Nir Eyal
Author of two bestselling books — Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Writes and consults at the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Both books have sold over 1 million copies across 30+ languages.
Appearances
Key ideas
Hooked model. Framework for building habit-forming products: trigger → action → variable reward → investment. The investment phase (user data, saved preferences, created content) increases switching costs and drives future triggers. Referenced in Sean Ellis on Product Market Fit and Growth as an explanation for artificially inflated PMF scores.
Indistractable framework. Four steps: master internal triggers; make time for traction; hack back external triggers; prevent distraction with pacts. The central insight is that 90% of distraction is internal — boredom, anxiety, loneliness — not technology. Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem.
Identity-based change. Sustainable behaviour change comes from identity (“I am indistractable”), not willpower or rule-based restrictions. Ego depletion only operates for people who believe willpower is a limited resource.