Smarter Faster Better, by Charles Duhigg

By PAUL BLOOMMARCH 25, 2016

SMARTER FASTER BETTER
The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business
By Charles Duhigg
Illustrated. 380 pp. Random House. $28.

Barack Obama is a life hacker. When interviewed by Michael Lewis a few years ago,
Obama explained that he wears only gray or blue suits so as to cut down the choices he
has to make each day, and then he cited research showing that you need to focus your
decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. The studies that Obama was
referring to suggest that if you exhaust your decision-making capacity with unnecessary
choices, youll end up making mistakes when it really matters.

Like many of us, Obama is influenced by the literature that draws upon psychology,
neuroscience and behavioral economics to tell us how to be happier and more
successful. The New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg has already contributed to
this genre with his first book, The Power of Habit, which was an engagingly deep dive
into the psychology of how routines are formed and modified.

His newest book is broader in scope. It has eight main chapters, each focusing on a
single idea about how to increase productivity in business or in life, each telling a story
of how the idea works in practice. 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. And Duhigg is a pleasure to read. Unlike a lot of contributors to this genre,
hes a journalist, not a professor, and it shows in his prose, as when he casually
describes someone as having a passion for long skirts and Hooters chicken wings.

But its not clear that his book lives up to its subtitle, The Secrets of Being Productive
in Life and Business. Many of Duhiggs conclusions seem less like secrets and more
like common sense. He reminds us that its important to set goals, both specific and
long-term. We learn that its good for an organization to allow people to participate and
express their views. I enjoyed reading about Annie Duke, cognitive scientist turned
poker player, but the upshot of this chapter was: When you plan for the future, try to
reason in terms of probability, not certainty. Are there really many people who need
reminding that we live in an uncertain world?

Other suggestions are less obvious, but they might not be that reliable as practical
advice. Duhigg tells of a pilot who landed an Airbus during a huge system failure by
thinking about the plane in a different way, as if it were a single-engine Cessna. Get
into the habit of telling yourself stories, Duhigg writes these stories will tell us what
to focus on and what to ignore. But one can easily find cases in which stories make us
stupid indeed, one of the main themes of Maria Konnikovas recent book, The
Confidence Game, is that our appetite for narrative can blind us to reality and make us
easy prey to con men.

Or consider choices. Duhigg talks about how the act of making choices invigorates and
motivates us, and suggests that we add opportunities for decision-making into our
lives. This really is interesting and unintuitive research. But, as Obama realized,
choices can also exhaust us, so its not clear whether the advantages of additional
choices exceed the costs.
 Certainly, Duhigg is sensitive to these sorts of nuances. He tells us about a kidnapping
case that was solved in part because an F.B.I. agent acted on his own initiative, and he
argues that organizations work better if employees have more autonomy. But he then
concedes that there are good reasons companies dont decentralize authority, and he
notes that the agent might have wasted time by following the wrong hunch. As he puts
it elsewhere, an instinct for decisiveness is great until its not.

He suggests that forcing people to commit to ambitious, seemingly out-of-reach

objectives can spark outsize jumps in innovation and productivity but then, on the
next page, he worries that such goals might cause panic and convince people that
success is impossible because the goal is too big.

Duhigg ends his book with A Readers Guide to Using These Ideas, and while some of
his proposals are clever there are some good tips about handling email overload
most have a fortune-cookie flavor, such as Envision multiple futures.

Why cant a writer as astute as Duhigg come up with less ambiguous advice? One
concern is his method. While his book contains an occasional failure story, the main
focus of each chapter is on a person or organization that did well. This makes intuitive
sense. If you want to be good at tennis, watch a champion tennis player; if you want to
learn the secrets of a successful marriage, look at happy couples. Few of us approach
people who do poorly and ask them the secrets of their failure.

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But we should. As Duhigg himself puts it, many successful people ... spend an
enormous amount of time seeking out information on failures. He should have done
more of that in his book. He talks about the great seasons of Saturday Night Live and
notes that while there was tension and infighting, the cast members still felt safe
enough to criticize one another without fear of punishment. This is plainly a good
thing, but if the same attitude was present for the lousy seasons of the show, then
receptivity to criticism cant be the secret sauce. Annie Duke uses probabilistic
reasoning to win at poker, but if the players she beats also calculate the odds, then that
isnt what makes someone a poker champion.

