Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

"Smarter Faster Better" sets out to satisfy that hunger. Duhigg's aim is to help people be genuinely efficient, rather than merely busy. To do this, he delves into neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics, and identifies highly productive individuals and organizations across a wide range of industries, from Broadway theater to the U.S. military.

His research pinpoints eight key concepts – including focus, goal setting, and decision making – that explain why some people and companies get so much done while others struggle. He then shows readers how to apply these ideas to their personal and professional lives.

So who's this book for? "Smarter Faster Better" is for anyone who wants to get more done, in less time and using less energy, so its audience is incredibly broad. Busy CEOs, managers and team leaders will get a lot from this book, but so will solo entrepreneurs, artists and those managing a home. And if you're asking yourself if you have the headspace to read it and take it all in, the good news is "Smarter Faster Better" is far from dry. Duhigg is an excellent storyteller and he includes plenty of gripping, edge-of-your-seat, real-life tales – from a high-stakes kidnapping, to an airline crash, to a poker tournament. So, in many ways, this is an easy book to read.

Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times and the author of the international bestseller "The Power of Habit." He's a graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, and is the winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk awards.

So keep listening to hear how to find meaning in small tasks so you get them done quickly, how to set a combination of short- and long-term goals, and how visualizing your work day can save you time and energy.

"Smarter Faster Better" is divided into eight chapters, one for each of Duhigg's eight concepts of productivity. These are: Motivation, Teams, Focus, Goal Setting, Managing Others, Decision Making, Innovation, and Absorbing Data.

Each chapter opens with a real-life story, drawing the reader in. Duhigg then halts the narrative, often at a crisis point or cliffhanger, and begins to discuss a psychological experiment or a discovery of neuroscience that backs up his point on productivity. He then returns to the cliffhanger and finishes off the story before closing the chapter.

This combination of exemplary, human-interest tales and social and psychological science is a popular format for business books today. Duhigg is a talented journalist who does it better than many of his contemporaries, bringing his protagonists to life and creating real drama or intrigue. While some readers will love the way he juxtaposes story and research, others may feel there's too much jumping around. His stories are also incredibly detailed and, in some cases, the point he's trying to make on productivity gets lost in the narrative.

So let's take a closer look at some of these concepts, starting with Motivation.

How can we get more motivated? How can we develop a bias toward action, rather than procrastination and inaction? This is a common dilemma and something most of us are faced with at some point in our lives. Duhigg looks at neuroscience and the United States Marine Corps, and comes up with some answers. He finds we have more self-motivation if we believe we're firmly in control of our destinies, rather than thinking events happen to us – in other words, if the locus of control is internal rather than external.

The U.S. Marines put this theory into practice after discovering wave after wave of young recruits lacked self-motivation – which is dangerous for a branch of the military that's often the first to arrive on the scene. It needs self-starters.

To fix this, officers completely redesigned boot camp, training Marines to make decision after decision, rather than simply follow orders. This act of being forced to make choices, over and over again, often in difficult circumstances, showed the Marines they were in control.

Leaders even included one challenge that could only be completed successfully if the soldiers disobeyed orders and took the initiative. This act of rebellion, in which the Marines asserted themselves, seized control, and did what they thought was right despite being told otherwise, helped develop self-motivation and a bias toward action.

But feeling in control isn't always enough, if we're really reluctant to get on with a task and keep putting it off. Duhigg says it helps to see those unpleasant chores as a vital part of our broader goals. With the Marines, asking themselves why they were undergoing the grueling training helped them link their success to a bigger picture – a regular salary and security for their families, for example. In a similar way, we need to link our unappealing tasks to something meaningful, in order to motivate ourselves.

So the next time you look at your To-Do List and consider avoiding an item, try connecting it to your bigger aspirations, or see it as an affirmation of your values and goals. Maybe making that difficult phone call will free up headspace and energy to focus on the project you really want to do. Or perhaps negotiating a pay raise will help you afford better health insurance for your family. It's easier to get over your resistance and move forward if you've got your eye on something more valuable.

We particularly like these tips on asserting control and giving tasks meaning. We can see how they could help increase motivation, and make it easier to tackle more mundane tasks, rather than allowing them to sit on our lists for days.

Now that we know how to improve our motivation, let's look at how we can set goals effectively.

Most of us have heard of SMART goals. These are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and based on a timeline. But setting SMART goals and achieving them can sometimes become little more than a box-ticking exercise, as a study within General Electric found.

Consultants discovered that GE workers with SMART goals were seizing on the easiest tasks and getting obsessed with finishing projects that met their criteria, rather than questioning whether they were doing the right things. Humans have a need for cognitive closure – an end to ambiguity – and our mood is boosted by completing things. So we tend to choose goals that just about meet our SMART requirements, rather than going for something more ambitious.

