Sep 9, 2019
#36: Nir Eyal is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Technology…which is found on the bookshelves of tech leaders at Facebook, Google, PayPal and Slack.
The MIT Review called him the Prophet of Habit Forming Tech.
Nir runs a popular productivity blog at www.NirAndFar.com, has successfully built and sold two businesses and was also a teacher at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
His life’s work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology and business.
I interviewed Nir about his brand new book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life which has a front cover endorsement from Mark Manson, he of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck fame.
If Nir’s first book Hooked was a roadmap for Silicon Valley companies to build habit forming technologies…
…Indistractable is a roadmap for us consumers to take back command of our attention and focus from said habit forming technologies.
I had a chance to visit Nir’s apartment in Manhattan, which is a stunning duplex, by the way, and we conducted the interview in what he calls his “moon room.” On the walls are a dozen or so framed photos of the moon taken from the 1970s.
He has them on the wall for inspiration – this is the room where dreams up “moonshots,” the big hairy audacious ideas. I loved the intentionality he designed into his environment.
As you’ll hear in the podcast and find out if you pick up the book, Nir is incredibly well researched and relies heavily on science and systems.
Systems, he’ll tell you, are what saves him from being downright lazy and obese. I was shocked to learn that the lean man sitting in front of me was once clinically obese…so clearly his systems are working for him.
And yet, at times I found myself wondering if there wasn’t a certain rigidity to his weighting of left-brained, systematic, everything must rely on science way of thinking.
For example, Nir will tell you that he time blocks every single
minute of his days.
He’s one of the few people I’ve interviewed who regularly
practiced meditation who said it just didn’t work for him…which
you’ll hear about in this episode.
So it’ll be up for you to decide how far you choose to take the 4 step protocol he outlines for how to live a life Indistractable.
Nir’s Resources:
Schedule Maker: https://nirandfar.com/schedule-maker
Distraction Guide: https://www.nirandfar.com/distractions
Blog: NirAndFar.com
Book #1: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Book #2: Indistractable: How to Control Your
Attention and Choose Your Life