Book Review: "Smarter Faster Better" by Charles Duhigg
The full title is "Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity. Charles Duhigg grabs a concept and researches it the way I do. He's got a podcast now on "How To" and it highlights his life-hacking style to things. This isn't his most recent book. It's not bad, but I think he's still getting better. That's saying a lot, as he's already a good writer. He reminds me in some ways of Tracy Kidder. I think it's the way he weaves human interest illustrations into his fairly dry material.
I read this on the Kindle instead of paper with a pen alongside me. For fiction, I generally prefer the Kindle. But for things I'm taking notes on? I disliked it. I found grabbing parts to highlight to be harder to do than I expected. Plus, it wasn't enough for me to highlight things, I also wanted to scrawl notes.= in the margin. The good part about starting on the Kindle, though, is that I got my highlights sent to my email. So now I don't have to type out the parts I highlighted like I do in previous book reviews. The bad part, of course, is I don't now have a handy paperback on my shelf that I can grab and read my notes about. I liked the book enough to believe I might do that sometime, so I went out and bought myself a paperback copy. Two, actually: I gave one as a Christmas present.
My downloaded Kindle highlights are:
Location 315
Specific choice we make matters less than the assertion of control. It’s this feeling of self-determination that gets us going.
Location 457
If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier, Quintanilla’s drill instructors had told him. That’s why they asked each other questions starting with “why.” Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge.
Location 475
nursing homes in the 1990s. Researchers were studying why some seniors thrived inside such facilities, while others experienced rapid physical and mental declines. A critical difference, the researchers determined, was that the seniors who flourished made choices that rebelled against the rigid schedules, set menus, and strict rules that the nursing homes tried to force upon them.
Location 769
that Google’s surveys said were most effective-allowing others to fail without repercussions, respecting divergent opinions, feeling free to question others’ choices but also trusting that people aren’t trying to undermine you-were all aspects of feeling psychologically safe at work.
Location 917
First, all the members of the good teams spoke in roughly the same proportion,
Location 923
fancy way of saying that the groups were skilled at intuiting how members felt based on their tone of voice, how people held themselves, and the expressions on their faces.
Location 972
“Everyone liked everyone else, or at least worked hard to pretend like they liked everyone,”
Location 976
“It seems like fairly minor stuff, but when the leader goes out of their way to make someone feel listened to, or starts a meeting by saying ‘I might miss something, so I need all of you to watch for my mistakes,’ or says ‘Jim, you haven’t spoken in a while, what do you think?,’ that makes a huge difference.”
Location 981
When someone was concerned or upset, they showed the group that it was okay to intervene. They tried to anticipate how people would react and then worked to accommodate those reactions. This is how teams encourage people to disagree while still being honest with one another and occasionally clashing.
Location 1005
“What matters are five key norms,” he told the audience. Teams need to believe that their work is important. Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful. Teams need clear goals and defined roles. Team members need to know they can depend on one another. But, most important, teams need psychological safety. To create psychological safety, Bock said, team leaders needed to model the right behaviors. There were Google-designed checklists they could use: Leaders should not interrupt teammates during conversations, because that will establish an interrupting norm. They should demonstrate they are listening by summarizing what people say after they said it. They should admit what they don’t know. They shouldn’t end a meeting until all team members have spoken at least once. They should encourage people who are upset to express their frustrations, and encourage teammates to respond in nonjudgmental ways. They should call out intergroup conflicts and resolve them through open discussion. There were dozens of tactics on the checklist. All of them, however, came back to two general principles: Teams succeed when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members show they are sensitive to how one another feels. “There
Location 1047
They will succeed because teammates feel they can trust each other, and that honest discussion can occur without fear of retribution. Their members will have roughly equal voices. Teammates will show they are sensitive to one another’s emotions and needs. In
Location 1070
*1 Project Oxygen found that a good manager (1) is a good coach; (2) empowers and does not micromanage; (3) expresses interest and concern in subordinates’ success and well-being; (4) is results oriented; (5) listens and shares information; (6) helps with career development; (7) has a clear vision and strategy; (8) has key technical skills. *2 The correct answers for these photos can be found in the notes on this page.
Location 1343
She was in the habit of imagining what the babies in her unit ought to look like. Then, when she glanced over and the bloody Band-Aid, distended belly, and mottled skin didn’t match the image in her mind, the spotlight in her head swung toward the child’s bassinet. 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. It’s always jumping around inside our heads. And, as a result, when it has to flare to life in the real world, we’re not blinded by its glare.
