Nir And Far: Business, Behaviour And The Brain

Kids are suffering. In the United States, 13 percent of three- to 17-year-olds had a mental or behavioral health diagnosis. That number climbs to 20.3 percent among teens aged 12 to 17 (as of 2023). Globally, 15 percent of 10- to 19-year-olds have a mental health disorder.You’re right in thinking it hasn’t always been like this. There’s been a sharp spike in recent years—even before the COVID-19 pandemic’s contribution. Between 2012 and 2018, there was a 34.6 percent increase in child mental illness. ADHD, anxiety, depression, and behavior/conduct problems are the most common conditions afflicting youth. Diagnoses of depression in children aged 3 to 17 grew 27 percent from 2016 to 2020.Parents and teachers often blame social media for rising teen depression rates. But many studies show only a correlation between the two (and a low one at that), not causation. It’s just as or more likely that kids experiencing poor family dynamics, a lack of autonomy, academic pressures, or other issues find solace and distrac

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Will Storr, an acclaimed author and journalist known for his deep exploration into human behavior, storytelling, and psychology. His newest book, “A Story is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate, and Persuade,” reveals how powerful storytelling techniques can be harnessed in business, leadership, and communication to drive impactful results.Every successful leader, marketer, or entrepreneur is, at heart, a great storyteller. Storytelling is not just an art—it’s a science, grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral design. Here are four science-backed principles for crafting persuasive narratives, adapted from my new book, A Story is a Deal.You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: https://www.nirandfar.com/storytelling-for-business/Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the sho

I’ll never forget the day I learned about Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition. Instead of celebrating my own recent success as an author, I found myself spiraling into a pit of self-doubt. “Why hadn’t I created a simple messaging app?” I wondered, mentally berating myself for missing out on what seemed like an obvious opportunity.Sound familiar?We’ve all been told that comparing ourselves to others is toxic. It’s the ultimate happiness killer, the thief of joy, the fast track to misery—or so conventional wisdom tells us. But here’s the thing: If comparison is so destructive, why do our minds keep returning to it? What if there’s more to this story than meets the eye?You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: https://www.nirandfar.com/social-comparison/Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for ot

The iatrogenic effects of psychiatry.Something is deeply wrong with the mental health system. Instead of leading to recovery, it often perpetuates cycles of dependency on therapy, medication, and diagnoses.Psychiatric diagnoses, which are unreliable to begin with, have become our identities rather than tools for recovery. While more people are going to therapy than ever before, our collective mental health isn’t improving. For some disorders, such as ADHD and PTSD, medication is prioritized over education or therapy that teaches people how to cope; thus, we see medication as a cure-all and don’t learn tools that can help us heal.As mental health awareness and interventions become increasingly common, we have to be aware of the iatrogenic effects—unintended, harmful consequences—of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.Is psychiatry keeping us sick?You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Is Psychiatry Keeping Us Sick? https://www.nirandfar.com/psychiatry-keeping-us-sick/Nir And Far, a podcast about business,

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and founder of Ness Labs. Her research at King’s College London explores the psychology and neuroscience of lifelong learning, curiosity, and adaptability. Her book, Tiny Experiments, is a transformative guide to rethinking goals, embracing uncertainty, and using curiosity as a tool for growth. In this episode, we dive into redefining success, the power of experimentation, distraction, and much more!Tiny Experiments: https://nesslabs.com/bookNess Labs: https://nesslabs.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neuranne

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Sahil Bloom, an entrepreneur, investor, and writer known for his engaging content on personal development, finance, and wealth-building. He is the creator of “The Curiosity Chronicle,” a biweekly newsletter that captivates millions of readers with insights on various topics. His new book, The 5 Types of Wealth, is a guide to building a life around the things you truly care about.Most of us don’t think about how we spend our professional time—we just try and keep up. But the secret to working smarter (not harder) lies in managing our most precious resource.Luckily, we have the best time-management technique—timeboxing—to help us. The concept is simple: Block off windows of time for distinct tasks.You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Why You’re Always Busy but Never Productive (and How to Fix It) https://www.nirandfar.com/busy-but-not-productive/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTun

My wife and I started our first business together in 2003. We sold solar panels in Long Island, New York, which meant making thousands of in-home sales calls.Before we entered a potential customer’s home, we had a little ritual. We always looked at each other before we opened our car doors and said, “Let’s go sell a solar system.” It was cheesy and a bit silly, but somehow, we had to say it, or we thought we’d be jinxed and lose the sale.Though we didn’t know it then, we had tapped into one of several practices that research has shown salespeople can use to close more deals. It turns out there’s a science to superstition, and whether the supernatural exists or not doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, there are practices anyone can use to increase their business’s good fortune.You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Surprisingly Strong Case for Luck in Sales https://www.nirandfar.com/luck-in-sales/Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podc

