’t just a product that people find valuable. Part of what you’re building is how people will find and experience that value. It’s easy to overlook, because it seems like enough of a challenge to build a great product that really helps users with their needs.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-trigger-product-usage-that-sticks/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Recently, MessageMe announced it had grown to 1 million users in a little over a week's time. The revelation captured the attention of envious app makers throughout Silicon Valley, all of whom are searching for the secrets of customer acquisition like it's the fountain of youth. "Growth hacking" has become the latest buzzword, as investors like Paul Graham profess it's functionally that matters.

Clearly, everyone wants growth. To someone creating a new technology, nothing feels better than people actually using what you've built and telling their friends. Growth feels validating. Growth tells everyone the company is doing things right. At least that's what we want to believe.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Viral Loops or Viral 'Oops'? https://www.nirandfar.com/viral-loops-or-viral-oops/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

We're in an addictive world. The world has become harder to resist. Products are getting better at giving people what they want and - for the most part - that has been good thing. Yet, the historical trend-line shows products are also becoming more habit-forming.

All products alleviate customers’ pain. Even products used to gain pleasure must first generate desire, a unique form of discomfort, which the customer will pay to satiate.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Our More Addictive World https://www.nirandfar.com/our-more-addictive-world/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Addiction can be a difficult thing to see. From outward appearances, Dr. Zoe Chance looked fine. A professor at the Yale School of Management with a doctorate from Harvard, Chance's pedigree made what she revealed in front of a crowded TEDx audience all the more shocking. "I'm coming clean today telling this story for the very first time in its raw ugly detail," she said. "In March of 2012 ... I purchased a device that would slowly begin to ruin my life."

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: "Is Some Tech Too Addictive?" https://www.nirandfar.com/tooaddictive/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir's Note: In this guest post, Ryan Hoover describes the design decisions and strategies used to build a habit-forming product, largely influenced by the learnings on this blog.  Follow @rrhoover or visit his blog to read more about startups and product design.

Recently, Nathan Bashaw and I launched Product Hunt, a daily leaderboard of the best new products. As two product enthusiasts, we wanted to create a community to share, discover, and geek out about new and interesting products. But to make it a success, we knew we had to make it a habit, a product people would use every day.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Hunting for Habits: Keying in on smart design to make a product irresistible

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post comes from Stephen Wendel, Principal Scientist at HelloWallet and the author of Designing for Behavior Change. Steve's new book is about how to apply behavioral economics to product development. Follow him on twitter @sawendel.

It can be extraordinarily difficult to stop habits head-on. Brain damage, surgery, even Alzheimer’s disease and dementia sometimes fail to stop them.1But why are they so difficult to change?

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How You Can Help Users Change Habits https://www.nirandfar.com/how-you-can-help-users-change-habits/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This book review is by Sam McNerney. Sam writes about cognitive psychology, business, and philosophy.

Many of us feel we’re drowning in the rising tide of emails, updates, and digital distractions. According to a survey by the Families and Work Institute, the majority of American workers report feeling overwhelmed or overworked. In her new book, Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has The Time, Brigid Schulte acknowledges that although the deluge of to do’s is inevitable, there are ways to regain our sanity.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: 4 Cures for Feeling Overwhelmed: A Book Review https://www.nirandfar.com/overwhelmed-a-book-review/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Today, there’s an app for just about everything. With all the amazing things our smartphones can do, there is one thing that hasn’t changed since the phone was first developed. No matter how advanced phones become, they are still communication devices — they connect people together.

Clearly, we’re a social species and these tech solutions help us re-create the tribal connection we seek.  However, there are other more hidden reasons why messaging services keep us checking, pecking, and duckface posing.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Psychology Behind Why We Can't Stop Messaging https://www.nirandfar.com/the-psychology-behind-why-we-cant-stop-messaging/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Let's admit it, we in the consumer web industry are in the manipulation business. We build products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do. We call these people "users" and even if we don't say it aloud, we secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly addicted.

