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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.
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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.
Praise for Smarter Faster Better
“A pleasure to read . . . Duhigg’s skill as a storyteller makes his book so engaging to read.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Not only will Smarter Faster Better 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 Businessweek
“Duhigg pairs relatable anecdotes with the research behind why some people and businesses are not as efficient as others.”—Chicago Tribune
“The book covers a lot of ground through meticulous reporting and deft analysis, presenting a wide range of case studies . . . with insights that apply to the rest of us.”—The Wall Street Journal
- Sales Rank: #856 in Books
- Published on: 2016-03-08
- Released on: 2016-03-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.30" w x 6.40" l, 1.39 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 400 pages
Review
“A pleasure to read . . . [Charles] Duhigg’s skill as a storyteller makes his book so engaging to read.”—The New York Times Book Review
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“Not only will Smarter Faster Better 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 Businessweek
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“Duhigg pairs relatable anecdotes with the research behind why some people and businesses are not as efficient as others. . . . He takes readers from inside the cockpit of a crashing plane to the writing room of Disney’s Frozen.”—Chicago Tribune
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“The book covers a lot of ground through meticulous reporting and deft analysis, presenting a wide range of case studies . . . with insights that apply to the rest of us.”—The Wall Street Journal
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“[Duhigg] looks at the numerous ways that people can become more effective, whether in improving motivation, setting goals, making decisions or thinking creatively . . . [He’s] an effective storyteller with a knack for combining social science, fastidious reporting and entertaining anecdotes.”—The Economist
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“Engagingly written, solidly reported, thought-provoking and worth a read.”—Associated Press
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“Charles Duhigg is the master of the life hack.”—GQ
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“A gifted storyteller, Duhigg . . . combines his reporting skills with cutting-edge research in psychology and behavioural economics to explain why some companies and people get so much done, while some fail. Almost all books written in this genre are full of case studies and stories, but Duhigg’s storytelling skills make this book memorable and persuasive. Duhigg succeeds in challenging our mindsets and existing thought processes. It is not just another productivity book. It is about making sense of overwhelming data we live with.”—The Financial Express
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“There are valuable lessons in Smarter, Faster, Better. . . . Duhigg is a terrific storyteller, and a master of the cliffhanger.”—Financial Times
“As he did in The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg melds cutting-edge science, deep reporting, and wide-ranging stories to give us a fuller, more human way of thinking about how productivity actually happens. He manages to reframe an entire cultural conversation: Being productive isn’t only about the day-to-day and to-do lists. It’s about seeing our lives as a series of choices, and learning that we have power over how we think about the world.”—Susan Cain, author of Quiet
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“A brilliant distillation of the personal and organizational behaviors that produce extraordinary results. Duhigg uses engaging storytelling to highlight fascinating research and core principles that we can all learn and use in our daily lives. A masterful must-read for anyone who wants to get more (and more creative) stuff done.”—David Allen, author of Getting Things Done
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“Charles Duhigg has a gift for asking just the right question, and then igniting the same curiosity in the rest of us. In Smarter Faster Better he finds provocative answers to a riddle of our age: how to become more productive (by two times, or even ten times) and less busy, how to be more effective in the world and more in control of our lives. Duhigg has rendered, yet again, a great service with his sharp, lucid prose.”—Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
About the Author
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter for The New York Times and the author of The Power of Habit. He is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk awards. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.
Charles Duhigg is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com or visit www.prhspeakers.com.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Motivation
Reimagining Boot Camp, Nursing Home Rebellions, and the Locus of Control
The trip was intended as a celebration, a twenty-nine-day tour of South America that would take Robert, who had just turned sixty, and his wife, Viola, first to Brazil, then over the Andes into Bolivia and Peru. Their itinerary included tours of Incan ruins, a boat trip on Lake Titicaca, the occasional craft market, and a bit of birding.
