Hey Time Dorks,
Connor here. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Nir Eyal — investor, bestselling author of Indistractable and Hooked, and someone whose work has genuinely influenced how I think about focus, attention, and distraction.
Nir’s new book is called Beyond Belief, and the question at the heart of it is one I hear from Time Dorks constantly: “I know what I’m supposed to do. So why don’t I do it?”
Whether it’s getting fit, writing your novel, or limiting the time you spend doomscrolling social media, everyone can relate to the feeling of having something you want to change, knowing what you need to do, but not doing it.
Nir’s answer to this question surprised me. He argues the hidden ingredient in human behavior change is belief.
We think motivation works like this: I want a benefit, so I do the behavior. But it turns out it’s not so simple. Even if you know what to do and you want the outcome, if you don’t believe you’ll get the benefit, you won’t be motivated. And if you don’t believe in your own ability to do the behavior, you won’t be motivated either.
Belief is the missing piece. Nir calls it The Motivation Triangle. When you want to make a change, you need the behavior, the benefit, and the belief. And I think understanding this will help a lot of people make real change.
If you’ve been wanting to make changes in your life, but you’ve felt stuck, I think you’ll get a lot out of this conversation.
We explored why beliefs can either limit us or liberate us, one of the most common limiting beliefs around time, why visualizing success can actually backfire, and a powerful practice that can dissolve a limiting belief on the spot.
Below, I share a few highlights from our conversation. If you want the full thing:
👉 Watch the full 30-minute interview or read the extended transcript on our website
Beyond Belief is out now. Order before March 16th and you’ll also get access to a live webinar Nir’s hosting on March 21st, plus a few other bonuses. More on that below.
|
|
Highlights from our conversation
The missing ingredient in behavior change
Connor Swenson: Hey Nir, thanks for joining. You’ve spent years studying human behavior — from how products hook us to how we manage attention and distraction. And now your new book is about beliefs. What experience in your own life made you realize belief is such an important part of behavior change?
Nir Eyal: The thing that made me want to dive deeper was the frustration of having written two books that together sold over a million copies — and every once in a while someone will say, “Hey, I read your book, I really enjoyed it, but I didn’t really do anything about it.”
At first I was super frustrated by that. Indistractable took me five years to write. I have 30 pages of citations to peer-reviewed journals. I really wanted to get the research right. And everyone complains about distraction, about not having enough time. I put the solution on a silver platter — and they don’t do it.
Then I realized: I do this too. I have tons of books full of advice I haven’t put into practice. I’ve paid gurus and experts to tell me what to do and somehow I haven’t used it either.
What I learned is that our concept of motivation is wrong. We think it works like this: I want a benefit, I do the behavior, done. Classic economic incentives. Except there’s something hidden underneath — belief. Even if I know what to do and want the outcome, if I don’t believe I’ll get the benefit, I won’t be motivated. And if I don’t believe in my own ability to do the behavior, same result. Motivation isn’t a straight line — it’s a triangle. You need all three: the behavior, the benefit, and the belief.
Once I understood how these limiting beliefs cause self-sabotage, and how we can identify them, delete them, and replace them with what I call liberating beliefs — beliefs that reduce unnecessary suffering — I realized that’s the missing piece for finally doing our best work and living the lives we deserve.
The limiting belief most of us share about time
Connor: I hear from our readers and community all the time — they’re smart, they’re motivated, they want to make changes, and they still struggle with distraction and focus. When you think about limiting beliefs specifically around time and attention, what are the ones you hear most?
Nir: The most common limiting belief I hear — bar none, more than anything else — is “I don’t have time.”
And that’s a limiting belief. Because the human race is 200,000 years old. The earth is billions of years old. What do you mean you don’t have time? Time for what? For everything all at once? That’s what we’re really asking for — we want to do everything simultaneously, with no pain, perfectly. We expect one perfect day where everything happens exactly as planned. That’s not reality. And that expectation is what causes the suffering.
One of the biggest things that blew my mind doing this research is that pain and suffering are two separate things. Pain is just the signal entering your brain — it’s data. All pain happens in the brain. Suffering is the interpretation of that signal.
The philosopher Schopenhauer said that life is that which fights entropy — the very definition of being alive is fighting chaos. When I started taking that perspective, I stopped suffering. Am I still busy? Yes. But I’m not stressed. Do I still have high expectations? Yes. But I’m not suffering from them. Now I can look forward to the work.
One mantra I repeat to myself several times a day: “It doesn’t get easier — you get stronger.” That, I think, is what’s missing from so much productivity advice. People read a book, try the advice, find it’s hard, and think something is wrong. But it’s never going to get easy. Raising kids is hard. A quality marriage is hard. Starting a business is hard. But that doesn’t mean you have to suffer through it.