Also, stories can tell us only so much. Ive never read a book from this genre that wasnt
filled with stories stories are memorable and appealing and persuasive and
Duhiggs skill as a storyteller makes his book so engaging to read. But individual cases,
whether of success or failure, tell you little about general principles, because you cant
distinguish factors that really made a difference from accidental features of the
examples youve chosen. My favorite musician might take LSD, but I cant know that
its the acid that makes her so good maybe shed be better without it. One needs to do
large-scale studies or, ideally, experiments. Take 200 musicians, randomly choose 100
of them to take acid, and force 100 to abstain; if the first group makes better music,
well, now youve found a secret of productivity.

If Duhigg used such methods, what would he find? Perhaps very little. Plainly, there are
things worth knowing about how to live ones life and run an organization. You can
learn to become a better poker player, a better pilot or a better manager, and M.B.A.
programs arent entirely a waste of time. But reading Duhiggs book makes one wonder
whether there really are any secrets here any surprising generalizations of broad
applicability. Readers looking for quick and dirty life hacks are going to be
disappointed. Better to ignore the how-to subtitle and just enjoy the excellent stories.
Paul Bloom is a professor of psychology at Yale. He is writing a book about the problems with
empathy.

A version of this review appears in print on March 27, 2016, on page BR19 of the Sunday Book
Review with the headline: More and Better. Today's Paper|Subscribe

Book Summary: Smarter Faster Better by

Charles Duhigg

The Book in Three Sentences

1. Productivity is the name we give our attempts to figure out the best uses of our

energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize the most meaningful rewards with the

least wasted effort.

2. Motivation is more like a skillit can be learned and honed.

3. Making good choices relies on forecasting the future.

The Five Big Ideas

1. To motivate yourself, you must believe you have autonomy over your actions and

surroundings.

2. People who are particularly good at managing their attention are in the habit of

telling themselves stories all the time.

3. 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.

 4. Good decision making is contingent on a basic ability to envision what happens

next.

5. Innovation becomes more likely when old ideas are mixed in new ways.

Smarter Faster Better Summary

Productivity, put simply, is the name we give our attempts to figure out the best

uses of our energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize the most meaningful rewards

with the least wasted effort.

Motivation is more like a skill, akin to reading or writing, that can be learned and

honed.

The trick [to motivation], researchers say, is realizing that a prerequisite to

motivation is believing we have authority over our actions and surroundings. To

motivate ourselves, we must feel like we are in control.

When people believe they are in control, they tend to work harder and push

themselves more.

One way to prove to ourselves that we are in control is by making decisions.

The first step in creating drive is giving people opportunities to make choices that

provide them with a sense of autonomy and self-determination.

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.

 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.

Researchers have found that people with an internal locus of control tend to praise

or blame themselves for success or failure, rather than assigning responsibility to

things outside their influence.

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.

Studies show that someones locus of control can be influenced through training

and feedback.

The students who had been praised for their intelligencewho had been primed to

think in terms of things they could not influencewere much more likely to focus on

the easier puzzles during the second round of play, even though they had been

complimented for being smart. They were less motivated to push themselves. They

later said the experiment wasnt much fun. In contrast, students who had been praised

for their hard workwho were encouraged to frame the experience in terms of self-

determinationwent to the hard puzzles. They worked longer and scored better.

They later said they had a great time.

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

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

 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.

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.

The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation, in other words, are

decisions that do two things: They convince us were in control and they endow our

actions with larger meaning.

An internal locus of control emerges when we develop a mental habit of

transforming chores into meaningful choices, when we assert that we have authority

over our lives.

When we start a new task, or confront an unpleasant chore, we should take a

moment to ask ourselves why.

Once we start asking why, those small tasks become pieces of a larger constellation

of meaningful projects, goals, and values. 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.

Self-motivation flourishes when we realize that replying to an email or helping a

coworker, on its own, might be relatively unimportant. But it is part of a bigger

project that we believe in, that we want to achieve, that we have chosen to do.
 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.

Self-motivation becomes easier when we see our choices as affirmations of our

deeper values and goals.

