Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Nir Eyal: How To Be Indistractable | E34

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Master your habits and become indistractable! This week, Hala interviews Nir Eyal, a leading export in behavioral design and popular author of “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products," and "Ind...istractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life." Tune in to learn about Nir's 4-step hook model to build habit-forming products and strategies to become indistractable to lead more productive and happier lives. If you liked this episode, please write us a review! Fivver: Get services like logo creation, whiteboard videos, animation and web development on Fivver: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrcpa  Fivver Learn: Gain new skills like graphic design and video editing with Fivver Learn: https://track.fiverr.com/visit/?bta=51570&brand=fiverrlearn Get a copy or download Nir’s ‘Indistractable’: https://amzn.to/2MKcA7f Get a copy or download Nir’s ‘Hooked’: https://amzn.to/2UfWaoe Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Hey guys, if you're an avid listener of Young & Profiting podcast, I'd like to personally invite you to YAP Society on Slack. It's a community where listeners network and give us feedback on the show, vote on episode titles, chat live with guests, and share your projects with the group.
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Starting point is 00:01:27 They start at just $20, but what you could learn is priceless. Check out the links in our show notes to learn more. You are listening to YAHP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halataha, and today we're speaking with Nier A.L., a leading expert in behavioral design, which lies at the intersection of technology, psychology, and business. Nier is a popular author who wrote the book, Hooked, had a built habit forming products, and he has a new book coming out called Indistractable, had it control your attention and
Starting point is 00:02:01 choose your life. In this episode, we'll dig into his four-step hook model to build healthy habits, why people are so distracted in today's day and age, and how we can become indistractable to lead more productive and happier lives. Hey, Nier, welcome to Young Improfting Podcast. Thanks, Holl, that's great to be here. Appreciate you having me. So you are a best-selling author, a speaker,
Starting point is 00:02:23 a popular blogger, a professor, an accomplished investor, an entrepreneur with two sold companies under your belt and more. So that's super impressive, but a lot of different titles to carry. So in your own words, can you tell our listeners about yourself and what you do and your purpose in life? Sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:44 I like the way you say all that. I needed an ego boost today, so I appreciate that. Maybe you could tell my kid how cool you think I am. That'd be great. So my job as a behavioral designer, and what I do is study and consult and teach about how technology primarily shapes human behavior. And I got started in this field back in 2012.
Starting point is 00:03:06 I had helped start a company that was acquired and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. And I had this thesis that habits were going to really matter, that as interfaces shrink as we go from desktop to laptop to mobile devices to wearable devices. And now to these auditory interfaces like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, I believe that habits will become more important because there's just less real estate to trigger people to action.
Starting point is 00:03:33 So that kind of started this fascination with how different products change human behavior. And I really saw what I thought would be tremendous potential to change people's lives for the better using the same techniques that we see companies like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and WhatsApp and Slack. I was in Silicon Valley during the rise of these companies and I knew many of the people who helped these companies get as big as they are today. What I wanted to do with my first book, hooked, was to democratize these techniques, was to figure out how we can take these tactics that make social networks, games, you know, products like YouTube, etc.
Starting point is 00:04:07 How could we take those same exact tactics and the same psychology of how these products are made to be so habit-forming and engaging? What if we could use that for good? What if we could use that for helping people exercise more or eat healthier or save money, be more productive at work? So that's really the idea behind my first book, hooked. Now, I wrote that book back when the problem that tech companies had back then was nobody using their technology.
Starting point is 00:04:35 These startups would build these amazing products and nobody would use them. They'd have really low engagement rates. And so that was the problem back then. Now fast forward, five years since I published hooked, came out in 2014. So now that we've had some time and perspective, now we see kind of a different problem. Now we see people overusing some of these products and services. So my next book Indistractable is really about distraction at large. How do we do what we say we're going to do? How do we keep promises to ourselves? That's really the subject matter of this next book.
Starting point is 00:05:06 And of course, it does have a heavy bent on technology because that seems to distract so many of us, but it's really about all distraction, right? We know what we're going to do, right? There's billions of dollars spent on self-help books, but fundamentally, we know Common Sense tells us, basically, how to get the things we want, right? If you want to be healthy, then you need to exercise and eat, right?
Starting point is 00:05:26 If you want to be more productive at work, you have to do focused work and, you know, come up with novel solutions to problems. If you want to have a good relationship with your family and friends, you need to spend time with them and be fully present. You know, it's not rocket science. We all know what to do. Why don't we do it? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:42 And so that's really the question I'm trying to answer when it comes to this next book, Indistractable. Well, awesome. During this interview, I hope to cover both facets. So your first book is really about helping businesses build addictive products that form habits, like you said, for good purposes. And your second book is really the opposite side
Starting point is 00:05:58 of the spectrum, helping people stop being lured into these habits in the first place so they'll be less distracted. So hopefully we'll get to cover both of those topics. But first, I wanna talk about behavioral design. So from my understanding, you really invented this field. You're the father of behavioral design. Can you provide more context into what this exactly is?
Starting point is 00:06:20 Yeah, well, I don't know if I can say I'm the father of behavioral design, but I appreciate it. I really decided that you're the father of behavioral design after research. I've been dubbed, yeah, there don't know if I can say I'm the father of behavioral design, but I appreciate every time I read the monoculture. I've re-decided that you're the father of behavioral design. Okay. After researching. I've been dubbed. Yeah, there's a lot of people who have influenced the field.
Starting point is 00:06:31 And so I appreciate that. Yeah, there's a lot of folks in the book that I credit their research as well. I think what I've done is to take a lot of, you know, very old consumer psychology research that's, you know, 50, 60, 70 years old and applied it to a new field. Because what we've seen is now possible through these devices that we carry around with us every day in our pockets, is that technology has become so persuasive in the same time that has become so pervasive.