That much relaxation, Robert had joked with friends before leaving, seemed unsafe. He was already anticipating the fortune he would spend on calls to his secretary. Over the previous half century Robert Philippe had built a small gas station into an auto parts empire in rural Louisiana and had made himself into a Bayou mogul through hard work, charisma, and hustle. In addition to the auto-parts business, he also owned a chemical company, a paper supplier, various swaths of land, and a real estate firm. And now here he was, entering his seventh decade, and his wife had convinced him to spend a month in a bunch of countries where, he suspected, it would be awfully difficult to find a TV showing the LSU-Ole Miss game.
Robert liked to say there wasn't a dirt road or back alley along the Gulf Coast he hadn't driven at least once to drum up business. As Philippe Incorporated had grown, Robert had become famous for dragging big-city businessmen from New Orleans and Atlanta out to ramshackle bars and forbidding them from leaving until the ribs were picked clean and bottles sucked dry. Then, while everyone nursed painful hangovers the next morning, Robert would convince them to sign deals worth millions. Bartenders always knew to fill his glass with club soda while serving the bigwigs cocktails. Robert hadn't touched booze in years.
He was a member of the Knights of Columbus and the chamber of commerce, past president of the Louisiana Association of Wholesalers and the Greater Baton Rouge Port Commission, the chairman of his local bank, and a loyal donor to whichever political party was more inclined to endorse his business permits that day. "You never met a man who loved working so much," his daughter, Roxann, told me.
Robert and Viola had been looking forward to this South American trip. But when they stepped off the plane in La Paz, midway through the monthlong tour, Robert started acting oddly. He staggered through the airport and had to sit down to catch his breath at the baggage claim. When a group of children approached him to ask for coins, Robert threw change at their feet and laughed. In the bus to the hotel, Robert started a loud, rambling monologue about various countries he had visited and the relative attractiveness of the women who lived there. Maybe it was the altitude. At twelve thousand feet, La Paz is one of the highest cities in the world.
Once they were unpacked, Viola urged Robert to nap. He wasn't interested, he said. He wanted to go out. For the next hour, he marched through town buying trinkets and exploding in a rage whenever locals didn't understand English. He eventually agreed to return to the hotel and fell asleep, but woke repeatedly during the night to vomit. The next morning, he said he felt faint but became angry when Viola suggested he rest. He spent the third day in bed. On day four, Viola decided enough was enough and cut the vacation short.
Back home in Louisiana, Robert seemed to improve. His disorientation faded and he stopped saying strange things. His wife and children, however, were still worried. Robert was lethargic and refused to leave the house unless prodded. Viola had expected him to rush into the office upon their return, but after four days he hadn't so much as checked in with his secretary. When Viola reminded him that deer hunting season was approaching and he'd need to get a license, Robert said he thought he'd skip it this year. She phoned a doctor. Soon, they were driving to the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans.
The chief of neurology, Dr. Richard Strub, put Robert through a battery of tests. Vital signs were normal. Blood work showed nothing unusual. No indication of infection, diabetes, heart attack, or stroke. Robert demonstrated understanding of that day's newspaper and could clearly recall his childhood. He could interpret a short story. The Revised Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale showed a normal IQ.
"Can you describe your business to me?" Dr. Strub asked.
Robert explained how his company was organized and the details of a few contracts they had recently won.
"Your wife says you're behaving differently," Dr. Strub said.
"Yeah," Robert replied. "I don't seem to have as much get-up-and-go as I used to."
"It didn't seem to bother him," Dr. Strub later told me. "He told me about the personality changes very matter of fact, like he was describing the weather."
Except for the sudden apathy, Dr. Strub couldn't find evidence of illness or injury. He suggested to Viola they wait a few weeks to see if Robert's disposition improved. When they returned a month later, however, there had been no change. Robert wasn't interested in seeing old friends, his wife said. He didn't read anymore. Previously, it had been infuriating to watch television with him because he would flip from channel to channel, looking for a more exciting show. Now, he just stared at the screen, indifferent to what was on. She had finally convinced him to go into the office, but his secretary said he spent hours at his desk gazing into space.
"Are you unhappy or depressed?" Dr. Strub asked.
"No," Robert said. "I feel good."
"Can you tell me how you spent yesterday?"
Robert described a day of watching television.
"You know, your wife tells me your employees are concerned because they don't see you around the office much," said Dr. Strub.
