Self Discipline and Self Control: Secrets of Reaching Your Life Goals
Emails, text messages, notifications, and glowing screens leave us with very little to show for all the time we spend looking at them. For many people this experience is highly ungratifying in the short term and terribly frustrating in the long term. They say “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” No one wants to aspire to this terrible aphorism. But without self discipline and self control even the very best of intentions are that—good intentions
So achieving what we aim to do is about setting the right goals. It is also about developing the ability to control our behavior and impulses that so often get in the way of our intentions. By exercising self control, we make an active choice. We forgo our immediate pleasures for the increased opportunity to fulfill our greater goals. It serves as a precursor for sustained behavioral change.
The articles on this page will help you develop the self discipline and self control needed to be more productive at work and at home. We will explore the sources of motivation and examine how to develop and track the habits that help you change your behaviors. and learn the needed tips to combat distraction.
Arm yourself with this toolkit filled with the newest scientific insights, practical tips, and real life examples. With it, you will be able to take better control of your life and increase your potential.
Here you’ll find a wealth of articles to help you understand the importance of self control. Explore and learn how to develop the self discipline needed to accomplish more of what matters.
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Top Articles on Self Discipline
Technology Is Not Hijacking Your Brain (video)
Some tech critics will have you believe that technology is "hijacking your brain" or that it's "irresistible." Not only is that not true, believing such nonsense is dangerous. In my recent talk at The Next Web conference, I discuss: The difference between...
When Distraction is a Good Thing
Is distraction a curse or a blessing? Not giving full attention to what we should be doing makes us miss deadlines, fail classes, and crash into other drivers. Distraction certainly has a price. Nonetheless, we love our distractions! Social media, spectator sports,...
How to Use Psychology to Make Persuasive Video
Nir's Note: This guest post is excerpted from Nathalie Nahai's best-selling book, Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion. A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world. - Alan Rickman, ActorWhat...
Tech Companies are Addicting People! But Should They Stop?
To understand technology addiction (or any addiction for that matter) you need to understand the Q-tip. Perhaps you've never noticed there’s a scary warning on every box of cotton swabs that reads, “CAUTION: Do not enter ear canal…Entering the ear canal could cause...
How to Use Personality Science to Drive Online Conversions
Nir's Note: This guest post is by Vanessa Van Edwards, lead investigator at the Science of People — a human behavior research lab. This exclusive book excerpt is from Vanessa's new book, Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, which was recently named as one...
Technology Is Distracting. Here’s How to Fix It. (Video)
Our personal technology is becoming more pervasive and persuasive. Critics claim it is addictive, irresistible, and hijacking our brains. Instead of offering another knee-jerk reaction, here's my take on the peril and promise of persuasive technology. This is the talk...
The Strange Way Being “Good” Hurts Your Willpower
Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Paulette Perhach. Paulette writes about finances, psychology, technology, travel, and better living for the likes of The New York Times, Elle, and Slate. I learned how to respect authority from my father. At the top of a huge water...
Research Reveals How to Take a Better Break
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...
The Unbelievable Future of Habit-Forming Technology
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...
Why Our Tech Obsession Might Be a Work Obsession
Nir's Note: Below is the transcript of an interview I did with David Burkus, an award-winning podcaster and author of Under New Management: The Unexpected Truths about Leading Great Organizations. This interview was part of a Heleo Conversation on the topic of...
The Secret Marketing Power of Evolutionary Psychology
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...
Your Ability to Focus Has Probably Peaked: Here’s How to Stay Sharp
Having a hard time focusing lately? You’re not alone. Research shows interruptions occur about every twelve minutes in the workplace, and every three minutes in university settings. In an age of constant digital interruptions, it is no wonder you’re having trouble...
Don’t Ask People What They Want, Watch What They Do
Nir’s Note: Irene Au is a design partner at Khosla Ventures and former Head of Design at Google, Yahoo, and Udacity. She’ll be speaking at the upcoming Habit Summit in April. (You can register here!) In this interview, she chats with Max Ogles about design strategy...