Starting point is 00:06:56 And so that means that this formula has resulted in the opportunity to change people's behavior and to change our own behavior. And so behavioral design is really understanding how to shape our behavior through our technology. How can technology facilitate behavior? Now I wrote hooked for two reasons. I wrote hooked number one because I wanted to help entrepreneurs. I've been a two time entrepreneur.
Starting point is 00:07:18 I'm not some academic that only does research studies. Like I've been in the field, started two companies. I know how hard it is to get people to change their behavior and use a product like the ones that I'm sure many of your listeners are making that would truly benefit them if they only used it. That's such a big problem. That's really what fascinates me so much about this field is, what if we could use technology to help people do the things they want to do, but for lack of good product design, don't do.
Starting point is 00:07:46 Wouldn't it be great if we could design the kind of products that didn't depend upon spammy advertising and expensive marketing? What if people use the products because they wanted to, not because they had to, and they use them on their own, not because you were sending them more spammy messages? So that's really the goal of behavioral design is to help people do things they want to do, but for lack of good product design, they don't do. Got it. And so just to recap for my listeners or to define it, it's really the intersection of technology, psychology, and business. They're very interesting. Right. And it's important. You mentioned a word that I just want to clarify. The book I
Starting point is 00:08:19 wrote hooked how to build habit-forming products is not called how to build addictive products. And so we never want to create addiction. Addiction is not the same thing as a habit. An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior or substance that causes harm to the user. So we would never want to addiction is unethical. Now it is also sometimes the unfortunate consequence, the unfortunate byproduct of any product that is an analgesic.
Starting point is 00:08:45 Any product that solves pain will be addictive to somebody if it's used by a sufficiently large number of people, but that should never be our intent to add to people. That's an unfortunate byproduct. Our goal as product designers, as behavioral designers, is really about helping people form healthy habits in their lives. Got it.
Starting point is 00:09:03 Okay, so let's start off with your hooked model. I think in order to provide some context to my listeners, can you first define what a habit exactly is? Yeah, so a habit is a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. It's about half of what you do every single day, day in and day out, is motivated through these habits. And this is very evolutionarily beneficial, right?
Starting point is 00:09:24 The fact that our brain can switch onto autopilot and help us do so many things at the same time or with little or no conscious thought helps our brain think about other things and solve other problems while we're driving in traffic or walking to work or washing the dishes. We do these things habitually with little or no conscious thought. And so if we can use that power, right?
Starting point is 00:09:43 If you can use the power of habit to help people shape their lives in ways that improve their lives and improve your bottom line, that's very good. Okay, so speaking of bottom line, why are habits good for business? Yeah, that's a great question. So there are many reasons that habits are good for business.
Starting point is 00:09:58 So one of them is that habits increase customer lifetime value. The longer someone uses a product, the more frequently they use a product, the more valuable each and every customer becomes to the company. Another reason is that habits supercharge growth, that when you think about what makes a product go viral, it's not good enough that a product is just spread from one person to the next, because if that doesn't happen quickly, if you don't have what's called a short viral cycle time, meaning the amount of time that elapses between the transmission of one person telling another about the product, if that
Starting point is 00:10:29 doesn't happen frequently, then you're never going to have viral growth because you're constantly churning customers as well, right? People are also stopping the use of your product. And so, in order to get that escape velocity and get exponential growth, you need the product to be transmitted frequently enough, which means that only the kind of products that are used habitually, these kind of daily use type products, those are the kind of products that ever have a hope
Starting point is 00:10:52 of spreading and growing virally. And then third and perhaps most importantly, habits are a barrier to competition. That it's a huge competitive advantage to have a habit around a product. Now, your business needs to have some kind of barrier, some kind of moat, because if you don't, what happens is you're constantly competing on price and features and price and features, and you're beating up the competition on these two factors. But when a product has some kind of sustainable competitive advantage, in this case, a habit,
Starting point is 00:11:21 that's no longer the case, because people will use a product or service out of habit and they won't even consider the competition. I'll give you an example. When it's time it's time I have to give a presentation in front of a large audience, I will ask the crowd to raise their hands if they search with Google in the past 24 hours. And 99% of the rooms hands will go up. And then I'll say, well, raise your hand for me if you search with Bing, the number two search engine, who searched with Bing in the past 24 hours. And maybe one hand will go up, typically a Microsoft employees hand, if they happen to be in the room. And so why is that? It's because those geniuses and mountain view have such better technology,
Starting point is 00:11:58 the algorithm is so much better, nobody can replicate it. No, it's purely a habit. Because when we Google something, we don't sit and ask ourselves, hmm, I wonder if Google makes the best search engine. No, we don't even give the competition a chance. We just use the product with little or no conscious thoughts. So if you form a habit with a product, it's very difficult to get you to switch because you don't even consider the alternatives. You don't consider the competitors. And so that becomes a huge, huge competitive advantage. Thank you. That was so well broken down and so interesting. So previously mentioned in your book, you describe a four step hook
Starting point is 00:12:31 model. The components are trigger action, variable reward and investment. Can you describe the hook model at a super high level and maybe we can dig deeper into each step after that? Absolutely. yeah. So the four steps I'll walk through it really quick at a high level here. And this is basically the outline of hooked is working through these four steps of the hook model for any business, frankly. Any business that's used with sufficient frequency, that is a prerequisite that I should
Starting point is 00:12:59 mention. If a product is a one-time use product, or if it's a product that's bought but not used, right? The product is a one-time use product, or if it's a product that's bought but not used, so if you sell some kind of server software that nobody knows exists unless servers on fire or something, then you don't need a habit. That's a one-time. The customer doesn't need to use it to benefit from it. Or like a fancy vacation, right? Right, so shopping for a vacation when you're in market can become a habit.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Lots of people will check travel deals every day, habitually when they're in market. But yeah, going on the vacation doesn't occur with sufficient frequency. So assuming you have a product that is used with sufficient frequency, now by the way, we can also talk about what do you do if your product is not used with sufficient frequency? What do you do then? Well, you can bolt on habit forming experiences. You can bolt on a content consumption habit.