Location 1403
models. By developing a habit of telling ourselves stories about what’s going on around us, we learn to sharpen where our attention goes. These
Location 1652
” the Political Psychology researchers wrote. When we’re overly focused on feeling productive, we become blind to details that should give us pause. It feels good to achieve closure. Sometimes, though, we become unwilling to sacrifice that sensation even when it’s clear we’re making a mistake.
Location 2688
This is probabilistic thinking. It is the ability to hold multiple, conflicting outcomes in your mind and estimate their relative likelihoods.
Location 3112
suggested for jump-starting the creative process-taking proven, conventional ideas from other settings and combining them in new ways-is remarkably effective,
Location 3260
It succeeded by mixing originality and convention to create something new. It took old ideas and put them in novel settings so gracefully that many people never realized they were watching the familiar become unique.
Location 3307
People become creative brokers, in other words, when they learn to pay attention to how things make them react and feel.
Location 3426
When strong ideas take root, they can sometimes crowd out competitors so thoroughly that alternatives can’t prosper. So sometimes the best way to spark creativity is by disturbing things just enough to let some light through.
Location 3511
Without self-criticism, without tension, one idea can quickly crowd out competitors. But we can regain that critical distance by forcing ourselves to critique what we’ve already done, by making ourselves look at it from a completely different perspective, by changing the power dynamics in the room or giving new authority to someone who didn’t have it before. Disturbances are essential,
Location 3568
transformative, but only if people know how to use it. To change students’ lives, educators had to understand how to transform all the spreadsheets and statistics and online dashboards into insights and plans. They had to be forced to interact with data until it influenced how they behaved.
Location 3587
teachers made it “disfluent”-harder to process at first, but stickier once it was really understood. By scribbling out statistics and testing preconceptions, teachers had figured out how to use all the information they were receiving.
Location 3654
“The important step seems to be performing some kind of operation,” said Adam Alter, a professor at NYU who has studied disfluency. “If you make people use a new word in a sentence, they’ll remember it longer. If you make them write down a sentence with the word, they’ll start using it in conversations.”
Location 3825
“the engineering design process,” which forced students to define their dilemmas, collect data, brainstorm solutions, debate alternative approaches, and conduct iterative experiments.
Location 3925
The people who are most successful at learning-those who are able to digest the data surrounding them, who absorb insights embedded in their experiences and take advantage of information flowing past-are the ones who know how to use disfluency to their advantage. They transform what life throws at them, rather than just taking it as it comes. They know the best lessons are those that force us to do something and to manipulate information. They take data and transform it into experiments whenever they can.
Location 3943
we should force ourselves to do something with the data. It’s 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 you’ll 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 you’ll 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.
I read this on the Kindle instead of paper with a pen alongside me. For fiction, I generally prefer the Kindle. But for things I'm taking notes on? I disliked it. I found grabbing parts to highlight to be harder to do than I expected. Plus, it wasn't enough for me to highlight things, I also wanted to scrawl notes.= in the margin. The good part about starting on the Kindle, though, is that I got my highlights sent to my email. So now I don't have to type out the parts I highlighted like I do in previous book reviews. The bad part, of course, is I don't now have a handy paperback on my shelf that I can grab and read my notes about. I liked the book enough to believe I might do that sometime, so I went out and bought myself a paperback copy. Two, actually: I gave one as a Christmas present.
My downloaded Kindle highlights are:
Location 315
Specific choice we make matters less than the assertion of control. It’s this feeling of self-determination that gets us going.
Location 457
If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier, Quintanilla’s drill instructors had told him. That’s why they asked each other questions starting with “why.” Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge.
Location 475
nursing homes in the 1990s. Researchers were studying why some seniors thrived inside such facilities, while others experienced rapid physical and mental declines. A critical difference, the researchers determined, was that the seniors who flourished made choices that rebelled against the rigid schedules, set menus, and strict rules that the nursing homes tried to force upon them.
Location 769
that Google’s surveys said were most effective-allowing others to fail without repercussions, respecting divergent opinions, feeling free to question others’ choices but also trusting that people aren’t trying to undermine you-were all aspects of feeling psychologically safe at work.
Location 917
First, all the members of the good teams spoke in roughly the same proportion,
Location 923
fancy way of saying that the groups were skilled at intuiting how members felt based on their tone of voice, how people held themselves, and the expressions on their faces.
Location 972
“Everyone liked everyone else, or at least worked hard to pretend like they liked everyone,”
Location 976
“It seems like fairly minor stuff, but when the leader goes out of their way to make someone feel listened to, or starts a meeting by saying ‘I might miss something, so I need all of you to watch for my mistakes,’ or says ‘Jim, you haven’t spoken in a while, what do you think?,’ that makes a huge difference.”