How to Achieve Your Goals By Creating an Enemy
DJ Khaled, the one-man internet meme, is known for warning his tens of millions of social media followers about a group of villains he calls “they.” “They don’t want you motivated. They don’t want you inspired,” he blares on camera. “They don’t want you to win,”...
How Cognitive Biases Can Help (and Hurt) Your Business
Nir’s Note: Buster Benson is a former product manager at Slack who worked previously at Twitter and Habit Labs and is working on a new book about productive disagreements. In this interview, he chats with Max Ogles about how cognitive biases affect product design. Q:...
What Most People Don’t Know About Behavioral Design
Nir’s Note: Susan Weinschenk is a behavioral scientist, author, and speaker at the upcoming Habit Summit in April. (You can register here!) In this interview, she chats with Max Ogles about some of the overlooked principles of behavioral design. Q: You’re the author...
How to Start a Career in Behavioral Design
How to Stay Informed Without Losing Your Mind
Around the election, in a desperate search for answers about our nation’s future, I found myself scrolling, reading, and watching everything I could. I was trapped in an endless pull-to-refresh cycle of consuming more news, tweets, posts, and videos than was good for...
What Do You Do When Someone “Steals” Your Amazing Idea?
The subject line read: “did you see this?” The message was from my editor Jen. “Nir, I saw the headline on this story and thought it might be written by you—but no!” she wrote. “Very weird.” I instantly clicked on the link she’d sent. It was uncanny! An article...
The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You
Not so long ago, my after work routine looked like this: After a particularly grueling day, I'd sit on the couch and veg for hours, doing my solo version of "Netflix and chill," which meant keeping company with a cold pint of ice cream. I knew the ice cream, and the...
Your World is Full of Placebo Buttons (and That’s a Good Thing)
All products and services, everything we buy and use, have but one job—to modulate our mood. The fundamental reason we use technology of all sorts, from stone tools to the latest iPhone, is to make us feel better. To prove the point, consider how perception of relief...
How to Build Technology that Feels Like a Friend
This Weird Research-Backed Goal Setting Hack Actually Works
Nir's Note: This article on goal setting was originally published in early 2016 but got such a great reader response that I decided to expand and update it along with adding the video below.Over the past four years, I’ve discovered many incredible ways to hack my...
3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products
If you’ve started a tech company to make a lot of money, chances are you’re bad at math—or simply delusional. Statistically speaking, your odds of a big-time payday are somewhere between zero and almost zero.Ninety-two percent of startups fail within three years....
Here’s How to Ethically Manipulate Other People
Are we using behavioral design (and ethical manipulation) for good? How do we know? Now that we have the power to profoundly change peoples' habits through technology, how do change behavior ethically?Manipulation Matrix In this short video, I talk to Amir Shevat,...
How Two Companies Hooked Customers On Products They Rarely Use
Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google), has a quirky way of deciding which companies he likes. It’s called “The Toothbrush Test.” According to the New York Times, when Page looks at a potential company to acquire, he wants to know if the...
Don’t Let Friendships Starve to Death: Use This Happiness Hack to Keep People Close
Several months ago, I wrote an article sharing a happiness hack my wife and I use to maintain and nourish close friendships.Here's a SlideShare summary of the happiness hack article. [bctt tweet="Don't let friendships starve! Use this #happiness hack to nourish...
Conquer Distractions With This Simple Chart
Is the world more distracting? Sometimes it seems that way. With our digital devices buzzing, world events demanding our attention, and more things to entertain us than ever before, it certainly seems harder to focus on what’s really important. And yet, focus is...
Should We Worry About the World Becoming More Addictive? Q&A with Nir Eyal
Nir's Note: This Q&A recently appeared on the 15five.com blog and it pulled out some thoughts I've been chewing on regarding technology, addiction, and our relationship with the products we use. I've edited it slightly and hope you find it interesting. Question:...