Starting point is 00:13:44 You can bolt on a community habit into a product that is not used with sufficient frequency, but we can get more into that later on. But just to outline the four steps of the hook model, the first step is a trigger. A trigger is some kind of cue that tells us what to do next. And these triggers come in two forms, external triggers and internal triggers. External triggers are things in our environment that tell us what to do next. The pangs, the dings, the rings, anything in your environment
Starting point is 00:14:11 that tells you what to do. The next type of trigger is called an internal trigger. An internal trigger is where the information is stored as a memory or an association inside the user's head. And this typically takes the form of an uncomfortable, emotional state. So all human behavior is motivated by the desire to escape discomfort, all human behavior.
Starting point is 00:14:34 We used to think that it's about pleasure and pain. It's actually not. It's just pain all the way down. That all behavior, whether it's using your product, whether it's getting a snack, whether it's putting on a coat, whatever it might be, is motivated by the desire to escape discomfort. It's called a homeostatic response. So that means that all products and services in order to be used habitually, they have to
Starting point is 00:14:53 attach themselves to that uncomfortable sensation. So when you're lonely, you check Facebook. When you're uncertain, you Google. When you're bored, you check YouTube, stock prices, sports scores, Reddit, lots of different products and services, cater to boredom. So that's probably one of the most important things that you can do if you're building a high-performing product. Probably the fair for a step is to understand
Starting point is 00:15:15 what internal trigger you're going to attach your products used to. The next step of the hook is the action phase. And the action phase is defined as the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward. So as a simplist, the user can do to get relief from that psychological discomfort, a scroll on Pinterest, pushing the play button on YouTube, a quick search on Google. All of these things are very simple actions done in anticipation of an immediate reward. So your goal as a product designer is to figure out how to reduce the friction, reduce the
Starting point is 00:15:48 steps to get the reward, which leads us to the third step of the hook, which is the reward phase. The reward phase is where the itch is scratched, where the user gets what they came for. And not only is this a reward where we give the user where they came for, the reward tends to take the form of a variable reward. So some type of mystery, some type of uncertainty, some type of variability keeps us checking, keeps us engaged, keeps us wanting more. So some products want to insert variability, right?
Starting point is 00:16:18 If you think about why people use a product that caters to boredom, well, it's because it introduces uncertainty. When you watch a good movie, you read a good book, see a good video on YouTube, scroll your feed. There's uncertainty around that experience, and it's really good at catering to the internal trigger of boredom. Other products want to take inherently variable situations and give the user agency in control. So, for example, with Uber or Lyft, the fact that you can check the interface while you're waiting for your cab,
Starting point is 00:16:47 and it tells you how far away that Uber cab is, gives you greater agency in control over something that's already variable. There's already uncertainty around, can you get to where you're going on time? Are you gonna make your flight at the airport based on when your Uber driver arrives? So some products wanna insert variability, other products operating conditions of uncertainty
Starting point is 00:17:08 and want to give the user greater agency and control. But all of these products have at their core. The engine is this variable reward, this uncertainty that scratches the user's itch but leaves them wanting more. And finally, the last step of the hook and maybe the most overlooked is the investment phase. The investment phase where the user puts something into the product in anticipation of some kind of future benefits, some kind of future reward. It can take the form of data, content, the acquisition of a skill, reputation, followers,
Starting point is 00:17:39 anything I put into the product that makes it better and better with use. And this is really an amazing property because what this means is that for the first time in the history of business, a product, the more it is used, the more it appreciates and value. That's a really big deal. If you think about it, everything in the physical world depreciates with wear and tear. The more you use it, your desk, your clothing, your car, the more you use it, the less valuable it becomes. But habit-forming products do the opposite.
Starting point is 00:18:11 The more data, the more content, the more followers, the more reputation, the more we use a product, the more we accrue these elements, and the product becomes more and more valuable, the more we use it. That's revolutionary. So, that's the point of the investment phase, is that it improves the product with use through stored value. The other thing it does, the investment phase increases the likelihood of the next pass through the hook
Starting point is 00:18:34 by loading the next trigger. So something that the user does to bring themselves back. So for example, when I send someone a message on Slack or WhatsApp or any number of other messaging platforms, when I send someone that message, there's no immediate reward. Nothing really happens that second. What I'm doing is I'm investing in the platform because I'm likely to get a reply. And that reply comes coupled with an external trigger in the form of a notification that brings me through the hook once again.
