You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
This is the follow up book to Charles Duhigg’s first book, “The Power of Habit”. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the quality of his work remains admirable. The chapters each in turn tell an interesting story that he gilds with well-written and thoughtful observations and conclusions. The book is well-researched and a smooth read. Once finished, however, you are found wondering if you have taken away any overarching, cohesive message. As self-help books go, it’s informative but not inspiring. I would recommend “Grit: The Power of Passion and perseverance” by Angela Duckworth for those who are seeking a good follow up to “The Power of Habit.” -Joyce A.
Not entirely applicable to where I'm currently at, but some things to think about and others to leave
I enjoyed the beginning of this book. However, as the chapters wore on I found that the sheer numbers of stories used to illustrate the few points became overwhelming. While they were interesting stories, I felt that the stories began to overwhelm the main points, making it difficult to wade through it all. Although I usually really enjoy this type of book, I found myself just wishing it would wind up! There are some very helpful tips in here, which are summarized at the very end. I think the author just took a really long time to make a few points. I enjoyed his previous book much more than this one.
If you've read Power of Habit, you know Duhigg has a talent for pulling together research and making the results of that research applicable and approachable. This book was no different in that regard. He clearly did a ton of research and pieced a variety of lessons together along with the applicable examples and stories to make his point. That said, I felt like he was a bit more wordy in this book that POH (which I looooved). Maybe it was the nature of the topic.../shrug. He also gives some really good practical tips on how he used his own techniques to write the book.
Smarter Faster Better dive's into understanding of how humans make decisions and applies that knowledge to give insights for how individuals can take more control over our lives through reframing our problems and applying a series of processes. Duhigg uses a biographical approach with specific people and organizations and reviews how they transformed their own lives/companies. Duhigg determined that one could generate motivation by discovering your 'why' for a particular action; and creating both stretch and smart goals that fit within the overall ambition but set achievable milestones. By building mental models about expectations for our day/week/meeting/conversation that can help identify the plan and makes it easier to maintain focus and the priority. To make better decisions come up with possible outcomes and assign probabilities to each outcome, understanding the probabilities of an outcome can mitigate anxiety over an outcome and provide perspective for likelihood of any particular one. When encountering new information, force yourself to write about how it's important or how it connects to your life/work/ideas. Productivity doesn't mean every action is efficient or produces returns, it means understanding where the actions and lessons learned fit within the context of the broader goal. I appreciated that the goal wasn't to turn humans into these idealistic efficiency machines focused on production, but to provide tools that each of us could use to make life a bit for focused on the things that matter to us.
This book presents interesting anecdotes and a few overarching theories of productivity, but is not a "how to" on being more productive in one's everyday life. I read this because I heard Charles Duhigg interviewed on NPR: he discussed how he and his wife had "solved the problem" of never getting home in time for dinner as a family by having their children lay out their clothes before they went to sleep; they traced the habitual problem they wished to solve back to its source and so were able to fix the problem. That story and its implied advice did not make an appearance in this book. (Maybe I missed the whole interview?)
In any case, here are the takeaways:
- team function is heavily dependent on the members of the team feeling safe. Everybody should have about the same about of speaking time and feel comfortable making mistakes and suggestions. Any other team traits can be variable, dependent on management style and the personalities of the team members. What is most important is the concept of "psychological safety." (My take: if you work at a start-up or are a manager yourself with actual influence over how your underlings work, this is a useful tidbit. If you work alone, or are stuck in a terrible corporate structure, this will make you sad.)
- actually interacting with new information presented to you is the best way to retain it. (Pretty sure we knew that already.)
- if you set your life up as a story to be narrated inside your head, you are more likely to be able to recognize and fix the unexpected issues that come up every day. Anything that deviates from how you expect your day to go is a flag to either return to your planned tasks or adjust your schedule to accommodate and get ahead of a possible problem. (My take: this is probably one of the more interesting and fleshed out theories in this book. He writes of "mental narratives." There are two stories about different airplane failures with vastly different outcomes, due in no small part, Duhigg writes convincingly, to the different levels of forecasting done by both sets of pilots. However, I haven't yet chosen to make a metal picture of my day which includes "cleaning the kitchen and taking out the trash when I get home from work" so I can't speak to whether or not this is useful advice for those of us not flying planes.)
- if you struggle with motivation, remind yourself "why" you are doing what you're doing, as if you were training for the Marines to support your young family.
- (another piece for managers or those with some advocacy) production probably works best when those closest to problems are able to fix those problems. Toyota: good; government: bad. And, a bit of a shake up in a team dynamic can spawn fresh ideas.
