Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPLive: Psychology of Habit-Forming Technology with Nir Eyal | Uncut Version

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Technology is becoming more and more addictive, is that a bad thing, or is it up to us to set boundaries for ourselves, so we don’t overuse these products?   Join Hala for a Live Young and Profiting Podcast Episode with Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. They will discuss creating beneficial behaviors while educating listeners on how to build healthy habits in their own lives.   **Meet the panel**   Nir Eyal - Nir is the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Having worked in the video gaming and ad industries, Nir understands the techniques used to motivate and manipulate people.    Now Nir helps companies create behaviors that benefit their users while educating people on how to build healthful habits in their own lives. Social Media:   Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on ClubHouse: @halataha 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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stores. Taxes and other fee still apply. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast. A place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter

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hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. Hey everyone, it's Hala from Young & Profiting Podcast. We are number one education podcast across all apps. You're listening to a Yap Live session on Clubhouse and today's special guest is Near Al. Near is very well known as an author and investor. He's known for his breakout book, which is hooked,

had to build habit forming products. You may remember him from my episode number 34, had to be indestructible with near AL. And in that episode, we discussed how we can better control our attention and become indestructible. Near is also very well known for his knowledge on the psychology of habit forming products. He's observed hundreds of companies

with habit forming products, and he's uncovered all the different patterns between them and how they got their users hooked, which is what we are gonna be talking about today. I'm super excited about it. And this episode is perfect for anyone who wants to start a habit forming product or service, or for anyone who simply wants to understand why we are so addicted to platforms like Clubhouse and Instagram.

And we're going to focus on Nier's four-step hook model. We're also going to better understand the difference between growth, engagement, and monetization, and when we should focus on each one. And we're going to also better understand how we can control our own product habits. So with that said, I'm going to get this amazing interview started. I know it's going to be a good one. Near is full of value. So, Near, let's start off with some basic foundations.

We're not talking about regular habits today. We are talking specifically about habits when it comes to products. And not everything that people want to sell or use is really habit forming. So can you explain what is a habit forming product versus what is not? I think that's the best place to start. Absolutely, yeah.

So this is not magic pixie dust that you can pour on any business and make it into the next Facebook. It's something that is used for specific types of companies, specifically the kind of products and services that require repeat engagement. So many products don't need repeat engagement, right? Like take, for example, car insurance, right? When you buy car insurance, you don't necessarily use it

unless it's gone for a bit, something terrible happens. You don't need to use the car insurance. You buy it once and then it's there in case something terrible happens. But when it comes to other products like social media companies, health tech companies, FinTech companies, all sorts of other products and services, anything that you need people to come back to use your product again and again with sufficient frequency, that's the kind of product that you should form a habit around. Now, the idea here isn't that every product necessarily needs to be habit forming.

It's that every product that needs to be habit forming needs a hook. And my hook model, which I just grabbed in my book, hooked, how to build habit forming products, gives people this lattice work, this model that they can use, to make sure their business has these four steps built into the product design. Because if you don't have some kind of habit or some other type of competitive advantage, you're just competing with people on price and features. So for example, take the car insurance company.

If the car insurance company is just plain old car insurance, well then Geico says, oh, 15 minutes saves you 15% on car insurance. Well then their competitor comes out and says, oh yeah, 12 minutes saves you 15% on car insurance. Well, then their competitor comes out and says, oh, yeah, 12 minutes saves you 20%. And they just keep beating each other up on price and features and price and features as opposed to a product that has some kind of competitive advantage. What Warren Buffett calls emote around your business, whether that's intellectual property, whether that's some kind of brand, whether it's a habit, that prevents the competition from coming in and eating your lunch based on price and features.

Instead, people use the product solely out of habit. They do so just like they would check Google, not because it's the best search engine. It turns out in head-to-head comparisons between Google and the number two search engine Bing. If you strip out the branding, people can't tell the two apart. And yet, when was the last time you thought to yourself, oh, I need to search for something. Let me go ahead and see who has the best search engine.

Nobody does that. You just Google it with little or no conscious thought. Why? Because it's a habit. Google doesn't necessarily have the best search engine. And even if it did or didn't, would you even know? No, because you use the product out of habit. And so that's the real power of a habit,

is that when a company builds a habit-forming product, users interact with it as just part of their day-to-day routine. They don't consider who has the best service product, whatever, they just use it out of habit. And so we can use those techniques, not only as a competitive advantage for our own company, we can really improve people's lives by helping them form healthy habits around education products, healthcare products, financial services products, all kinds of ways we can use habits for good. I totally agree. I definitely want to get into all the different benefits of, you know,

using this hook model and the benefits of a habit forming product. But I do want to make sure that we set some groundwork because a lot of people may not be familiar with habit forming products, what they are. So what's the best way for a company to determine if it has habit forming potential? For all the business owners listening right now, how can they know if their product or service has habit forming potential? Yes, so the best filter is frequency. So many times people say, oh, is it an enterprise product, is it a consumer web product, is it fintech, is it health tech, what kind of products make for good habit forming products? It's actually any product that is used with sufficient frequency.

So I've worked with companies who build enterprise SaaS products that seem very boring and mundane, but for the people who actually value these products, they use it with sufficient frequency to turn it into a habit. So the line of demarcation is not offline or online enterprise or consumer. The line of demarcation is frequent or infrequent. And the real critical cutoff point is a week's time or less. So the research shows that if your product is not something that people interact with, at least within a week's time or less,

it's very difficult to change a consumer habits. Not impossible, but it's really difficult. Very few examples of companies can do this successfully. So it's really that kind of company that needs people to interact with the product, to do the key habit, whether it's check a dashboard, scroll of feed, open an app, whatever it might be, with sufficient frequency.

So at least a week's time or less. Yeah, I think that's super helpful to you understand. Now, you alluded to this a bit. It's not only relevant to technology. So this hooked model and having a habit forming product is not just relevant to software products. Can you give us an example of habit forming product or service that is not

like Instagram Clubhouse Facebook? Sure. Yeah. So when we think about many of the products that we use every day, what makes us use that product or service with little or no conscious thought? I'll give you a very mundane example that you wouldn't think of as a habit, but the place I go to get my hair cut. So I've gone through a few barbers in my life, with some of them I don't go back to anymore,

and one in particular I do go back to, and I've been going back to for years, and a big reason why I don't even think about it, hey, who would be better at cutting my hair is because I formed a cognitive habit with this particular barber. Why? Well, we didn't get into the four steps of the hook model, but I'll dive into one of the most important steps of the four, which is the investment phase. The investment phase is where you put something into the product to make it better with use.