Starting point is 00:19:05 Trigger action reward investment. So that's why there's this loop that through these four steps, this is how customer preferences are formed, how our taste are shaped, and how these habits take hold. Awesome. So, how is this hook model different than traditional feedback loops or habit loops such as the model that was popularized by the book Power of Habit by Charles DuHig. Yeah, so the biggest difference is that the traditional three-part habit loop is really
Starting point is 00:19:34 about behavioral habits in our day-to-day lives. But there's a great deal of difference between a habit loop that's applied to your life versus one that's applied to your user's life. So the hooked model is really made for product design. It's not about personal behavior changes for product designers. And so there's a lot of aspects that you have to consider in terms of how would you design a habit for someone else
Starting point is 00:19:59 as opposed to for yourself. For example, considering people's internal triggers, that's nowhere in Charles's book. By the way, Charles is a journalist, both he and I have to get credit to the academics who actually did this research. So, you know, neither of us came up with these steps. We're reporting and popularizing the hard work of many, many academics. So, external triggers, you know, how do you send a notification, for example, that will be acted upon. Well, there's some real insights there about how do you appropriately send a notification, for example, that will be acted upon. Well, there's some real insights there about how do you appropriately send a notification
Starting point is 00:20:28 to make sure it's acted upon and it feels like it's magic versus something that feels like spam. And so that takes an understanding of the internal triggers in order to send the external triggers, the minute the user feels their pain point, their itch, their internal trigger. When it comes to the action phase, the insights around making the action as easy as possible, designing your user interface in a way that
Starting point is 00:20:48 saves the user as much friction and effort as possible will increase the likelihood of them doing the behavior. Variable rewards are nowhere in anybody else's habit loop. But of course, when we see products that we use every day, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Slack, they're full of these slot machine-like variable rewards. I mean, every single one of them has this element of mystery, variability, this scanarian mechanic of bringing us back through operant conditioning. And then finally, the investment phase, also that doesn't appear in anybody else's habit model, that is this idea of putting something into the product to make it better and better
Starting point is 00:21:22 with use. You know, this is where big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning really becomes very valuable for this exact reason. Because for the first time, products of all sorts can get better with use, right? Even companies that were traditionally not thought of as tech companies today are, every company is a tech company today.
Starting point is 00:21:39 Because if you're collecting user information, if you're customizing the experience, which you should be, everybody should be doing this. If you're customizing the experience, which you should be, everybody should be doing this, if you're customizing the experience in some way, then you are using this piece of the hook model to improve the product with use. Got it. And so in addition to internal and external triggers,
Starting point is 00:21:57 I know you also talk about paid and earned triggers. Could you just break that down for our listeners? Sure. So there's many different types of external triggers. Remember, external triggers are these things that tell us what to do next. Some piece of information that prompts the next action. And so when you think about earned triggers versus paid triggers, an earned trigger is something that you yourself own. So if you have earned the customer's trust in a way that they want to hear from you in the future. For example, if you make an app that reminds people to exercise or meditate or save money or learn a new
Starting point is 00:22:33 language, and the user welcomes that notification, that ping, that ding, that ring, that tells them what to do next, well, you have earned that right. And so you essentially own that trigger in the customer's mind. Now as opposed to a paid trigger, if you buy the notification from somebody else, right, if you have to go through Facebook or Google or an advertiser platform to send an external trigger, well you're basically renting that user's attention. You don't only use his attention, you haven't earned the right to mess with them, you're basically renting it from someone else. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just happens to be really great when you don't have to pay someone else to access your customer. So the idea is that we want to take
Starting point is 00:23:15 those paid triggers and quickly convert them into no longer requiring us to send these external triggers by creating our own habit, by creating a product that people want to use on their own without needing these notifications. Certainly not the ones that we have to buy from someone else. And in regards to the action step, why is it important to make sure that the product is really easy to use? Right. So one principle that we've known for decades now, it's called Lewin's equation, is that behavior is a function of a person in their environment.
Starting point is 00:23:46 And so this goes back over 100 years, and it's pretty much common sense, right? That what you do is a function of the environment around you. If you see a donut on the kitchen counter when you go into your kitchen for breakfast, whereas if you have, you know, the healthier option, the eggs in the fridge, but the donut's right there ready for you, and it's easy to go ahead and eat the donut, and you're in a rush, so you're super motivated to eat the donut quickly as opposed to having to fry up an egg. You're going to eat the donut because it's easier to do that behavior. So the environment shapes our behavior, and we see this all over the place, right?
Starting point is 00:24:17 The environment is a huge, huge factor in people's behavior. We like to think that we are fully in control of our behavior, and it's not that we can't take steps to control our behavior, but without forethought, we are fully in control of our behavior, and it's not that we can't take steps to control our behavior But without forethought we are very much at the whim of our environment So that means that if you are designing a product that is helping people do something that they themselves want to do But they're not doing it then it's only because of one of three reasons and this comes out of the work of BJ Fog It's Danford who says that behavior is a function of motivation, ability, and a trigger.
Starting point is 00:24:49 So we talked about those triggers earlier. Motivation is the energy for action, how much we want to do something. And ability is how easy it is to do that behavior, the capacity to do that behavior, because the easier something is to do, the more likely we are to do it. So whether it's because something is easy because it is something is to do, the more likely we are to do it. So whether it's because something is easy, because it is physically easier to do, or
Starting point is 00:25:09 because it's mentally easier to do, or because it's less costly, any of these factors of ability make a behavior more or less likely to occur based on how easier difficult the behavior is. And so even my new changes, right, seconds of low time in your app, a website that's too crowded with too many triggers and confuses the user, not building enough trust and causing the user to have to think and second guess whether they want to do business with you. All of these factors decrease the user's ability and therefore make it less likely that the user will do what they and you want them to do. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea
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Starting point is 00:29:02 Shopify is a commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Shopify is packed with industry leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth, giving you complete control over your business and brand, without having to learn any new skills in design or code. And Shopify grows with you no matter how big your business gets. Thanks to an endless list of integrations and third-party apps, anything you can think of from on-demand printing to accounting to chatbots, Shopify has everything you need
Starting point is 00:29:40 to revolutionize your business. If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was gonna collect payments and how I was gonna trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me
Starting point is 00:29:59 with just the click of a button. Even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button. It was so easy to do. Like I said, I just took a couple of days and so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be and I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat and enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders
Starting point is 00:30:30 and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly recommend it. Shopify is a platform that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com.sashProfiting.
