Nir and Far

Journalists and writers on Substack and similar platforms are entrepreneurs. They have to work hard to build a brand and ensure retention through superior coverage. If they are journalists they have maintain integrity with their audience. It is like the difference between Zoom as a point solution and Microsoft Teams as part of the Microsoft 365 suite bundle. Lazy and sloppy ITs will subscribe to Microsoft suite offerings. Those who want to step up their game will buy best of breed point solutions. - This is a good piece on the dark patterns NY Times employs and their signature hypocrisy: https://www.nirandfar.com/cancel-new-york-times/ HN discussion on NY Times hypocrisy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27338157

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products is a great book that focuses on this more http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked

> I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so. Recommend reading up on the "Hook Model" - http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked - or watch this video - https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM - the techniques for building addictive products are well known, with a history that goes back to Las Vegas and the gambling industry. Most social media companies - with the exception of one or two like Zynga - of course aren't overly announcing "we're building stuff to get you addicted" but their business depends on audience numbers so guess what: try searching LinkedIn jobs for "Facebook" and "psychology" and it's pretty clear

You're clearly wrong: if using TLDR didn't deliver some sort of value, nobody would do it. Your argument is similar to how my parents argue about texting - you just don't get it, and because of a cultural mismatch, you probably never will. But as an entrepreneur, you need to be able to notice when you don't understand something, and you need to be above disregarding trends because you don't understand them - you should be trying to understand rather than just giving up and saying "this is stupid". Separately, there are several reasons why people read tons of news articles they don't really care about. In general, they fall within rewards of the self (desire for mastery, completion, etc). For more info, check out http://www.nirandfar.com/ and pay attention to his explanations of the different types of random rewards that drive behavior.

Sorry Max, looks like it's working now here: http://www.nirandfar.com/

"Slavery" is a powerful word, understood universally, with high chances of proving the point and making an impact when used. Your censorship of it's usage may have been done on good intentions but the results are nefarious. Does it seem to you that we are living in some Nirvana / restored Heaven Of Humanity? Take a look at this, wage slavery makes 25% of work classification: https://www.nirandfar.com/wage-slaves/ Confining the word "slave" to some well-in-the-past primitive dawn of humanity and punishing us for using it to depict the deplorable state of humanity today does nothing for improving said state and makes you in the best case one of the "useful idiots" of the establishment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot ). How do you define a "slave"? Think of this definition: "a slave is any person that trades their time in exchange for the right to live". Does it seem to you that Elon Musk is a slave? How bout someone working on a computer 1,000,000 times more powerful than 30 years ago and going through even more drudgery with less stability and guarantee of making a living out of the productivity increase? Is it really the best that civilization can throw at the versatility and capability of the human mind? Fixing bugs in the 100'th million line of crap framework code and the perspective of being replaced by a statistical model? That's your glorious "non slavery" world you censor from using?

I spent way too much time in the calendaring space. > Makes scheduling collaborative instead of a nuisance. This is not a strong opinion (sorry Derrick, I love you) Every calendar/scheduler thinks they do this. Most are just variations of calendly (which no one loves, but does it's job). Calendars (imo) need to stop getting enamored with scheduling and more enamored with helping people use their time wisely. Stronger opinion: scheduling sucks - do less of it. Stronger opinion: you should schedule your calendar exactly this way (https://www.nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/) Stronger opinion: a full calendar doesn't make you productive. Making sure you've scheduled the things that matter to you first before you let any other events is, is the only thing that matter. Tying the way someone calendars to a specific workflow is what matters. You saw Superhuman do this with "inbox zero." They convinced you that inbox zero means you're productive. It's the wrong metric IMO, but that's how they built out their fan base. If someone is trying to get a calendar off the ground, they should just hire Nir as an advisor, make his workflow the default calendaring experience and start from there. That would do worlds of work for differentiating in this space where everyone largely does the same minor improvements in different colorways.

Lots of people will come in here with technological solutions. Adding limiting software and blockers may help with some aspects of a phone distraction habit, but they're unlikely to solve the problem long term. The first step is to notice why you're using the phone. Since this habit is likely very strongly engrained it will be difficult to notice. Here's an example from my life: I'm working on problem -> I don't understand what to do next -> I feel confused and anxious -> This feeling is unpleasant and I want to avoid it -> I pick up my phone to browse something meaningless to take my mind off of the unpleasant feeling. Your exact triggers and feelings might be very different. Finding the pattern of your thoughts is the important thing. With this in mind, you can start to understand why getting rid of the phone probably won't help. You will just replace it with another activity. I tried switching to a dumb phone and cutting the internet off to my house for 6 months. It didn't help that much. Instead I would deal with the unpleasant feelings by watching TV or picking up a book. Your habit was built over months and years. You won't change it in a day. The first step is just noticing your feelings (harder than it sounds!). I recommend the book Indistractable [1]. It gives a lot more detail about how these internal distractions are the root cause of a lot of procrastination habits. Just reading the book will not fix your problem in the same way as reading a book on…

Let me tell you an anecdote about my personal experience. Let me know if any of this sounds familiar. As the years went by, I began to realize that a lot of the managers/mentors I had worked for and looked up to when I was younger simply did not know what they were talking about. You're too easily distracted -- focus, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, they would say! But they would never talk about how the left hand of the organization and the right hand of the organization didn't agree. And I began to wonder if they were making things up in order to deflect blame away from the leadership structure which included themselves. Of course, that sinking suspicion turned out to be generally true. When I worked at hypergrowth companies with great leaders (rare to find and whom I must say I somewhat took for granted), guess how often I found it hard to focus? Very rarely. Now, what about all the other places with organizational dysfunction? Oh, it was VERY hard for me to focus. Borderline impossible, really. It turns out that my to-do lists, my "productivity hacks" my treasured knowledge bases -- all of them were a very specific kind of procrastination I was doing to maintain some semblance of control trying to get work done in an organization that made questionable decisions over my head. I was trying to avoid having the hard conversations with the people who made those decisions because they were stressful and risky and if they went the wrong way I would have to leave. Which…

