107 Quotes

"If she thinks she’s incapable, she’ll prove it correct—whether it has anything to do with the stars and moon or not. Her inflexible self-identification denies her the chance to improve her life."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"Words are powerful. Linguistic research shows that language shapes people and culture; it can also give us insight into ourselves and our behavior."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"research about children and the labels we ascribe to them shows just how influential words can be. Labeling not only affects how children see themselves and how they are treated but also limits their potential."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"The study concluded that teachers’ positive perception of students correlated to those students’ high performance on intellectual and academic tests. In contrast, teachers’ negative perceptions would lead to low performance from students. The labels the children received became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"Using verbs to identify ourselves is an effective method for releasing “trapped priors”—a term in psychology for a perception of reality that’s tainted, or trapped, by past experiences."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"By focusing on our behaviors, not fixed characteristics, we can release harmful perceptions of ourselves that hold us back from trying methods that might improve our lives"
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"In a 2020 study, 72% of people said they feel happier after a spontaneous act. Those who described themselves as a “spontaneous person” were 40% more likely to consider themselves a “happy person.”"
Nir Eyal
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity
"the key to spontaneity is timeboxing, a powerful method for getting things done that involves planning out periods of time each day to focus on distinct tasks."
Nir Eyal
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity
"If we don’t plan our time, someone else will. Scheduling spontaneity doesn’t lessen the joy of spontaneity; it enables it. You still have the freedom to do whatever strikes you in the moment — even more so because you know that’s exactly what you intended to do."
Nir Eyal
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity
"Ask yourself why spontaneity is important to you: How does it help you become the person you want to be?"
Nir Eyal
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity
"Then, turn your values into time by creating a weekly calendar template for your perfect week."
Nir Eyal
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity
"The Hook Model is a way of describing a user’s interactions with a product as they pass through four phases: a trigger to begin using the product, an action to satisfy the trigger, a variable reward for the action, and some type of investment that, ultimately, makes the product more valuable to the user. As the user goes through these phases, he builds habits in the process."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"habit-forming companies get users to cue themselves to action by attaching their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"startups manufacture desire by guiding users through a series of experiences designed to create habits. I call these experiences “Hooks,” and the more often users run through them, the more likely they are to self-trigger."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"The cycle in the Hook Model is comprised of a Trigger, Action, Reward, and Investment. As the consumer passes through these phases, he builds habits in the process. After the cycle is complete, his habits have been reinforced and the product even has more value to him."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"Triggers come in two types: external and internal."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"The internal trigger becomes part of their routine behavior and the habit is formed."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"After the trigger comes the intended action. Here, companies leverage two pulleys of human behavior – motivation and ability."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"Variable schedules of reward are one of the most powerful tools that companies use to hook users. Research shows that levels of dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward, just ask any primate."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"The investment generally comes in the form of asking the user to give some combination of time, data, effort, social capital or money."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"The investment implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around. Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all commitments that improve the service for the user."
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"Companies need to know how to harness the power of Hooks to improve peoples’ lives"
Nir Eyal
The Hook Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
"The German writer and philosopher Goethe believed he could predict someone’s future based on one simple fact. “If I know how you spend your time,” he wrote, “then I know what might become of you.”"
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"Either way, the best way to draw up a draft of who you want to be is to home in on the characteristics you want to embody—also known as your values."
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"Listing your values and the activities that push you to meet them reveals any gaps between how you spend your time and who you want to become."
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"Too often, people don’t make time for their values."
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"But here’s the thing: Your life in the future isn’t going to look the way you want it to unless you take control of your time and attention."
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"The best way to make our ideal future come to fruition is to turn values into time."
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"Timeboxing, a well-studied time and attention management technique, facilitates that. It involves reserving specific periods in your calendar for traction, the activities you planned to do in advance to live out your values."