The answer to this is to combine SMART goals with a broader objective, or a "stretch" goal. In practical terms, we can write our stretch goal at the top of a piece of paper, then divide it up into smaller goals that are specific, measureable, realistic, and so on.

These small goals show you what steps you need to take the following day, week or month, while the stretch goal ensures the actions you're taking are aligned with your ultimate ambition and you're not chasing a quick fix. We can do this with anything, from running a marathon, to managing a takeover bid, to finishing a piece of creative work.

This tool is more common sense than rocket science. You may have used SMART goals at some point in your career. You may have always had a bigger ambition in mind too, even if you didn't call it a stretch goal.

But we like the reminder, and think it'll prompt some readers to reassess their goals – and question if they're guilty of ticking things off lists for instant gratification, without thinking about the bigger picture. We also like the way the author tells the story of how GE developed SMART and stretch goals, a process that was imitated by much of corporate America.

Let's now look at Duhigg's theories on Focus and, specifically, on the power of mental models to help manage our attention.

A mental model is a visualization technique – we conjure up a story or picture in our minds about what we expect to see. The author says this helps us to stay focused, screen out background noise, decide what deserves our attention, and make better decisions, rather than simply reacting.

The key is to create mental models that can be adapted to a range of situations so we're not taken by surprise. This means if reality begins to differ from a mental model, we can adopt another and respond appropriately, rather than saying or doing something we later regret. Mental models help us to stay calm and be prepared.

As an example, Duhigg tells the story of an airline pilot who used a mental model to help land a commercial plane after an explosion blew a hole in its wing. The pilot managed to land the plane safely by switching his mental model during this crisis. He imagined he was flying a small Cessna plane rather than a jet, which allowed him to stay calm, focus on the essentials, and simplify an incredibly complex task. Duhigg contrasts this with a tragic story about the crashing of an Air France flight whose pilots suffered from cognitive tunneling – information overload that forced them to fall back on familiar routines.

In the same way, we can use mental models to prepare for a job interview, get ready for an important meeting, or plan our schedule, so we know what we're going to do when we arrive at our desks on Monday morning and don't need to waste time thinking about it. They also help us prepare for the unexpected.

So say you're on a deadline with a project and you need to map out your working day to make the best use of your time. First, set a goal for what you want to achieve. Next, ask yourself what you're going to do first. Then ask yourself what distractions may occur, how you'll handle them, how you'll know when you've reached your goal, what you'll need to achieve it, and what you'll do next. This means if distractions do arise – unexpected phone calls, meeting requests, and so on – you'll know how to respond and you won't waste time trying to decide what to do.

Again, this is simple energy- and time-saving advice, and you may have heard something similar before. But if you're not already doing it, we think it could help you focus in a world filled with distractions. It's also quite easy to apply to a range of situations.

In another chapter, Duhigg makes some good points about how to create productive teams. He draws on the example of Saturday Night Live, the long-running comedy show on American TV. The show's creator, Lorne Michaels, shaped a culture in which writers and actors felt comfortable to take risks, pitch new jokes, and come up with off-the-wall ideas, even if those ideas were rejected.

He created an atmosphere in which all team members felt psychologically safe – free to be honest, real and fully creative, leading to an incredible chemistry between actors and writers. This story shows the importance of nurturing an environment in which people feel heard and are open to others' opinions and ideas.

We also like the chapter on innovation. Here, Duhigg describes how the creators of the computer-animated movie Frozen rewrote the script by looking inside themselves and paying attention to how certain events made them feel. This helped produce a box office sensation that children and many parents could connect to on an emotional level.

At the end of "Smarter Faster Better," Duhigg summarizes his productivity tips and describes how some of them have helped him in his work, including when writing this book. He shares how he found the motivation to answer an inbox full of emails by taking control, and how he set himself SMART and stretch goals to complete his manuscript.

We like this personal touch and the way the author confesses to his own struggles with productivity. However, it's clear from this summary, and the rest of the book, that some of his eight productivity concepts are stronger, more relevant, and easier to apply than others. A few chapters feel like add-ons – they're not central to his message.

On the whole, though, "Smarter Faster Better" is an engaging read and Duhigg's skill as a journalist, storyteller and thorough researcher are its main strengths. He's an authoritative voice and a credible author who's found a good number of original, compelling, exemplary tales to back up his theories. This makes up for the fact that his "secrets of being productive," as mentioned in the subtitle, are more common sense than groundbreaking discoveries. And many of the scientific and psychological studies he refers to have appeared in business books before.

Still, we believe that, if you can make space for another book on productivity, you'll take away some useful tips to apply to your work or home life. And you'll get to read some dramatic descriptions of real-life events, which all offer lessons to learn.

"Smarter Faster Better," by Charles Duhigg, is published by William Heinemann, part of Penguin Random House.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.