Nir is a behavioral product designer and the author of two bestselling books, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. He previously co-founded and sold two tech companies and taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Follow Nir on X @nireyal.
[0:16] - How Nir’s interest in habit formation led him to work in behavioral design
[5:15] - Behavioral factors at the route of America's obesity epidemic
[12:56] - Distractions, the negative externalities of abundance
[18:09] - Combining scientific research with practical advice in writing
[22:03] - Writing as a means for thinking and a tool for iteration
[26:15] - The psychology of human motivation and distraction
[33:31] - Nir’s fundamental principles for preventing distraction
[38:16] - Why identifying and controlling internal triggers is more important than limiting external triggers in conquering distraction
[42:38] - Using timeboxing to turn distractions into periods of productivity
[52:10] - Balancing inspiration and spontaneity with timeboxing
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Thanks to Chase Devens for the show notes and Yiction for the music.
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