Nir Eyal
One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future
"But productivity myths hold you back. They aren’t just inaccurate—they have the potential to hinder your productivity rather than help."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Myth: Motivate Yourself to Focus with a Reward"
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"For hundreds of years, we’ve believed that motivation is driven by reward and punishment. But the truth is, the root cause of human behavior is to relieve discomfort."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"If you feel discomfort, also known as an internal trigger, such as anxiousness or restlessness, when you try to accomplish a certain task, then an arbitrary external reward is not going to motivate you to overcome that discomfort."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"The idea is to pay such close attention to your task that you find new challenges you didn’t see before."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Myth: The “Best” Productivity Apps Will Help You Focus"
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Searching for the holy grail of productivity apps is just another distraction. Spending hours searching for and trying out the best productivity apps is wasting time."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"That means using this fail-safe trick in your search for the right productivity apps: First diagnose the problem, then search for the solution."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Myth: Multitasking Destroys Productivity"
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Multichannel multitasking is a way to navigate the two limitations of the human brain: one, its limited processing power—the more concentration a task requires, the less room the brain has for anything else—and two, its limited number of attention channels, meaning it can only concentrate on one sensory output at a time."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"As long as we’re not required to concentrate too much on any one channel, we’re able to do more than one thing at once."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"We can even use temptation bundling—which involves multitasking with one task you enjoy and one you don’t—to motivate us."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Myth: You Have to Be Ready to Successfully Pursue a Goal"
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"The myth of readiness is actually a detriment to your productive pursuit of a goal or dream."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Declaring yourself “ready” or not means thinking you have to have a quality output standard."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Myth: A To-Do List Is all You Need"
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Output isn’t the only measurement of accomplishment. Treating it that way doesn’t take into account the journey of long-term goals and thus discourages people from pursuing those goals."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"Stop making yourself feel like you’re not doing anything just because you didn’t check off a box today."
Nir Eyal
5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life
"“People make time for what they want to make time for.”"
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"Maybe they’re “just not that into you,” according to this video from Sex and the City. Why aren’t they calling texting or replying?"
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"Smart People Make Time for What’s Important to Them"
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"When we let someone steal our time and attention with distraction, we’re paying with a non-refundable, nonrenewable resource."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"And they don’t feel guilty about being stingy with their time—because to surrender control of their time is to surrender how they want to live their life and what type of person they want to become."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"Time is precious. We only have so much of it. We must be careful about who and what we give it to."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"People Make Time for Who They Want in Their Life"
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"Just as important as limiting what we allow in our life is limiting who we allow in our life."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"It’s essential to make time only for people who enable us to pursue traction. That means focusing on quality relationships over quantity."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"Ensuring the values of the people in your life don’t conflict with your own is critical to picking quality relationships. But we also must pick friends with as much interest and time to put into the relationship as we do."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"That begins with identifying the values they want to live by. Intimacy, selflessness, and determination are all values, or characteristics of the people we want to become."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"With this timeboxed calendar in hand, we can live the life we really want."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"It’s 100 percent within your right to make time for what you want."
Nir Eyal
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
"That’s because language shapes expectations, which shape our reality. If we have experiences that lead us to label ourselves in specific ways during our life, then we are likely to stick with those labels and the behaviors that go with them."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"Sure, only hard-core astrology followers would find any justification in that listener’s statement—but the sad thing is, to some degree, we all use a form of it. Most people hawk “This just wouldn’t work for me” as a valid explanation for not trying something new."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"Her inflexible self-identification denies her the chance to improve her life."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"That’s why we should stop defining ourselves as fixed identities, nouns, and instead start describing ourselves using verbs."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"Labeling not only affects how children see themselves and how they are treated but also limits their potential."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"The study concluded that teachers’ positive perception of students correlated to those students’ high performance on intellectual and academic tests."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"So, instead of saying, “I am [insert overly simple noun here],” we should say, “I am someone who [verb].”"
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"For years, experts in addiction research have known the detrimental consequences of identifying as nouns, and they are phasing out calling people “addicts.”"
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"By focusing on our behaviors, not fixed characteristics, we can release harmful perceptions of ourselves that hold us back from trying methods that might improve our lives—like those that can help us achieve the critical skill of being Indistractable."
Nir Eyal
Labeling Yourself is Keeping You Down, Do This Instead
"In a congressional hearing in 2021, U.S. representative Kathy Castor of Florida said that apps are “designed to be addictive.”"
Nir Eyal
You're Not Addicted to Technology. Here's What's Happening Instead.
"Do people overuse technology? Of course. But that’s entirely different from addiction, and this isn’t just a matter of semantics."