Users take our technologies with them to bed. When they wake up, they check for notifications, tweets, and updates before saying "good morning" to their loved ones. Ian Bogost, the famed game creator and professor, calls the wave of habit-forming technologies the "cigarette of this century" and warns of equally addictive and potentially destructive side-effects.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Morality of Manipulation https://www.nirandfar.com/the-art-of-manipulation/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

My interview with author John Jantsch about his new book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

It’s time to abolish the reference check. The unpleasant process of calling up a job applicant’s former boss to gab about the candidate’s pluses and “deltas” is just silly. Maybe if we all just agree to stop doing it the practice will go away, like pay phones and fanny packs. Instead, I’ve learned a better way to hire that leverages a universal human attribute—namely, the fact that we’re all lazy.

What’s my beef with reference checks? They don’t accomplish the job we intend them to do. In a startup, you can’t afford to hire B-players. But reference checks, which are intended to do the screening, fail to eliminate these candidates who are just so-so.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Abolish the Reference Check https://www.nirandfar.com/abolish-the-reference-check/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

A reader recently asked me a pointed question: “I’ve read your work on creating user habits. It’s all well and good for getting people to do things, like using an app on their iPhone, but I’ve got a bigger problem. How do I get people to do things they don’t want to do?” Taken aback by the directness and potentially immoral implications of his question, my gut reaction was to say, “You can’t and shouldn’t!” To which his response was, “I have to; it’s my job.”

This gentleman, who asked that I not disclose his name, is the corporate equivalent of the guy the mob sends to break kneecaps if a worker doesn’t do as they’re told. For the past decade, he has run the same methodical process of cajoling, and at times threatening, people to do things they don’t want to do. “It’s really unfair and mean. I know it is,” he said. “But people have to comply or else people get hurt.”

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Ways To Get People To Do Things They Don’t Want To Do https://www.nirandfar.com/ways-to-get-people-to-do-things-they-dont-want-to-do/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: In this guest post, Ryan Hoover, Director of Product at PlayHaven, utilizes my thinking on the “Habit Zone” to shed light on where Turntable.fm fell short. Ryan blogs at ryanhoover.me and you can follow him on Twitter at rrhoover.

As I described nearly two years ago, much of Turntable’s success was due to its well-executed social engagement loop; however, that wasn’t enough. So what went wrong?

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: What Killed Turntable.fm? https://www.nirandfar.com/what-killed-turntable-fm/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

We in the design business love when people do what we want. Nothing is more satisfying than when a user intuitively understands what to do with what we’ve built. At the heart of good design, however, is understanding what the user really wants to get done.

But what of designing for behaviors people don’t want to do, at least not right now? We all know we should eat healthier, exercise more, create fewer greenhouse gases, give more to charity, and vote in every local election from city council to school board. But do we? Despite countless organizations and nonprofits encouraging us to do what we know we should, we often don’t. Why is designing for behaviors in the user’s best interests so hard?

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: When Designing for Good Is Bad https://www.nirandfar.com/when-designing-for-good-is-bad/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Auren Hoffman, the CEO of LiveRamp in San Francisco. This essay is a bit different from the normal subject matter on the blog but I hope it will stir some discussion about which of our personal habits are worth improving. Connect with Auron on Twitter at @auren or on Facebook.

To really differentiate yourself and become a superstar in this winner-take-all world, you should be focusing on improving your strengths, not your weaknesses.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: To Become a Superstar, Improve Your Strengths (Not Your Faults) https://www.nirandfar.com/to-become-a-superstar-improve-your-strengths-not-your-faults/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by James Clear. James writes at JamesClear.com, where he share ideas for mastering personal habits. Join his free newsletter here.

In 1936, a man named Kurt Lewin wrote a simple equation that changed the way we think about habits and human behavior.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: This Simple Equation Reveals How Habits Shape Your Health, Happiness, and Wealth https://www.nirandfar.com/this-simple-equation-reveals-how-habits-shape-your-health-happiness-and-wealth/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This post was co-authored with Stuart Luman, a science, technology, and business writer who has worked at Wired Magazine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and IBM.