"I guess I'm more interested in other things now," Robert replied.
"Like what?"
"Oh, I don't know," Robert said, and then went silent and stared at the wall.
Dr. Strub prescribed various medications--drugs to combat hormonal imbalances and attention disorders--but none seemed to make a difference. People suffering from depression will say they are unhappy and describe hopeless thoughts. Robert, however, said he was satisfied with life. He admitted his personality change was odd, but it didn't upset him.
Dr. Strub administered an MRI, which allowed him to collect images from inside Robert's cranium. Deep inside his skull, near the center of Robert's head, he saw a small shadow, evidence that burst vessels had caused a tiny amount of blood to pool temporarily inside a part of Robert's brain known as the striatum. Such injuries, in rare cases, can cause brain damage or mood swings. But except for the listlessness, there was little in Robert's behavior to suggest that he was suffering any neurological disability.
A year later, Dr. Strub submitted an article to the Archives of Neurology. Robert's "behavior change was characterized by apathy and lack of motivation," he wrote. "He has given up his hobbies and fails to make timely decisions in his work. He knows what actions are required in his business, yet he procrastinates and leaves details unattended. Depression is not present." The cause of this passivity, Dr. Strub suggested, was the slight damage in his brain, which had possibly been triggered by Bolivia's altitude. Even that, however, was uncertain. "It is possible that the hemorrhages are coincidental and that the high altitude played no physiologic role."
It was an interesting but ultimately inconclusive case, Dr. Strub wrote.
Over the next two decades, a handful of other studies appeared in medical journals. There was the sixty-year-old professor who experienced a rapid "decrease in interest." He had been an expert in his field with a fierce work ethic. Then, one day, he simply stopped. "I just lack spirit, energy," he told his physician. "I have no go. I must force myself to get up in the morning."
There was a nineteen-year-old woman who had fallen briefly unconscious after a carbon monoxide leak and then seemed to lose motivation for the most basic tasks. She would sit in one position all day unless forced to move. Her father learned he couldn't leave her alone, as a neurologist wrote, when she "was found by her parents with heavy sunburns on the beach at the very same place where she laid down several hours before, under an umbrella: intense inertia had prevented her from changing her position with that of the shadow while the sun had turned around."
There was a retired police officer who began waking up "late in the morning, would not wash unless urged to do so, but meekly complied as soon as his wife asked him to. Then he would sit in his armchair, from which he would not move." There was a middle-aged man who was stung by a wasp and, not long after, lost the desire to interact with his wife, children, and business associates.
In the late 1980s, a French neurologist in Marseille named Michel Habib heard about a few of these cases, became intrigued, and started searching archives and journals for similar stories. The studies he found were rare but consistent: A relative would bring a patient in for an examination, complaining of a sudden change in behavior and passivity. Doctors would find nothing medically wrong. The patients scored normally when tested for mental illness. They had moderate to high IQs and appeared physically healthy. None of them said they felt depressed or complained about their apathy.
Habib began contacting the physicians treating these patients and asked them to collect MRIs. He then discovered another commonality: All the apathetic individuals had tiny pinpricks of burst vessels in their striatum, the same place where Robert had a small shadow inside his skull.
The striatum serves as a kind of central dispatch for the brain, relaying commands from areas like the prefrontal cortex, where decisions are made, to an older part of our neurology, the basal ganglia, where movement and emotions emerge. Neurologists believe the striatum helps translate decisions into action and plays an important role in regulating our moods. The damage from the burst vessels inside the apathetic patients' striata was small--too small, some of Habib's colleagues said, to explain their behavior changes. Beyond those pinpricks, however, Habib could find nothing else to explain why their motivation had disappeared.
Neurologists have long been interested in striatal injuries because the striatum is involved in Parkinson's disease. But whereas Parkinson's often causes tremors, a loss of physical control, and depression, the patients Habib studied only seemed to lose their drive. "Parkinsonians have trouble initiating movement," Habib told me. "But the apathetic patients had no problems with motion. It's just that they had no desire to move." The nineteen-year-old woman who couldn't be left alone at the beach, for example, was able to clean her room, wash the dishes, fold the laundry, and follow recipes when instructed to do so by her mother. However, if she wasn't asked to help, she wouldn't move all day. When her mother inquired what she wanted for dinner, the woman said she had no preferences.
