By: Charles Duhigg - the Goble Group · NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Power of Habit comes a fascinating book that explores the science of productivity, and

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Smarter Faster Better The Secrets of Being Productive

in Life and Business

__________________________________

By: Charles Duhigg

Book Description (from Amazon)

Publication Date: March 8, 2016

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Power of Habit comes a fascinating book that explores the

science of productivity, and why managing how you think is more important than what you think—with an appendix of

real-world lessons to apply to your life.

At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key productivity concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and

decision making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in

neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star

generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this painstakingly researched book explains that the

most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently.

They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.

A young woman drops out of a PhD program and starts playing poker. By training herself to envision contradictory futures,

she learns to anticipate her opponents’ missteps—and becomes one of the most successful players in the world.

A group of data scientists at Google embark on a four-year study of how the best teams function, and find that how a

group interacts is more important than who is in the group—a principle, it turns out, that also helps explain why Saturday

Night Live became a hit.

A Marine Corps general, faced with low morale among recruits, reimagines boot camp—and discovers that instilling a

“bias toward action” can turn even the most directionless teenagers into self-motivating achievers.

The filmmakers behind Disney’s Frozen are nearly out of time and on the brink of catastrophe—until they shake up their

team in just the right way, spurring a creative breakthrough that leads to one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.






What do these people have in common?

They know that productivity relies on making certain choices. The way we frame our daily decisions; the big ambitions we

embrace and the easy goals we ignore; the cultures we establish as leaders to drive innovation; the way we interact with

data: These are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive.

In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Duhigg explained why we do what we do. In Smarter Faster

Better, he applies the same relentless curiosity, deep reporting, and rich storytelling to explain how we can improve at the

things we do. It’s a groundbreaking exploration of the science of productivity, one that can help anyone learn to succeed

with less stress and struggle, and to get more done without sacrificing what we care about most—to become smarter,

faster, and better at everything we do.

My Synopsis:

A combination of great story sharing and scientific data, this was surprisingly a good read. Lots of little nuggets of wisdom

to pull out, but ideas on paper are worthless…their value is only truly apparent through execution. And even then, you

must have the true desire to be (and get) smarter, faster, better. Adventure on.

Smarter Faster Better

The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

p. 7 Connecting these eight ideas is a powerful underlying principle: Productivity isn’t about working more or sweating

harder…productivity is about making certain choices in certain ways.

p. 7 …we’ve been paying attention to the wrong innovations. We’ve been staring at the tools of productivity, rather

than the lessons those technologies are trying to teach us.

p. 9 Motivation: Reimagining Boot Camp, Nursing Home Rebellions, and the Locus of Control

p. 18 …They enjoyed themselves much more when they were in control of their choices

p. 18 Participants were more motivated to obey simply because they believed they were in control.

p. 19 …a prerequisite to motivation is believing we have authority over our actions and surroundings. To motivate

ourselves, we must feel like we’re in control.

p. 19 When people believe they are in control, they tend to work harder and push themselves more.

p. 19 Each choice – no matter how small – reinforces the perception of control and self-efficacy.

p. 20 Motivation is triggered by making choices that demonstrate to ourselves that we are in control.

p. 22 They didn’t even have the vocabulary for ambition. They’d followed instructions their whole life. – Marine Gen.

Charles Krulak

p. 23 “internal locus of control” = a belief they (you) could influence their destiny through the choices they made.

p. 25 …some people’s sense of self-determination gets suppressed by how they grow up, or experiences they’ve had,

and they forget how much influence they can have on their own lives. – Carol Dweck

p. 26 You’ll never get rewarded for doing what’s easy for you…We praise people for doing things that are hard. That’s

how they learn to believe they can do them. – Marine Sgt. Dennis Joy

p. 30 If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier…

p. 30 Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge.






p. 31 If you give people an opportunity to feel a sense of control and let them practice making choices, they can learn to

exert willpower. Once people know how to make self-directed choices into a habit, motivation becomes more

automatic.

p. 32 The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation, in other words, are decisions that do two things;

They convince us we’re in control and they endow our actions with larger meaning.

p. 36 …unless we practice self-determination and give ourselves emotional rewards for subversive assertiveness, our

capacity for self-motivation can fade.

p. 36 We start to recognize how small chores can have outsized emotional rewards, because they prove to ourselves

that we are making meaningful choices, that we are genuinely in control of our own lives.

p. 37 Self-motivation…is a choice we make because it is part of something bigger and more emotionally rewarding than

the immediate task that needs doing.

p. 38 Teams: Psychological Safety at Google and Saturday Night Live

p. 43 (In Project Oxygen) …researchers had identified eight critical management skills: (1) a good coach; (2) empowers

and does not micromanage; (3) expresses interest and concern in subordinates’ success and well-being; (4) is

results oriented; (5) listens and shares information; (6) helps with career development; (7) has a clear vision and

strategy; (8) has key technical skills.

p. 46 There is strong evidence that group norms play a critical role in shaping the emotional experience of participating

in a team.

p. 50 As Edmundson’s list of good norms grew, she began to notice that everything shared a common attribute: They

were all behaviors that created a sense of togetherness while also encouraging people to take a chance.

p. 50 …psychological safety is a shared belief, held by members of a team, that the group is a safe place for taking risks.

p. 60 …the most successful teams had norms that caused everything to mesh particularly well.

p. 62 …giving everyone a voice and finding people willing to be sensitive enough to listen to one another.

p. 64 For psychological safety to emerge among a group, teammates don’t have to be friends.

p. 64 …when the leader goes out of their way to make someone feel listened to…that makes a huge difference.

p. 64 This is how psychological safety emerges: by giving everyone an equal voice and encouraging social sensitivity

among teammates.

p. 65 You can take a team of average performances, and if you teach them to interact the right way, they’ll do things no

superstar could ever accomplish.

p. 66 Teams need to believe that their work is important.

Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful.

Teams need clear goals and defined roles.

Team members need to know they can depend on one another.

But, most important, teams need psychological safety.

p. 67 Teams succeed when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members show they are sensitive to how

one another feels.

p. 69 So if you are leading a team, think about what message your choices send.

p. 69 …a team will become an amplification of its internal culture, for better or worse.

p. 69 If motivation comes from giving individuals a greater sense of control, then psychological safety is the caveat we

must remember when individuals come together in a group.






p. 71 Focus: Cognitive Tunneling, Air France Flight 447, and the Power of Mental Models.

p. 75 Mental automation lets us choose, almost subconsciously, what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

p. 76 …as automation becomes more common, the risks that our attention spans will fail have risen.

p. 76 In the age of automation, knowing how to manage your focus is more critical than ever before.

p. 77 …once in a cognitive tunnel, we lose our ability to direct our focus. Instead, we latch onto the easiest and most

obvious stimulus, often at the cost of common sense.

p. 81 Reactive thinking is at the core of how we allocate our attention, ad in many settings, it’s a tremendous asset…is

how we build habits.

p. 81 Reactive thinking, in a sense, outsources the choices and control that, in other settings, create motivation.

p. 81 …the downside of reactive thinking is that habits and reactions can become so automatic they overpower our

judgement. Once our motivation is outsourced, we simply react.

p. 88 All people rely on metal models to some degree. We all tell ourselves stories about how the world works, whether

we realize we’re doing it or not.

p. 90 It’s always been difficult to learn how to focus. It’s even harder now.

p. 90 Meeting new people and learning new skills takes a lot of additional hours.

p. 92 …they outperformed their colleagues because they had more productive methods of thinking.

p. 92 People who know how to manage their attention and who habitually build robust mental models tend to earn

more money and get better grades.

p. 101 (Mental) models help us choose where to direct our attention, so we can make decisions, rather than just react.

p. 101 If you want to do a better job of paying attention to what really matters, of not getting overwhelmed and

distracted by the constant flow of emails and conversations and interruptions that are part of everyday, of

knowing where to focus and what to ignore, get into the habit of telling yourself stories.

p. 102 To become genuinely productive, we must take control of our attention.

p. 102 You can’t delegate thinking.

