Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity is a book by Charles Duhigg about how corporations, teams, and individuals make decisions, work together, and set goals to achieve greatness. The book is split into eight parts covering motivation, teams, focus, goal-setting, managing others, decision-making, innovation, and absorbing data.

Motivation

  • To make a decision about something not-so-interesting makes the whole task more interesting (e.g. write the conclusion first, decide where an interview will happen).
  • Relate the work of your position back to your personal life, your emotions, and your necessities to fuel motivation.

Teams

  • Google’s Project Aristotle analyzed the qualities of a good team. Their results show teams need…
    • to believe that their work is important and personally meaningful
    • clear goals and well-defined roles.
    • to know they can depend on each other.
    • psychological safety (e.g. have everyone talk at least once, do not interrupt others, encourage people to express conflicts and frustrations).
  • What makes a good manager? They…
    • empower instead of micromanage.
    • express interest and concern in subordinates’ success/well-being.
    • are result orientated.
    • listen and share information.
    • help with career development.
    • have a clear vision and strategy.
    • have key technical skills.
  • Quality of a group is determined by norms. Good norms include:
    • Encourage people to suggest ideas without fear of mistakes (Enthusiasm).
    • Discourage people from making harsh judgements.
  • To understand social cues and emotions is more important than every person getting along with everyone else, because it feeds into voicing divergent thinking and creativity.

Focus

  • Distractions are bad because when the wide dim spotlight of your attention suddenly needs to become specific and bright, it may make mental leaps in logic.
    • When this happens the mind puts all its attention on the most obvious thing in front of it, which is not always the best option.
  • Narrate your plan throughout the day. Describe what you will do next in detail to keep attention high. This allows for subtleties to be picked up easier.
    • At the same time, still be able to adapt to new situations and take input from others to control reactive thinking.
    • Describe to yourself what you see and what it means. Find other people to hear your theories and challenge them. Get into a pattern of forcing yourself to anticipate what comes next.

Goal-Setting

  • SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Timeline
    • SMART goals tend to get things done, but often limits scope and leads to crossing things off a list more enjoyable than the actual work.
  • Stretch goals that lie in the ambitious, but not impossible, zone spark creativity and innovation that SMART goals alone cannot achieve.
  • Pairing SMART and stretch goals together is the way to take seemingly impossible tasks into realistic implausibilities.
    • Use a stretch goal to broaden horizons and use SMART goals to break it up into manageable pieces.
  • Goal-Setting is not the end all, be all. Consider if what you are doing is heading you in the right direction.

Managing Others

  • Fostering company commitment culture leads to best results.
    • Employees are committed to one another as well as the company.
    • Employees rally behind a common goal by working towards slow steady growth.
  • Let the people closest to the problem fix the issues.
  • Empower teams to be self managing and self-organized.

Decision-Making

  • Good decisions are based off forecasting and figuring out probabilities of outcomes.
  • Forecasting the future depends on how much information you have about successes and failures, so be sure to investigate mistakes and probe for what went wrong and right.

Innovation

  • Studies show most notable creative works come from combining two known fields in a new/exciting way.
  • Intermediate disturbances shake up cultures just the right amount for creativity to flourish. Too little or too much hinders ideation.
    • Times of panic/anxiety/stress pushes us to see old things in new ways.

Absorbing Data

  • The best way to absorb data is to play around with it. Hypothesize ideas, test them, analyze data, and adjust behaviors instead of just listening to the data as it comes in.
  • Processes like the engineering design process help old questions look unfamiliar, and tackle them in new ways (see diagram below).

Conclusion

  1. Motivation: Start by making a decision that puts you in control and relate the task to something you care about to give it meaning.
  2. Teams: Build psychological safety by making decisions that encourage everyone’s opinions and demonstrate sensitivity when teammate is flustered.
  3. Focus: Tell yourself a story about what you expect to happen and let that guide your attention. Ask questions to understand what issues you may run into and how to combat them.
  4. Goal-setting: Choose a stretch goal that reflects your biggest aspirations and then break it up into subgoals with SMART objectives.
  5. Managing others: Put responsibility into the hands of your workers and build a culture that makes everyone feel committed to the success of the company.
  6. Decision-making: Envision multiple futures and hone probabilistic instincts.
  7. Innovation: Combine old ideas in new ways. Be aware of you react to experiences; anxiety can push us to see old ideas in new ways. Constantly critique your work to allow yourself to see it from new perspectives. Give authority to people who did not have it before to gain these novel POVs.
  8. Absorbing data: Engage with data– Make notes about what you learn, test the idea, draw graphs, explain it to a friend. Idle reception of data does not mean you understand it.