Nir Eyal

Yeah, that's exactly right.

You know, they say that research is me-search.

And so I don't write what I know.

I write about what I need to know, what I want to know.

And so when I was struggling with distraction, I wrote Indistractable, and it worked.

It changed my life.

The problem was that...

I would get these phone calls from readers.

Every week I do these office hours where anybody who's read one of my books can call me up and ask me questions about one of my books.

And every so often a call would sound like this.

Somebody would call me and say, hey Nir, I read your book, I really liked it, but it didn't work.

And I'd be kind of surprised, you know, I spent five years writing Indistractable and, you know, I really went to great lengths to find the latest research, 30 pages of citations to peer-reviewed studies.

And so I'd say, well, tell me more.

Why didn't it work?

You know, let's start with step one.

How did step one go for you?

And they'd say something to the effect of, you know, I read step one.

I read step one.

I just didn't do it.

I said, okay, no problem.