Nir Eyal's Blog, page 2

How to Protect Your Focus Without Burning Bridges

Most professionals don't struggle with time management. They struggle with people-pleasing.From an early age, we're conditioned to say "yes." But this automatic response creates a significant dilemma: every time we say yes to something inessential, we're implicitly saying no to work that actually matters.

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The Real Culprit Behind Plummeting Children’s Mental Health

Kids are suffering. In the United States, 13 percent of three- to 17-year-olds had a mental or behavioral health diagnosis. 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.

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The 4 Secrets to Storytelling for Business

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.

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The Hidden Power of Social Comparison

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.

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Is Psychiatry Keeping Us Sick?

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.

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Why You’re Always Busy but Never Productive (and How to Fix It)

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. Sahil Bloom breaks down timeboxing categories even further in the work domain to ensure each type of work gets its due.

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The Surprisingly Strong Case for Luck in Sales

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.”

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Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You

Failure is baked into the human experience. So why are we so terrible at dealing with it? Fear of judgment and the stigma that our failures reflect poorly on us discourage us from trying new things. Negative self-talk and rumination convince us that our failures mean we’re incapable and undeserving. But failure is typical in all professions.

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You Are Not Your Mental Health

For many people, receiving a diagnosis of a mental health issue is a revelation, a kind of validation that explains the confusing symptoms they’ve endured, sometimes for years. Suddenly, the world feels a bit more manageable because now, there’s a label for their experience. For the first time in a long time, they feel understood. Take my friend, Thomas (not his real name).

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Control Your Calendar (Not Your To-Do List) and Success Will Follow

Our society celebrates getting things done. Long hours, overflowing inboxes, and maxed-out calendars become badges of honor. But this relentless pursuit of output can leave us feeling drained, disconnected, and unfulfilled. We neglect the things that truly matter to us—family, personal growth, health—because tasks, not our values, dictate our schedules.

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