Starting point is 00:30:58 Again, go to Shopify.com.sashProfiting.all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com.sashProfiting.sashProfiting.sashProfiting.all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com Sush profiting shopfly.com Sush profiting all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. And when you are talking about rewards, you mentioned the fact that they really need an element of mystery or a degree of novelty. And in your book, you also talk about how rewards come in three different types. Tribe, hunt, and self, I believe. That's right.
Starting point is 00:31:29 Can you? Very good. Thank you. You're an app pupil there. That's great. Can you unpack that and just describe these different types of rewards? Because I thought this was one of the most fascinating parts of your book. Sure. So I talk about variable rewards as this engine of the hook model. I'll tell you the story of how this was kind of discovered so to speak.
Starting point is 00:31:47 So B.F. Skinner was a psychologist, the father of behaviorism, he was the father of operand conditioning, and he did some really fascinating experiments back in the 1950s and 60s, where he took these pigeons, and he put them in a little box, and he gave them a disc to peck at. And every time they peck at the disc, they would get a little food reward, a little food pellet. And so very quickly he could train these pigeons to peck at the disc whenever they were hungry. Now mind you, he wasn't creating automaton, right? He wasn't creating little puppets. He could only get the pigeons to peck at the disc if they were hungry, meaning there had to be an internal trigger of hunger in order for the pigeon to be motivated to pick at the disc. Just like with us, people aren't puppets on a string.
Starting point is 00:32:28 We can't make people do something they don't want to do. They have to have some kind of internal trigger, some kind of knee, some kind of itch in order to do that behavior. But then Skinner found something very interesting happened when he ran out of the food pellets. So one day he literally ran out of them. He didn't have enough food pellets. And so he couldn't afford to give the food pellet every time the pigeon pecked at the disc. He could only afford to give it to the pigeon once in a while. And that meant that if the pigeon pecked at the disc, sometimes they would
Starting point is 00:32:55 get a reward. But then if the pigeon pecked at the disc again, they wouldn't receive a reward. And to Skinner's amazement, he saw the pigeons increase the rate of response. They would peck at the disc more often when the reward was given on a variable schedule of reinforcement. And so it turns out that in all sorts of experiences that you find most habit forming, most engaging, the things that capture our attention and won't let go, you will find this element of mysteries, this variable reward. And these variable rewards
Starting point is 00:33:25 come in three types. Rewards of the tribe, rewards of the hunt, and rewards of the self. Rewards of the hunt are things that feel good, that have this element of mystery, and come from other people. So cooperation, partnership, competition, all of these things feel good, come from other people, and have this element of mystery. So it makes social media so engaging. Stack overflow if you've ever used that for any engineers listening, right?
Starting point is 00:33:49 It's this social Q&A site, Kora, a lot of companies use this social reward. You see that all of the place. The next type of variable reward is called rewards of the hunt. And this is about the search for material possessions or information. So when you think about what makes the news so habit forming, right? Why do people read the news every day? Nobody wants yesterday's news, right? That's old news. That's not fun. The first three letters of news is any W. New. It has to be what we don't know, the uncertainty that search for information. That's what the rewards of the hunt is all about. I can
Starting point is 00:34:22 also be, of course, the search for money. When you think about variable rewards, you think of gambling, slot machines, right? What makes a slot machine so engaging? Why can nobody stop watching a spinning roulette wheel? Because there's uncertainty around what's going to happen. And so that same psychology is what keeps us scrolling and scrolling on the internet as well. And then finally, rewards of the self.
Starting point is 00:34:42 For words of the self are about the search for these variable rewards that feel good, but don't come from other people and aren't about these material or information rewards. These things feel good in and of themselves. They're what's called intrinsically pleasurable. The search for mastery, consistency, competency, control. Best example online is gameplay. Right, when you play Candy Crush or Angry birds or any number of these other games, you're not winning anything in terms of material possessions at least.
Starting point is 00:35:09 You're not even playing with other people, many of these games. But there's something fun about getting to the next level, the next accomplishment, the next achievement. So when you think about checking email, right, email is probably the mother of habit forming technology. It uses all three types of variable rewards. It comes from other people.
Starting point is 00:35:24 So you have your rewards at the tribe. It's about rewards at the hunt, right? What's in each email? It's a good news, it's a bad news. And then there's this element of finishing checking your inbox, right? So looking at each one of those unread messages, opening it, clearing them away, these are examples of rewards of the self, the sense of mastery, control, competency. That's very interesting. So to recap this section of the interview, can you just describe some of the questions that we should use when we're thinking about developing a product that forms habits? Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:35:56 So if you're building the kind of product that needs to build a habit, if your business model depends upon bringing people back on their own, then you have to ask yourself these five fundamental questions. If number one, what's the internal trigger? What's the user's itch that your product is addressing? And does it occur with sufficient frequency to bring them back and form a habit? Second, what's your external trigger?
Starting point is 00:36:16 What's the information in their environment that prompts them to action? The third question is, in the action phase of the hook, what's the simplest thing the user can do to get relief from their psychological discomfort with your product? Fourth, what's the variable reward? Does the product scratch the user's itch and yet leave them wanting more?
Starting point is 00:36:36 And then finally, the investment phase, what's the bit of work the user does to increase the likelihood of the next pass through the hook. Awesome. Let's shift gears to your new book. This is namely on distraction. It's called indistractable. It's out on preorder now. I believe it comes out in September. You must be very excited. I am very excited. I'm sure it's going to be a smash hit like your other one. Thank you. Thank you. I hope so. From your mouth to God's ears. Let's hope. So first help us understand the breadth of this distraction problem. Why are people so distracted? Why did you decide to write this book?
Starting point is 00:37:17 Yeah, so you know, this book kind of came out of my own personal struggle with distraction. You know, I noticed that after I had written hooked, I was finding myself with some bad habits that I didn't like. I remember one particular occasion I was with my daughter, and she's an only child, and so, you know, she's the love of our life, and we had this book of activities that daddies and daughters could do together. And one of the activities was to ask each other this question, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I wish I could tell you what she said, but I can't because I was busy on my phone when she was answering that question.
