“Hooked” by Nir Eyal — “10 Bullets-100 Words” Book Summary
A unique book summary format — Let’s you take a bite without revealing the entire dish
Book title — “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal is an Israeli-born American author, lecturer, and investor known for his bestselling book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. He has also authored Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
It’s not the title, but its sub-title that attracted me towards this book — “How to Build Habit-forming products.”
Habits — my favorite subject to dig into. While reading books related to Habits, I am not only learning about how to build long-term habits, but I am learning about Human Psyche too. That’s why at the end of this book, I had manual notes and marking all over it.
List down all the products you use consistently: your smartphone, a few apps, those specific websites, a particular food, favorite clothes, etc. How did these products get you to follow them consistently?
How are these companies getting your “Hooked” to their products?
That’s what the book attempts to answer.
“10 bullets-100 words” book summary and my takeaways from this book:
- Successful Products are Habit-forming.
- Habit-forming products = Hook Model with four phases
- Four phases combine to form a habit-forming product.
- Trigger — Behavior cues — Internal (emotions, routines) + External (notifications, emails, alarms)
- Action — Ease of use (time, money, physical effort, mental labor) and motivate (pleasure, hope, social acceptance)
- Variable Reward — Infinite variability (importance, recognition, knowledge)
- Investment — Time and money — For long-term rewards
- Habit-forming products influence everyday and trigger actions.
- Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram — master of Hook model.
- Ask — (a) Does your product make the life of the user better?, and (b) Would you use the product?
My takeaways
To me, this book is a combination of technology, innovation, business, and human psychology.
The book helped me understand how and why products like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, are keeping you and me hooked to them. To me, the essential part of the Hook Model is “Triggers” and “Variable rewards.” Each time there is a notification, it tempts me to use the product, and then it leads to a variable reward (likes, forwards, information, fun, and so on).
Once you get the hang of the modus operandi and the way these habits-forming products are making use of human-psyche, you can either move away from harmful habit-forming products (apps) or adopt products that can lead to a more meaningful life.
“Hooked” is a beautiful book if you are looking to build your app or a website or a product. Even if you are not planning to do any of this, the book is helpful to generate awareness about what kinds of habits you’re forming around such products.
100 words are as easy as it’s challenging to summarize an excellent book. There is so much which remains unsaid. Still, I realize, confining myself to 100 words will bring out more creativity and effort.
And this is precisely what came about. I hope this structure entices you to pick up this book, learn a new thing or two, and expand your outlook.
Thanks for reading.
Nishith is a Chartered Accountant by profession. He is a Marathoner, an avid reader, writer, aspiring author, and a personal-transformation coach. He manages a unique self-transformation platform — “Be Better Bit-By-Bit.” This platform offers daily self-transformation activities and exercises to its members. Philosophy and belief of this platform — “Small and Consistent Improvements.”
Follow the platform on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.
Also, do listen to the podcasts — “Be Better Bit-By-Bit” and “10 Bullets — 100 Words” available on various streaming platforms i.e., Spreaker, Spotify, Google Podcast, Jio Saavn, and Castbox.
