Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal | |
|---|---|
 Nir Eyal in 2019 | |
| Education |
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| Occupation | Author |
| Writing career | |
| Language | English |
| Subjects | psychology, technology, business |
| Notable works |
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| Website | www |
Nir Eyal is an Israeli-born American author, lecturer, and investor. He wrote Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (2014), Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life (2019) and Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Extraordinary Results (2026), the latter of which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list upon publication.
Biography
Nir Eyal was born on February 19, 1980, in Hadera, Israel. When he was three, his family immigrated to the United States and settled in a suburb of Orlando, Florida.[1][2][3] He earned a B.A. at Emory University in 2001.[4] He then worked for Boston Consulting Group and started a solar panel company before attending Stanford for his MBA.[1]
Academic and literary career
After graduating from the Master of Business Administration program at Stanford in 2008,[4] Eyal and fellow students founded a company that placed online ads in Facebook, with Eyal as CEO.[2] His work in the company sparked his interest in the psychology of users, and he went on to become a consultant in product design.[2] In 2012, he taught as a lecturer in marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and as an instructor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.[5][6] Eyal's expertise is in behavioral design, which incorporates elements of behavioral science to enable software designers to develop habit-forming products for businesses.[7][8][9]
Eyal maintains a blog NirAndFar.com, where he developed and first published the "hook model",[10] followed by the publication of his 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which became a Wall Street Journal best seller.[11][12] The title reflects Eyal's idea of the "hooked model", which aims to "build products that create habit-forming behavior in users via a looping cycle that consists of a trigger, an action, a variable reward, and continued investment."[13] His book helped inspire the product development framework used to create strength training app Fitbod.[14]
His second book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, was written with Julie Li and published in September 2019,[15][16][17] It received the 2019 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award.[18] Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Extraordinary Results, his second book, was edited by Julie Li and published by Portfolio on March 10, 2026.[19] Beyond Belief debuted on the New York Times bestseller list upon publication.[20]
Eyal has spoken out against over-broad proposals to regulate habit-forming technologies, arguing that it is an individual user's responsibility to control their own use of such products.[21] Critics have noted that this stance echoes strategies employed by the tobacco industry, which historically emphasized personal responsibility while minimizing corporate accountability for creating addictive products.[22][23] This parallel has been highlighted by technology ethics researchers who point out that both industries have used similar rhetoric about individual choice and self-control to deflect from discussions about the intentionally addictive design of their products.[24][25]
Published works
- Eyal, Nir (2026). Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Extraordinary Result. Portfolio. ISBN 978-0593852033.
- Eyal, Nir (2019). Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. BenBella Books. ISBN 978-1948836531.
- Eyal, Nir (2014). Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Random House. ISBN 978-1591847786.
References
- 1 2 Bowles, Nellie (October 6, 2019). "Addicted to Screens? That's Really a You Problem". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
- 1 2 3 "How to Cure Your Kids' Addiction to Technology". Haaretz. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ Klug, Lisa. "A 'kibbutz' experience in California does wonders for the soul". The Times of Israel. ISSN 0040-7909. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- 1 2 "Nir Eyal." Contemporary Authors Online. Gale, 2015. Retrieved via Gale in Context: Biography database, October 11, 2019.
- ↑ "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products". Stanford.edu. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "Nir Eyal". Psychology Today. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "What We Are Reading Today: Indistractable by Nir Eyal". Arab News. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "Forget to-do lists. Here are 4 tips on how to stop procrastinating". CNBC. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "Compulsive Behavior Sells". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ Greenwald, Ted. "Compulsive Behavior Sells". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ Matveeva, Sophia. "Essential Technology Books For Non-Technical Founders". Forbes. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ Fowler, Geoffrey A. "Take Back Your Brain From Social Media". WSJ. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ "How the 'Hook Model' Can Turn Customers Into Addicts". Fortune. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ Eyal, Nir (March 1, 2019). "The One Fitness App That Hooked Me". Calcalist. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023.
- ↑ Eyal, Nir (June 5, 2018). "This behavioral designer's top brain hacks for beating distraction". Fast Company. Retrieved October 11, 2019.
- ↑ Fell, Jason (May 7, 2019). "4 Steps to Breaking Free from Time Constraints and Living the Life You Want". Entrepreneur. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ "Indistractable by Nir Eyal review – letting tech off the hook". The Guardian. October 18, 2019. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "Nir Eyal's Strike on Distraction (OWL Award Spotlight)". BookPal. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "Belief is an overlooked part of motivation". Fast Company. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ "Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous Books - Best Sellers - Books". The New York Times. March 29, 2026. Retrieved April 20, 2026.
- ↑ Klein, Ezra (August 7, 2019). "Is Big Tech addictive? A debate with Nir Eyal". VOX. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
- ↑ Brownell, Kelly D.; Warner, Kenneth E. (2009). "The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?". The Milbank Quarterly. 87 (1): 259–294. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0009.2009.00555.x. PMC 2879177. PMID 19298423.
- ↑ Harris, Tristan (July 26, 2019). "Tech companies use the same psychological tricks as slot machines". Vox. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
- ↑ Alter, Adam (2017). Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1594206641.
- ↑ Lewis, Paul (October 6, 2017). "'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia". The Guardian. Retrieved December 28, 2022.