Teams succeed when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members

show they are sensitive to how one another feels.

Cognitive tunneling can cause people to become overly focused on whatever is

directly in front of their eyes or become preoccupied with immediate tasks.

Once in a cognitive tunnel, we lose our ability to direct our focus. Instead, we latch

on to the easiest and most obvious stimulus, often at the cost of common sense.

Reactive thinking is at the core of how we allocate our attention, and in many

settings, its a tremendous asset.

Reactive thinking is how we build habits, and its why to-do lists and calendar

alerts are so helpful: Rather than needing to decide what to do next, we can take

advantage of our reactive instincts and automatically proceed. Reactive thinking, in a

sense, outsources the choices and control that, in other settings, create motivation.

The downside of reactive thinking is that habits and reactions can become so

automatic they overpower our judgment.

People who are particuarly good at managing their attention share certain characteristics:

1. They Create pictures in their minds of what they expect to see

2. They tell themselves stories about whats going on as it occurs

3. They narrate their own experiences within their heads

4. They are more likely to answer questions with anecdotes rather than simple

responses

5. They say when they daydream, theyre often imagining future conversations

6. They visualize their days with more specificity than the rest of us do

Psychologists have a phrase for this kind of habitual forecasting: creating mental

models.

All people rely on mental models to some degree. We all tell ourselves stories about

how the world works, whether we realize were doing it or not. But some of us build

more robust models than others. We envision the conversations were going to have

with more specificity, and imagine what we are going to do later that day in greater

detail. As a result, were better at choosing where to focus and what to ignore.

People who are particularly good at managing their attention are in the habit of

telling themselves stories all the time. They engage in constant forecasting. They

daydream about the future and then, when life clashes with their imagination, their

attention gets snagged.

Cognitive tunneling and reactive thinking occur when our mental spotlights go

from dim to bright in a split second. But if we are constantly telling ourselves stories

and creating mental pictures, that beam never fully powers down. Its always jumping
 around inside our heads. And, as a result, when it has to flare to life in the real world,

were not blinded by its glare.

By developing a habit of telling ourselves stories about whats going on around us,

we learn to sharpen where our attention goes.

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work,

cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and

do when you get to your desk. Then youll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which

real life deviates from the narrative inside your head.

Narrate your life, as you are living it, and youll encode those experiences deeper

in your brain.

It is easier to know whats ahead when theres a well-rounded script inside your

head.

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 react.

To become genuinely productive, we must take control of our attention; we must

build mental models that put us firmly in charge.

Get in a pattern of forcing yourself to anticipate whats next.

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.

 Numerous academic studies have examined the impact of stretch goals, and have

consistently found that forcing people to commit to ambitious, seemingly out-of-

reach objectives can spark outsized jumps in innovation and productivity.

For a stretch goal to inspire, it often needs to be paired with something like the

SMART system.

The reason why we need both stretch goals and SMART goals is that

audaciousness, on its own, can be terrifying. Its often not clear how to start on a

stretch goal. And so, for a stretch goal to become more than just an aspiration, we

need a disciplined mindset to show us how to turn a far-off objective into a series of

realistic short-term aims.

Stretch goals can spark remarkable innovations, but only when people have a

system for breaking them into concrete plans.

The problem with many to-do lists is that when we write down a series of short-

term objectives, we are, in effect, allowing our brains to seize on the sense of

satisfaction that each task will deliver. We are encouraging our need for closure and

our tendency to freeze on a goal without asking if its the right aim. The result is that

we spend hours answering unimportant emails instead of writing a big, thoughtful

memobecause it feels so satisfying to clean out our in-box.

Come up with a menu of your biggest ambitions. Dream big and stretch. Describe

the goals that, at first glance, seem impossible, such as starting a company or running

a marathon. Then choose one aim and start breaking it into short-term, concrete steps.

Ask yourself: What realistic progress can you make in the next day, week, month?

How many miles can you realistically run tomorrow and over the next three weeks?
 What are the specific, short-term steps along the path to bigger success? What

timeline makes sense? Will you open your store in six months or a year? How will

you measure your progress? Within psychology, these smaller ambitions are known

as proximal goals, and repeated studies have shown that breaking a big ambition

into proximal goals makes the large objective more likely to occur.