Starting point is 00:37:57 And the next thing I knew, I looked up and she was gone. She had gotten the message that she was less important than whatever I was looking at on my phone. And so I'm embarrassed to tell you that, but that's what happened. And I decided to look, you know, I need to figure this out because if I understand how these products hook us, right, I wrote the book on it, and I'm struggling. Well, then I'm guessing lots of people out there are struggling. And so at first I wanted to write a book about technology distraction, right? Why technology is the problem?
Starting point is 00:38:23 I originally thought I was going to call the book unhooked. But then the more I dove into the problem, I realized that it wasn't technology, that was the real problem, that technology is what's called the proximate cause. It's the surface level cause, the real cause, the root cause was much more complex and much more fascinating. That it turns out, I intended to write a book about technology distraction. It turns out I ended up writing about the psychology of distraction, is really the topic of the book. What I learned was that it's not just about the technology.
Starting point is 00:38:55 Technology is the tool, but it turns out there's so much more going on in terms of the deeper psychology. And so, when it comes to indistractable, I have another four-part model. I'm very fond of four-part models. And it kind of uses many of the same psychology that I learned writing hooked to try and help us put technology in its place. And so the idea here,
Starting point is 00:39:12 every book I read on the topic when I did research about this problem of why don't we do what we say we're going to do, every book basically said the same thing. Just get rid of the technology, the technology is the problem. So go on a digital detox or 30 day plan or whatever, and it doesn't work.
Starting point is 00:39:28 And I'll tell you why it doesn't work. I did all this stuff, but, you know, I should have known it wouldn't work because I used to be clinically obese at one point in my life. And I remember when I was obese, I would go on all these fat diets, right? No fast food for a whole month. Well, guess what happened on day 31, right?
Starting point is 00:39:43 I don't know what happened. I'd eat like crazy. I'd make up for lost time because I wasn't getting to the root of why I was overeating. And as anybody who's struggled with overeating knows, it's not about hunger, right? It's not about the food itself. It's about the emotional need. And it's an icky sticky truth we don't like to talk about. We like to blame the tech companies for addicting us. And I wanted to do that too. And I wanted to warn people about like,
Starting point is 00:40:08 look, I know from the inside that this stuff is addictive. And it turns out I can't say that because the science doesn't support it. The science tells us that we use and overuse and sometimes abuse these products because we're filling emotional needs. It's back to these internal triggers that we talked about earlier. That let me tell you, if you can't sit with your
Starting point is 00:40:28 daughter without looking at your phone, it's not the phone. That's the problem. There was stuff going on inside me that I didn't want to face, that I didn't want to look at, that I was trying to escape and I didn't have the tools to deal with those uncomfortable sensations in a healthier manner. Yeah, and to that point, you talk about how this is not a new problem and how like, you know, 2,500 years ago, Socrates and Plato were talking about this concept. Can you just explain the history behind some of this? Yeah, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:41:00 I mean, this is one of the things that fascinates me. You know, we think that Facebook invented distraction And it is not a new problem. I mean literally 2,500 years ago Socrates and Plato are talking about across here this tendency that we have to do things against our better interest I mean it is part of the human condition and it's part of being an adult is that you know We live in a world today that has so many good interesting fascinating things vying for our attention. And that's a good thing, right? Do we want Netflix to make more boring shows, right? Do we call up Netflix? They say, hey, can you stop making your show so entertaining?
Starting point is 00:41:33 That would be great, because they're distracting me. No, I mean, part of being a grown-up is learning how to put this stuff in its place. And I think what disturbed me about the popular narrative that I bought into at one point is that we slough off responsibility, and we expect it to be fixed for us. Well, I got news for you. This stuff ain't going away.
Starting point is 00:41:49 It's always been a part of the human condition and it always will be part of the human condition. If anything, technology is only going to make things more distracting, not less. So if we don't learn how to become indistractable now, if we don't teach our kids how to become indistractable, then I really do think the world is going to buy for Kate into people who know how to manage their behavior, who know how to manage their attention, and do what they say they're going to do, and people who just get tugged around by other interests.
Starting point is 00:42:15 Because the fact is, I can tell you from the inside, if you don't take steps to become indistractable, these companies are going to get you. They're too sophisticated, they're too good, that if you don't take steps to put this stuff in its place, not only the frivolous social media or gaming companies, I'm talking about the workplace technology, Slack and email, your phone, it's going to get you unless you understand how to put it in its place. And so half the book is about things that you yourself can do, this four-part indistractable
Starting point is 00:42:44 model. The other half of the book realizes that you that you yourself can do, right? This four-part, indistractable model. The other half of the book realizes that you operate in an environment, right? That your behavior is dictated in many parts by other people. So the second half of the book is about how do we have an indistractable workplace? How do we create a culture that doesn't make people desperate for distraction? It turns out that what I learned in this, and we can talk about this more, but you know, I learned that distraction at work is not about the technology. It's about a dysfunctional company culture.
Starting point is 00:43:10 Then I also talk about how to raise indistractable kids. And finally, I talk about how to have an indistractable relationship. What do you do when you sit around the table and some of your friends decide it's a good time to take out their phone when you were hoping you would have quality time together? Or what do you do if you're spouse or you're seeking to figure another is on their device instead of coming to bed. What do you do in those circumstances?
Starting point is 00:43:30 So I really try and look at these many different facets of this problem of distraction and give a holistic and yet tech positive and empowering solution. I'm not one of these chicken little alarmists that tells you technology is melting your brain. I love technology, it's great. I mean, I could have written my books, I couldn't have benefited so many ways in my life. Had it not been for the amazing power of technology.