A few years ago, I started waking up at three o’clock every morning. Over the years, I’d read many articles about the importance of rest, so I knew the research was unequivocal: Quality sleep supports cognitive performance and lowers the risk of diseases and health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, obesity, and dementia. Knowing that, I’d toss and turn in bed, disappointed that I wasn’t following through on my plan to get seven to eight hours of shut-eye. It was on my schedule, so why wasn’t I asleep? You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Getting Great Sleep is Much Easier Than You Think https://www.nirandfar.com/sleep-hacks/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: htt

Something as vague and indiscernible as “luck” has no place in the business world, right? Yet studies show luck can make all the difference between business success and failure. So, can you learn how to be lucky? Joël Le Bon, professor of marketing and sales at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, has found that luck is a significant factor in sales professionals’ performance. He even says companies can manage their luck to get a competitive edge. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Be Lucky in Business and Life: 4 Science-Backed Principles https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-be-lucky/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/

We all dwell on unresolved personal conflicts from time to time. Who hasn’t ruminated on a hurtful comment or unintentional harm we might have caused someone? Feeling bad about something you did, or something done to you, is human. Congratulations on not being a psychopath! But while it’s expected that the arguments we’ve had, the negative events we’ve experienced, and the major decisions we face haunt us, overthinking can also pile on new problems. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Stop Overthinking https://www.nirandfar.com/stop-overthinking Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

ee if you can relate to Sarah. She’s a software engineer who loves her job—except for her manager, Tom. To Tom, everything is a crisis worthy of interrupting Sara, even when she’s deeply focused on her work. One morning, while Sarah is coding a critical feature, Tom calls and asks her to drop everything to help with an urgent report for the CMO. Sarah complies, but by the end of the day, she hasn’t dedicated much time to any of the tasks she planned to focus on. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Handle a Distracting Boss https://www.nirandfar.com/handling-a-distracting-boss/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

How belief in luck makes us bolder and better. Richard Branson will be the first to tell you that he’s generally a lucky person in business and life. An adrenaline junkie, he’s lived through several near-death experiences, including in the early ’70s, when he and his then-wife survived a shipwreck that no other passengers did by jumping off the boat in a storm and swimming to shore. You can read the Nir And Far article on: Only People Who Believe in Luck Have It https://www.nirandfar.com/believe-in-luck-for-success/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

As a clinically obese teen, my parents were desperate to get me to a healthy weight. My mom coaxed me on a walk through our boring, middle-class Central Florida suburb every Sunday. The road we walked was paved with good intentions, but for me, it was hell: the heat and humidity, the painful chafing between my thighs, the inevitable embarrassment of applying Vaseline to said chafing. … If I was going to suffer, I would need a reward, and it had better be a good one! You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Can You Think Yourself Thinner? https://www.nirandfar.com/think-yourself-thin/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report highlights a stark reality: disengaged and burned-out employees are draining 9% of the world’s GDP, resulting in approximately $8.8 trillion in losses. On the other hand, engaged employees are 18% more productive and 23% more profitable. This underscores how closely productivity is tied to profitability and overall organizational health. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Work Productivity Hacks & Tips for Today’s Workplace https://www.nirandfar.com/ways-to-be-productive-at-workplace/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

Is there a reason everything some people touch turns to gold? You know those people who just seem to get more and more successful? It’s as if each success gives them momentum to achieve even more. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Why Successful People Only Get More Successful https://www.nirandfar.com/success-breeds-success/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Nicholas Hutchison, founder of BookThinkers and author of Rise of the Reader. When I was growing up, you couldn’t pay me to read a book about self-help or business. Now, I read between 60 to 80 books every year. A good non-fiction book is the distilled knowledge of years of research and insight and costs just a few bucks. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of such a cheap, efficient way to learn lessons that could change your life without having to do the work or live the experiences the author had to bear? You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Become an Indistractable Reader https://www.nirandfar.com/be-a-better-reader/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podc

If we think life is over in old age, it will be. There is no shortage of supposed methods for increasing lifespan. Typing in “longevity” into Amazon reveals over 40,000 books on the topic. Each author purports their own cure, typically involving a special diet, miracle supplement, or painful practice. What’s usually left out is how much extra life one can expect to gain by following these often difficult, frequently expensive, and rarely scientifically-backed routines. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Want to Live Longer? Change Your Mind About Aging https://www.nirandfar.com/live-longer/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

Experiencing fear without harm lessens feelings of anxiety. Nir’s Note: The following essay is adapted from a chapter in Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery by Scott Young. Scott is the author of Ultralearning and a TedX speaker renowned for his “MIT Challenge,” where he learned 4 year’s worth of college-level computer science in just 12 months.. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Overcome Anxiety Forever https://www.nirandfar.com/overcoming-anxiety/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

Referent power is considered the most potent because it doesn’t require that a leader micromanage, use coercion, or reward to influence others. People follow a leader with referent power based on who the leader is and how they behave. According to French and Raven, referent power has the broadest range of influence of any power, allowing it to be leveraged on a large scale. You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Referent Power: The Ultimate Form of Influence https://www.nirandfar.com/referent-power/ Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support

I visit with Mike Norton about his new book, The Ritual Effect. Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nirandfar/support