And this is really revolutionary. I don't think people understand how this idea is so powerful because most companies think, well, just give people what they want and that you're done, like build a better mouse trap and the world will be to path your door. But if you're not asking for them to invest in the product to make it better with use,

you're making a huge, huge mistake. So online, this has really been ramped up, because for the first time, we can make products and services with these platforms in real time. So because of the data I give Facebook or Twitter or whatever else, the algorithm has shaped the content I see based on the data I give these companies. So that's how they do it online, right? So the more you use YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, whatever the case might be, the product is being shaped for your preferences. And that becomes really powerful because if you were to log into my YouTube account,

the videos you'd see probably would be very interesting because they've been shaped, that content has been tailored to me based on my past viewing behavior, the data I've given those companies. And you say, yeah, okay, but I asked you for an offline example. Well, let's go back to my barber. And the barber, I don't go back to anymore. I would sit down with my barber, and he would remember what kind of cut I wanted, or what my name was, or that I have a daughter.

As opposed to the barber I do go back to consistently, I don't even ask anymore to see, I'm sure he's not the best barber in the world, but I don't even ask to see if I should go to a different barber, why? Because I know that once a month when I go to this particular barber, and this is an example of a product that isn't used that frequency, and yet is able to form a habit because of how much investment

is put into that relationship, he knows exactly already how I want to get my haircut. He remembers that. He remembers my daughter's name. He remembers what I do for a living. He remembers these details about our relationship that makes me not want to go anywhere else. And I can't tell you how many businesses out there. It doesn't matter what business you're in.

Fail to give a crap about their customer enough to ask them that for this information that improves the service with use. And so almost every business out there, whether it's habit forming or not, frankly, feasible information that makes the product better and better with use. That's what this investment phase is all about. So many different kinds of businesses,

not just online businesses, can build these consumer habits. Okay, so let's talk about what happens in our brain when a habit starts to form. And I also think that helpful context for this would be the difference between a habit and a routine. So that's a great question. So there is a bit of misunderstanding these days between habits and routines. A habit is defined as a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. So it's these

kind of things that you can do kind of in the back of your brain. So you know, once you learn to drive a car, for example, when you're a teenager and you learn to drive a car, you have to put in a lot of conscious thought. You have to think about every little move because you're learning this behavior for the first time. Whereas when you practice enough, when it becomes a habit, oh, when you drive a car, you can talk to your friend oh, when you drive a car, you can talk to your friend, you can listen to a podcast, you can do all kinds of other stuff as you're driving because it becomes a habit. It becomes something you can do with little or no conscious thought because fundamentally,

a habit is nothing more than a learn to behavior. So if you can kind of do it on autopilot, that's a habit. A routine, however, is defined as a series of behaviors frequently repeated. So the thing that's missing the definition of a routine is that it doesn't have to be done with little or no conscious thought. And so this kind of goes away from the product design discussion we were just having and more about a personal development discussion, because I'm a little bit upset with the self-help industry these days promoting habits as the cure-all for everything all the time. That is getting on my nerves because I think what's happened is we've reached

peak habit, meaning you hear a lot of self-help authors and gurus promoting habits as the way to achieve success in everything in your life. That if you want something in your life, just make it into a habit, right? You want to have a healthy, good looking body, and you want to exercise more, turn exercise into a habit. You want to write a book, oh, turn writing into a habit. And I'm here to tell you that not everything can become a habit, because not everything can become a behavior done with little or no conscious thought. So take for example exercise or writing a book. These behaviors take a lot of conscious thought. They take a lot of work. I've written two best sellers, thousands of articles, been published in the New York Times and

a Harvard Business Review and I will tell you that every time I write an article it is really, really hard work. I have to think. I have to be fully present. I can't do it with little or no conscious thought. So it has to be something that I don't try and put the requirement of a habit rather it is a routine. You say, okay, well what's the big deal? It's just semantics, habit, routine, who cares? I think the reason this is so important is because when people are told that, oh, you can make anything into a habit. Anything can be made easy. Anything can be made something you do with little or no conscious thought.

What we're telling them is that if it's difficult, you're doing something wrong. And so what do they do? Do they blame the guru who told them that you can turn anything into a habit? No, they blame themselves. They think they're broken. They think they're wrong. And then they quit. And so I think we need to have this new expectation when it comes to changing our life, when it comes to changing our behavior,

that some behaviors are going to be difficult. Right? The whole idea of deliberate practice. We've all heard about the 10,000 hour rule. Well, deliberate practice in the 10,000 rule, our rule, is the opposite of a habit. Deliberate practice requires full attention and full conscious thought. That's how you get better at a skill is by thinking deliberately about how you want to improve. So it's the exact opposite of a habit. And we have to be able to say, look, some tasks are going to be hard. They're going to be difficult. And that's okay because that's what's required to get better at that job. So as long as we know, look, some behaviors can become habits, but then many behaviors will not become habits, and I know what to do so that I don't get burned out while I'm

trying to learn those behaviors and integrate them in my life and make them into routines, then we'll be better armed to deal with the right tool for the job. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm really happy that you broke that down because I agree. I think that a lot of people talk about building habits as if it's so easy and to your point. There's lots of things that are very, very difficult to build a habit and just by nature, aren't the right fit to be a habit. And we're trying to like force that when it's really hard to do that.

So you got a lot of backlash for writing hooked, and it was because some people thought that you were teaching other people how to make addictive products. It happened to be that your hooked model was very, very good, but I do want you to know that I think on Clubhouse specifically, and the circles that I run in and the people who are in this club,

they're very interested in figuring out how they can create habit forming products and not because they want people to be addicted and ruin their lives, but because a lot of the technology products that are out there actually help people's lives. And so I just wanted to call that out. Let you know this is a safe space and don't hold any of the juicy details back. I don't know with backlash you're talking about. I didn't get that much back. Well, not like crazy backlash, but people, you know, I've heard you talk about that in

the past of how people think that learning these models could do bad when most of the time it's used for good. Yeah, you know, and I think it's only folks who haven't actually read the book. Exactly. You know, people interpret how to build habit-forming products, which is the title of the book with how to build addictive products, which is not the title of the book. And I specifically talk about in the book

why there's a big difference between habits and addiction. An addiction is a persistent compulsive dependency on a behavior of substance that harms the user. So I specifically say in the book, you never want to design a product to be addictive. That would be sadistic. Why would we hurt our users? And more so, we way overdue this discussion

