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.” It was cheesy and a bit silly, but somehow, we had to say it, or we thought we’d be jinxed and lose the sale.

Though we didn’t know it then, we had tapped into one of several practices that research has shown salespeople can use to close more deals. It turns out there’s a science to superstition, and whether the supernatural exists or not doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, there are practices anyone can use to increase their business’s good fortune.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: The Surprisingly Strong Case for Luck in Sales https://www.nirandfar.com/luck-in-sales/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

A few years ago, I started waking up at three o’clock every morning. Over the years, I’d read many articles about the importance of rest, so I knew the research was unequivocal: Quality sleep supports cognitive performance and lowers the risk of diseases and health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, obesity, and dementia.

Knowing that, I’d toss and turn in bed, disappointed that I wasn’t following through on my plan to get seven to eight hours of shut-eye. It was on my schedule, so why wasn’t I asleep?

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Getting Great Sleep is Much Easier Than You Think https://www.nirandfar.com/sleep-hacks/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Something as vague and indiscernible as “luck” has no place in the business world, right? Yet studies show luck can make all the difference between business success and failure. So, can you learn how to be lucky?

Joël Le Bon, professor of marketing and sales at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, has found that luck is a significant factor in sales professionals’ performance. He even says companies can manage their luck to get a competitive edge.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Be Lucky in Business and Life: 4 Science-Backed Principles https://www.nirandfar.com/how-to-be-lucky/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

We all dwell on unresolved personal conflicts from time to time. Who hasn’t ruminated on a hurtful comment or unintentional harm we might have caused someone? Feeling bad about something you did, or something done to you, is human. Congratulations on not being a psychopath!

But while it’s expected that the arguments we’ve had, the negative events we’ve experienced, and the major decisions we face haunt us, overthinking can also pile on new problems.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Stop Overthinking https://www.nirandfar.com/stop-overthinking

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

ee if you can relate to Sarah.

She’s a software engineer who loves her job—except for her manager, Tom. To Tom, everything is a crisis worthy of interrupting Sara, even when she’s deeply focused on her work.

One morning, while Sarah is coding a critical feature, Tom calls and asks her to drop everything to help with an urgent report for the CMO. Sarah complies, but by the end of the day, she hasn’t dedicated much time to any of the tasks she planned to focus on.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: How to Handle a Distracting Boss https://www.nirandfar.com/handling-a-distracting-boss/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

How belief in luck makes us bolder and better.

Richard Branson will be the first to tell you that he’s generally a lucky person in business and life.

An adrenaline junkie, he’s lived through several near-death experiences, including in the early ’70s, when he and his then-wife survived a shipwreck that no other passengers did by jumping off the boat in a storm and swimming to shore.

You can read the Nir And Far article on: Only People Who Believe in Luck Have It https://www.nirandfar.com/believe-in-luck-for-success/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

As a clinically obese teen, my parents were desperate to get me to a healthy weight. My mom coaxed me on a walk through our boring, middle-class Central Florida suburb every Sunday.

The road we walked was paved with good intentions, but for me, it was hell: the heat and humidity, the painful chafing between my thighs, the inevitable embarrassment of applying Vaseline to said chafing. … If I was going to suffer, I would need a reward, and it had better be a good one!

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Can You Think Yourself Thinner? https://www.nirandfar.com/think-yourself-thin/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/

Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report highlights a stark reality: disengaged and burned-out employees are draining 9% of the world’s GDP, resulting in approximately $8.8 trillion in losses. On the other hand, engaged employees are 18% more productive and 23% more profitable. This underscores how closely productivity is tied to profitability and overall organizational health.

You can read the Nir And Far blog post on: Work Productivity Hacks & Tips for Today’s Workplace https://www.nirandfar.com/ways-to-be-productive-at-workplace/

Nir And Far, a podcast about business, behaviour and the brain by Nir Eyal. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on iTunes and leave an iTunes review. It will greatly help new listeners discover the show. Please visit my website Nir and Far for other info about my writing, books and teaching: http://www.nirandfar.com/