In the never-ending effort to motivate employees, companies are taking cues from video games–adding scoring, virtual badges, and other game-like elements to everyday work processes to make jobs more fun.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: It's Not All Fun and Games: The Pros and Cons of Gamification at Work https://www.nirandfar.com/its-not-all-fun/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Lyle McKeany is an entrepreneur writing and working on an early-stage startup. In this essay, he shares his experience using lean startup methodologies with my Hook Model at the Lean Startup Machine conference. This article also appears today on Pando Daily. Follow Lyle on Twitter @lylemckeany.

The conventional view of lean startup ideation methodology is to identify a problem, test your riskiest assumption with a certain success criterion, talk to potential customers before coming up with a solution. Then pivot or persevere until you validate a solution. But it turns out that this conventional view isn’t always the appropriate approach. Here’s how my experience at a Lean Startup Machine(LSM) event in San Francisco earlier this month proves it.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Is “Lean Startup” Right for Your Idea? https://www.nirandfar.com/right-for-your-idea/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Wednesday was my birthday. It should have been a great day. My wife and daughter had prepared a delicious breakfast, I had lunch with close friends, and I finished up some writing and client work. At the end of the day I headed to San Francisco to enjoy a swanky scotch tasting at a friend’s house.

Then I heard the news. WhatsApp had been purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. When I read about the deal I blurted out the words, “Holy Crap!” so loudly that a stranger nearby gave me a disapproving look.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How To Cope with Your Insane Jealousy Of The WhatsApp Deal https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-cope-with-your-insane-jealousy-of-the-whatsapp-deal/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

I’ll admit, the bento box is an unlikely place to learn an important business lesson. But consider the California Roll — understanding the impact of this icon of Japanese dining can make all the difference between the success or failure of your product.

The California Roll provided a gateway to discover Japanese cuisine and demand exploded. Over the next few decades sushi restaurants, which were once confined to large coastal cities and almost exclusively served Japanese clientele, suddenly went mainstream. Today, sushi is served in small rural towns, airports, strip malls, and stocked in the deli section of local supermarkets.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently https://www.nirandfar.com/california-role-rule/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Marketplace businesses exist to connect two or more parties, typically the buyers and the sellers. Investors love these marketplace businesses because they tend to grow quickly and spawn winner-take-all companies. A long line of successful Silicon Valley startups have found success providing a place for people to connect and transact. Examples of these kinds of companies include industry titans like eBay and LinkedIn but also include some of today’s web darlings like Uber and AirBnB.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Marketplaces & The Curse of the Network Effect https://www.nirandfar.com/the-curse-of-the-network-effect/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post was authored by Lisa Kostova Ogata, one of the first product managers at Farmville and a VP of Product at Bright.com (sold to LinkedIn). While at Zynga, Lisa learned how to shape user behavior, but in this essay she describes her surprise when she found herself unexpectedly hooked.

I don’t consider myself a gambler. I’m the person who places a minimum bet at the roulette table with the specific intent of getting a free drink — after all, it’s cheaper than buying one at the bar. Yet, there I was on a Monday night, glued to my computer screen for over an hour as I watched an online auction. I couldn’t resist.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Secrets of Addictive Online Auctions https://www.nirandfar.com/online-auctions/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Is “no” the most powerful word in the English language? In this guest post Chikodi Chima explores the power of no and what happens when people say, “No.” Chikodi is a former VentureBeat staff reporter who helps startups with their public relations and marketing. His blog is PR Tips For Startups and he is @Chikodi on Twitter.

Sirens were beautiful creatures from Greek Mythology who lured sailors to their death.  The power of their song was so irresistible it would cause captains to steer their boats into the rocks and drown. We are also seduced daily by ideas that sound great at first, but may leave us shipwrecked, unless we have the power to say no.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Power of No https://www.nirandfar.com/the-power-of-no/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: In contrast to last week’s post on the power of saying “no,” Eric Clymer shares how a creative attitude helped his team build a #1 ranked app. Eric was the lead developer of the “A Beautiful Mess” app and is a Partner at Rocket Mobile.