around addictions, right? We call everything an addiction. Oh, that chocolate, it's so delicious, it's addictive. Oh, that TV show, I want to watch it a lot, it's addictive. No, it's not. Right? We don't talk about any other pathology this way. We don't talk about terrets or epilepsy this way. And yet somehow this pathology of addiction,

we're able to moralize and medicalize perfectly normal behavior. There's nothing wrong with enjoying Facebook or YouTube or any of these technology tools that you're not addicted to them. Now what you might be sometimes is distracted. Okay, but people don't like to use that terminology. Why? Because when something's an addiction, I can blame somebody else. Oh, I stayed up too late, scrolling Facebook. Oh, it's because it's addictive, right? The product did it to me, right? There's a dealer. There's a pusher. I'm unable to control my behavior just like an addict would be. Well, that's ridiculous, right? By thinking that you are powerless, guess what? It becomes so. When people give the excuse

of, oh, it's hijacking my brain, I can't do anything about it. Guess what? They don't do anything about it. And so it justifies what they really want. And I think not only is this language around addiction harmful to and disrespectful to people who actually struggle with the terrible pathology of addiction, it's incredibly disempowering. Because the vast majority of people out there now, some people really do get pathologically addicted. Just like when it comes to alcohol, alcohol is highly addictive. But is everybody who has a glass of wine with dinner, an alcoholic? Of course not, that's ridiculous.

Is everyone who has a joint, addicted, has a campus use disorder? Of course not, that's ridiculous. And so it's only the small minority of people, single-digit percentages, that ever get addicted to these things. So yes, some people do get addicted to different technologies, Facebook, whatever, because people get addicted to all sorts of things. But the vast majority of people are not addicted. They are distracted.

And so we need to take responsibility to understand a difference that it's not a disorder, it's not we have to stop moralizing and medicalizing and take responsibility to say, look, if it's not this thing, it's going to be something else. I have to take responsibility for my behavior to make sure that I do more acts of traction as opposed to allowing myself to get distracted. And if we don't do this, by the way, from a product design community perspective, if we throw out the baby with the bath water

and say, oh, all persuasive techniques are bad because some people abuse them and because some people get addicted, we risk throwing out all the good we can do with these technologies, right? The vast majority of products out there, they don't suck you in, not the way that Facebook and Twitter and Instagram suck you in, they just suck. So how much better could the world be if education products, SaaS products, healthcare products

were intentionally designed to be habit forming so that they could build good habits in people's lives. And so that's really what this is about. Hooked is about how to build good habits, indistractibles about how to break those bad habits, but they're not the same behaviors, right? You can get hooked onto an ed tech product that teaches you a new language that helps you build good finance habits. You can get hooked to those products while getting unhooked and not using the products

that you find distracting, like social media or whatever. Thank you, that's exactly where I wanted you to go with it. So thank you so much for explaining that. And I wanted people to understand that it's not bad to want to create a habit forming product. It's good business to create a habit forming product. So that's what I wanted to get out of that. Near you have a famous four-step hooked model, trigger action, variable reward,

and investment are the four steps. We're going to go deep on each step. But first, I want to get the high level, and I want to take everybody through a real example of a habit forming product. You've mentioned in the past that email is the mother of all habit forming product. You've mentioned in the past that email is the mother of all habit forming technology. So can you help explain to us why email is so habit forming and take us through this hook model?

Sure, absolutely. So the four steps of the hook model, it starts with an external trigger. An external trigger is a ping, a ding, a ring, anything in your outside environment that tells you what to do next. And so we're very familiar with these external triggers.

We see them every day in our outside environment. And every habit forming product has to leverage these external triggers in order to eventually form this habit, which is an association with an internal trigger. Now I'll get back to those internal triggers in just a second. That actually is the most important step of these steps that I'm about to describe, but I'll get back to it in just a minute. So with the email, it's pretty obvious. So with the notification on your phone, that would be the external trigger. The action phase, the next step of the hook is to find as the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward, the very simplest

thing I can do to scratch this itch. So with email, simply open whatever email service provider you use, whether it's Gmail or superhuman or Outlook, whatever you use, one button, tap that app, and now you're taken to your email feed. And it's your inbox. If you think about it, it is very much a precursor to the social media feed, right? There's all these messages, which lead us to the third step of the hook, the variable reward phase.

The variable reward phase is about scratching the user's itch, giving them what they came for, and yet leaving this bit of uncertainty, this variability around what they might find the next time they interact with the product. And part of the reason that email is so habit-forming is that there is so much variability.

It's sort of like a slot machine, right? When you check your email account, at least in a business context, if you're a busy professional, your inbox is full of good news and bad news and urgent stuff and mundane stuff and that variability, that uncertainty, drives us to engage. It's what makes a slot machine, something people want to engage with, right? It's this uncertainty around what you might win. It's what makes social media so scrollable, the more you keep scrolling,

the more interesting content you might find. Some of it is interesting, some of it's not that interesting, but that constant search is because of that drive for variability, trying to figure out what you might find next, some of it interesting, some of it not. It's what makes sports exciting, right?

Why do we get infatuated with watching some silly ball bounce up and down a court or net or pitch? Well, it's because of the uncertainty around who might win the game. Why do we like watching movies or reading books? It's all about uncertainty, it's all about variability. Variable rewards are the rocket fuel driving these habit-forming products. So that's the variable reward phase. So

email, of course, you know, lots of variability. Who's it from? What's the message say? Is it good news, bad news, urgent, not urgent? All this stuff is variable, and that's what keeps us checking. And then finally, the investment phase. The investment phase is where you put something into the product to make it better with use. We talked about this a little bit. So with email, it happens to do with the same, with this very simple action of sending some message. When you send someone a message, you're doing what we call loading the next trigger. You're making it more likely that the person will come back to that service because they've loaded the next trigger.

They've done something to bring themselves back. So we see this on Slack, we see this on WhatsApp, we see this on all sorts of communication platforms. When you send a message, you're loading the next trigger because you're likely to get a reply. And that reply comes coupled in the form of an external trigger, right? There we go through the hook model. Again, in the form of an external trigger. There we go through the hook model again,

in the form of an external trigger that notification that sends you through trigger action reward investment, yet again and again. And again, until eventually, we begin to form an association with what's called an internal trigger. Tease this in the beginning when I talked about these four steps, the external trigger is something in our outside environment that tells us what to do next. An internal trigger tells us what to

do next with information that's stored inside our own heads. And this happens when we reach for a product or service based on a feeling. So internal triggers are defined as uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape from boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, stress, anxiety. Anytime we feel these sensations, we look for something to relieve that discomfort. And so a product that builds a habit attaches itself to those internal triggers, to those uncomfortable emotional states, so that every time we experience them, we reach for this product or service with little or no conscious thought purely out of habit.

