019: Nir Eyal on building healthy habits, technology & the wonder of TikTok (Part 1)

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Fellow BSers,

Welcome to another episode of 'A Load of BS: The Behavioural Science Podcast'. This week, I welcome psychologist, technologist and businessman Nir Eyal. Nir is the Habits and Distractions man having written two best selling books on the subjects - Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

Accolades
Indistractable received critical acclaim, winning the Outstanding Works of Literature Award as well as being named one of the Best Business and Leadership Books of the Year by Amazon and one of the Best Personal Development Books of the Year by Audible. The Globe and Mail called Indistractable, “the best business book of 2019.”

In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine and Psychology Today.

Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Today, he writes, consults and teaches the methodologies that he espouses in his books.

Investments
You might not be surprised to hear that Nir also invests in habit forming products. His portfolio includes Eventbrite, Kahoot!, Product Hunt and Canva.

Nir's style
Despite recording this in Nir's evening time in Singapore, what will stand out to you in this conversation is Nir's insatiable enthusiasm for and clarity on his subject. He is a superlative wordsmith whose messages are conveyed with punch but are always backed by thought and research. He is not afraid to challenge  much of today's conventional wisdom in how we consume technology.

In Part 1 of our conversation, I talk to Nir about:

How to build healthy habits in people's livesHabits vs. addictionsWhether technology is hijacking our brainsNir's unfair investing advantageHow products influence our decisionsThe purpose of brand advertisingBreaking customers' habitsNegativity bias: why we remember the bad stuff first andThe wonder of TikTok, the lunacy of Clubhouse and, of course, the magic of podcasts

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Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto