Smarter Faster Better

The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

Number of pages: 400

Publisher: Random House

BBB Library: Corporate Success, Operations Management

ISBN: 978-0812993394



About the Author

He is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. He contributed to “Golden Opportunities”, a series of articles that examined how companies are trying to take advantage of aging Americans.

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Editorial Review

Productivity isn’t about working more or sweating harder. It’s not simply a product of spending longer hours at your desk or making bigger sacrifices. Rather, productivity is about making certain choices in certain ways. The way we choose to see ourselves and frame daily decisions; the stories we tell ourselves, and the easy goals we ignore; the sense of community we build among teammates; and the creative cultures we establish as leaders, these are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive.

Book Reviews

"Not only will Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business make you more efficient if you heed its tips, it will also save you the effort of reading many productivity books dedicated to the ideas inside."— Bloomberg

"Many of the stories are terrific; my favorites were about the early seasons of “Saturday Night Live,” F.B.I. agents racing to rescue a kidnapping victim, and a poker player competing in a $2 million winner-take-all tournament." — The New York Times

"In Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive, Charles Duhigg presents eight key ideas that can maximise the productivity of organisations, companies and individuals, focusing on how we make choices and frame decisions in daily life."— The London School of Economics and Political Science

"The new book, like its predecessor, has a format that’s familiar in contemporary nonfiction: exemplary tales interpolated with a little social and cognitive science."— The New Yorker

"I found the book to be an insightful discussion of new insights and methods to boost productivity, innovation and achievement."— Project Management Hacks

Books on Related Topics

Wisdom to Share

Self-help books and leadership manuals often portray self-motivation as a static feature of our personality or the outcome of a neurological calculus in which we subconsciously compare efforts versus rewards.

When people believe they are in control, they tend to work harder and push themselves more. They are, on average, more confident and overcome setbacks faster.

The first step in creating drive is giving people opportunities to make choices that provide them with a sense of autonomy and self-determination.

Motivation is triggered by making choices that demonstrate to ourselves that we are in control. The specific choice we make matters less than the assertion of control. It’s this feeling of self-determination that gets us going.

Studies show that someone’s locus of control can be influenced through training and feedback.

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

Moreover, to teach ourselves to self-motivate more easily, we need to learn to see our choices not just as expressions of control but also as affirmations of our values and goals.

As automation becomes more common, the risks that our attention spans will fail have risen.

Mental models help us by providing a scaffold for the torrent of information that constantly surrounds us. Models help us choose where to direct our attention, so we can make decisions, rather than just reacting.

“Cognitive tunneling” is a mental glitch that sometimes occurs when our brains are forced to transition abruptly from relaxed automation to panicked attention.

Cognitive tunneling can cause people to become overly focused on whatever is directly in front of their eyes or become preoccupied with immediate tasks.

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

Books by the same Author

When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you hop in the shower, check your email, or brush your teeth? Which route did you drive to work? When you got to your desk, did you chat with a colleague or jump into a memo? Salad or hamburger
The Power of Habit

When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you hop in the shower, check your email, or brush your teeth? Which route did you drive to work? When you got to your desk, did you chat with a colleague or jump into a memo? Salad or hamburger