Top 70 Nir Eyal Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.”

— Nir Eyal

2. “Reducing the thinking required to take the next action increases the likelihood of the desired behavior occurring unconsciously.”

— Nir Eyal

3. “Empowering children with the autonomy to control their own time is a tremendous gift. Even if they fail from time to time, failure is part of the learning process.”

— Nir Eyal

4. “As you read in part one, “Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do.” To strive means “to struggle or fight vigorously.” It does not mean being perfect or never failing. Like everyone, I still struggle with distraction at times.”

— Nir Eyal

5. “Anything that stops discomfort is potentially addictive, but that doesn’t make it irresistible. If you know the drivers of your behavior, you can take steps to manage them.”

— Nir Eyal

6. “Addicts’ beliefs regarding their powerlessness was just as significant in determining whether they would relapse after treatment as their level of physical dependence. Just let that sink in – mind-set mattered as much as physical dependence! What we say to ourselves is vitally important. Labeling yourself as having poor self-control actually leads to less self-control.”

— Nir Eyal

7. “The mind takes shortcuts informed by our surroundings to make quick and sometimes erroneous judgments.”

— Nir Eyal

8. “Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, said it best: “By pleasure, we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.”

— Nir Eyal

9. “Distraction, it turns out, isn’t about the distraction itself; rather, it’s about how we respond to it.”

— Nir Eyal

10. “Eons of evolution gave you and me a brain in a near-constant state of discontentment. We’re wired this way for a simple reason. As a study published in the Review of General Psychology notes, “If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances.”

— Nir Eyal

11. “An endless cycle of resisting, ruminating, and finally giving in to the desire perpetuates the cycle and quite possibly drives many of our unwanted behaviors.”

— Nir Eyal

12. “Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.”

— Nir Eyal

13. “Too many choices or irrelevant options can cause hesitation, confusion, or worse – abandonment.”

— Nir Eyal

14. “Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality.”

— Nir Eyal

15. “Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting.”

— Nir Eyal

16. “Without sufficient amounts of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, kids turn to distractions for psychological nourishment.”

— Nir Eyal

17. “Traction draws you toward what you want in life, while distraction pulls you away.”

— Nir Eyal

18. “We can cope with uncomfortable internal triggers by reflecting on, rather than reacting to, our discomfort. We can reimagine the task we’re trying to accomplish by looking for the fun in it and focusing on it more intensely. Finally, and most important, we can change the way we see ourselves to get rid of self-limiting beliefs.”

— Nir Eyal

19. “Self-compassion makes people more resilient to letdowns by breaking the vicious cycle of stress that often accompanies failure.”

— Nir Eyal

20. “Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work out in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around.”

— Nir Eyal

21. “Hedonic adaptation, the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction, no matter what happens to us in life, is Mother Nature’s bait and switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don’t, or at least they don’t for long.”

— Nir Eyal

22. “We implemented a ten-minute rule and promised that if we really wanted to use a device in the evening, we would wait ten minutes before doing so. The rule allowed us time to “surf the urge” and insert a pause to interrupt the otherwise mindless habit.”

— Nir Eyal

23. “Only by understanding our pain can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges.”

— Nir Eyal

24. “Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. Indistractable people are as honest with themselves as they are with others. If you care about your work, your family, and your physical and mental well-being, you must learn how to become indistractable.”

— Nir Eyal

25. “Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, realized that as customers form routines around a product, they come to depend upon it and become less sensitive to price.”

— Nir Eyal

26. “When our lives change, our schedules can too. But once our schedule is set, the idea is to stick with it until we decide to improve it on the next go-round.”

— Nir Eyal

27. “Think of all the locks, security systems, and storage units we use to protect our property and how little we do to protect our time.”

— Nir Eyal

28. “Without techniques for disarming temptation, mental abstinence can backfire. Resisting an urge can trigger rumination and make the desire grow stronger.”

— Nir Eyal

29. “He believes that willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t “run out” of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows in response to what’s happening to us and how we feel.”