How to Hook Users in 3 Steps: An Intro to Habit Testing
Changing user habits isn't easy -- but understanding how to conduct Habit Testing will increase your odds of success. In this video, I provide a brief introduction to the three steps of Habit Testing. I explain how product designers use these steps to identify their...
The Four People Addicting You to Technology
Recently, the Pokemon Go phenomenon has reigniting the question of technology's role in changing behavior. To put things in perspective, I wanted to share the main points of an article I published on the topic titled, Who’s Really Addicting Us to Technology?, in a...
Die Dashboards, Die! Why Conversations Will Reinvent Software
In years to come, conversations will breathe new life into software—particularly the boring enterprise tools millions of knowledge workers begrudgingly use every day. Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) work because of our familiarity with messaging. Even the most...
“Think Different” is Bad Advice
Nir's Note: This guest post is an excerpt from the new book Invisible Influence: The Hidden Factors that Shape Behavior, written by my friend and Wharton School professor, Jonah Berger. Being different, the notion goes, is the route to success. Think different was...
The Secret to Sending Emails and Notifications That Work
In this video I discuss the psychology of sending good triggers. The video is based on an earlier post written with Ximena Vengoechea.Related Articles
Three Steps To Get Up To Speed On Any Subject Quickly
You have just a few days to learn everything there is to know about a subject you know nothing about. Now what? "Don’t boil the ocean," Terry said as he slapped a tall stack of papers on my desk. "Just tell us what we need to know." I was staring at a serious problem....
It’s How You React to Failure that Matters: Why Ego is the Enemy
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. It can ruin your life only if...
How to Win Your Competition’s Customers
About a year ago, I wrote an essay about how to win your competition's customers habits. Today, I'd like to share a quick video of the ideas in that article. Let me know what you think about this format and if you'd like to see more videos like this one...Behavior Can...
Hooked for Good: How Habit-Forming Products Improve Lives
Below is my opening presentation from Habit Summit highlighting examples of companies changing user behavior for good.BTW - If you couldn't attend the Habit Summit, you can get access to the presentations you missed here.Related Articles[catlist name=hooked-resources...
Good Products Start With Good Questions
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...
Why People Check Their Tech at the Wrong Times (and the Simple Trick to Stop It)
Chances are you’ve experienced the following: You’re with a small group of friends at a nice restaurant. Everyone is enjoying the food and conversation when someone decides to take out his phone — not for an urgent call, but to check email, Instagram, and Facebook....
Happiness Hack: This One Ritual Made Me Much Happier
When my wife and I moved to New York City in 2001, recently graduated from college and newly wed, we were eager to find friends. We knew nearly no one but were sure we’d soon find a fun-loving group like the 20- and 30-something New Yorkers who spontaneously dropped...
Who’s Really Addicting You to Technology?
“Nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet,” wrote Tony Schwartz in a recent essay in The New York Times. It’s a common complaint these days. A steady stream of similar headlines accuse the Net and its offspring apps, social media sites and...
How to Clear Your Computer of Focus-Draining Distraction
By the looks of his laptop, Robbert Van Els could be mistaken for a secret agent. His screen is an explosion of urgent files — a master control center for managing clandestine operatives. The man of mystery persona is typified by a side-sliding sports car winding...
Human + A.I. = Your Digital Future
In the new film Ex Machina, a reclusive billionaire invents a robotic artificial intelligence. To test whether his invention is indistinguishable from a human being, he helicopters-in a young engineer to see if he falls in love with the robot. Today, making machines...
Why ‘Assistant-As-App’ Might Be the Next Big Tech Trend
Whenever I feel uncomfortable writing about a topic, that’s when I know I should write about it. So here goes. This article is about how a new way of designing apps changed my life. But to explain the power of this trend, I need to tell you about poop. That’s the...
People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently.
If your new product or service isn’t gaining traction, ask yourself “What’s my California Roll?” I’ll admit, the bento box is an unlikely place to learn an important business lesson. But consider the California Roll — understanding the impact of this icon of Japanese...
