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 lea...
Aug 26, 2019•8 min
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 ...
Aug 19, 2019•10 min
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...
Aug 12, 2019•8 min
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 attentio...
Aug 05, 2019•9 min
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 ...
Jul 29, 2019•7 min
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 ...
Jul 22, 2019•9 min
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 discus...
Jul 15, 2019•8 min
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, ...
Jul 08, 2019•6 min
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 at rrhoover 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 Fa...
Jul 01, 2019•5 min
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 ...
Jun 24, 2019•7 min
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 rea...
Jun 17, 2019•9 min
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 abo...
Jun 10, 2019•8 min
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...
Jun 03, 2019•10 min
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...
May 27, 2019•5 min
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/ho...
May 20, 2019•10 min
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-...
May 13, 2019•11 min
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 ...
May 06, 2019•8 min
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 ...
Apr 29, 2019•9 min
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 h...
Apr 22, 2019•12 min
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,...
Apr 15, 2019•9 min
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 wors...
Apr 08, 2019•17 min
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 Boos...
Apr 01, 2019•11 min
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...
Mar 25, 2019•10 min
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 ar...
Mar 18, 2019•9 min
Type the name of almost any successful consumer web company into your search bar and add the word “addict” after it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Try “Facebook addict” or “Twitter addict” or even “Pinterest addict” and you’ll soon get a slew of results from hooked users and observers deriding the narcotic-like properties of these web sites. We’re on the precipice of a new era of the web. As infinite distractions compete for our attention, companies are learning to master new tactics to...
Mar 11, 2019•10 min
Nir’s Note: My friend Jake Knapp just published a fantastic book titled, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days . The book details a process he and his colleagues at Google Ventures use to quickly go from idea, to prototype, to live test. Jake put together an exclusive excerpt from the book for NirAndFar.com readers. Here it is: Monday of the sprint week begins with an exercise we call “ Start at the End”. It’s a look ahead—to the end of ...
Mar 04, 2019•7 min
Nir’s Note: This post is 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. “I wish that I could be like the cool kids,” goes the catchy hook for the hit song by Echosmith. The official video has been viewed over 15 million times on YouTube, perhaps tapping into something deeper than mere adolescent angst. You can read the Nir and Far blog post: Getting Over Your Fear of Missing Out ht...
Feb 25, 2019•8 min
Note: I’m proud to have co-authored this post with my good friend Charles Wang . Charles is a co-founder of LUMOback , a former classmate, and an accomplished psychiatrist. He brings a great perspective to the art of Behavior Engineering. Today’s top selling books are about how to acquire world-class skill. Daniel Coyle’s, The Talent Code looks at how deliberate practice is required to achieve greatness. Joshua Foer shows us how we must smash past performance plateaus to be an...
Feb 18, 2019•7 min
We are caught in an endless cycle of messaging hell and the pattern is always the same. First, a new communication system is born — take email or Facebook, for example. Ease-of-use helps the product gain wide adoption and reach a critical mass of users. And then things turn ugly. Some crafty entrepreneur figures out how to exploit the system and starts building a business around it. He reaches millions of people and opens the floodgates to countless others who seek to emulate his methods. Inevit...
Feb 11, 2019•7 min
“Hi Nir,” the email began. “I have been reading your work and find it incredibly interesting.” Naturally, this is the kind of message a blogger loves to receive. However, this email was special for another reason. It was from a prominent New York publishing agent who represents several authors I read and admire. “I don’t know if you’ve already started down this road or whether writing a book interests you, but I’d be delighted to have a conversation with you if you are interested.” You can read ...
Feb 04, 2019•8 min