So when you're lonely, check Facebook, when you're uncertain, Google, when you're bored, you too, credit, stock price, a sports course, lots of things cater to this uncomfortable internal trigger, I would put email in this category as well, right? Anytime you're anxious about what's going on at work, you're uncertain about what to do next. Hey, check email. Whether that's healthy or not is a different story, but that's the default habit. That's what people tend to do. Eventually, the reason this is so powerful is that you don't even need the external triggers anymore. That's what's so amazing about when you form a habit. These companies don't have to spend money on marketing or advertising to bring people back. They don't even have to send people these spammy triggers and notifications. People use the device on their own purely

out of habit because they are queued from the internal triggers. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast.

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for triggers. How can a company understand what triggers exist for their product or how to create new triggers? I guess the first thing that pops in my mind is push notifications for an app or email or some sort of notification, but other than that, how can companies design triggers that can work for their product or uncover what those triggers are and try to maximize them? Yeah, this is a terrific question.

So when it comes to the external triggers, the difference between an external trigger that feels like magic and one that feels like spam is one word. And that one word is context, context. Okay, that's the word that matters here. I'll give you a very quick story to illustrate the point. Before COVID, I was on a transcon flight and I was sitting across the aisle from a gentleman who was clearly sleeping. Okay, he was right across from me, he was absolutely sleeping, everybody could see it.

And yet the flight attendant came by and turned to this gentleman and said, sir. And he didn't wake up. So she said it even louder. She said, Sir, and again, like he's passed out. Everybody can see it. And so she says it says it a third time. She says it even louder. She says, Sir, and finally you wake up, you know, what, what, what is it? What is it? And she says, Sir, what would you like to drink? And this is such a great example. I think, Wow, that was very rude. Why did she insist on waking him up to give him a drink, right? And yet we do this as business people all the freaking time. We send our customers notifications and emails and push all the time on power schedule, not their

schedule. So the difference between making an external trigger that feels like spam and one that feels like magic is context. Meaning you want to send the external trigger as close to as possible as when the user feels the internal trigger. Did that guy sitting across the aisle want a drink? Yes, but not when he was sleeping, when he was thirsty. So by instead of sending these notifications and pings and dings and rings, when it's convenient for us in our business, we have to ask ourselves, when is the user feeling the internal trigger? When are they feeling the thirst that would necessitate them using our product? And that's when we send the external trigger.

That's really key there. I love that. And I think also in terms of context, making sure that your messages are relevant and it's based on some sort of action that they've taken or some interest that they have rather than just notifying them about the software without any relevant reason to. Right, it has to be, of course, the user has to have some kind of need. We can't just create these

needs from outer space. They have to have some kind of internal trigger already present. We never want to create the internal trigger, right? We only want to leverage the internal triggers that are already there. Okay, cool. So let's move on to step number two, its action. And for my understanding, this is all about the usability and ease of use of the product. And you've observed hundreds of companies where you've studied these patterns of UX designs and functionality. So can you help us understand the difference between what successful companies do and their UX and UI and what some of the more common mistakes are when it comes to that? Yeah, so the action phase is all about the simplest behavior done in anticipation of reward.

And we know, you know, one of the first principles of good UX design is that the easier something is to do, the more likely people are to do it. So all technological innovation is about shortening the distance reducing the friction between the recognition of the need and the cessation of that need. That's what all products and services doesn't matter what business you're in, doesn't matter if you're building some amazing new technology, whether it's the cotton jam to the eye phone, all technology does the same thing. It shortens the distance between the recognition of the need and the cessation of that need by reducing friction. And even the most trivial things,

you know, the changing the color, making it cognitively easier to understand, reducing steps, anything you can do to reduce the effort that your customer has to take to get the cessation of their need will have an impact on their likelihood to do the behavioration of their need will have an impact on their likelihood to do the behavior you've designed for them. Yeah, and so is it correct that you could have an amazing product, but if it's hard to use, even though people would want to use it, they're never going to form a habit because they're just going to be kind of turned off from that bad experience and not want to go

back. Like, can you explain how it kind of prevents people from creating a habit? Oh, all the time. I mean, this is where we see all kinds of behaviors we didn't use to take. We didn't use to do all of a sudden have become habits because of the ubiquitous nature of technology,

because of the fact that we are carrying around these devices with us in our pockets that we call smartphones, all kinds of behaviors that used to be very difficult to do are now possible. Right? So when we think about, you know, not that long ago, you know, when I was in college, we didn't have smartphones, right? Pre-2008, it sounds crazy to think about, but the Apple App Store and the iPhone is only since 2008. It's relatively young. So, you know, the habits that we have now formed

because we have easy access to these technologies, whether it's emails become a habit, social media has become a habit, checking our bank accounts have become a habit, all kinds of things that weren't habits before, because we didn't do them with sufficient frequency, because that action now has become easier to do, now can become a habit.

And so anytime that technology has an interface change that allows people to interact with it more often throughout their day, that creates a huge opportunity for new entrance and startups to build these new exciting habits. So again, anything that shortens the distance between the recognition of the need and the cessation of it, reducing friction, making it easier for people to do, BJ Fogg is a researcher at Stanford. He has these six elements of ability, which are time, money, physical effort, non-routine, social deviants, and cognitive load, these elements of friction, these things that prevent people from doing the behavior that you've designed for them to do.

So, the more you can reduce those barriers to action, the more you can reduce the cost, the amount of time it takes, the amount of thinking. That's a big one when it comes to making a product and services that you all, you know, the listeners today are building. If you can make something easier to understand, people are more likely to do that behavior. And so, that's why we see this trend towards cleaner interfaces, particularly when it comes to mobile devices, when it comes to actions on the screen,

where there's just one key behavior the user has to do, we've seen statistically that people are more likely to do it. So we really want to make the behavior as easy as possible to do. Therefore, we're going to get more people doing that behavior. Yeah, that makes total sense. Okay, cool. So let's move on to step number three. It's variable reward.

So first of all, I would like you to explain what happens to our brain when we expect a reward. And then I'd love it if you could kind of dive deep in terms of the difference between a variable reward and a regular reward. Like why does it need to be variable? So let's start from where this idea comes from. The research first came to us from a psychologist by the name of B.F. Skinner, who was a psychologist

in the 1950s and 60s, who did these famous experiments with pigeons. And he took these pigeons and he put them into what today we call a Skinner box. And he let these pigeons peck at a into what today we call a Skinner box and he let these pigeons peck at a disc to receive a reward. In this case, the reward was a little food pellet. So every time the pigeon pecked at the disc, they would get this food pellet and he very

quickly trained them to peck at the disc whenever they were hungry. Now, this is a really important point because he couldn't make the pigeons peck at the disc if they weren't hungry. Just like for our customers and users, we can't make people do something they don't want to do. We can't invent that hunger out of anywhere. There has to be an internal trigger. So in Skitter's case, he would starve these pigeons.

These pigeons were very hungry, and so he could train them to pick at the disc and get a little reward to get that food pellet. Great. This is called operand conditioning. If you have kids, you've probably done something similar with a reward's chart. Or, you know, if you have a pet, you probably train them also with treats. You probably are familiar with this idea. But then Skinner had a little problem.

One day, Skinner walked into the lab and he realized he didn't have enough of these food pellets. He wasn't going to have enough to last him throughout the day. So he couldn't afford to give the pigeons a food pellet every time the pet at the desk. He could only afford to do it once in a while. So sometimes the pigeon would peck at the disk and no food pellet would come out. No reward. The next time the pigeon would peck at the disk, they would receive a reward. And what Skinner observed to his amazement is that the rate of response, the number of

times the pigeon picked at the disc, increased when the reward was given on a variable schedule of reinforcement. So what happens is that the brain creates this desirous response, and we react more often when there's variability. Variability causes us to engage, it causes us to focus and it is highly habit forming. Why? Because the brain's fundamental function is to learn patterns, right? That's what the brain is constantly doing. It's scanning our environment to understand cause and effect. If I do X, what will happen, right? What will the result in YB?

And so whenever there's uncertainty there, whenever there's mystery, whenever there's this sense of the unknown, we become more focused in that task to try and figure out how to play it properly, right? How to understand how the world works based on learning new information that's different from what we now know and we now believe.

So this is why the news media has a business, right? of course based on learning new information that's different from what we now know and we now believe. So, this is why the news media has a business, right? The news could care less whether you've spent enough time reading the news, right? The New York Times and Fox News and CNN, they don't care if you're well informed, they could care less. All they want you to do is to spend as much time as possible consuming the news. So they don't tell you the most important information. No, they tell you the most sensational information.

The first rule of journalism is if it bleeds, it bleeds. Why? Because that's what's exciting, that's what's interesting, that's what is fascinating to us because it's variable. We don't know what's going to happen. Nobody wants to know the mundane news, right? Nobody wants to hear about how people didn't die today. They want to hear the crazy stuff, the uncertain stuff, the surprising stuff.

That's what keeps the news business and business. When it's up to sports, you know, it's basically the same basketball game, the same football games keep being played. You know, we know one side's going to win, one side's going to lose. But it's the whole drama around how is it going to unfold and who's going to finally win? That's what makes sports so entertaining. Of course, it's what makes social media so enticing. It's about what are people post on social media?

What do comments say? How many likes does something get? All these things use this slot machine-like mechanic of a variable reward. Yeah, and I think there's even another layer to this if we can talk about infinite variability versus finite variability because I think that's super interesting if you can talk about that. Sure. So some experiences have what's called infinite variability versus finite variability. And the best example of finite variability is games. Many times people talk about how we want things to be gamified. If you want an experience to be engaging, add points and badges and leaderboards, they can feel like a game.

And I want to push back on that a little bit because if you think about it, games don't actually form long-term habits all that well. I'll prove it to you. When was the last time you played Super Mario Bros. or Pac-Man or Angry Birds. Not that off years ago. What? Yeah, years ago, right? So for a while, it was crazy engaging. Oh my God, everybody was playing it. And now we forget about them, right?

Why? Why does that happen? Because most games have an element of finite variability. Okay, you play Pac-Man, you play, play, play, play, play, until you kind of get the idea, it's kind of the same thing again and again and again. And what's once variable becomes predictable. Remember, Farmville, oh my God, everybody was playing Farmville. It's hijacking everybody's brain. You know, every few months we'll give some silly game that the world is in transpi. And everybody says, oh my goodness, it's so addictive. Everybody can't stop playing it. And then guess what happens? A few months later, everybody stops playing it.

Why? Because it's not infinitely variable. The variability ends eventually, right? Angry birds. Oh my God, so entrancing. Everybody's playing Angry Birds. But then you play it, play it, play it, play it. You get the idea.

It's kind of the same game again and again and again. As opposed to games or experiences that offer infinite variability, these are the kind of experiences we keep playing. So for example, a world of warcraft or fortnight or email, for example, these are all games we play where there's infinite variability. Why? Because there's a social element. And people are always changing.

Our friends are going on new experiences. They have something to share. They're much more variable than a game that has a finite end. So when it comes to games, movies, books, these things have a finite end, right? If you, how many times do you go see a movie? And you say, wow, that was really amazing. And you walk out of the theater and you watch the movie again right then and there. Very few films do you ever watch more than once?

Very few books do you read more than once? It's not that they're bad businesses. These are not bad businesses. It's just that you have to constantly crank out more and more and more content, right? Gaming studios, movie studios, book publishing houses, they constantly need to make new, new, new, new, new content because the experience of any one piece of content is it has an element of finite versus infinite variability. As opposed to social platforms or any kind of product that has a social element to them, they have much more of an element of infinite variability. Makes total sense. Thank you for breaking that down. And I think it's

really helpful for everybody out there who's looking to design a new product or service. So let's talk about the last step of this hooked model. We talked about the action phase and that really focuses on ease and simplicity, but a true habit forming product requires an investment of a user's time and effort. And honestly, it sounded really counterintuitive to me because you'd think that a habit forming product needs to just be easy. So talk to usut the investment stage. Why is it so important and why is it something that businesses often forget to implement?

Yeah, the reason that people often forget to implement this step is that they think that, okay, we just give people what they came for, we just make people happy, okay, good bye. And they don't give people to invest in making the product better with use. It's almost like, you know, the metaphor I like to use here is imagine if, and you sit down together and you have a wonderful conversation, you tell them about what you're struggling with, about how work is going, and it's kind of tough, and about how what you're struggling with with your kids, and you kind of get vulnerable, and you divulge information with your good friend, okay?

You have a beautiful one. You know, people, we know that people get closer to each other when they're able to be a little bit vulnerable, right? But then you get together in a couple of weeks, you have another lunch, and you realize that your friend doesn't remember a single thing you told them. Not one thing that you told them, that you spilled your guts, you shared all this information with them, and they don't remember a single thing.

So either your friend has amnesia, and they medical attention or they're a bad friend because they weren't paying attention to you. And so this is exactly what most businesses do with their customers. The customer has taken out their wallet. They have given you money. They have spent time with you and you haven't bothered to learn anything about them to try and make that experience better to try and get closer to them. They come to you next time and it's as if they never did business with you at all. Just like that friend that doesn't remember a single thing you told them. It's a waste. It's a missed opportunity. phase of the hook model is about having the customer put something into the product to make it better and better with use. By giving you data, content, accruing followers, reputation, anything that makes the product more and more valuable with use. Because unlike things in the physical world, right, you're clothing, you're car, you're furniture, all these things,

depreciate with use. They lose value with wear and tear. Habit forming products do the opposite. A habit forming product doesn't depreciate. It appreciates. It gets better and better the more we use the product. And so it does this because of this principle of store value with the product or service through the investment phase. The more a customer puts into the product, the more valuable the product becomes.

That is a hallmark of habit-forming products. Can you give us some examples of investments? So I think the obvious one is social media. For example, I'm a big LinkedIn influencer. I've invested so much time into all my posts and to engaging with my community and building that following. And so that is the investment that I've made in LinkedIn. And it's why I'm so addicted, it's because I have an audience that I've built there.

Not a big deal. Habituated. Habituated. So is there any other examples that aren't so obvious that you can talk about? Yes. So is there another product that you're maybe habituated to that you're not sure why that we can tackle? So LinkedIn is a great example, right?

Like you put so much into the product in the form of your follower account, your content, all of that is stored value that even if a better LinkedIn came along and they're probably all already products that are better than LinkedIn at doing what LinkedIn does, but you wouldn't switch. Why? Because you've invested so much already, right? You can't port over all those followers. You can't port over all that content. You can't port over your fluency with the product. And so you're not going to leave even if somebody better

comes along. That's super powerful. That goes back to that idea of the mouth, the competitive advantage around a habit-forming product. But is there another product that you're like, you're like, yeah, like, let's say, wow, I'm really kind of habituated to. Like, class pass, I use class pass all the time to work out. Even during COVID, I was using it and doing homework outs. Okay, interesting. So yeah, you know, I'm not super familiar with class pass. I think I understand that.

It's basically like an online platform where you can sign up to different gym classes, whether it's online or in person. What would you say is the habit there? I would say the habit is, I don't know, wanting to work out every day. I don't know if that counts. OK, so the internal trigger is probably

a little bit of, remember, internal triggers are always negative emotions. So I'm guessing it's a little bit of a sense of obligation, maybe a little guilt, maybe a sense of, if I don't work out, then I haven't, you know, I'll be unattractive, I'll be tired, all those things, yeah. Okay, a little bit of fear of like, what am I going to feel like if I don't work out? So physical activity has all sorts of internal triggers. So that's great.

So that's the internal triggers, this uncomfortable emotional state around what happens if I don't work out. The action, let's see, what's the action? Is the action of class, I'm not super familiar with it, but you tell me, is the action finding the class? Like I can't find the class. I do wanna do.

You search for your location or the type of workout that you want, so basically searching for the different kind of workout that you want in the timeframe that you want. Perfect, okay, so this is really interesting. So I think most people looking at class pass would say, oh, I want to make the habit taking the class or buying the passes, but this, that's a very common pitfall that many companies, particularly when it comes to e-commerce companies, they're so focused on getting people to

check out and they don't think enough about how do we get people to check in. So it sounds to me like a habit here with class pass is not the workout itself. It's certainly not buying the passes. That's not going to be a comma habit. Remember, that's something that's not done with little or no conscious thought. Bying something is not a habit because you have to think about what you're buying. Most people almost never buy something without thinking about what they're buying. The habit, I would argue in this case is finding the class, right?

It's the, ooh, I could take Zumba or I could take a high intensity interval training or I could work out with this coach or that coach. It's the searching process that can be done with little or no conscious thought. Now, that leads us to the third step, the variable reward because there's this hunt for, oh my goodness, I could do this activity or that activity or this yoga class sounds fun or that I've never tried that before. The search for all the different options is itself kind of intoxicating, right? It's kind of fun to look at all the options that you could have at your disposal with

this class pass service. Is that sound right or? Yeah, that sounds right. And then they also gamify it a bit. They give you like badges if you do 10 Pilates classes. I get a badge and get to walk around with my Pilates class. So I think that probably helps

too. Yeah, this is perfectly leads us to the four step. The investment phase, right? So let's say I'll guess her now that the investment becomes actually doing the class or probably one step before is

marking the class you want to do. Do you have to somehow reserve the class? Yeah, you got actually doing the class, or probably one step before is marking the class you want to do. Do you have to somehow reserve the class? Yeah, you got to reserve the class. There we go. Okay, so that's the investment. It's not actually taking the class.

It's pushing the little button that says, I'm going to be there. That's the investment. It's still simple, still easy, much easier than actually going to attend the class. But if they can pass you through every time you interact with a product, you end with saving or notifying or committing in some small way to this is the class I am going to attend, what have you just done? One, psychologically, you've invested

in the behavior itself, right? You have committed yourself, I am going to show it for this class, right? That's one thing you've done. You've also given the company data to know, oh, okay, Hala is into yoga. She's not so much into, I don't know, high intensity interval training or whatever the case might be. Let's show her more of that interesting content next time. So they've used the data you've invested in the service on the first pass, the first go around

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knowing what to prioritize. And you have something that helps teams stay focused as a framework called gem, growth, engagement, and monetization. And I say this all the time. I'm a marketer, a growth hacker, and I help people build their podcast to number one podcast. And I've noticed that there's a lot of people out there who want to pour money on paid ads on bad content. So content that doesn't retain or engage and they just want to pour paid ads on it. And then it just really is not sustainable. Like, yes, you might get a short burst every time you do a campaign. But then, you know, nobody

retains and it's not sustainable. So I think this is really important because I think a lot of people make this mistake. So can you go over what Gem is and what's the right order to use each step and that would be super helpful? Yeah, absolutely. So this idea is that every successful company needs these three basic pillars that we call Gem.

And I didn't invent this technique, I can't take credit for it. I think Reed Hoffman developed this. And the idea is that Gem stands for growth, engagement, and monetization. Growth is how you acquire new customers. Engagement is how you keep them coming back. So that's everything we've just talked about.

It's only been about that E in growth and engagement monetization, the E stands for engagement. That's what we've been talking about in terms of this hook model. And the end stands for monetization. How do you make sure that you can sustain your business by making enough of a profit to keep your company going? So you need all three, each is necessary, but not sufficient.

You've got to have the GE and the M. Now, what a lot of people do is that they make the mistake of prioritizing in the wrong order. And I see this all the time. We call these leaky bucket businesses. Leaky bucket businesses are ones where the founders or the investors will pour lots of money into acquiring customers, right? The customers will come into the top of the final. And then they all leak out the bottom. Nobody sticks around. Nobody continues to use the product.

This is what we call leaky bucket business. So they invest in growth before engagement. And that is a huge mistake. And I know you've seen it a lot, how a lot of these companies are like, oh, we want to go viral. We want to spend a lot of money on marketing and growth and get people to know about us. But if you haven't first figured out engagement,

if you haven't nailed your hook, it is a big, fat waste of money. Why? Because you can always buy growth. You can always buy growth. You just got to send Facebook a bunch of money to buy ads. You can buy television commercial, billboards, radio spots. You can always buy growth. What you cannot buy is engagement. Engagement has to be built in. It has to be designed into your product experience. You can't buy it. It has to be built in, which is why it's so important to first make sure you have nailed your hook model. You have nailed engagement. Then invest money in growth.

Amen to that, Near. I love that. Thank you so much for an amazing interview. We're going to move on to the Q&A portion. Again, guys, if you have a question, raise your hand. So Molly, I know you have a question for near. Would you please ask your question and introduce yourself. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Hala. My name is Molly Daron. I'm the founder of Hill and Brand Media and executive producer of the Spotlight series. You say that time management is pain management. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. I love how we're jumping back and forth between Hooked,

which is about how it's been good, how it's been indistractable, which is about how to break bad habits. Molly brings up this really important pillar that I learned over the past five years when it came to managing my own distraction. That's why I wrote this book, not because I had the answers, but because I was looking for the answers. I found that I was incredibly distracted in my own life.

I would say I was going to exercise, but I didn't. I said I was going to eat right, but I wouldn't. I would say I was going to work on that big project and stop procrastinating, and not so much. And so I wanted to figure out why I kept getting distracted in my day-to-day life. And at first, I blamed all the external triggers, the pain of the dings, the rings. I blamed all the technology for getting me distracted. And I got rid of it.

I did a digital detox. I did the whole digital minimalism thing. And it didn't work. And it didn't work because I wasn't distracted because of the technology. I wasn't distracted because of the things outside of me. I was distracted because of what was going on inside of me. The internal triggers, we talked about earlier, about if you're building a habit forming product, you want to make sure you can identify those internal triggers to attach your product to. Now, if you are trying to break bad

habits, like this bad habit I had around getting distracted, well, you have to figure out what is that internal trigger that you are looking to escape. So here's a really important lesson. This might be the most valuable thing you hear in this entire interview, is that most people don't understand what drives human behavior.

What is the nature of human motivation? I certainly didn't understand motivation. I thought motivation was all about carrots and sticks. Right, we've all heard this. That everything we do is about the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Sigmund Freud said something similar. He called it the pleasure principle. Jeremy Bentham said something about this.

We all know this idea of carrots and sticks. It turns out, however, that neurologically speaking, this is completely wrong. Completely wrong. We do not do what we do in a pursuit of pleasure in the avoidance of pain. It's not about carrots and sticks, but rather the carrot is the stick. The carrot is the stick. What do I mean by this? Everything you do, everything you do, is about a desire to escape discomfort.

Everything you do, it's called the homeostatic response. So physiologically, if you go outside and it's cold, the brain says, huh, this is uncomfortable, you should put on a coat. If you walk back inside, it's too hot, the brain says, oh, that doesn't feel good, take it off. If you feel hunger pangs, that doesn't feel good, the brain tells you to eat. If you're stuffed, you ate too much, the brain says stuck. So those are physiological responses.

The same holds true to our psychological responses. So uncertainty, fatigue, loneliness, boredom, all of these things prompt us to do everything we do, which means therefore, if all human behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort, that therefore means that time management is pain management. Time management is pain management. I will tell you I have read virtually every academic study on this topic of distraction and procrastination

and time management. I've written a book about it. I've read everybody else's books on this topic and I will tell you none of these techniques work. None of them will work to help you focus and do what you say you're going to do. Unless you start first and foremost with understanding that all human behaviors desire to escape discomfort and that we have to master these internal triggers first and foremost because whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, we will always find distraction. We will always look for escape from discomfort unless we know how to deal with that discomfort

in a healthy way that leads us towards traction rather than distraction. Wow, that was amazing. Molly, thank you for that incredible question. I feel like it really covered a key point that we didn't get to touch on. So thanks so much. I think that was super helpful. Brian, what is your question for Nier? Nier, you blew on my mind a bit. I'm a son of a psychologist, so as you're talking through some of that, it's very much resonating.

And I love your insight spot on. So I'd love to pick your brain and get some insights into how that would play into culture as we build teams and I'm a vice president of a team, you know, almost 200 people, how some of this research and what you've learned about the psychology and habit forming and all that can build a strong culture today, right? Because people are pulled in so many directions. How do we as leaders and parts of the team really build that cohesiveness and build a strong culture? Yeah, thank you so much for this question. It's such a good one. So half of indistractable is about what you can do for yourself. It's about the four steps to becoming indistractable that anyone,

anyone can do to become indistractable themselves. But I'm not so naive to not know that there's only so much you can do on your own, that we operate in various environments. One of the most distracting is the workplace, that we can be indistractable, but what if our workplace is not indistractable, and your boss insists on calling you all day every day and interrupts you while you're trying to do focused work? What do you do then? Well we have to acknowledge that distraction in the workplace is a symptom of cultural dysfunction.

So there's a whole big section in the book about how to build an indistractable workplace. There's also a section on how to raise indistractable kids, how to have indistractable relationships. But when it comes to this section on building an indistractable workplace, what I discovered in my five years of research is that there is no relationship between how much technology a company uses and how distractable people feel. Why? Because it's not about the technology.

It's about the fact that people can't talk about the problem of distraction. That turns out to be a symptom of the larger disorder, meaning if you can't raise your hand at your workplace and say, hey, you know, the fact that I am constantly interrupted all day long with pings and dings and I'm expected to respond all the time means I can't do my best work. If you're afraid to raise your hand and voice this concern, it's not the technology

that's doing this. It's the fact that you work at a place where that type of culture is accepted. And so what we have to do is to change this company culture. So if you work in a place where you are the boss, where you are the leader, you obviously have the most influence. The best thing you can do is, number one, be indestructible yourself. I see this with parents, I see this with bosses all the time.