In improv comedy, there are really only two words that matter: “Yes, and.” You share a premise, form a scene, create a character, and if everything works out right, kill the audience. Then, you try and do it again with another, “Yes, and.”

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: “Yes, And”: The Two Words that Created a #1 App https://www.nirandfar.com/the-two-words-that-created-a-1-app/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

In advertising, marketers reinforce a behavior by linking to the promise of reward. “Use our product,” they claim, “and you’ll get laid”; it’s the gist of many product pitches from soap to hamburgers.

But online, feedback loops aren’t cutting it. Users are increasingly inundated with distractions, and companies find they need to hook users quickly if they want to stay in business. Today, companies are using more than feedback loops. They are deploying the Hook Model.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Variable Rewards: Want To Hook Users? Drive Them Crazy https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

If the Internet had a voice, I am fairly certain it would sound like the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“Hello Nir,” it said to me in its low, monotone voice. “Glad to see you again.”

“Internet, I just need a few quick things for an article I’m writing,” I’d reply. “Then it’s back to work. No distractions this time.”

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: This Will Be the Last Article You Read https://www.nirandfar.com/this-will-be-the-last-article-you-read/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by James Clear. James writes at JamesClear.com, where he share ideas for mastering personal habits. Join his free newsletter here. In 1936, a man named Kurt Lewin wrote a simple equation that changed the way we think about habits and human behavior.

Known today as Lewin’s Equation, this tiny expression contains most of what you need to know about building good habits, breaking bad ones, and making progress in your life.Let’s talk about what we can learn from Lewin’s Equation and how to apply these ideas to master the habits that shape your health, happiness, and wealth.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on This Simple Equation Reveals How Habits Shape Your Health, Happiness, and Wealth https://www.nirandfar.com/this-simple-equation-reveals-how-habits-shape-your-health-happiness-and-wealth/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Jane McGonigal is a game designer at The Institute for the Future and bestselling author of Reality is Broken and SuperBetter. She’ll be speaking at the upcoming Habit Summit in April. (You can register here!) In this interview with Max Ogles, McGonigal discusses impact of future technologies on behavior, habits, and the way we design products.

Q: You recently worked on a project designed to visualize the future of technology. The idea was that using some future, not-yet-existent product, nicknamed FeelThat, people could actually share emotions with each other. (Here’s a link to the video.) What was the thinking behind it?Jane McGonigal: This is a project with Institute for the Future to look at some of the emerging technologies that are being prototyped, tested, and innovated right now. We try to imagine where technologies might take us in a decade or more if they became widespread and popular. We use a process to collect signals, or “clues,” about the future that suggest things that might have the potential to change our lives down the road.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Unbelievable Future of Habit-Forming Technology https://www.nirandfar.com/the-unbelievable-future-of-habit-forming-technology/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: Gad Saad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University and the author of The Consuming Instinct. He’ll be speaking at the upcoming Habit Summit in April. (You can register here!) In this interview with Max Ogles, Saad discusses the role of evolutionary psychology in modern marketing.

Q: Let’s start with a simple question: What is evolutionary psychology?Gad Saad: Evolutionary psychology is applying evolutionary theory to understand the human mind. Evolution is typically used to explain all biological diversity, from how flowers evolved, to how a particular trait of an animal evolves. For example, why does the peacock have its tail that way that it does? The exact same tools of biology apply when we’re trying to understand the human mind. Put simply, evolutionary psychology is the pursuit of understanding the human mind through an evolutionary lens.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Secret Marketing Power of Evolutionary Psychology https://www.nirandfar.com/the-secret-marketing-power-of-evolutionary-psychology/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post by Avi Itzkovitch offers some clues as to why we can’t seem to put our cell phones down. Avi (@xgmedia) is an Independent User Experience Consultant. He is currently working from his Tel-Aviv Studio XG Media.