Un-Hooked: Increasing Focus in the Age of Distraction
I recently presented a new talk about how to manage digital distraction using the Hooked Model. I hope you enjoy the brief video below.Also, I've been thinking of writing more on this topic. Let me know what you think. Is this an interesting topic? Do you struggle...
Would You Take A Bet That Would Change Your Life? Probably Not. Here’s Why
Changing habits is hard. But what if there was a way to dramatically improve your odds of quitting even your worst habits? What if this method was shown to be over 8 times more effective than traditional methods at helping people quit a stubborn addiction like...
The Behavioral Economics Diet: The Science of Killing a Bad Habit
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...
The Mind-Hack I Used to Help My Father Lose Weight
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...
4 Ways to Win Your Competitor’s Customer Habits (Slides)
After the slide presentation I posted about "The Secret Psychology of Snapchat" received such a warm response from readers, I decided to create another set of slides. This presentation is about how to win over your competition's customer habits. I hope you enjoy it....
4 Cures for Feeling Overwhelmed: A Book Review
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,...
Here’s Why You’ll Hate the Apple Watch (and the Important Business Lesson You Need to Know)
If you are among the 19 million people Apple predicts will buy an Apple Watch, I have some bad news for you — I’m betting there is an important feature missing from the watch that’s going to drive you nuts. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one. In fact, I’m...
The Secret Psychology of Snapchat
You've undoubtedly heard of Snapchat, the habit-forming messaging service used by over 100 million people monthly. This week, I teamed up with Victoria Young and Dori Adar to help explain what makes the app so sticky. We decided that instead of writing a long blog...
Can’t Kick a Bad Habit? You’re Probably Doing It Wrong
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...
Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know The Answer) Book Review
Here's the Gist: Duncan Watts is a sociologist and principal researcher at Microsoft Research. His latest book is Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer): How Common Sense Fails Us. Personal preference, though not entirely arbitrary, is likely constructed and...
Your Fitness App is Making You Fat, Here’s Why
Fitness apps are all the rage. An explosion of new companies and products want to track your steps and count your calories with the aim of melting that excess blubber. There's just one problem -- most of these apps don't work. In fact, there is good reason to believe...
The Psychology of Notifications: How to Send Triggers that Work
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...
How Technology Tricks You Into Tipping More
My taxi pulled up to the hotel. I got out my credit card and prepared to pay for the ride. The journey was pleasant enough but little did I know I was about to encounter a bit of psychological trickery designed to get me to pay more for the lift. Chances are you’re...
Building Community Starts with Understanding People
Curated by Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, a site and community for discovering the latest tech products, backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Ryan is the contributing writer of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, and blogs on startups, marketing, and product...
When Persuasion Becomes Deception
Curated by Harry Brignull, freelance UX consultant, user researcher, and expert witness. Harry has a PhD in Cognitive Science and is the founder of Dark Patterns, a site dedicated to naming and shaming websites that use deceptive user interfaces. Harry blogs at...
Latest Tech Trends: Products to Eliminate Distractions and Increase Willpower
Four minutes into pitching the wonders of his invention to an influential reporter, Patrick Paul gets hit with the kind of snarky comment startup entrepreneurs dread. Paul is the founder of Hemingwrite, a “distraction free writing tool with modern technology like a...
Mastering Pricing Principles
Curated by Gregory Ciotti, part of the content marketing team at Shopify and prior to that, Customer Champion at Help Scout. Gregory writes essays on human behavior on his blog, Sparring Mind.There's a reason people on Craigslist are always overvaluing their crap: the...
3 Ways to Make Better Decisions Using “The Power of Noticing”
Nir’s Note: This book review is by Sam McNerney. Sam writes about cognitive psychology, business, and philosophy.In Moneyball, Michael Lewis tells the story of Billy Bean, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who transformed the A’s using sabermetrics, the...
A Handy Behavioral Design Toolkit
Curated by Jason Hreha, former Global Head of Behavioral Science at Walmart. Jason is the co-author of abook on applied behavioral economics with Dan Ariely and Kristen Berman and used to be a Researcher in the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab–led by BJ Fogg, author...