This doesn't take long to read and it is interesting, but if you're looking for something more personal and less general, I would recommend or something I haven't read yet.
In any case, here are the takeaways:
- team function is heavily dependent on the members of the team feeling safe. Everybody should have about the same about of speaking time and feel comfortable making mistakes and suggestions. Any other team traits can be variable, dependent on management style and the personalities of the team members. What is most important is the concept of "psychological safety." (My take: if you work at a start-up or are a manager yourself with actual influence over how your underlings work, this is a useful tidbit. If you work alone, or are stuck in a terrible corporate structure, this will make you sad.)
- actually interacting with new information presented to you is the best way to retain it. (Pretty sure we knew that already.)
- if you set your life up as a story to be narrated inside your head, you are more likely to be able to recognize and fix the unexpected issues that come up every day. Anything that deviates from how you expect your day to go is a flag to either return to your planned tasks or adjust your schedule to accommodate and get ahead of a possible problem. (My take: this is probably one of the more interesting and fleshed out theories in this book. He writes of "mental narratives." There are two stories about different airplane failures with vastly different outcomes, due in no small part, Duhigg writes convincingly, to the different levels of forecasting done by both sets of pilots. However, I haven't yet chosen to make a metal picture of my day which includes "cleaning the kitchen and taking out the trash when I get home from work" so I can't speak to whether or not this is useful advice for those of us not flying planes.)
- if you struggle with motivation, remind yourself "why" you are doing what you're doing, as if you were training for the Marines to support your young family.
- (another piece for managers or those with some advocacy) production probably works best when those closest to problems are able to fix those problems. Toyota: good; government: bad. And, a bit of a shake up in a team dynamic can spawn fresh ideas.
This doesn't take long to read and it is interesting, but if you're looking for something more personal and less general, I would recommend
I read this book after being request to as part of a charity drive. It 100% is not in my usual vein of preferred books, but I tried to enter into it with an open mind.
I think there are some fascinating studies and findings here, but nothing that really surprised me too much. There is a LOT of emphasis on larger companies, corporate success, and other big success stories, but far less on smaller accomplishable take ways for every day people.
A lot of things, like the auto-industry example of people on the ground have a better idea of problems, seems obvious. But as one of the people on the ground, frequently ignored, in my own industry, knowing that problems get solved better with empowered employees seems like a "duh" argument, but also one the American workforce has perpetually ignored.
A lot of these findings felt like this, where even if they were enlightening, at my own level in my professional life, were not able to be implemented.
I also think the book ignores many examples of companies doing the exact opposite of what it argues, while still succeeding wildly, I would have liked to hear why the author thought, say Amazon has become the giant it has, while seeming to ignore most of the suggestions of these findings.
I think overall, this book could be interesting for people who are interested in trends in business, and different approaches companies try to be successful. But as a grunt peon it frequently felt like a scholar just saying what everyone on the ground already knows, things would run better if everyday employees were empowered to approach problems creatively, and to find solutions from the ground up. Uh hu, and how are we gonna convince the boss that...
I think there are some fascinating studies and findings here, but nothing that really surprised me too much. There is a LOT of emphasis on larger companies, corporate success, and other big success stories, but far less on smaller accomplishable take ways for every day people.
A lot of things, like the auto-industry example of people on the ground have a better idea of problems, seems obvious. But as one of the people on the ground, frequently ignored, in my own industry, knowing that problems get solved better with empowered employees seems like a "duh" argument, but also one the American workforce has perpetually ignored.
A lot of these findings felt like this, where even if they were enlightening, at my own level in my professional life, were not able to be implemented.
I also think the book ignores many examples of companies doing the exact opposite of what it argues, while still succeeding wildly, I would have liked to hear why the author thought, say Amazon has become the giant it has, while seeming to ignore most of the suggestions of these findings.
I think overall, this book could be interesting for people who are interested in trends in business, and different approaches companies try to be successful. But as a grunt peon it frequently felt like a scholar just saying what everyone on the ground already knows, things would run better if everyday employees were empowered to approach problems creatively, and to find solutions from the ground up. Uh hu, and how are we gonna convince the boss that...
This book has a terrible title, but there is some very useful advice in it, particularly for teachers.
Really interesting collection of stories, a lot of teamwork studies and organizational psychology insights which I love. One note: I wish I’d skipped the pilot/plane stories - a little TMI for a frequent flyer!
I don’t think I had the Road To Damascus moment I was hoping for from this book but elements of it I’ll take with me.