Top all-time · #509
Nir and Far
Personal blog · nirandfar.com · on HN as nireyalbusinessdesign
Nir and Far is a personal blog at nirandfar.com about business and design. Since 2011, 115 different Hacker News readers have linked it 219 times, most often “How to Manufacture Desire”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 36 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Nir Eyal's blog as the home of Hooked and Indistractable, and for his ideas on habit-forming products, habits and distraction.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Commenters recommend reading Hooked and Indistractable; one calls the content informative, another a good piece.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 36 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Best-selling author Nir Eyal gives science-based insights to build healthy habits, improve productivity and focus, and manage distraction.
Most-linked posts?
- How to Manufacture Desire5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-03-28
- Indistractable5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-09-19
- The New York Times uses the dark patterns it derides4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-05-30
- /hooked/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-08-31
- The Strange But Effective Way I Stick to Hard Goals3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-11
- /want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-24
- How to Be More Productive and Focus (+ Free Schedule Maker)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-25
- Infinite Scroll: The Web’s Slot Machine | Nir and Far3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-22
- Hooks: An Intro on How to Manufacture Desire3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-14
- Want to Design User Behavior? Pass the ‘Regret Test’ First3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-01-10
What Hacker News says?
> I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so. Recommend reading up on the "Hook Model" - http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked - or watch this video - https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM - the techniques for building addictive products are well known, with a history that goes back to Las Vegas and the gambling industry. Most social media companies - with the exception of one or two lik…
Comment linking /hooked
on “Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It”Submitted The New York Times uses the dark patterns it derides as a story · 200 points
HN discussionFor how long are we going to moan and groan about companies doing this "to us"? Come on people, we're not helpless. We're far more powerful than the tech companies. I know all their tricks and literally wrote the book on how they get you "Hooked." These tactics are good, but they're not THAT good. See this article if you want to "hack back": https://www.nirandfar.com/distractions
Comment linking /distractions
on “A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)”Submitted The Billion Dollar Mind Trick: An Intro To Triggers as a story · 84 points
HN discussionSocial platforms amplifies all of our human qualities, and our interaction habits. Since old ages, people were striving to seek attention and show their work [1] [2]. After reading this book [3] indistractable, I started to reflect on how our educational systems are not designed to prepare students to live in this digital age, yesterday it's FB, today it's TikTk and tomorrow there will be something else. FB is just…
Comment linking /indistractable/
on “Something weird is happening on Facebook”Submitted Want To Hook Users? Drive Them Crazy. as a story · 71 points
HN discussionUnpredictable rewards create obsession, it all tracks. He’d probably be less popular if he actually delivered 100% More background if you’ve not come across intermittent reinforcement https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them...
Comment linking /want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/
on “Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold”Submitted Myths and exaggerations about technology addiction (2020) as a story · 66 points
HN discussionThoughts and habits are related, but they aren't the same. Interesting counterpoint to the replacement theory of kicking bad habits: https://www.nirandfar.com/2015/04/bad-habits.html
Comment linking /2015/04/bad-habits.html
on “To Change Habits, Try Replacement Instead”Submitted What Killed Turntable.fm? as a story · 46 points
HN discussionThat's only been true for the past few months, and it's been very well documented how complicated the cancelation process used to be [0]. It's funny because I use PayPal for any unknown-to-me site where I don't want to give out my card, but the only site where I've needed their help to cancel something was the New York Times. [0] https://www.nirandfar.com/cancel-new-york-times/
Comment linking /cancel-new-york-times/
on “NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances”Submitted Getting Your Product Into the Habit Zone as a story · 43 points
HN discussionTime blocking is one. If one doesn’t structure time and context, then todo items can’t get done. Edit: Here’s one implementation by Nir Eyal, author of “Hooked” and Indistractable”: https://www.nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/
Comment linking /schedule-maker/
on “We Still Don’t Get Things Done”Submitted Behavior by Design as a story · 43 points
HN discussionCheck out out Nir Eyal's book "Indistractable"[1]. It's about 5 hours long with plenty of useful tips for becoming indistractable. 1: https://www.nirandfar.com/indistractable/
Comment linking /indistractable/
on “We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus”Submitted Where is the Web Going? as a story · 41 points
HN discussion> Secondly, almost any use of social media trains me to crave more -- it genuinely is addictive, and the unreliability of the novelty ("refreshing in the hope of seeing something new") makes this all the worse. That's pretty much what it's designed to do. Really recommend reading "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked or watch some of the authors videos like https://www.youtube…
Comment linking /hooked
on “Neal Stephenson: Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015)”Submitted Abolish The Reference Check as a story · 39 points
HN discussionIt's the same mechanism that social and other addicting apps use, specifically a variable reward system. The unknown of what's behind that notification drives our brains crazy and makes us need to check. More from Nir Eyal here: https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them...
Comment linking /want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them-crazy/
on “Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?”Submitted The Strange But Effective Way I Stick to Hard Goals as a story · 32 points
HN discussionThat's fair. I was a little bit sloppy with my previous comment; I was mentally conflating their lawsuits about intellectual property with their dark patterns that prevent people from unsubscribing. I'm not sure if it's still this way, but five years ago they were a nightmare to disentangle yourself from. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235341 They actually published an op-ed criticizing Amazon for using dark…
Comment linking /cancel-new-york-times/
on “Firefox expands fingerprint protections”Submitted Strange Sex Habits of Silicon Valley as a story · 31 points
HN discussion> unless they deliberately exploit addicting behaviors to increase engagement and retention I can assure that this is something on the forefront of any consumer-oriented service. This stuff is tracked, tweaked, reported on, KPIs are built around it and used as important ways of measuring the health of the company. See Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products [1] which describes some of this process. > Do we embra…
Comment linking /hooked
on “Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore”Submitted The Developer Divide: When Great Companies Can't Hire as a story · 30 points
HN discussionLet me tell you an anecdote about my personal experience. Let me know if any of this sounds familiar. As the years went by, I began to realize that a lot of the managers/mentors I had worked for and looked up to when I was younger simply did not know what they were talking about. You're too easily distracted -- focus, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, they would say! But they would never talk about how the left h…
Comment linking /todo-vs-schedule-builder/
on “Are we losing our ability to remember?”Submitted Where Have The Users Gone? as a story · 24 points
HN discussionAuthor here. You might be right, we could be using Slack wrong. But have you read the book "Hooked"? The author writes about Slack here: https://www.nirandfar.com/2014/11/slack.html - Slack is built to addict people to use it. I don't want to fight against that, I want to have tools that support my workflow.
Comment linking /2014/11/slack.html
on “Unslacking Tideways Company”Submitted Why People Check Their Phones at the Wrong Times and a Simple Trick to Stop It as a story · 22 points
HN discussionLikely "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products"[1] by Nir Eyal [1] https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/
Comment linking /hooked/
on “Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet (2010) [pdf]”Submitted Ways To Get People To Do Things They Don’t Want To Do as a story · 21 points
HN discussion