Onboarding Matters – Getting Users Engaged in your Product
Curated by Josh Elman, Venture Partner at Greylock, where he led investments in Medium, Discord, Jelly, Mammoth Media, and other companies. Previously, Josh was an early employee of LinkedIn, launched Facebook Connect while at Facebook, and helped Twitter grow its...
The Limits of Loyalty: When Habits Change, You’re Toast
“I’m endlessly loyal,” my wife said, staring straight into my eyes. But she wasn’t talking about our marriage -- she was pledging her allegiance to a piece of software. “I’ll never quit Microsoft Office,” she told me. “It does too much for me to leave it.” For a...
Dual Process Theory: Is Your Product the Elephant or the Rider?
Curated by Steve Wendel, a behavioral scientist and the Founder of the Action Design Network, and the author of the book Designing for Behavior Change, which gives step by step guidance on using behavioral techniques to help your users take action.Dual Process...
4 Ways to Use Psychology to Win Your Competition’s Customers
Let’s say you’ve built the next big thing. You’re ready to take on the world and make billions. Your product is amazing and you’re convinced you’ve bested the competition. As a point of fact, you know you offer the very best solution in your market. But here’s the...
Web Psychology – The Science of Online Persuasion
Curated by Nathalie Nahai, international speaker, and best-selling author of Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion. She coined the term 'web psychology' , defining it as 'the empirical study of how our online environments influence our attitudes and...
Email Habits: How to Use Psychology to Regain Control
"You teach best what you most need to learn." - Richard Bach I don't usually write about personal and revealing matters, but recently I've noticed something I don't like about myself--I check email too often. This confession doesn't come easily, because, ironically, I...
Developing User Empathy with Design Sprints
Curated by Alex Baldwin, Designer at Envoy. Alex served as the CΧO at Hack Design and designer at Envoy. Previously, he's worked as a designer-in-residence with Techstars and 500 Startups. You can find him climbing nature, disc jockeying, drinking lattes, or possibly...
The Real Reason “Stupid” Startups Raise So Much Money
Have you noticed all the startups raising massive sums of money recently? Perhaps you’ve scratched your head wondering how a company like Buzzfeed, known for its website full of animated gifs, listicles and quizzes, just raised $50 million dollars, valuing the company...
Want To Be A Game Psychologist? What You Need to Know
Curated by Jamie Madigan, Ph.D., originator of psychologyofgames.com where you can find his writings. Jamie writes and talks about how psychology can be used to understand how games are made, played, and sold. He has written on the subject for various websites and...
The Psychology Behind Why We Can’t Stop Messaging
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...
How to Do Effective User Research
Curated by Steph Habif, Behavior Designer at Habif Health. Steph is a behavioral scientist with 10+ years of experience leading healthcare teams on ways to design for consumer engagement. She specializes in user research and behavior design and has worked with...
Context Driven Design (The “Context Effect”)
Curated by Michal Levin, Senior User Experience Designer at Google. She is also the author of the book Designing Multi-Device Experiences by O'Reilly Media, offering a new context-driven approach to designing user experiences across devices. In a UX career of over 10...
The Psychology of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise App: Why is Slack so Habit-Forming?
Slack isn’t just another office collaboration app. The company has been called, “the fastest-growing workplace software ever.” Recent press reports claim that “users send more than 25 million messages each week,” and that the company is, “adding $1 million to its...
Writing Copy for Your Reader’s Brain
Curated by Roger Dooley, an international keynote speaker and consultant. He is the author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing (Wiley), and he writes the popular blog Neuromarketing, as well as Brainy Marketing at...
Mind Hacking a Book
“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...
Designing Habit-Forming Products
Curated by Nir Eyal, Author of Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products. Nir has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Nir is a co-creator of this course.How do companies design experiences to...
Framing Reward is as Important as Reward Itself
On May 1, 1981, American Airlines launched its frequent flyer program AAdvantage. Since then, a flood of loyalty programs have attempted to bring customers back through rewards. Today, you can become a card-carrying member of just about anything: hotels, supermarkets,...