Do you constantly check your smartphone to see if you’ve received messages or notifications on Facebook? Does your phone distract you from your studies or work? Do your friends, parents, children, or spouse complain that you are not giving them enough attention because of your phone? You may be addicted to your phone.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Real Reason You’re Addicted to Your Phone-Nir&Far https://www.nirandfar.com/the-real-reason-youre-hooked-to-your-phone/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This post was co-authored with Ximena Vengoechea. Ximena is a design researcher at Twitter and will be speaking at this year’s Habit Summit. 

In his famed experiments, Ivan Pavlov trained his dogs to associate mealtime with the ring of a bell. Pavlov found he could elicit an involuntary physical response in his dogs with a simple jingle. Every time his bell rang, the dogs began to salivate.Today, the beeps, buzzes, rings, flags, pushes, and pings blasting from our phones prompt a similar response. They are the Pavlovian bell of the 21st century and they get us to check our tech incessantly.However, as powerful as these psychological cues are, people are not drooling dogs. Your product’s users can easily uninstall or turn off notifications that annoy them.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Psychology of Notifications: How to Send Triggers that Work https://www.nirandfar.com/notifications-that-work/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is written by Max Ogles. Max writes at MaxOgles.com about behavior change, psychology, and technology. Sign up for a free copy of his upcoming e-book, “9 Ways to Motivate Yourself Using Psychology and Technology."

A commonly quoted and incredibly scary stat reveals that 9 out of 10 people who undergo heart bypass surgeries as a result of poor health are unable to change their habits, even with their lives on the line.We’ve all failed at something, though luckily most of us don’t face death as a consequence. 

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Number One Reason Good Habits Don't Last https://www.nirandfar.com/the-number-one-reason-good-habits-dont-last/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Right now, someone is tinkering with a billion dollar secret — they just don’t know it yet. “What people aren’t telling you,” Peter Thiel taught his class at Stanford, “can very often give you great insight as to where you should be directing your attention.”Secrets people can’t or don’t want to divulge are a common thread behind Thiel’s most lucrative investments such as Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as several other breakout companies of the past decade. The kinds of truths Thiel discusses — the kinds that create billion dollar businesses in just a few years — are not held exclusively by those with deep corporate pockets. In fact, the person most likely to build the next great tech business will likely be a scrappy entrepreneur with a big dream, a sharp mind, and a valuable secret.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Next Secrets of the Internet: https://www.nirandfar.com/the-next-secrets-of-the-web/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

When my family immigrated to the United States in 1981, my father weighed 185 pounds. He came chasing the American dream but got more than he expected. Along with a new, more prosperous life for his family, he also acquired some bad habits.For one, he took up smoking because, as he sheepishly admits, “that’s what business people here did back then.” And to ward off the boredom of long car rides between sales calls, he began eating American-made junk food.Eventually, he stopped smoking. However, the junk food habit got the best of him. His weight ballooned by over 50 pounds and in his late 50s his doctor told him he was pre-diabetic.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Mind-Hack I Used to Help My Father Lose Weight https://www.nirandfar.com/father-lose-weight/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: In this guest post Ryan Hoover takes a look at how interface changes drive innovation. Ryan blogs at ryanhoover.me and you can follow him on Twitter atrrhoover

What do motorized vehicles, broadband internet, and smartphones have in common? These technologies all introduced new forms of user interface, transforming its user’s daily lives and behaviors.I’ve been studying Nir Eyal’s work and recently read his article on the power of interface changes.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Future is Driven by Interface Changes https://www.nirandfar.com/driven-by-interface-changes/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Note: I’m proud to have co-authored this post with Jason Hreha, the founder of Dopamine, a user-experience and behavior design firm. He blogs at persuasive.ly

Yin asked not to be identified by her real name. A young addict in her mid-twenties, she lives in Palo Alto and, despite her addiction, attends Stanford University. She has all the composure and polish you’d expect of a student at a prestigious school, yet she succombs to her habit throughout the day. She can’t help it; she’s compulsively hooked.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Billion Dollar Mind Trick: An Intro Triggers https://www.nirandfar.com/billion-dollar-mind-trick-2/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Diets don’t work. Studies show that temporary fixes to old habits actually make people gain weight. Essentially, the dieter’s brain is trained to gorge when off the diet and inevitably the weight returns.

