Nir And Far: Business, Behaviour and the Brain

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...

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 y...

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...

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 te...

I interview psychologist Jocelyn Brewer, founder of Digital Nutrition.&#8482

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 intellect...

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,...

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:...

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 t...

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...

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...

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 va...

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 efficie...

‘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 T...

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 T...

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...

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 t...

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...

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 faste...

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...

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, yo...

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 peop...

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 call...

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...

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 w...