When Pychyl writes a to-do list, for instance, he starts by putting a stretch goal

such as conduct research that explains goal/neurology interfaceat the top of the

page. Underneath comes the nitty gritty: the small tasks that tell him precisely what

to do. Specific: Download grant application. Timeline: By tomorrow.

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

Good decision making is contingent on a basic ability to envision what happens

next.

Making good choices relies on forecasting the future. Accurate forecasting requires

exposing ourselves to as many successes and disappointments as possible.

How do we learn to make better decisions? In part, by training ourselves to think

probabilistically.

To [make better decisions], we must force ourselves to envision various futures

to hold contradictory scenarios in our minds simultaneouslyand then expose

ourselves to a wide spectrum of successes and failures to develop an intuition about

which forecasts are more or less likely to come true.

 There are numerous ways to build a Bayesian instinct. Some of them are as simple

as looking at our past choices and asking ourselves: Why was I so certain things

would turn out one way? Why was I wrong?

Innovation becomes more likely when old ideas are mixed in new ways.

If you want to become an innovation broker and increase the productivity of your own

creative process, there are three things that can help:

1. First, be sensitive to your own experiences. Pay attention to how things make you

think and feel. Look to your own life as creative fodder, and broker your own

experiences into the wider world.

2. Second, recognize that the panic and stress you feel as you try to create isnt a

sign that everything is falling apart. Rather, its the condition that helps make us

flexible enough to seize something new. Creative desperation can be critical; anxiety

is what often pushes us to see old ideas in new ways. The path out of that turmoil is

to look at what you know, to reinspect conventions youve seen work and try to apply

them to fresh problems. The creative pain should be embraced.

3. Finally, remember that the relief accompanying a creative breakthrough, while

sweet, can also blind us to seeing alternatives. It is critical to maintain some

distance from what we create. Without self-criticism, one idea can quickly crowd out

competitors. But we can regain that critical distance by forcing ourselves to critique

what weve already done, by making ourselves look at it from a completely different

perspective.

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

Bayes rule. The probability of an event, based on conditions that might be related

to the event.

Cognitive tunneling. An inattentional blindness phenomenon in which you are too

focused on instrumentation, task at hand, internal thought, etc. and not on the present

environment.

Proximal goals. Short-term goals.

Smarter Faster Better, Part II:

Stretch Goals + SMART Goals = SUCCESS

(Stretch + SMART goals examples included)

EP133. STRETCH GOALS + SMART GOALS = SUCCESS LISTEN ON ITUNES

This is part II of our two part series on goal setting, inspired by the book,Smarter Faster Better by

Charles Duhigg (get the full book summary here)

In part I, we talked about why its important to think big and develop stretch goals if we want to

achieve our personal + professional dreams.

But if all we do is dream big and write down a long list of audacious aspirations, its unlikely that

well take any action on them. Why? Because most of the time, its unclear what, specifically, we

need to do in order to make those dreams a reality. So, in this article/episode were going to focus

on how to do that by pairing Stretch Goals with SMART Goals

WHY DO WE NEED BOTH STRETCH GOALS AND SMART

GOALS?

Because they serve two different purposes:

Stretch goals inspire us to think big and remind us to focus on the big picture.

SMART goals goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and

Timebound help us form a concrete plan of action in order to make the stretch goal a

reality.
In the book, Duhigg tells us that the best way to do this is to put together a specific type of to-do

list one that forces you to first figure out your stretch goal, and then to figure out your SMART-

goal (aka: a specific action plan to help you achieve your big, giant stretch goal.

So the solution is writing to-do lists that pair stretch goals and SMART goals:

Come up with a menu of your biggest ambitions. Dream big and stretch. Describe the goals that, at

first glance, seem impossible, such as starting a company or running a marathon. Then choose one

aim and start breaking it into short-term, concrete steps. Ask yourself: What realistic progress can

you make in the next day, week, month? How many miles can you realistically run tomorrow and

over the next three weeks? What are the specific, short-term steps along the path to bigger success?

What timeline makes sense? Will you open your store in six months or a year? How will you

measure your progress? Within psychology, these smaller ambitions are known as proximal goals,

and repeated studies have shown that breaking a big ambition into proximal goals makes the large

objective more likely to occur.

