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Article Archives

Here you’ll find all of our articles on topics on personal behavior design and consumer psychology. Whether designing customer behaviors or your own habits, you’ll benefit from understanding the research I share from user experience design, behavioral economics, and neuroscience.

How to Banish Virtual Meeting Boredom

Can virtual meetings be as effective as in-person ones?It’s one thing to eliminate distractions in meetings. It’s another to do the same in virtual meetings. Now that virtual teams are becoming a norm, many coworkers have never met each other in person. Yet, they’re...

Listening to Fitness Gurus is Making You Fat

Use these 4 Science-Backed Tips for all the Gym Motivation You NeedYou could feel the excitement buzzing through the WhatsApp channel. An A-list fitness guru reportedly spending millions of dollars yearly to reverse aging was in town to hold an in-person workout....

The Magic of Now, Not How

Nir’s Note: Noah Kagan is the Chief Sumo at AppSumo and runs a YouTube Channel with over 1 million subscribers. His new book, Million Dollar Weekend, is out now. Airbnb began as a weekend project when the founders sent an email offering their living-room air mattress...

The App that Transforms Drinking Habits: a Case Study

As a child of two parents who both struggled with alcoholism, Nick Allen had a choice to make when it came to his own drinking. He could follow the same destructive path his parents took, or he could swear off drinking altogether. But for Allen, and millions of others...

3 Steps to Master Your Emotions and Be Your Best Self

Your emotions are the core of everything. Mastering them allows you to be your best self.You won’t evolve if you ignore your emotions. I discovered the power of managing emotions when I set out to find a cure for my chronic distraction. I was struggling to the point...

The Ultimate Guide to Unstoppable Motivation

Nir’s Note: Ali Abdaal is a medical doctor turned entrepreneur, and the world’s most-followed productivity expert, with an audience of over 6 million across social media. His new book, Feel-Good Productivity, explores science-backed strategies that help you do more of...

How to Build a Habit-Forming Enterprise Product

Use the Hooked Model to retain your customers by building better habitsFor companies building products for enterprise customers, increasing customer retention by just 5 percent increases profits by 25 to 95 percent. Yet keeping customers isn’t easy. Eighty percent of...

Unlocking Focus with the Distraction Tracker

Use this tool to stop wasting precious time on distractionThink you’ll explode if you try one more ineffective productivity hack? Here’s what you need to know to actually hack back distraction: There are only three causes of any distraction: an internal trigger, an...

You Don’t Have to Follow the Same Routines Forever

Embrace doing something for just a little whileNumerous articles detail the routines of the most successful people in the world: Apple CEO Tim Cook wakes up at 3:45 a.m. and exercises. Actor and producer Reese Witherspoon eats the same healthy breakfast every day....

You Can Have Your Retirement Fantasy Today

Dreaming of retirement helps you fantasize about your ideal life—and potentially have it now Imagine your retirement. Are you picturing long, lazy days on a tropical beach under coconut trees? Maybe you’ve opted for a life of adventure, traveling to all the places you...

The 4-Day Workweek: How To Do More With Less

Become Indistractable to conquer the paradigm shiftWhat would it look like if the world moved toward a four-day workweek? The organization, 4 Day Week Global, did a 6-month study of 900 employees across 33 U.S. and Irish businesses in 2022. The study was based on the...

Managers, Stop Distracting Your Employees

Nir’s Note: This post originally appeared here in The Harvard Business Review. Summary. The rise of remote work has made corporate leaders paranoid, thinking they must monitor their employees’ every digital move in order to maintain productivity. But while people...

Here’s How I Made the Time to Write 2 Bestselling Books

The cornerstone techniques you need to build and stick to a writing routine.So you want to write a book. Awesome! If you’ve made attempts already, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that writing is hard work. I’ve written two books and countless articles, and it...

5 Productivity Myths Ruining Your Life

Busting these myths will set you free from productivity woesEvery time I hear a productivity myth described as fact, I cringe as if listening to a snake oil salesman peddle his cures. Let me tell you, when I was writing my second book, Indistractable, I endlessly...

6 Habits That Are Secretly Making You Miserable

Uncover the real sources behind six habits secretly causing misery and learn simple ways to break them for a happier life.You wake up in the morning irritable and groggy but determined to be productive. Yesterday didn’t go well. It always seems as if there are not...

One Question to Ask Yourself to Know Your Future

And to change it too.The German writer and philosopher Goethe believed he could predict someone’s future based on one simple fact. “If I know how you spend your time,” he wrote, “then I know what might become of you.” Seeing how you spend your time reveals your values...

Make Time for Procrastination

Nir's Note: This guest post is by Bryan Gentry who writes at Idea Link about finding productivity and satisfaction in life and work. Follow him on Twitter at @brygentry for more insights and occasional dad jokes.If you haven’t finalized your New Year’s resolutions,...

People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So

People make time for what they want, and we should aspire to that.“People make time for what they want to make time for.” Though the author is unknown, this saying has become an axiom to soothe distraught thoughts. Some use it as reasoning to understand why another...

Kickstart the New Year with a Self-Audit

Practicing introspection using these methods will improve your self-awareness, confidence, and motivation in the new year.As New Year’s Eve approaches, so does the customary exercise of introspection and self-reflection. The practice of examining ourselves can be a...

’Tis the Season for Reexamining Your Values

How will you spend your precious time in the coming year?As one year ends and another begins, many of us won’t help but reflect on who we are and who we’d like to become. Most people aiming to emulate their ideal selves will resort to New Year’s resolutions—but more...

4 Mental Traps That Kill Productivity

(...and how to avoid them to keep a "productivity mindset")Productivity has many enemies: too many meetings, external triggers like interruptions from coworkers, and multitasking the wrong way, to name a few. But more often than not, it’s mental traps that trip us up....

Not Enough Hours in the Day To Slay Your To-Do List

Even the most productive person can’t have it all. At least, not all at once.You can search for the best productivity apps to make you more efficient and focused. You can implement productivity hacks and cut distractions. But you still might feel like there simply are...

3 Reasons Why Subscription Businesses Fail

Nir's Note: This article originally appeared in The Harvard Business Review Subscriptions are hot (and not). Companies and investors love subscription business models since they generate recurring revenue that translates to predictable cash flow. The more money a...