And here’s what really surprised me: the belief doesn’t even necessarily have to be objectively true. You might think, “Am I just gaslighting myself?” But I’d argue we’re already not seeing reality clearly — our brains can’t handle reality as-is. We create shortcuts and beliefs to filter it. So if beliefs make up such a huge proportion of our decisions, we better choose them consciously. Not based on our history or programming, but by actively asking: which beliefs are limiting me, and which ones can liberate me?
Why visualizing success can backfire
Connor: In Make Time, the key daily practice is choosing a highlight — one big exciting thing to protect and prioritize. A lot of people have heard about visualization and manifestation: just imagine yourself finishing it, and that energy will help you get it done. But you argue that positive fantasies can actually drain motivation. Why is visualizing success a trap, and what should we do instead?
Nir: The problem with manifesting and positive thinking is that it focuses on outcomes. And there’s a lot of research that shows it can really backfire.
Gabrielle Oettingen did wonderful research where she hooked people up to blood pressure monitors as they visualized outcomes — the beach body, the Lamborghini, finding love. What was happening as they did these exercises? Their blood pressure was dropping. They were relaxing. And in follow-up contact, those who had visualized their desired outcomes became less likely to do the hard work to get them. Students who visualized the A became less likely to study. People on a diet who visualized being thin were less likely to change their eating habits.
The brain was registering: it’s already here. I’ve already enjoyed the pleasure. What’s the point of the hard work?
The lesson in this is don’t visualize success. Plan for the pain. This is called mental contrasting.
👉 Watch Nir explain mental contrasting (72 seconds)
You contrast what you want with the psychological barrier in your way: your inability to deal with that pain. That’s what procrastination actually is. The difficult conversation you’re avoiding? That’s pain management. The scrolling instead of the presentation? Pain management. At the end of the day, it’s all about pain management.
And this is exactly what elite athletes visualize. Not the gold medal — the obstacles. The defensive line coming at them. The terrain of the ski slope. What might get in my way, and what will I do about it?
I used to be clinically obese, not just overweight. One tactic that changed my life: I visualized what I would do when someone offered me a piece of cake at a dinner party. I rehearsed the discomfort so the pain didn’t become suffering and rule my life. That’s the right way to use visualization.
👉 Watch the full 30-minute interview or read the extended transcript on our website
|
|
Something to Try: The Turnaround Practice
Nir shared a four-question practice you can run in about 30 seconds. It comes from Byron Katie’s work, and it’s simple yet incredibly powerful at the same time.
👉 Watch Nir explain the turnaround practice (52 seconds)
1. Is my belief true? Write down whatever belief causing you suffering: I don’t have time. I have a short attention span. I’m not good at prioritizing. Then ask: is it true?
2. Is it absolutely true? Ask yourself, is this belief, without exception, true 100% of the time?
3. Who am I with this belief? How does it cause me suffering? Who do I become? How do I feel? What is this belief costing me? How does it cause me to suffer?
4. Who would I be without it? If I let go of this belief, or had a different belief, what would change?
Nir told me that what this practice reveals, almost every time, is that the belief is optional. It’s not absolutely true. And often, it’s hurting you and you’d be better off without it.
Then, you do the turnaround. You ask yourself: could the exact opposite also be true?
I don’t have time → I have plenty of time.
I have a short attention span → I’m good at focusing.
I’m not good at prioritizing → I’m great at time management.
Can you find even one circumstance where that’s true — even 1%? If so, try it on. Not to convince yourself of something false, not to fake it till you make it — but to look through life through a different lens, like trying on a pair of glasses.
Beliefs are tools, not truths. When we build a portfolio of perspectives instead of being locked in one story about ourselves, we can choose the belief that actually serves us.
👉 Watch Nir explain why this works (63 seconds)
|
|
Get the book + join a live workshop with Nir
If you enjoyed this conversation, grabbing the book is the obvious next step to learn more.
Beyond Belief is out now. If you order before March 16th, Nir’s including three exclusive bonuses:
👉 A free ticket to his “Break Through Limiting Beliefs” Workshop (March 21, 12pm ET / 4pm GMT) where Nir will walk you through the belief-transformation system live
👉 A 30-Day Belief Transformation Journal — 30 days of guided daily prompts to catch limiting beliefs, 8 in-depth exercises to uncover the “root beliefs” driving your patterns, daily 5-minute belief-change templates, and evidence-tracking to make your beliefs work for you
👉 Access to a private interview series with Kim Scott, Dr. David Burkus, and Jon Levy on the belief systems behind high-performing teams
👉 Grab your copy of Beyond Belief here
Thanks for reading,
Connor