When examined by doctors, Habib wrote, the apathetic sixty-year-old professor would "stay motionless and speechless during endless periods, sitting in front of the examiner, waiting for the first question." When asked to describe his work, he could discuss complicated ideas and quote papers from memory. Then he would lapse back into silence until another question was posed.
None of the patients Habib studied responded to medications, and none seemed to improve with counseling. "Patients demonstrate a more or less total indifference to life events that would normally provoke an emotional response, positive or negative," Habib wrote.
"It was as if the part of their brain where motivation lives, where �lan vital is stored, had completely disappeared," he told me. "There were no negative thoughts, there were no positive thoughts. There were no thoughts at all. They hadn't become less intelligent or less aware of the world. Their old personalities were still inside, but there was a total absence of drive or momentum. Their motivation was completely gone."
II.
The room where the experiment was conducted at the University of Pittsburgh was painted a cheery yellow and contained an fMRI machine, a computer monitor, and a smiling researcher who looked too young to have a PhD. All participants in the study were welcomed into the room, asked to remove their jewelry and any metal from their pockets, and then told to lie on a plastic table that slid into the fMRI.
Once lying down, they could see a computer screen. The researcher explained that a number between one and nine was going to appear on the monitor. Before that number appeared, participants had to guess if it was going to be higher or lower than five by pressing various buttons. There would be multiple rounds of guessing, the researcher said. There was no skill involved in this game, he explained. No abilities were being tested. And though he didn't mention this to the participants, the researcher thought this was one of the most boring games in existence. In fact, he had explicitly designed it that way.
The truth was, the researcher, Mauricio Delgado, didn't care if participants guessed right or wrong. Rather, he was interested in understanding which parts of their brains became active as they played an intensely dull game. As they made their guesses, the fMRI was recording the activity inside their skulls. Delgado wanted to identify where the neurological sensations of excitement and anticipation--where motivation--originated. Delgado told participants they could quit whenever they wanted. Yet he knew, from prior experience, that people would make guess after guess, sometimes for hours, as they waited to see if they had guessed wrong or right.
Each participant lay inside the machine and watched the screen intently. They hit buttons and made predictions. Some cheered when they won or moaned when they lost. Delgado, monitoring the activity inside of their heads, saw that people's striata--that central dispatch--lit up with activity whenever participants played, regardless of the outcome. This kind of striatal activity, Delgado knew, was associated with emotional reactions--in particular, with feelings of expectation and excitement.
As Delgado was finishing one session, a participant asked if he could continue playing on his own, at home.
"I don't think that's possible," Delgado told him, explaining that the game only existed on his computer. Besides, he said, letting the man in on a secret, the experiment was rigged. To make sure the game was consistent from person to person, Delgado had programmed the computer so that everyone won the first round, lost the second, won the third, lost the fourth, and so on, in a predetermined pattern. The outcome had been determined ahead of time. It was like betting on a two-headed quarter.
"That's okay," the man replied. "I don't mind. I just like to play."
"It was odd," Delgado told me later. "There's no reason he should have wanted to continue playing once he knew it was rigged. I mean, where's the fun in a rigged game? Your choices have no impact. But it took me five minutes to convince him he didn't want to take the game home."
Most helpful customer reviews
800 of 876 people found the following review helpful.
Too much reliance on anecdote to prove its points
By Edward Durney
Charles Duhigg is a good journalist (his share of a Pulitzer Prize proves that), and his book Smarter Faster Better is a good read. I enjoyed reading it. It's inspiring and insightful.
But the book promises to be more than just entertainment. The title takes off the Olympic motto: Citius Altius Fortius (Faster Higher Stronger), and its cover shows a runner smartly running directly to the center of a maze. A self-help, self-improvement type of book, it promises "the secrets of being productive in life and business". That I don't think the book delivers.
Why not? The book is full of stories. Anecdotes. Case studies. Whatever you want to call them. Charles Duhigg researches a lot of disparate incidents involving various people, and tries to bring them together to show us how to draw on other people's experiences to be more productive. But he fails.