— Nir Eyal

30. “Ironically, I wasn’t falling back asleep because I was worried about not falling back asleep – a common cause of insomnia.”

— Nir Eyal

31. “Input is much more certain than outcome. When it comes to living the life you want, making sure you allocate time to living your values is the only thing you should focus on.”

— Nir Eyal

32. “Motivation or Ability – Which Should You Increase First? After uncovering the triggers that prompt user actions and deciding which actions you want to turn into habits, you can increase motivation and ability to spark the likelihood of your users taking a desired behavior. But which should you invest in first, motivation or ability? Where is your time and money better spent? The answer is always to start with ability.”

— Nir Eyal

33. “Consequently, any technology or product that significantly reduces the steps to complete a task will enjoy high adoption rates by the people it assists. For.”

— Nir Eyal

34. “While we can’t control the feelings and thoughts that pop into our heads, we can control what we do with them.”

— Nir Eyal

35. “The positive results of the time we spend doing something is a hope, not a certainty. The one thing we control is the time we put into a task.”

— Nir Eyal

36. “Second, we have a strong tendency for reciprocity – responding in kind to the actions of another. When someone says “Hello” or extends their hand to shake our own, we feel the urge to reciprocate – not doing so breaks a strong social norm and feels cold.”

— Nir Eyal

37. “You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it’s distracting you from.”

— Nir Eyal

38. “Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions.”

— Nir Eyal

39. “The goal is to eliminate all white space on your calendar so you’re left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day.”

— Nir Eyal

40. “I discovered that living the life we want requires not only doing the right things; it also requires we stop doing the wrong things that take us off track. We all know eating cake is worse for our waistlines than having a healthy salad. We agree that aimlessly scrolling our social media feeds is not as enriching as spending time with real friends in real life. We understand that if we want to be more productive at work, we need to stop wasting time and actually do the work. We already know what.”

— Nir Eyal

41. “Dweck concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in those test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource. It wasn’t the sugar in the lemonade but the belief in its impact that gave participants an extra boost.”

— Nir Eyal

42. “Even selfless acts, like helping someone, are motivated by our need to escape feelings of guilt and injustice.”

— Nir Eyal

43. “Researchers tell us attention and focus are the raw materials of human creativity and flourishing. In the age of increased automation, the most sought-after jobs are those that require creative problem-solving, novel solutions, and the kind of human ingenuity that comes from focusing deeply on the task at hand.”

— Nir Eyal

44. “At the heart of the therapy is learning to notice and accept one’s cravings and to handle them healthfully. Instead of suppressing urges, ACT prescribes a method for stepping back, noticing, observing, and finally letting the desire disappear naturally.”

— Nir Eyal

45. “Though conventional wisdom says our beliefs shape our behaviors, the opposite is also true. Evidence of the importance of rituals supports the idea of keeping a regular schedule, as described in part two. The more we stick to our plans, the more we reinforce our identity.”

— Nir Eyal

46. “Meanwhile, in Fogg’s formula, ability relates to facility of action. Quite simply, the harder something is to do, the less likely people are to do it.”

— Nir Eyal

47. “Viewed through the lens of this critical question, triggers can now be identified for what they rightly are: tools. If we use them properly, they can help us stay on track. If the trigger helps us do the thing we planned to do in our schedule, it’s helping us gain traction. If it leads to distraction, then it isn’t serving us.”

— Nir Eyal

48. “The people we love most should not be content getting whatever time is left over. Everyone benefits when we hold time on our schedule to live up to our values and do our share.”

— Nir Eyal

49. “Living the life you want requires not only doing the right things but also avoiding doing the wrong things.”

— Nir Eyal

50. “Similarly, email’s uncertainty keeps us checking and pecking. It provides good news and bad, exciting information as well as frivolity, messages from our closest loved ones and from anonymous strangers. All that uncertainty provides a powerful draw to see what we might find when we next check our inboxes.”

— Nir Eyal