Starting point is 00:43:51 I mean, look, it's talking right now with these amazing technologies, let us do all these things we do. And so it's a tech-positive book and it's also an empowering book that helps people get the best out of technology without letting it get the best of us. Yeah, and I think it's a perfect time for something like this, because as you said, companies are only getting more sophisticated. And I don't think people realize how complex it is behind the scenes and how much they're targeted.
Starting point is 00:44:17 Yeah, and we can use it for good. I still believe that, you know, by and large, you know, I don't want to live in a world without what you're building. I think it's great that you have the option to have great products that engage us. I mean, we want the products we use to be engaging. That's not a problem. That's progress. We want awesome products that help us.
Starting point is 00:44:35 I think it's going to be up to us, though. Unless you are a child, I think children deserve special protection. I think the people who are pathologically addicted deserve special protection. But for the rest of us, it's up to us. It's going to be our responsibility to learn how to deal with these things healthfully. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the 6 or 7 figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roachio
Starting point is 00:45:00 has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of Not One, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach Show. Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur, and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on Young and Profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework, it was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing
Starting point is 00:45:33 what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in 95 and at the same time, she built her eight figure company as a side hustle and eventually took it and made her full-time hustle and her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United
Starting point is 00:46:03 States. She's built an empire. she's earned a life-changing wealth. And on top of all that she maintains a happy marriage and a healthy home life. On the Kelly Road Show, you'll learn that it's possible to have it all. Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today.
Starting point is 00:46:32 Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, ya fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently had best-selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master
Starting point is 00:47:06 class, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework, and I'm so happy because I really needed this class.
Starting point is 00:47:32 With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With Masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors,
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Starting point is 00:48:47 Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com slash profiting. That's masterclass.com slash profiting for 15% off an annual membership masterclass.com slash profiting. You have called indistractability a superpower. Why do you think that that is the ultimate secret weapon of today? Because one could argue that creativity or emotional intelligence or being able to adapt is more important today. I would argue that all the creativity in the world,
Starting point is 00:49:21 all the adaptability, all the leadership skills, don't get you very far if you don't execute on your dreams. And so you can't execute on your dreams unless you do the work. And so it's not good enough just to have desire and aspirations. If you want to make a difference in the world, you have to get your butt in the chair and do the work. And that's hard. It's hard and it's not comfortable. And we haven't been taught how to focus, how to stay on task and do
Starting point is 00:49:58 what we say we're going to do. Not only that, it's so much more difficult these days when we have so many good things to distract us, right? Like, oh, I just want to watch YouTube for a minute or let me just Google something or even the most insidious things are you know those tasks that Feel like work. We call it pseudo work, right? Like I'll just check email for a minute because that's kind of something I need to be doing Right, it's kind of feels productive and this is why we had this explosion of messaging today Not because people need to send these messages with a Harvard Business Review found that 25% of the emails that the average office worker receives, they should not have received. And about 25% of the emails
Starting point is 00:50:34 they send, they should not have sent. The reason we had this deluge of emails is because people are using technology to fulfill their voids, to fulfill these uncomfortable emotional sensations of having to do the work. The solution is, it's two big solutions, the solution is do pseudo work or call a meeting. That's what we do. When at the end of the day, to really move our life and the world forward, we have to do focused work. We have to come up with novel solutions to hard problems. Well, guess what? You can't do that unless you have focused time. But we don't have any focused time in our days anymore. We're constantly reacting and we have no time to reflect. And so that's what I want to change is I want to give us the skill set to put our ideas
Starting point is 00:51:22 into action. The reason I call it a superpower is imagine for a second what your life would be like. If everything you said you would do, you did. Imagine in the domain of your life, right, when it comes to taking care of your body, your health, getting enough sleep, reading, books that can improve your life. Think about in the domain of your relationships, how much closer would you be with your significant other, your kids, your friends, if you were there for them and you were fully present, you may time for these people. In your work, how much more effective would you be at work if you actually finished everything
Starting point is 00:51:54 on your to-do list every day, every day, instead of moving it to the next day and the next day and the next day. How unbelievably different would our life be if everything we said we would do we actually did? That's why I think it's a superpower. Yeah, that is powerful. How can we stop being distracted? What are your top tips for that? Yeah, so it's not so much tips and tactics as it is a strategy. I mean, I do give a lot of tactics, a lot of things that you can do today, like, you know, very quick hit tips. But that's not the most important aspect of the book. The thing I want you to remember are these four parts of the indistractable model
Starting point is 00:52:26 because if I give you the strategy and that is seared into your brain, you'll come up with a tactics for yourself. The strategy here is to understand that all action is either traction or distraction. You notice both those words end in the same word. They both end in the word action. Traction is any action that you do that moves you towards what you want in life. It's things that you do with intent. The opposite of that, the opposite of traction, is distraction.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Traction is any action that you do that moves you off track. So think about a number line to the right as traction, to the left as distraction. Now, what spurs action? What makes us do something that is either traction or distraction? Think about two arrows pointing towards the center of that number line. Those two arrows represent either internal triggers or external triggers. And of course, we talked all about this when we talked about hooked how all our behaviors are spurred by either internal triggers or external triggers.
Starting point is 00:53:26 So now we have four parts. We have internal triggers, external triggers, traction and distraction. So all we have to do to become indistractable is work on these four basic elements. First, we have to master these internal triggers. Understand the discomfort that drives us to seek escape through distraction as opposed to traction. And so there's really only two things we can do about mastering our internal triggers. We can either fix the source of the problems, figure out why we feel bad, why we are looking
Starting point is 00:53:56 for escape in this manner, or if we can't fix the source of the problem, we have to learn ways to cope with that discomfort. And so I give many different ways to do exactly those two things. How do you either fix the problem or learn tactics to cope with that discomfort? There's a lot of myths out there in folk psychology that need to be overturned. Like the ego depletion myth, this horrible myth that people run out of willpower, that it's like a gas tank, turns out that's totally not true. Unless you believe it's true. And so it's like a gas tank, turns out that's totally not true. Unless you believe it's true.
