Nir And Far: Business, Behaviour And The Brain

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 yo

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 w

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

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:

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, bo

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 disc

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

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

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:/

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

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/ --- Su

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/ --- Support

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 F

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

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 Ni

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

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

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 list

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/ --- Support this podcast:

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