Games, Play, and Motivation
Curated by Stephen P. Anderson, an internationally recognized speaker and consultant based out of Dallas, Texas. He created the Mental Notes card deck, a tool that's widely used by product teams to apply psychology to interaction design. He’s also of the author of the...
How Scarcity & Impatience Drive Irrational User Behavior
Curated by Yu-kai Chou, President of Octalysis Group. Yu-kai is a gamification pioneer and President of Octalysis Group, as well as an international keynote speaker and lecturer at Stanford, TEDx, SxSW, and Accenture. Yu-kai was rated the "Top Gamification Guru" by...
Habits, Obstacles, and Media Manipulation with Ryan Holiday
This week I chat with Ryan Holiday, an author, hacker, and self-described “media manipulator.” Ryan Holiday’s new book “The Obstacle is the Way” takes an interesting look at how challenges shape and improve our lives. We discuss the personal habits Ryan integrated...
Should You Listen To Your Users or Your Data?
Curated by Matthew Pearson, Behavioral Economist at Airbnb. As a former user researcher on Airbnb's design team with a background in behavioral economics, Matthew brings methods and insights from economics and psychology to bear on the user experience, particularly as...
Emotional Engagement – Designing with the Heart in Mind
Curated by Paul Sas, Behavioral Economist at Intuit. Paul was Intuit’s Behavioral Economist from 2012 to 2015, working with Mint, Quick Books, and TurboTax to deliver the most emotionally engaging product experiences. Paul got his PhD in experimental psychology at...
A Free Course on User Behavior
I do quite a bit of research, writing, and consulting on product psychology — the deeper reasons underlying why users do what they do. I also frequently teach and speak on the topic. Invariably, after each talk, someone approaches me and asks, “That was very...
This Simple Equation Reveals How Habits Shape Your Health, Happiness, and Wealth
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...
It’s Not All Fun And Games: The Pros and Cons of Gamification at Work
Nir’s Note: This post was 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.MAKING WORK INTO A GAME HAS ITS CRITICS. IS THIS A PRACTICE WORTH KEEPING?In...
Product Psychology: The 3 Things Everyone Should Know About
Curated by Nir Eyal. Nir Eyal is the author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Nir has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at...
Getting Traction: How to Hook New Users
Nir’s Note: Justin Mares is the co-author of the book Traction, a startup guide to getting customers. Justin's framework provides a simple way for new marketers to discover their most effective triggers. In his book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products,Nir...
Designing for Behavior Change Book Review
Nir’s Note: This guest post comes from Marc Abraham, a London-based product manager. In this article, Marc reviews the recently published book Designing for Behavior Change by Stephan Wendel. Follow Marc on Twitter.Behavioral economics, psychology and persuasive...
The Sneaky Trick Behind the Explosive Growth of the Kardashian Game
Recently, I started looking into the explosively popular new game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. The game has ranked at or near the top of Apple’s U.S. App Store charts for the most downloaded free game. Industry watchers say the app could gross $200 million annually and...
The Sweet Spot: Where Technology Meets the Motivational Brain
Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Dr. Marc Lewis, who studies the psychology and neuroscience of addiction. After years of active research, Marc now talks, writes, and blogs about the science and experience of addiction and how people outgrow it. Visit his website...
The Number One Reason Good Habits Don’t Last
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...
How Successful Companies Design for Users’ Multi-Device Lives
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...
The Link Between Habits and User Satisfaction
Nir's Note: In this essay, Ryan Stuczynski and I discuss the relationship between habits and user satisfaction. Ryan was the Director of Analytics at Fab and today leads growth for theSkimm. Follow Ryan on Twitter or Medium.Here's the Gist: People have limited...
What Triggers The Best Word of Mouth Marketing?
Nir's Note: Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School and author of the New York Times bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Contagious explains the science behind word of mouth, how six key factors drive products and ideas to become popular,...
Is Some Tech Too Engaging?
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...