We have to stop being hypocrites. Culture flows downhill. It flows from leadership on down, whether it's parent to child or leaders to the rest of the organization, we have to display what it means to be indistractable. When people notice that and will emulate those behaviors, so be indistractable yourself. The next thing we have to do is to provide our employees with psychological safety. This has been studied by Dr. Amy Edminson for years now. Psychological safety is this idea that you can voice a concern. You can voice a problem without fear of getting fired for raising

this concern because again, the problem of distraction in the workplace is that we can't talk about the problem of distraction in the workplace, that when companies give their employees the psychological safety they need to know that hey, I can talk about this, and I'm not gonna be seeing as lazy or trying to get out of work, that it's something that will be welcome by the organization to improve the company culture.

That's where people start voicing these concerns. And funny enough, they can fix these problems very, very quickly, as long as they have an open forum and the psychological safety they need to talk about these problems. So the three traits of an indistractable company is number one, employer type psychological safety. They have a forum to talk about these problems and that leadership displays what it means to be indistractable. Probably the best example and I profiled this company in my book is Slack. So, Slack is this technology when I did a survey on what was the most distracting technology people interact with.

Number one, no surprise was email. Number two was Slack or some other group messaging service. So, I actually went to Slack headquarters and I expected this company to be incredibly distracted, right? Because if it's the technology that's making people distracted, well, Slack should be the most distracted company on Earth because nobody uses Slack more than Slack. And that's not what I found. Why? Because when you go into company headquarters in the canteen,

right, where everybody gets together for lunches, et cetera, there's a big neon sign, big pink letters that blare out. It says, work hard and go home. Work hard and go home. Not something you would expect to see in a publicly traded Silicon Valley startup. Actually, now they've been acquired by Salesforce, but I think Salesforce. But you wouldn't expect to see that because this company, it's about the company culture. From Stewart Butterfield to CEO on down.

Everybody at the company knows that to do our best work, we have to be indistractable. So there's a lot more information. I'm trying to make it very quick. I'm sorry to be long-winded, but it's really about understanding that distraction, the workplace is a symptom of cultural dysfunction. But the good news is, culture can change.

Awesome. Thanks, Brian. And that's Brian from the Brian Kovie Show. I was actually on his podcast. So make sure you guys check his podcast out as well. Okay. Cool. So I'm going to kick it over to Nidhi. What's your question for Nier? Thanks, Hala. This is Nidhi speaking. Hi, Nier. My name is Nidhi Tuwari. I'm a mental health therapist and a professional speaker. And I'm just absolutely loving this conversation. You know, I've just been wondering while Clubhouse and other social media platforms,

they're pretty habit forming. There's also a massive time investment on the user's end, which can be a bit difficult to sustain. So I'm wondering, do you see a way for platforms to adapt so that we can avoid user burnout and retain users at a higher rate? Would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, it's a terrific question. And I think it's why this idea that every platform out there

is trying to quote unquote, addict people is a little bit misplaced because when we get people to abuse our products, when we are not considered about how the proper, healthy use of our product should look and what kind of frequency it should be used, exactly what you're mentioning happens. People do burnout. People stop using mentioning happens. People do burn out. People stop using the product.

People aren't stupid. If a user is overusing a product, they say, hey, I'm not sure this is benefiting me. And they stop using completely. And so what we see is a trend right now where companies are helping people moderate the use of the product in a healthy way. I'll give you a couple examples.

The Apple iPhone now comes with a screen time feature. Android phones come with Google Well-being. How many products can you think of where the product itself helps you use the product less? It's pretty rare. Instagram now has stopping cues. As you're scrolling Instagram, it says, hey, you're all caught up, right?

Because they understand that if people feel crappy after using the product too much, if they can't get control over the time that's done the product, they burn out completely. So that's what we see happening today. We see that people are building into the design of their product, ways to monitoring you so that they can use it, not just for a little bit of time and burnout, but hopefully in a healthy way for the rest of their lives. Amazing. OK, so we've got five minutes left. And I'd love to close this out on kind of a positive note in terms of the benefits of having a habit forming product. We talked a lot about them.

I think the one that sticks out most to me is that you don't really need to have super crazy advertising or aggressive messaging when people just naturally like and have a habit around your product. So what are some of the other reasons why we should consider creating a habit forming product or service? Yeah, so there's so much potential out there to build healthy habits in people's lives. And I really think it's going to be the people who realize that this opportunity exists and will only become a bigger opportunity in the future. There really will be a bifurcation, I think, between people who let their time and attention

be controlled by others and people who stand up and say, no, no, no, no, I am indistractable. I decide how my time and attention will be controlled. I decide for myself where I'm going to invest my life by deciding in advance how to live my life and spend my time according to my values. And for those folks, they are going to be looking for ways to use the kind of products and services that build healthy habits in their lives. So as technology becomes increasingly pervasive and persuasive, the people who can find opportunities to help people build good habits in their lives. I put my money where my mouth is and I invest in habit-forming products. And I've seen since I've written, hooked dozens of companies who do this, Cahooch, is a great

example of the $3 billion company that uses the hook model to get kids hooked on to online education. There's a company FitBod that uses the hook model to get people hooked to exercise. I've worked with all sorts of companies that can use the hook model to build healthy habits in people's lives, and I think there will be a tremendous opportunity out there for entrepreneurs to use these methods to build good habits in people's lives. And if you're building that kind of product, please do reach out to me at my website is nearsandfar.com, Nears.com, my first name, and I am an active investor in these technologies. So I'm more than happy to hear about anybody who's using the hook model and habit forming

technology for good. Yeah, I highly recommend his block site. It is amazing and he's always putting up new content on there. It's near and far.com. Thank you so much, near for your time. We do this session every single Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern. We have some great events coming up. We had Naveen Jane last week coming up.

I have Chris Voss, Dr. Jack Schaefer. He's an XFBI agent. Chris Voss is a world's number one negotiation expert. So we've got some amazing sessions. Make sure you follow near here. Thank him for being a special guest. Make sure you follow him here on Clubhouse and on Instagram. Please follow all the moderators on stage, especially if they asked a question that you enjoyed. And thank you guys so much for joining this young and profiting podcast live episode. And I'll see you guys again next week. And with that said, this is Hala, Near, and Friends, signing off.

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