That's because you can pull out of anecdotes pretty much anything you want to. I can find an anecdote to support any argument I want to make. Anecdotes are like statistics. As Simpson's paradox says, often the same statistics can be used to show something and its exact opposite. The same with anecdotes.
Take Charles Duhigg's use of the life of Rosa Parks in his book The Power of Habit. He says that she shows the power of social habits. He tells of how her husband said she was so social she rarely ate dinner at home, instead eating at the home of friends. That gave her the social strength to start a movement.
But Susan Cain (a blurber for this book) in her book Quiet, tells the story of Rosa Parks to support her argument of the power of introverts. While extroverts tend to gain their energy in social situations, introverts typically recharge through solitude and feel drained from too much stimulation. The same person, but one author sees her as a social butterfly and another as an introvert who sought solitude.
That's not to say that Charles Duhigg or Susan Cain is wrong. And I don't want to push this example too strongly. But I do think that many authors, and most TED talk speakers, depend too much on anecdote and story telling to persuade, while they would do better to just entertain. I have no problem using anecdotes to pump people up. But to try to derive secrets from them seems a step too far.
Take another example, this one from this book. Charles Duhigg uses the example of the 2009 Air France Flight 447 jetliner crash in the Atlantic as an example of "cognitive tunneling" and poor mental models. In that tragic accident, the Airbus A330 plane was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris and ran into bad weather. The plane was flying fine, but its pitot tubes apparently froze up and gave the pilots the wrong speed information. They acted on that wrong information, put the plane into a stall, and fell into the ocean.
But does that anecdote unequivocally show cognitive tunneling? And can one take from that anecdote a lesson about how not to cognitively tunnel? I don't see how. I've read several other accounts of that Air France accident, and none of them blamed it on cognitive tunneling (although one did mention tunnel vision as one of many factors).
The Air France accident seems to me more like what Charles Perrow described in Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies. Just like with the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, people do not do well when their instruments lie to them about situations they cannot see with their eyes. Another account blames the Air France accident mainly on over-reliance on automated systems in the Airbus planes. (William Langewiesche's article in Vanity Fair is fascinating reading.)
My point is that any anecdote can, by its nature, be interpreted in many different ways. Just like in the old fable six blind men saw six different things in an elephant. None were wrong, yet none were right.
Rather than books like this one, I prefer my anecdotes in the form of biographies. When I read a good biography, or a good history, the author presents a life or a series of stories in a way that the reader can draw their own conclusions. I'm sure the author's slant comes through to some extent.
But when I read a book by someone like David Halberstam or David McCullough, I usually feel as though I read a gem that provides lessons for my life. I didn't get that with this book. To me, at least, it seemed too shallow, too broad, and too pushy. Not deep, focused, and subtle.
128 of 140 people found the following review helpful.
The book's good points get buried and forgotten in an epic flood of words
By Mark G
A brief warning to busy and smart people: the book contains some interesting insights and pieces of valuable advice. But, in the tradition of most self-help books, its worthwhile points could be communicated in a book 70 to 80 percent shorter. It is just unbelievably tedious with runaway background information and stories. It contains so much superfluous material that it is actually painful to listen to. And the good points get buried and forgotten in a flood of words. I normally prefer unabridged versions of books but this one begs for a most severe abridgement.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Absolutely loved this book- I'm a sucker for books on productivity
By katarinaism
Absolutely loved this book- I'm a sucker for books on productivity, but this was one of the best in awhile. Duhigg is a great storyteller and builds suspense as you read through the anecdotes in each chapter, anxiously awaiting the wisdom that can be gleaned from each one. Unlike many books, Duhigg doesn't just proselytize general aphorisms about how to be efficient but gives very concrete examples and advice - for example, outlining how to set very detailed and precise goals and keep yourself motivated. As a Neuro resident at a busy academic center I definitely felt that this book will help with keeping myself focused on very specific tasks - eg for research, how to go about breaking down a seemingly large an insurmountable project into bite size tasks I can finish in my spare time. I loved this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who wishes they had more focus in their life.
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