The World Expert Who Sold Over 1 Million Books on Behavior Design

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THIS ISSUE

1. Our featured legend is Nir Eyal - he is the world’s expert on behavior design. I uncover key insights along his journey to mastery.

2. I share the most important lessons in my conversation with him to help us achieve everything we want in life.

3. Ideas and insights about cryotherapy (you’ll see why), habits and regret from around the web.

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FEATURE STORY

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Nir Eyal is a two time best-selling author, he has more than 1M followers across his social channels and is the world’s expert on habits. (BONUS: This is the article I found online and I read to him an excerpt, to which he replied “I got goosebumps as you were reading it”)

Nir Eyal has spent the last decade answering two questions:

1. Why are some products so good at making their use a habit (Facebook, Google) and some so bad (MySpace, Yahoo)?

2. How can we become “indistractible” in the age where everything is trying to grab and sell our attention?

His drive in answering these questions led to two best selling books: Hooked and Indistractible, together they sell more than one millions copies translated to over 30 languages.

How I met Nir

Nir and I first met virtually as part of a community of thought-leaders. When I found out he lives in Singapore, I reached out to see if he was going to be around during my trip back to visit my folks earlier this year.

Turns out he was and we met up at The Ice Bath Club.

It was great venue, plus the setup was such that it was ok for people to have conversations. In fact, their target group was entrepreneurs and people looking to network. Way better than sitting down for a dinner!

After a few rounds of cold (ice bath) and hot (sauna), I popped the question about appearing on my new show “Sure! You jumped into the ice bath with me, I’ll do your show”.

🏔 Insights on Nir’s journey to mastery:

1/ Early experiences elevated the importance of knowledge and writing

Nir was a clinically obese kid growing up in Florida and one of the most important lessons for him was that knowledge was powerful. When he started to read a book about the actual calories and ingredients of common foods, he started to make better decisions for his health. (Nir showed up in a weighted vest at the Ice Bath Club, all prepped for his long run after - all I can say is he definitely turned it around.)

He also recalled an English class that taught him the power of persuasive writing where his own opinions would sometimes change after discussing the assigned editorial from different magazines.

2/ A gap year instilled in him gratitude, which made him more intentional

Nir took a year between high-school and college. He deferred his freshman year at Emory and participated in Americorp, helping inner city elementary kids with their reading and school. That experience helped him realize how fortunate he is and when he started college a year later, he felt way more focused and driven.

3/ He desperately wanted the answers himself

When he was starting a tech company, he wanted to know how to create a product people would habitually use, that’s why he started to research and write about it. And when he found it tremendously difficult to avoid distraction, that led him to learn everything there was to know about becoming indistractible. Lesson? Scratch your own itch. Instead of writing about what you know, write about what you want to know.

4/ His mission gave him meaning

Nir felt that once he uncovered and decided on a resonating mission, everything fell into place.

📕 Legendary lesson: How to achieve everything you want in life

None of us want to feel regret on our deathbeds. How do we avoid regret?

First, you need to know what you want and who you want to become. I feel that this is the hardest part for people, especially younger people. The recommendation here is to pursue your curiosity and make the best decision for yourself in this moment. What is my mission? Who do I want to become?

Next, map out the activities across the three domains of life. Nir mentions the domains of YOU, YOUR RELATIONSHIPS and YOUR WORK (Reactive & Reflective work). What are the core activities that reflects your values across all three of them? Map them out a week at a time. Put it on your calendar, time box it.

Understand that anything worthwhile is hard. In the pursuit of a better life, a more legendary one, know that you will run into challenges. We are wired to run away from discomfort. This is one of the most important lessons from Nir’s work. The single most important factor for our decisions is to avoid pain.

In order for us to stop being distracted, to become “indistractible”, we have to face discomfort. We have to plan and practice for traction, the opposite of distraction. How? By following the four strategies:

1/ Master internal triggers: 90% of distraction is internal. When you feel bored, fatigued, stressed, the first thing your mind will tell you is to scroll it away, eat it away, click it away. Instead, have a plan, set a timer or use a mantra “This is what it feels like to get better.”

2/ Make time for traction: put time on the calendar and make time everything you need to take action on. (You can also schedule time for distraction, don’t be so hard on yourself for wanting to mindlessly scroll through social media, just don’t let it take over your time for traction.)

3/ Hack back external triggers: reduce the notifications and maybe put up some physical signs during your planned time for traction.

4/ Make a pact: last strategy is to make a pact with someone to follow through on your traction time. It could be a buddy, it could be paying someone if you failed, it could be making a pact with your future self.

You should measure yourself based on doing what you said you would do for how long. One of the worst metrics to have in this process is look at what you accomplished, instead, just focus on the time you’ve spent. Todo lists typically make you check off items to feel good rather than move the needle forward by doing the work you don’t want to do.

Recognize that distraction is not your fault, the only way around it is to practice each activity. It’s not our fault that everything around us is vying for our attention, social media, advertising, even our kids. Instead of being harsh on ourselves, we should focus on practicing “indistractability” across each activity. Writing? Exercising? Creating Excel spreadsheets? Each activity demands its own journey of mastery.

My biggest takeaway from Nir is this:

If we don’t control how we spend our time, we are letting other people, and other companies control it. And that is the sure path to wasted potential and an unfulfilling life.

LEGENDARY CURATIONS

🔗 4 interesting things across the interwebs inspired by Nir:

1. Do ice baths and cryotherapy actually work? What does research say? Here is an article from Mayo clinic, summarizing the most current findings.

2. I love love love this quote. Chris Williamson quotes James Clear on this YouTube Short.

3. Nir Eyal feels that success is living without any regrets. Here we have the top five regrets of the dying from Bonnie Ware.

4. Nir has a treasure trove of articles that can help you live a more productive and less distracted life.

ONE ACTION

I love the idea of having a mantra when things get uncomfortable: “This is what it feels like on the path to legendary”.

Make your mark, live your legend 🤘🏽,

Howie Chan

Creator of Legend Letters

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

SOURCES

1. Eyal, Nir, Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products, Book, Penguin Publishing House, November 6, 2014 - LINK

2. Eyal, Nir, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, Book, Penguin Publishing House, September 10, 2019 - LINK

3. Eyal, Nir, The Secret to Being “Indistractable” and Achieving Anything You Want, The Legend Letters Podcast, October 15, 2024 - LINK

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