p. 103 Goal Setting: Smart Goals, Stretch Goals, and the Yom Kippur War

p. 107 …the need for cognitive closure = the desire for a confident judgement on an issue, any confident judgement, as

compared to confusion and ambiguity.

p. 108 The need for closure introduces a bias into the judgmental process…

p. 118 The process of making a gal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires…

p. 120 …had fallen prey to an obsession with achievable but inconsequential goals, and were focused on unimportant

short-term objectives rather than more ambitious plans.

p. 120 Experiments have shown that people with SMART goals are more likely to seize on the easiest tasks, to become

obsessed with finishing projects, and to freeze on priorities once a goal has been set.

p. 120 You get into this mindset where crossing things off your to-do list becomes more important than asking yourself if

you’re doing the right things.

p. 122 …successful because they balanced the psychological influence of immediate goals with the freedom to think

about bigger things.

p. 124 Incremental improvements would only yield incremental economic growth.

p. 126 Numerous academic studies…have consistently found that forcing people to commit to ambitions, seemingly out

of reach objectives can spark outsized jumps in innovation and productivity.






p. 127 There is a fine line between an ambition that helps people achieve something amazing and one that crushes

morale.

p. 127 Stretch goals, paired with SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timeline) thinking, can help put the

impossible within reach.

p. 129 …we all know that merely writing down grand aspirations doesn’t guarantee we will achieve them.

p. 130 …repeated studies have shown that breaking a big ambition into proximal goals makes the large objective more

likely to occur.

p. 131 What matters is having a large ambition and a system for figuring out how to make it into a concrete and realistic

plan. You’ll keep your eyes on what’s both wise and SMART.

p. 134 Managing Others: Solving a Kidnapping with Lean and Agile Thinking and a Culture of Trust

p. 144 …the Toyota Productive System…relied on pushing decision making to the lowest possible level.

p. 145 The way a business treats workers…was critical to its success.

p. 146 …most companies had cultures that fell into one of five categories (or models): star, engineering, bureaucratic,

autocratic, commitment

p. 149 Hands down, a commitment culture outperformed every other type of management style in almost every

meaningful way.

p. 149 Employees in commitment firms wasted less time on internal rivalries because everyone was committed to the

company, rather than to personal agendas.

p. 153 We might have disagreements or see things differently, but at the end of the day, we were committed to each

other’s success.

p. 153 Once you’re entrusted with that kind of authority, you can’t help feel a sense of responsibility.

p. 153 …when workers felt a greater sense of control, their drive expanded.

p. 157 What is the point of hiring smart people, we asked, if you don’t empower them to fix what’s broken. – Ed Catmull

p. 158 The only rules were that everyone had to make suggestions, anyone could declare a time-out if they thought a

project was moving in the wrong direction, and the person closest to a problem had primary responsibility for

figuring out how to solve it.

p. 160 …we’ve learned it’s critical that agents feel like they can make independent decisions.

P 164 There has to be a system in place that makes you trust that you can choose the solution you think is best and that

your bosses are committed to supporting you if you take a chance that might not pay off.

p. 165 Employees work smarter and better when they believe they have more decision-making authority and when they

believe their colleagues are committed to their success.

p. 167 Decision Making: Forecasting the Future (and Winning at Poker) with Bayesian Psychology

p. 170 Many of our important decisions are, in fact, attempts to forecast the future.

p. 170 Good decision-making is contingent on a basic ability to envision what happens next.

p. 173 ...a losing hand isn’t necessarily a loss. Rather, it’s an experiment.

p. 175 The paradox of learning how to make better decisions is that it requires developing a comfort with doubt.

p. 179 The future isn’t one thing. Rather, it is a multitude of possibilities that often contradict one another until one of

them comes true.

p. 181 Losers are always looking for certainty…Winners are comfortable admitting to themselves what they don’t know.

p. 195 Our assumptions are based on what we’ve encountered in life, but our experiences often draw on biased samples.

p. 196 If we pay attention only to good news, we’re handicapping ourselves.






p. 196 …calibrating your base rate requires learning from both the accomplished and the humbled.

p. 203 …the goals are the same: to see the future in multiple possibilities rather than one predetermined outcome; to

identify what you do and don’t know; to ask yourself, which choice gets you the best odds?

