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 consultan...
Nov 16, 2020•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, foundin...
Nov 09, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 s...
Nov 02, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Oct 26, 2020•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 neede...
Oct 19, 2020•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 app...
Oct 12, 2020•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Oct 05, 2020•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 popul...
Sep 28, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 dau...
Sep 21, 2020•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Sep 14, 2020•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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, P...
Sep 07, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ma...
Aug 31, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. H...
Aug 24, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 p...
Aug 17, 2020•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 b...
Aug 10, 2020•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 wa...
Aug 03, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jun 22, 2020•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Jun 08, 2020•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jun 01, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Pinte...
May 25, 2020•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 po...
May 18, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 want...
May 11, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 liv...
May 04, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Apr 27, 2020•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Apr 20, 2020•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 th...
Apr 13, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Apr 06, 2020•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 th...
Mar 30, 2020•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 sta...
Mar 23, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. Y...
Mar 16, 2020•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
