Nir And Far: Business, Behaviour And The Brain

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many pop psychology topics, the conventional wisdom about the effectiveness and application of habits is frequently outdated, misapplied, or flat out wrong.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 subsc

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 p

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

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 podcas

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, boo

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

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 teachi

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/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nirandfar/support

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

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/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nirandfar/support

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 revi

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

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/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nirandfar/support

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 m

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/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ni

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/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nirandfar/support

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.nira

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 b

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/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/niran