p. 205 Innovation: How Idea Brokers and Creative Desperation Saved Disney’s Frozen

p. 208 …our capacity to achieve creative insights becomes more important than ever, the need for fast originality is even

more urgent.

p. 212 …the building blocks of new ideas are often embodied in existing knowledge.

p. 215 A lot of the people we think of as exceptionally creative are essentially intellectual middlemen. – Brian Uzzi

p. 215 People connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. – Ronald Burt

p. 220 It (West Side Story) succeeded by mixing originality and convention to create something new.

p. 223 People become creative brokers, in other words, when they learn to pay attention to how things make them react

and feel.

p. 225 That’s what growing up is, letting go of the things you shouldn’t have to care about.

p. 227 …when that tension disappears, when you solve the big problem and everyone starts seeing things the same way,

people also sometimes start thinking alike and forgetting all the options they have.

p. 231 …as I listened, I started picking up on things I hadn’t noticed before.

p. 235 Creativity can’t be reduced to a formula.

p. 236 If you want to become a broker and increase the productivity of your own creative process, there are three things

that can help: be sensitive to your own experiences; recognize the panic and stress you feel as you try to create

isn’t a sign that everything is falling apart; remember that the relief accompanying a creative breakthrough, while

sweet, can also blind us to seeing alternatives.

p. 236 The creative pain should be embraced.

p. 237 Creativity is just problem solving. Once people see it as problem solving, it stops seeming like magic, because it’s

not…We just have to learn how to trust ourselves enough to let the creativity out. – Ed Catmull

p. 238 Absorbing Data: Turning Information into Knowledge in Cincinnati’s Public Schools

p. 241 …the idea that data can be transformative, but only if people know how to use it.

p. 242 …there’s a difference between finding an answer and understanding what it means.

p. 243 …being surrounded by data often makes it harder to decide.

p. 243 …information blindness refers to our mind’s tendency to stop absorbing data when there’s too much to take in.

p. 245 Our brains crave reducing things to two or three options. – Eric Johnson, cognitive psychologist

p. 246 One way to overcome blindness is to force ourselves to grapple with the data in front of us, to manipulate

information by transforming it into a sequence of questions to be answered or choices to be made.

p. 247 When information is made disfluent, we learn more.

p. 258 …the engineering design process…forced students to define their dilemmas, collect data, brainstorm solutions,

debate alternative approaches, and conduct iterative experiments.






p. 258

p. 261 Once a frame is established, that context is hard to dislodge.

p. 262 Systems teach us how to force ourselves to make questions look unfamiliar. It’s a way to see alternatives. – Eric

Johnson, Columbia psychologist

p. 265 When we encounter new information and want to learn from it, we should force ourselves to do something with

the data.

p. 266 Every choice we make in life is an experiment.

p. 267 …dedication and purpose only succeed when we know how to direct them.

p. 270 Motivation becomes easier when we transform a chore into a choice. Doing so gives us a sense of control.

p. 272 Self-motivation becomes easier when we see our choices as affirmations of our deeper values and goals.

p. 272 Forcing ourselves to explain why we are doing something helps us remember that this chore is a step along the

longer path, and that by choosing to take that journey, we are getting closer to more meaningful objectives.

p. 278 We aid our focus by building mental models – telling ourselves stories – about what we expect to see.

p. 278 What will happen first?

What distractions are likely to occur?

How will you handle that distraction?

How will you know you’ve succeeded?

What is necessary for success?

What will you do next?

p. 284 Productivity is about recognizing choices that other people often overlook.

p. 284 Productivity emerges when people push themselves to think differently.

p. 285 Productivity doesn’t mean that every action is efficient.

p. 285 …in the end, if you learn how to recognize certain choices that, to many, might not be obvious, then you can

become smarter, faster, and better over time.

Define the

Dilemma

Collect Data

Brainstorm

Solutions

Debate

Approaches

Experiment The

Engineering

Design

Process

Documents

By: Charles Duhigg - the Goble Group · NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Power of Habit comes a fascinating book that explores the science of productivity, and