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 ins...
Oct 18, 2021•14 min
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 podca...
Oct 11, 2021•6 min
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 enj...
Oct 04, 2021•4 min
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 ...
Sep 27, 2021•9 min
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 il...
Sep 20, 2021•6 min
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: S...
Sep 13, 2021•7 min
I interview psychologist Jocelyn Brewer, founder of Digital Nutrition.™
Sep 06, 2021•46 min
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 addict...
Aug 30, 2021•7 min
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 ar...
Aug 23, 2021•5 min
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 an...
Aug 16, 2021•5 min
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 Tec...
Aug 09, 2021•9 min
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...
Aug 02, 2021•7 min
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-h...
Jul 26, 2021•10 min
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 yo...
Jul 19, 2021•9 min
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 ...
Jul 12, 2021•6 min
‘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...
Jul 05, 2021•9 min
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 &a...
Jun 28, 2021•6 min
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-selli...
Jun 21, 2021•11 min
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...
Jun 14, 2021•7 min
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 subs...
Jun 07, 2021•8 min
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 s...
May 31, 2021•10 min
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 “D...
May 24, 2021•4 min
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 ...
May 17, 2021•4 min
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 c...
Apr 26, 2021•12 min
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 a...
Apr 19, 2021•18 min
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 wo...
Apr 12, 2021•7 min
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 Measur...
Apr 05, 2021•5 min
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 Type...
Mar 29, 2021•21 min
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 NirAnd...
Mar 15, 2021•14 min
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....
Mar 08, 2021•14 min