I disagree. "Benefit society" means something that can't be defined or tracked so easily. And consumer behavior is heavily biased by things that aren't optimized to benefit society. I have in mind this book, Hooked by Nir Eyal: https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/

That's fair. I was a little bit sloppy with my previous comment; I was mentally conflating their lawsuits about intellectual property with their dark patterns that prevent people from unsubscribing. I'm not sure if it's still this way, but five years ago they were a nightmare to disentangle yourself from. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235341 They actually published an op-ed criticizing Amazon for using dark patterns to prevent people from leaving Amazon Prime while they were using those exact same patterns themselves. https://www.nirandfar.com/cancel-new-york-times/

That's only been true for the past few months, and it's been very well documented how complicated the cancelation process used to be [0]. It's funny because I use PayPal for any unknown-to-me site where I don't want to give out my card, but the only site where I've needed their help to cancel something was the New York Times. [0] https://www.nirandfar.com/cancel-new-york-times/

It's more that they're using Skinner Box variable rate reinforcement bs to rope readers in and keep them reading, which explains why the text feels so randomized and out-of-any-logical-order. https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/

Have you read Nir Eyal's "Indistractable"? Hopefully I'm getting my books right" but in that he talks about identity. That is, the power defining who / what you want to be indentified as / with. At the right moments, it's a powerful thought to have. https://www.nirandfar.com/indistractable/

Unpredictable rewards create obsession, it all tracks. He’d probably be less popular if he actually delivered 100% More background if you’ve not come across intermittent reinforcement https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/

Time blocking is one. If one doesn’t structure time and context, then todo items can’t get done. Edit: Here’s one implementation by Nir Eyal, author of “Hooked” and Indistractable”: https://www.nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/

Check out out Nir Eyal's book "Indistractable"[1]. It's about 5 hours long with plenty of useful tips for becoming indistractable. 1: https://www.nirandfar.com/indistractable/

It's the same mechanism that social and other addicting apps use, specifically a variable reward system. The unknown of what's behind that notification drives our brains crazy and makes us need to check. More from Nir Eyal here: https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/

Likely "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products"[1] by Nir Eyal [1] https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/

Nir Eyal, 2019 - "We need to beat tech edition" Nir Eyal, pre-2019 - https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/ He is one of the reasons tech addiction actually exists and now he is being enabled to virtue signal on how bad tech addiction is? What a joke.

Not related to games, but the stuff in this book is pretty informative, albeit disturbing. I listened to the audio book a couple years ago. https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/

Author here. You might be right, we could be using Slack wrong. But have you read the book "Hooked"? The author writes about Slack here: https://www.nirandfar.com/2014/11/slack.html - Slack is built to addict people to use it. I don't want to fight against that, I want to have tools that support my workflow.

Thoughts and habits are related, but they aren't the same. Interesting counterpoint to the replacement theory of kicking bad habits: https://www.nirandfar.com/2015/04/bad-habits.html

I can see this becoming a form of status-signalling in years to come (if it is not already?) Just as a sign of status for the CEO used to be the ability to disappear off to the golf course for a few hours, the new status might be the ability to be effectively inaccessible. The rest of us will have to put up with companies deliberately manipulating "habit forming" type behaviours to push their products. [1] [1] https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked

And as with any mental model there are potential pitfalls such as when you tell yourself your willpower has been depleted. You then have an excuse to slack off http://www.nirandfar.com/2016/11/the-way-you-think-about-willpower-is-… I agree it's hard to make the right choice when your tired, but the way you think about it will also affect your behavior.

Related study from 2013 [1]: "Unfortunately, too many well-intentioned products fail because they feel like “haftas,” things people are obligated to do, as opposed to things they “wanna” do. Schell points to neuroscience research showing “there are different channels in the brain for seeking positive consequences and avoiding negative consequences.” "When faced with “haftas,” our brains register them as punishments so we take shortcuts, cheat, skip-out, or in the case of many apps or websites, uninstall them or click away in order to escape the discomfort of feeling controlled." [1] http://www.nirandfar.com/2013/07/why-behavior-change-apps-fail-to-chan…

There's a couple I know: 1. Engagement Pyramid: http://www.socialmediamodels.net/social-media-overview-models-category… 2. Hook Model: http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/09/desire-engine-in.html

Number 7 is exacty what you want: http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/08/the-webs-slot-machine.html

The Billion Dollar Mind Trick: An Intro To Triggers http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/04/billion-dollar-mind-trick.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3881370 > This article skims the surface of habit formation > > - HN commenter The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business http://www.amzn.com/1400069289 > [using the habit loop] cycle to structure habits in your own life > > - HN commenter Don't Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training http://www.amzn.com/1860542387 > a manual and a philosophy for solving the problems in your life caused by > other's behavior, whether it is your husband, your children, your pets, or > your co-workers > > - Amazon reviewer

BJ Fogg (at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab - http://captology.stanford.edu/) and Nir Eyal have great research on the topic of forming habits: The Fogg Model for Behavior Design and Eyals MEA "Minimum Enjoyable Activity" for habit design are excellent frameworks. http://www.tinyhabits.com http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/01/your-new-years-resolution-i... http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/02/habits-are-new-viral-why-st... (great read for founders http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/nir-eyal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHMwNbXnXo (nice video presentation)