In my previous essay, I shared the story of my father’s struggle with bad eating habits. He had put on weight over the last few decades and despite several attempts, he had trouble taking it off. In his late 60s he faces pre-diabetes and a daily ritual of taking a handful of pills.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: The Behavioral Economics Diet: The Science of Killing a Bad Habit https://www.nirandfar.com/behavioral-economics-diet-the-science-of-killing-a-bad-habit/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

How do products tempt us? What makes them so alluring? It is easy to assume we crave delicious food or impulsively check email because we find pleasure in the activity. But pleasure is just half the story.

Temptation is more than just the promise of reward. Recent advances in neuroscience allow us to peer into the brain, providing a greater understanding of what makes us want.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Temptation https://www.nirandfar.com/temptation/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

My wife put our daughter to bed, brushed her teeth, and freshened up before bed. Slipping under the covers, we exchanged glances and knew it was time to do what comes naturally for a couple on a warm night in Silicon Valley. We began to lovingly caress–but not each other, of course. She began to fondle her cell phone, while I tenderly stroked the screen of my iPad. Ooh, it felt so good.

If our nightly habits were any indication, we were having a love affair with our gadgets instead of each other. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones substituting foreplay for Facebook. According to a recent study, fully one-third of Americans would rather give up sex than lose their cell phones.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Strange Sex Habits of Silicon Valley https://www.nirandfar.com/strange-sex-habits-of-silicon-valley/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Do you get the feeling apps are getting dumber? They are, and that’s a good thing. Behind the surprising simplicity of some of today’s top apps, smart developers are realizing that they’re able to get users to do more by doing less. A new crop of companies is setting its sights on changing user behaviors; the small behaviors in your life, hoping to reap big rewards.

They’re using the best practices of interaction design and psychology to build products with your brain in mind. Here’s how they’re doing it.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Stop Building Apps, Start Building User Behaviors https://www.nirandfar.com/stop-building-apps-and-start-building-behaviors/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Until recently, when I needed a break I’d grab my phone. Whether I was bored, mentally fatigued, or just wanting a pick-me-up, I felt relief checking the news, Facebook, or Instagram.

However, new research suggests there are good ways and not-so-good ways to spend our break time. While some breaks can leave us refreshed and reenergized, others tend to leave us depleted and drained.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Research Reveals How to Take a Better Break https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-spend-your-breaks-wisely-and-have-a-better-workday/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Note: I co-authored this post with Andrew Martin and David Ngo. It originally appeared in TechCrunch.

This week, fans packed stadiums in London wearing their nation’s colors like rebels ready for battle in Mel Gibson’s army. They screamed with excitement and anguished in defeat. Many paid thousands of dollars to travel around the globe to be there.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Psychology of Sports: How Sports Infect Your Brain https://www.nirandfar.com/how-sports-infect-your-brain/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

NOTE: This post originally appeared in Techcrunch. 

Reading Leena Rao’s recent article on Techcrunch about the personalization revolution, you get the sense that the tech world is waiting for a bus that isn’t coming. Rao quotes well-known industry experts and luminaries describing what needs to happen for e-commerce to finally realize the promise of personalized shopping, a future where online retailers predict what you’ll want to buy before you know yourself.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Personalized eCommerce Is Already Here, You Just Don't Recognize It https://www.nirandfar.com/personalized-ecommerce-is-already-here/

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: In this guest post, Ryan Hoover, contributing writer of my book Hooked, describes how nostalgia is used to drive attention and build an engaging product. Follow @rrhoover or visit his blog to read more about startups and product design.

Remember pogs?

Remember Tubthumping?

Remember Nickelodeon GUTS?

Now pause…

How do you feel right now? Did reading those words stimulate any emotional reaction? Did it bring back memories? Excite you? Make you smile?

