Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

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However, you can learn how to create the right conditions for creativity and productive innovation to thrive. There are four principles that you can implement to create such conditions:

People with an internal locus of control tend to earn more money, have more friends, stay married longer, and report greater professional success and satisfaction.” There is not much to disagree with here, and that is one of the intriguing things about the genre this book belongs to. Not dozens or hundreds but thousands of titles like “Smarter Faster Better” are published every year, and they account for a disproportionate percentage of total book sales. Yet they mainly reiterate common sense. Charles Duhigg was born in 1974 in New Mexico. He graduated from Yale University and earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. [1] Career [ edit ] Loeb Winners". UCLA Anderson School of Management. June 29, 2009. Archived from the original on February 2, 2019 . Retrieved February 1, 2019. This is a useful lesson for anyone hoping to motivate themselves or others because it suggests an easy method for triggering the will to act: Find a choice, almost any choice, that allows you to exert control.”Generating mental models and theories is key. But so is subjecting them to scrutiny. As part of his pre-flight visualizations, the Qantas pilot actively encouraged his crew to challenge him and one another. “Everyone has a responsibility to tell me if you disagree with my decisions or think I’m missing something.” Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you’ll encode those experiences deeper in your brain.” awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, [22] the Deadline Awards, [23] and the John B. Oakes Awards [24]

It was easy for me to say: “You know what? I’ll just write 365 book summaries next year.I’ll publish one every single day.” The hard part is still showing up every day, after over 6 months, and actually writing them. 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 Power of Habit is one of my favorite books of all time. So much in fact, that I’ve given away several copies over the last year. In March 2016 Charles Duhigg finally published his next book. I don’t mind that it took four years though, because I know it’s the only way for Charles to go as deep as he does in his research and preparation. SABEW Names Winners in the Best in Business Contest". Wireless News. March 26, 2009. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012 . Retrieved May 4, 2010. Stretch goals are far-reaching objectives that, at first glance, may not even seem possible. They’re ambitious and audacious, and often require a lot of forethought and effort to achieve. The second action you can take to generate motivation is finding meaning in your choices. Sometimes, simply making a choice isn’t enough to increase your motivation, especially when the task in front of you is difficult or unpleasant. However, reminding yourself of the meaning behind your choices— why you’re doing what you’re doing—can give you the boost you need to get started. If you link a difficult task to a higher purpose, it can become more palatable and you can become more motivated to complete it. Principle #2: Maintain Focus

In 1982, GM shut down its Fremont, California plant — one with a well-earned reputation as “the worst auto factory in the world.” Two years later, GM reopened the plant in a new partnership with Toyota. For the Japanese company, it was an opportunity to expand in the American market. And for GM it was a chance to learn about the famed “Toyota Production System” that consistently produced cars of high quality at low cost. At the heart of this system was the idea of pushing decision making to the lowest level: workers on the assembly line saw mistakes and problems first, so they should be empowered to take immediate action to correct them. I want us to envision the first thing we’ll do if there’s a problem,” he told his copilots as they rode in a van from the Fairmont hotel to Singapore Changi Airport. “Imagine there’s an engine failure. Where’s the first place you’ll look?” The pilots took turns describing where they would turn their eyes. De Crespigny conducted this same conversation prior to every flight. His copilots knew to expect it. He quizzed them on what screens they would stare at during an emergency, where their hands would go if an alarm sounded, whether they would turn their heads to the left or stare straight ahead. “The reality of a modern aircraft is that it’s a quarter million sensors and computers that sometimes can’t tell the difference between garbage and good sense,” de Crespigny later told me. He’s a brusque Australian, a cross between Crocodile Dundee and General Patton. “That’s why we have human pilots. It’s our job to think about what might happen, instead of what is.” There are valuable lessons in Smarter, Faster, Better. . . . Duhigg is a terrific storyteller, and a master of the cliffhanger.” — Financial Times

One of his main tactics is a kind of intentional disruption: mid-project, he will step in and shake up a team by tweaking its dynamics, even if he knows that by doing so he will generate a certain amount of tension. In the case of Frozen, he named the film’s writer, Jennifer Lee, as a second director. A writer is more a lone voice, where a director must listen to and incorporate suggestions from across the production. The new responsibility and point of view were just the jolt she needed. How to Stay Focused on Stretch and SMART Goals How Charles Duhigg focused on his stretch and SMART goal when writing the book. Key Terms So far, the concepts we’ve explored have related to increasing your personal productivity. Now we’ll shift the focus to organizational productivity. In particular, we’ll discuss how you can build productive teams in the workplace.