STRETCH FIRST, GET SMART LATER

Lets go over the steps to put one of these Stretch + SMART Goal to-do lists together:

STEP 1: Start with a blank page, and write your long-term stretch goal at the top of that page.

STEP 2: Below that stretch goal, write your SMART goals related to your long-term stretch goal

Another way to think about this stretch + SMART goal combination is to think of stretch goals as

projects and SMART goals as all the actions you need to take in order to complete the project.

EXAMPLES OF STRETCH GOALS PAIRED WITH SMART

GOALS
Heres a few examples of creating to-do lists pairing stretch goals + SMART goals together:

STRETCH GOALS + SMART GOALS EXAMPLE #1

Stretch goal: run a marathon.

Specific sub-goal: Run 7 miles without stopping.

Measurable: Run twice around the park, no walking.

Achievable?: Sure, if I run 3 times a week.

Realistic?: Sure, if I wake up early every Mon, Wed, and Fri.

Timeline: Run 3 miles this week, 4 miles next week, 5 miles

STRETCH GOALS + SMART GOALS EXAMPLE #2

Stretch goal: Conduct research on how to start an online business. (Remember: write this

at the top of the page. Then, underneath your stretch goal, write down the nitty-gritty: the

small tasks that tell you precisely what you need to do.)

Specific: Register for business license at legalzoom.com

Timeline: By tomorrow.

Side note: Its not even always important that you add every component of the SMART goal

system, its just important that youre constantly aware of what to do next while youre also

always reminding yourself of your larger ambition so you dont get stuck in the weeds of doing

things just for the sake of doing them.

STRETCH GOALS + SMART GOALS EXAMPLE #3

 Stretch: Publish kickass podcast episode on how to use stretch goals and SMART goals to

succeed (in case you havent noticed, its this episode!)

Specific: Come up with at least 3 examples of pairing stretch goals with SMART goals to

help explain the concept; and then draft/outline/record article and episode.

Measurable: Reference the book, [Smarter Faster Better] by Charles Duhigg and brainstorm

ideas until I settle on three great examples I can utilize to clearly explain this concept.

Achievable?: As long as I continue to stick with my usual schedule and block time to work

on my most important goals + projects this podcast being one of them then I should

have this ready to go by Wednesday.

Realistic?: Yep. Shouldnt take more than 8 hours, split between two days, to do this from

start to finish.

Timeline:

Monday (time block: 8am12pm) Focus on reading, research, brainstorming,

writing and/or outlining both the article version as well as the podcast version of

this project.

Tuesday (time block: 8am12pm) Focus on reviewing and tweaking the final

draft, recording the podcast, and then scheduling it for release on Monday morning.

BOOM.

FINAL NOTES + HOW YOU CAN START PAIRING

STRETCH GOALS WITH SMART GOALS

In short, we need stretch and SMART goals. It doesnt matter if you call them by those names. Its

not important if your proximal goals fulfill every SMART criterion. What matters is having a large
ambition and a system for figuring out how to make it into a concrete and realistic plan. Then, as

you check the little things off your to-do list, youll move ever closer to what really matters. Youll

keep your eyes on whats both wise and SMART.

The difference between a person who sets big goals and fails to achieve them, and a person who sets

big goals and makes them a reality, is a PLAN Heres how you can start putting one of your own

together:

Start with a stretch goal

Next, pair that stretch goal with all of the SMART components related to

completing it (Remember: first choose a big giant stretch goal that gets you inspired and

excitedand then attach a SMART goal plan-of-attack to help you achieve it.)

Step back every now and then to see the big picture. As Duhigg tells us in Smarter

Faster Better, In addition to having audacious ambitions and plans that are thorough, we

still need, occasionally, to step outside the day-to-day and consider if were moving toward

goals that make sense. We still need to think.

When youre feeling down, and need inspirationthink about WHY you want to

achieve the stretch goal.

When youre feeling lost, and dont know what you need to doit means you havent

broken your stretch goal down into something actionable enough yet; so go back to step 2.