Nir Eyal
You're Not Addicted to Technology. Here's What's Happening Instead.
"In each case, something else that is outside our control has gained total agency over the decisions we make and the world we live in."
Nir Eyal
You're Not Addicted to Technology. Here's What's Happening Instead.
"In the mid-1980s, psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan developed what they call the “self-determination theory” of motivation. It identifies three innate human needs— competency, autonomy, and relatedness. We need these things to feel happy and in control, and students rarely have access to them."
Nir Eyal
You're Not Addicted to Technology. Here's What's Happening Instead.
"They find autonomy, competency, and relatedness in a video game instead, where they can master the virtual world, do it on their own terms, and connect with their friends."
Nir Eyal
You're Not Addicted to Technology. Here's What's Happening Instead.
"But I learned the network effect isn’t everything. In fact, it became a liability."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"“But there is a fatal flaw in some businesses that can hogtie their ability to make money — the expectation of completeness.”"
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"When we asked event organisers to pay up, they said ‘what for?’,” Stock said. But threatening to remove a listing was not possible, Zvents needed them all to keep site visitors happy."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"The Expectation of Completeness"
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"“They also create much more value than they capture.”"
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"When searching on Google, users also have an expectation of completeness. They come to the site to find all relevant results, every time. If Google decided to only display listings from paying advertisers, we’d all switch to Bing."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"When considering the collective value of all the clicks on un-sponsored links, the company does give away the vast majority of the value it creates."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"The difference is that Google’s market is not limited to local happenings as was the case for Zvents. Google’s market is much, much bigger."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"By organizing “the world’s information,” Google skims a proportionally tiny amount of value from a tremendously huge marketplace."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"The absolute number of people who buy a sponsored placement is large enough to keep the company humming, even though it only monetizes a tiny proportion of the value created."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"The expectation of completeness, and the resulting inability to monetize, may help explain the challenges faced by companies like Foursquare, RedBeacon, and many industry-specific job listing sites."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"One way around the problem of completeness is to facilitate the transaction itself."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Companies like oDesk, Etsy and Uber, ensure they are in the middle of the money by processing the flow of cash. It’s much easier to justify taking a cut when you hold the gold, particularly when doing so adds convenience and security to the transaction."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Without the ability to collect a share of each transaction, marketplaces serving users who expect completeness face a difficult challenge. Two options remain: either cater to a very large market, a la Google, or monetize a large share of the value created"
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Network effects are great but they don’t ensure a viable business model."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Though they may prove successful from a growth and engagement perspective, certain marketplaces can be very difficult to monetize."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Marketplaces where either the buyer or seller expects to choose from an exhaustive listing – so-called “complete” marketplaces – typically give-up far more value than they are able to capture."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Unless they facilitate the transaction itself, these businesses often find themselves in a bind."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"Complete marketplaces must either cater to a very large market, à la Google, or position themselves to monetize a large share of the value they create."
Nir Eyal
The Curse Of The Network Effect – TechCrunch
"users who had taken pains to schedule a daily reminder in the app’s settings were much more likely to stick around."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"When they proactively prompted new users to set a daily reminder after completing their first meditation session, Calm saw a 3x increase in daily retention"
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"you have to motivate your users to build a new habit."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"Habits don’t begin with action. They begin with a trigger to action."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"No matter how many external triggers you provide to people, they’re not going to take action if they really don’t want to in the first place. There’s also a crucial internal trigger that must exist within the user."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"Intrinsic motivation provides the fuel, and that’s where you should be aiming with the sparks of your external triggers"
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"Remember that people are “switching” to your product whether they are coming to you from a direct competitor or not…. They have their “old way” of doing things and it’s your onboarding’s job to get them to experience the good life that your product offers."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"Deliver value in the message itself"
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"In most cases, new users never get to the “Action” step of the Hook Model because they never return after their first session. That’s why triggers are so key. Lives get busy, and sometimes you need to prompt new users to do something to get to their aha moment."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium
"The success of your product relies on the success of your behavioral design. Guidance to value and benefit and paving the way to repeat meaningful engagement will motivate users to interact with your product, again and again."
Nir Eyal
How to Trigger Product Usage that Sticks | by Nir Eyal | Medium

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