Book of the Month - May 2024
Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business
Charles Duhigg - ISBN: 9780812993394 - 2016
Author:
Charles Duhigg
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of The Power of Habit, which spent over three years on New York Times bestseller lists. His second book, Smarter Faster Better, was a bestseller. His latest book, Supercommunicators, was published in February, 2024, and is also a bestseller.
Charles currently writes for The New Yorker magazine.
A Yale University and Harvard Business School graduate, Charles has frequently contributed to This American Life, NPR, The Colbert Report, PBS’s NewsHour, and Frontline.
Charles led the team that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism for “The iEconomy,” a series that examined the global economy through the lens of Apple. That series included examinations of such topics as the factories in China where iPhones and iPads are manufactured.
Charles has also received The George Polk Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and other honors.
While a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Charles reported from Iraq about American military operations.
Before becoming a full-time journalist in 2003, Charles worked as an analyst for American Property Global Partners, a private equity firm and co-founded SWPA Education Management Group, L.L.C., which developed education programs for medically underserved areas.
He was also, for one terrifying day in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco.
Charles lives in Santa Cruz with his wife and two children.
Taken from charlesduhigg.com/about
Brief Synopsis:
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 and rich storytelling to how we can improve at the things we do.
At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key 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 book reveals that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.
Smarter Faster Better is a story-filled exploration of the science of productivity, one that can help us learn to succeed with less stress and struggle—and become smarter, faster, and better at everything we do.
Insights:
“The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation, in other words, are decisions that do two things: They convince us we’re in control and they endow our actions with larger meaning.”
“A sense of control can fuel motivation, but for that drive to produce insights and innovations, people need to know their suggestions won’t be ignored, that their mistakes won’t be held against them. And they need to know that everyone else has their back.”
“Stretch goals, paired with SMART thinking, can help put the impossible within reach.”
“The best entrepreneurs are acutely conscious of the risks that come from only talking to people who have succeeded,” said Don Moore, the Berkeley professor who participated in the GJP and who also studies the psychology of entrepreneurship. “They are obsessed with spending time around people who complain about their failures, the kinds of people the rest of us usually try to avoid.”