Finally, stop reading this right now and take action. You can do it. Go!
Smarter Faster Better
Charles Duhigg
When I requested a copy of this upcoming book (released March 8,
2016) from Random House*, I was really hoping for a repeat of
Duhiggs 2012 The Power of Habit. Unfortunately, there was
something missing from this one. I cant quite figure out what it is,
but I think it has to do with the first book being much easier to apply
and this one overall being more theoretical.

That being said, this was incredibly readable and had a lot of great
case studies that Ive encountered in numerous settings and other
books Ive read recently about work productivity and managing up.
Duhiggs writing style is incredibly easy to read and he seamlessly
ties together disparate examples to elucidate his points. Off the top of
my head a few are: the development of Disneys Frozen, General
Electric (I feel like Im an expert after Badowskis excellent Managing
Up), aviation near-crashes, the writing and staging of West Side Story,
Google, Cincinnati school reform, debt collection and many others!
Needless to say you will easily find at least one example that you
really identify with.

Where I really found myself nodding my head and mmhming

(mentally and verbally it got me a few odd looks on the subway),
was when Duhigg discussed teamwork throughout the book. It was
fascinating to see the numerous examples and to think about the
successful (and less successful) teams Ive been a part of in my
professional, educational and personal lives.

The data shows theres a universality to how good teams succeed.

Its important that everyone on a team feels like they have a voice,
butwhether they actually get to vote on things or make decisions
turns out not to matter much. Neither does the volume of work or
physical co-location. What matters is having a voice and social
sensitivity. (Ch. 2, Teams, my emphasis)

I stressed that no one at Disney needed to wait for permission to

come up with solutions. What is the point of hiring smart people, we
asked, if you dont empower them to fix whats broken? (Ch.
5, Managing Others, Ed Catmull Pixar co-founder)

Duhigg and the many example he provides, drill down to the essence
of team work and the importance of communication, going up AND
coming down. When I think about the times Ive felt lost or
inconsequential at my jobs its been when Ive had all decision-
making abilities removed from either a change in management or
lack of flexibility. Using Duhiggs suggestions of finding ANYTHING you
can make a decision about will be incredibly useful going forward. Im
aware that allowing workers the freedom to make choices and being a
worker who is able to make choices is a perk of seniority and
longevity, but it was interesting to read that at ALL levels this ability
is just as important as the ability to feel as if you are being heard,
regardless of the outcome.

The other big thing that stood out to me is how productive I must
already be (and I know I am), because Duhigg has now given me the
vocabulary to describe what it is I do. I try to explain things to
supervisors about why Im able to produce the amount of work I do
and still have the time for the creative impulses to strike, but Ive
never had the vocabulary. Now that I know Im constantly creating
mental models and desperately need clear delineated psychological
safety (aka team standards), Im (if possible) even more confident in
my abilities.

As a last note, I really enjoyed this line about real life siblings and how
they Frozenultimately adopted it as the conflict for the stories
sisters.
Siblings dont grow apart because one is good and one is bad. They
grow apart because theyre both messes and then they come
together when they realize they need each other. Thats what I want
to know. (Ch.7, Innovation, Jennifer Lee Screenwriter/Director,
Disneys Frozen)

It really struck true and reminds me of how many siblings while living
together through high school are ready to murder each other or
want nothing to do with each other, but the second there is some
independence and/or maturity from living alone, they start to bond a
lot better. I know it was true for my sister and I. The older we get and
the more sorted our lives become the better we are at communication
and feeling like were not the crazies in the family

The only thing that bothered me about this book was the citation
scheme. Similar to Dr. Mtters Marvels, there was no line, footnote or
end note citation (minimal but only for immediate clarification). The
citations were all listed by chapter and with a brief snippet of
whatever text the citation referred to to guide you. If anyone knows
what system this is please let me know so I can read more
about it and find ways to break through its seeming lack of
clarity.

Recommendation: If youre expecting a how-to-guide dont bother.

Although Duhigg provides a lot of tips (especially in the Appendix,
read it if you read anything), this isnt a how to book. This is a book of
case studies that illustrate the general ideas of how to become more
productive, and although fascinating, you have to take a lot of extra
time to extrapolate what it is you think you should get out of them.

* I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher in return for
my honest opinion. No goods or services were exchanged.
Opening Line: My introduction to the science of productivity began
in the summer of 2011, when I asked a friend of a friend for a favor.

