Nir Eyal was part of a team of Stanford MBAs and also one of the brightest investors in Silicon Valley. He documented his experiences, reading and observations of hundreds of companies to know how mind manipulation(操纵) worked—how products change our actions, and create desires. The result of his research is the Hook Model.

A trigger is the actuator of behavior. Triggers come in two types: external and internal. Habit-forming products start by alerting users with external triggers like an email, a website link, or the app icon. For example, suppose Barbra, a young woman in Pennsylvania, happens to see a photo in her Facebook taken by a family member from a rural part of the state. It’s a lovely picture and since she is planning a trip there, the external trigger’s call-to-action intrigues her and she clicks. By cycling through successive hooks, users begin to form associations with internal triggers, which attach to existing behaviors and emotions.

The simple action takes Barbra to a website called Pinterest, a “pinboard-style photo sharing” site where she is dazzled by other fascinating objects related to what she is generally interested in—namely things to see on her upcoming trip.

Variable rewards are one of the most powerful tools companies implement to hook users. Research shows that levels of the dopamine(多巴胺) rise when the brain is expecting a reward. Wanting rewards creates a focused state, which suppresses the areas of the brain associated with judgment and reason while activating the parts associated with wanting and desire.

When Barbra lands on Pinterest, she’s spending more time hunting for the next wonderful thing. Before she knows it, she enjoys endlessly scrolling Pinterest, and she builds a desire to keep the things that delight her. By collecting items, she’ll be giving the site data about her preferences. Soon she will follow and make other investments, which serve to increase her ties to the site and prepare her for future loops through the hook.

The most hated day of the week is misunderstood. When the Boomtown Rats, an Irish band, released   “I Don’t Like Mondays” in 1979, the song became an instant hit.

What many do recognise all too well is the difficulty of gathering the energy to get out of bed on Monday mornings in order to face the week ahead. Many bosses argue that starting off the week in person in the office creates good energy. However, plenty of employees beg to differ.

A paper published by the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that people tend to be more ill-mannered on Mondays, and grow more polite as the week unfolds. The authors have diagnosed a new condition, Mondayitis, which is defined. as “a systemic illness with collections of symptoms including tiredness, light-headedness, dry mouth and headache”. These symptoms typically appear on the first working day after a period off work, which could be a weekend or a longer holiday. They can lead sufferers to call in sick, decide to work from home or, if they do show up in the office, come across as detached (冷漠的) and unavailable. Mondayitis appears to be infecting other days of the week.

However, the covid-19 pandemic has led many people to re-evaluate their work-life balance. A lawyer in London who spends weekends working on cases likes to ease into the formal workweek with an elegant breakfast in a fancy restaurant. A broader movement is promoting the idea of a four-day work week, one arrangement of which would make Monday part of the weekend. Less ambitiously, and more realistically, asocial-media campaign for   “bare-minimum Mondays” argues for a gentle start to the week.

You may have prepared or merely enjoyed a more elaborate meal than a sandwich. You may have gone for a walk in the park or simply lay in bed. Either way, you almost certainly cleared your head. When revived and spirited, you will have a fresh start.