Starting point is 00:54:26 And so it's really harmful. I do a lot of turning over of apple cards in this book because there's a lot of untruse out there that people need to know are not true because these untruse are really hurting them like this idea that you run out of will power. It's not true at all unless you believe it is. So that's the first step. We have to master these internal triggers. Next, we have to make time for traction.
Starting point is 00:54:46 Right? We talked about traction versus distraction. We have to make time for traction. That means we have to make time on our calendars for the things that we need to do. So many people, they don't even know the difference between traction and distraction because they didn't plan what they wanted to do. So here's the thing I want your listeners to remember, is that you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. You can't complain about all these things, distracting you, the television, the radio, the YouTube, whatever, Facebook,
Starting point is 00:55:16 unless you know what it is you wanted to do in that time. So this comes down to putting on our counters, what we wanna do, and then more importantly, so that's kinda basic, you've heard that advice before. What people don't do is that they don't synchronize their schedules with the various stakeholders in their life. You know, a lot of us, we talk a good game. We say we value certain things, but if I can't see your values on your schedule in terms of how you spend your time, it's just, just vaporware, right? It's just talk. So to walk the walk, we need to actually
Starting point is 00:55:47 make time for our values on our calendars, turn our values into time. The third thing we do is that we need to hack back these external triggers. So external triggers are these things in our environment that either lead to traction or distraction. So we have to ask ourselves this critical question, this is kind of my version of the Marie Kondo, you know, does it bring you joy question. The question that I want people to ask is, for every external trigger in your life, is this trigger serving you or are you serving it? If it's serving you, terrific. That's great. Like, if you have a notification that tells you, hey, it's time to go to the gym or, you know, it's time for this meeting and that's what you plan to do with your time,ific. But if that external trigger is leading you to distraction, you have to figure out how
Starting point is 00:56:29 to hack back, how to remove it from your life. Not just in your technology, but I also give you insights on how to do this during meetings, how to do this in the workplace as well. You know, one of the greatest sources of workplace distraction more than our technology is other people, right? In open floor plan offices, you have people stopping by your desk and say, hey, how's it going? Want a chitchat?
Starting point is 00:56:50 Well, yeah, I do, but not right now. So actually, I have in the center of indistractable, there's a card stock insert that you can rip out and fold to put on your screen. That's a big red sign that says, I'm indistractable right now. Please come back later. That tells your coworkers that you are indistractable. Please don't bother me right now, right? In a polite way.
Starting point is 00:57:12 So there's all these tactics that you can use. But what I really want you to understand is this large strategy of, is the trigger serving me or am I serving yet? And then finally, the last step of the indistractable model is to prevent distraction with Pax. And P finally, the last step of the indistractable model is to prevent distraction with packs. And packs are these ancient technique. I mean, we have the Ulysses Pact is probably the oldest example of Ulysses in
Starting point is 00:57:32 the Odyssey written by Homer, 2500 years ago. He uses this pre-commitment. He binds himself to the mast of his ship to make sure that he's not tempted to do something he doesn't want to do. And so we can use these same type of packs. We have three types, price packs, effort packs, and identity packs to help us prevent us from doing something we don't want to do. Something we'll later regret.
Starting point is 00:57:55 And so I give you all kinds of techniques for how to do that as well. And so those are the four steps to becoming indistractable. Master internal triggers, make time for attraction, hack back external triggers, and finally prevent distraction with packs. So this is kind of the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more to say about it, but I want to kind of give you at least the four parts. Well, thank you so much for that preview of your book. I'm sure it's going to be great when it comes out. So when does it exactly come out?
Starting point is 00:58:19 So September 10th is when it's available. And if you're hearing this before September 10th, 2019, then you can actually get on my website. If you go to indistractable.com, I managed to negotiate this with my publisher. If you live in North America, so you, as in Canada, you can actually get the entire text of indistractable in a PDF. If you pre-order it, if you pre-order it today, you won't get the physical book until September 10th, but you will get a PDF emailed to you immediately if you pre-order by entering your order number into indistractable.com. You also get all kinds of other goodies, like a distraction tracker, a schedule maker,
Starting point is 00:58:54 a workbook, a video mini-course, all kinds of other goodies. My list of recommended tools and resources as well, so lots and lots of stuff at indistractable.com. Fabulous. And where can our listeners go to find out more about you and everything that you do? Yeah, thank you. So my website is called neer and far.com and near is spent like my first name. So it's N-I-R and far.com. My first book is hooked, how to build habit forming products. And for the second book, you can go to indistractable.com. Great. Well, near you have a brilliant mind and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. This is a lot of fun. How much? Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast.
Starting point is 00:59:26 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to write us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show. Follow YAHP on Instagram at Young and Profiting and check us out at YoungandProfting.com. And now you can chat live with us every single day on Yacht's Society on Slack. Check out our show notes or YoungandPropeting.com for the registration link. You can find me on Instagram at Yacht with Hala
Starting point is 00:59:53 or link to just search for my name, Hala Ta-Ha. Big thanks to the Yacht team for another successful episode. This week, I'd like to give a special shout out to our international team members, Christian and Kayla. Kayla writes our show notes each week and Christian updates our website with the latest content. They make a great duo and we appreciate all that they do for ya.
Starting point is 01:00:13 Keep up the good work. This is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft.
Starting point is 01:00:36 That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better better, where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness.
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