Closing Line: We can all become more productive. My hope is that

you now know how to start. (Not whited out as this is a work of
nonfiction.)

Additional Quotes from Stronger Faster Better (Sorry for the

lack of page numbers, but the galley is off Im pretty sure by a few
pages so I just put the chapter in which the quote appears.)
Productivity, put simply, is the name we give our attempts to figure
out the best uses of our energy, intellect, and time as we try to seize
the most meaningful rewards with the least wasted effort. Its a
process of learning how to succeed with less stress and struggle. Its
about getting things done without sacrificing everything we care
about along the way. (Introduction)

Motivation is more like a skill, akin to reading or writing, that can be

learned and honed. Scientists have found that people can get better
at self-motivation if they practice the right way. The trick, researchers
say, is realizing that prerequisite to motivation is believing we have
authority over our actions and surroundings. To motivate ourselves,
we must feel like we are in control. (Ch. 1, Motivation)

As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well, said
Woolley. But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time,
the collective intelligence declined. The conversations didnt need to
be equal every minute, but in aggregate, they had to balance out.
(Ch. 2, Teams)

Team members might behave certain ways as individualsthey may

chafe against authority or prefer working independentlybut often,
inside a group, theres a set of norms that override those preferences
and encourage deference to the team. (Chapter 2, Teams)
For psychological safety to emerge among a group, teammates dont
have to be friends. They do, however, need to be socially sensitive
and ensure everyone feels heard. (Ch. 2, Teams)

In the age of automation, knowing how to manage your focus is

more critical than ever before. (Ch. 3, Focus)

People like Darlene who are particularly good at managing their

attention tend to share certain characteristics. One is a propensity to
create pictures in their minds of what the expect to see. These people
tell themselves stories about whats going on as it occurs. They
narrate their own experiences within their heads. They are more likely
to answer questions with anecdote rather than simple responses.
They say when they daydream, theyre often imagining future
conversations. They visualize their days with more specificity than the
rest of us do. (Ch. 3, Focus)

Researches have found similar results in dozens of other studies.

People who know how to manage their attention and who habitually
build robust mental models tend to earn more money and get better
grades. Moreover, experiments show that anyone can learn to
habitually construct mental models. (Ch. 3, Focus)

To become genuinely productive, we must take control of our

attention; we must build mental models that put us firmly in charge.
When youre driving to work, force yourself to envision your day.
While youre sitting at a meeting or at lunch, describe to yourself
what youre seeing and what it means. Find other people to hear your
theories and challenge them. Get in a pattern of forcing yourself to
anticipate whats next. If you are a parent, anticipate what your
children will say at the dinner table. Then youll notice what goes
unmentioned or if theres a stray comment that you should see as a
warning sign. (Ch. 3, Focus)
Stretch goals can spark remarkable innovations, but only when
people have a system for breaking them into concrete plans. (Ch.
4, Goal Setting)

Good decision making is contingent on a basic ability to envision

what happens next. (Ch. 6, Decision Making, authors emphasis)

This, ultimately, is one of the most important secrets of learning how

to make better decisions. Making good choices relies on forecasting
the future. Accurate forecasting requires exposing ourselves to as
many successes and disappointments as possible. We need to sit in
crowded and empty theaters to know how movies will perform; we
need to spend time around both babies and old people to accurately
gauge life spans; and we need to talk to thriving and failing
colleagues to develop good business instincts. (Ch. 6, Decision
Making, authors emphasis)

In theory, the ongoing explosion in information should make the

right answers more obvious. In practice, though being surrounded by
data often makes it harder to decide. (Ch. 8, Absorbing Data)

Its not enough for your bathroom scale to send daily updates to an
app on your phone. If you want to lose weight, force yourself to plot
those measurements on graph paper and youll be more likely to
choose a salad over a hamburger at lunch. If you read a book filled
with new ideas, force yourself to put it down and explain the concepts
to someone sitting next to you and youll be more likely to apply them
in your life. When you find a new piece of information, force yourself
to engage with it, to use it in an experiment or describe it to a friend
and then you will start building the mental folders that are at the
core of learning. (Ch. 8, Absorbing Data)