Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal

Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occurring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do it.[x]

consider this idea: A habit is when not doing an action causes a bit of pain.

how does this relate to being able to try new things and then not being able to try as many new things as you would like

My answer to the vitamin or painkiller question is that habit-forming technologies are both. These services seem, at first, to be offering nice-to-have vitamins, but once the habit is established, they provide an ongoing pain remedy. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain

Instead, since this is an important account alert email, Mint has reduced the available actions to a single click:

More choices require the user to evaluate multiple options. Too many choices or irrelevant options can cause hesitation, confusion, or worse, abandonment.[xliv]