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: Nostalgia: A Product Designer’s Secret Weapon https://www.nirandfar.com/2014/01/nostalgia-a-product-designers-secret-weapon.html

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post is an excerpt from my friend Ryan Holiday’s new book, Ego Is the Enemy. Ryan is the author of three other books and his monthly reading recommendations, which go out to 50,000+ subscribers, can be found here. 

John DeLorean ran his car company into the ground with a mix of outsized ambition, negligence, narcissism, greed, and mismanagement. As the bad news began to pile up and the picture was made clear and public, how do you think he responded? Was it with resigned acceptance? Did he acknowledge the errors his disgruntled employees were speaking out about for the first time? Was he able to reflect, even slightly, on the mistakes and decisions that had brought him, his investors, and his employees so much trouble?

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: It’s How You React to Failure that Matters: Why Ego is the Enemy https://www.nirandfar.com/2016/07/react-failure-matters-ego-enemy.html

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Everyone suddenly seems interested in messing with your head. Gamification, Quantified Self, Persuasive Technology, Neuromarketing and a host of other techniques offer ways to influence behavior. At the heart of these techniques is a desire to change peoples’ habits so that behavior change becomes permanent.

Here’s the problem: Until now, the explosion of methods for changing behavior has been a hodgepodge of author-centric noise. Reading all of the books, blogs, and blowhards can leave one confused by their seemingly conflicting advice. Pundits push their methods as cure-alls. For example, some argue that earning badges and leveling-up can inspire the clinically obese to become slim again. They can’t. Others claim that being good at anything requires strict goal setting and performance objectives. It doesn’t. The goal of this article is to help you identify which of the different techniques would be most effective for each type of behavior change.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How to Design Behavior (The Behavior Change Matrix) https://www.nirandfar.com/2012/03/how-to-design-behavior.html

Nir’s Note: In this last in a series of guest posts on the topic of technology habits, Jason Shah shares practical tips he used to regain control over his devices and break bad habits. Jason is a Product Manager at Yammer and blogs about user experience and technology at blog.jasonshah.org. You can follow him on Twitter @jasonyogeshshah.

“Not long ago, in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Texas, a 17-year-old boy was weathering withdrawal at its worst. His body shuddered with convulsions. He hurled tables and chairs around the hospital.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on How to Break 5 Soul-Sucking Technology Habits https://www.nirandfar.com/2013/10/how-to-break-5-soul-sucking-technology-habits.html

Interested in boosting customer desire? A classic study that demonstrates the psychology of scarcity reveals an interesting quirk of human behavior that may hold a clue.

In 1975, researchers Worchel, Lee, and Adewole wanted to know how people would value cookies in two identical glass jars. One jar held ten cookies while the other contained just two stragglers. Which cookies would people value more?https://twitter.com/JulesMaltz

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How to Boost Desire Using the Psychology of Scarcity https://www.nirandfar.com/2013/07/psychology-of-scarcity.html

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

This week, thousands of people swarmed the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Looking from above, the scene resembled an insect infestation of scampering masses in a hive of the latest must-haves.

When considering our complex relationship with technology, perhaps it is useful to reflect upon the plight of one particular bug, the male julodimorpha beetle, who like us at times, can’t get enough of a bad thing. His misplaced desire is so powerful that it threatens the survival of his species.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on: How Technology is Like Bug Sex https://www.nirandfar.com/2013/01/how-technology-is-like-bug-sex.html

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Nir’s Note: This guest post comes from Marc Abraham, a London-based product manager at Beamly. In this article, Marc reviews the recently published book “Designing Multi-Device Experiences” by Michal Levin. Follow Marc on Twitter or check out his blog.

We live in a world where the number of connected devices is growing on a daily basis at an immense rate, with people constantly switching between these devices (PCs, smartphones, tablets, TVs and more). The question arises how we can design optimally for a device to be used together with other devices.

You can read the Nir and Far blog post on How Successful Companies Design for Users' Multi-Device Lives https://www.nirandfar.com/2014/07/how-successful-companies-design-for-users-multi-device-lives.html

Nir & Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/