Location 981
When someone was concerned or upset, they showed the group that it was okay to intervene. They tried to anticipate how people would react and then worked to accommodate those reactions. This is how teams encourage people to disagree while still being honest with one another and occasionally clashing.
Location 1005
“What matters are five key norms,” he told the audience. Teams need to believe that their work is important. Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful. Teams need clear goals and defined roles. Team members need to know they can depend on one another. But, most important, teams need psychological safety. To create psychological safety, Bock said, team leaders needed to model the right behaviors. There were Google-designed checklists they could use: Leaders should not interrupt teammates during conversations, because that will establish an interrupting norm. They should demonstrate they are listening by summarizing what people say after they said it. They should admit what they don’t know. They shouldn’t end a meeting until all team members have spoken at least once. They should encourage people who are upset to express their frustrations, and encourage teammates to respond in nonjudgmental ways. They should call out intergroup conflicts and resolve them through open discussion. There were dozens of tactics on the checklist. All of them, however, came back to two general principles: Teams succeed when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members show they are sensitive to how one another feels. “There
Location 1047
They will succeed because teammates feel they can trust each other, and that honest discussion can occur without fear of retribution. Their members will have roughly equal voices. Teammates will show they are sensitive to one another’s emotions and needs. In
Location 1070
*1 Project Oxygen found that a good manager (1) is a good coach; (2) empowers and does not micromanage; (3) expresses interest and concern in subordinates’ success and well-being; (4) is results oriented; (5) listens and shares information; (6) helps with career development; (7) has a clear vision and strategy; (8) has key technical skills. *2 The correct answers for these photos can be found in the notes on this page.
Location 1343
She was in the habit of imagining what the babies in her unit ought to look like. Then, when she glanced over and the bloody Band-Aid, distended belly, and mottled skin didn’t match the image in her mind, the spotlight in her head swung toward the child’s bassinet. 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. It’s always jumping around inside our heads. And, as a result, when it has to flare to life in the real world, we’re not blinded by its glare.
Location 1403
models. By developing a habit of telling ourselves stories about what’s going on around us, we learn to sharpen where our attention goes. These
Location 1652
” the Political Psychology researchers wrote. When we’re overly focused on feeling productive, we become blind to details that should give us pause. It feels good to achieve closure. Sometimes, though, we become unwilling to sacrifice that sensation even when it’s clear we’re making a mistake.
Location 2688
This is probabilistic thinking. It is the ability to hold multiple, conflicting outcomes in your mind and estimate their relative likelihoods.
Location 3112
suggested for jump-starting the creative process-taking proven, conventional ideas from other settings and combining them in new ways-is remarkably effective,
Location 3260
It succeeded by mixing originality and convention to create something new. It took old ideas and put them in novel settings so gracefully that many people never realized they were watching the familiar become unique.
Location 3307
People become creative brokers, in other words, when they learn to pay attention to how things make them react and feel.
Location 3426
When strong ideas take root, they can sometimes crowd out competitors so thoroughly that alternatives can’t prosper. So sometimes the best way to spark creativity is by disturbing things just enough to let some light through.
Location 3511
Without self-criticism, without tension, one idea can quickly crowd out competitors. But we can regain that critical distance by forcing ourselves to critique what we’ve already done, by making ourselves look at it from a completely different perspective, by changing the power dynamics in the room or giving new authority to someone who didn’t have it before. Disturbances are essential,
Location 3568
transformative, but only if people know how to use it. To change students’ lives, educators had to understand how to transform all the spreadsheets and statistics and online dashboards into insights and plans. They had to be forced to interact with data until it influenced how they behaved.
Location 3587
teachers made it “disfluent”-harder to process at first, but stickier once it was really understood. By scribbling out statistics and testing preconceptions, teachers had figured out how to use all the information they were receiving.
Location 3654
“The important step seems to be performing some kind of operation,” said Adam Alter, a professor at NYU who has studied disfluency. “If you make people use a new word in a sentence, they’ll remember it longer. If you make them write down a sentence with the word, they’ll start using it in conversations.”
Location 3825
“the engineering design process,” which forced students to define their dilemmas, collect data, brainstorm solutions, debate alternative approaches, and conduct iterative experiments.
Location 3925
The people who are most successful at learning-those who are able to digest the data surrounding them, who absorb insights embedded in their experiences and take advantage of information flowing past-are the ones who know how to use disfluency to their advantage. They transform what life throws at them, rather than just taking it as it comes. They know the best lessons are those that force us to do something and to manipulate information. They take data and transform it into experiments whenever they can.
Location 3943
we should force ourselves to do something with the data. It’s 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 you’ll 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 you’ll 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.