Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators and "master of the life hack" ( GQ ) explores the fascinating science of productivity and offers real-world takeaways to apply your life, whether you're chasing peak productivity or simply trying to get back on track.
"Duhigg melds cutting-edge science, deep reporting, and wide-ranging stories to give us a fuller, more human way of thinking about how productivity actually happens."--Susan Cain, author of Quiet
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.
Rezensionen (5)
Publisher's Weekly-Rezension
Journalist Duhigg (The Power of Habit) shares his conversations with productive people in this manual for increasing productivity. From this fieldwork he draws eight commonalities, treated in individual chapters. He places particular emphasis on the importance of individual agency and engagement: according to him, success comes from proactive transformation, as opposed to passive acceptance. The book's major source consists of the interviewees' stories, so it makes sense that the discussion is more narrative than data-driven. Many examples are recent, relevant, and fresh-such as the story of creative triumph that was the development of the hit film Frozen. The narrative can feel like one under-analyzed anecdote after another, but Duhigg's accessible prose comes across as appropriate for the subject matter, since it ensures that his points about behaving proactively can be absorbed quickly and easily. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus-Rezension
Why some people are more productive than others. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Duhigg follows up his bestselling The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (2012) with a revealing, brightly written exploration of the ways in which successful people make the right choices necessary to succeed with less effort. Drawing on research studies and innumerable interviews with neurologists, businesspeople, government leaders, and psychologists, the author identifies a series of key ideas that help expand productivity. In absorbing stories from every corner of life, he shows how these ideas explain why some people get so much done. Each chapter offers a remarkable blend of anecdotes and science illustrating concepts that clearly have much to offer individuals and companies striving for greater productivity. In Marine Corps training and nursing homes, he finds people are more motivated when they feel in control. Teams like the original group that created Saturday Night Live thrive in a place made safe for risk-taking. In accounts of the experiences of FBI agents, educators, airline pilots, and others, Duhigg explains the importance of creating mental models ("we must take control of our attention"), having large ambitions and realistic plans (rather than "achievable but inconsequential goals"), and managing people successfully in a culture of commitment and trust. In making decisionsin poker, for instancewe must see the future as having multiple possibilities. In innovating, we must be mindful that fast originality often lies in using proven ideas from elsewhere in new ways. Finally, in workplaces inundated with information, we can learn from data by actually doing something with it, as happened in the recent overhaul of the Cincinnati public school system. In each instance, Duhigg shows an uncanny ability to find just the right exciting example of productivity-boosting methods, leaving readers to nod in recognition that they might act in the same way to improve their lives and work. Highly informative and entertaining and certain to have wide appeal. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist-Rezension
Investigative reporter Duhigg defines productivity as attempting to realize the most meaningful rewards with the best uses of our energy, intellect, and time by learning to succeed with less effort and stress and by efficiently accomplishing tasks without sacrificing other priorities. His eight concepts to expand productivity include innovation, motivation, mental models, and the correct way to set goals. A skillful storyteller, the author weaves his thought-provoking ideas into lessons learned from interviews of businesspeople, government leaders, psychologists, and others. One standout anecdote tells how, under enormous time pressure, with its creative team spinning, Disney promoted an underling to be, effectively, a film's codirector. This shake-up launched the all-time highest-grossing animated film, Frozen. We also learn about the world's most famous woman poker player, whose mastery of decision making stems from leaning to live with uncertainty and constantly updating her assumptions while thinking probabilistically having the ability to hold multiple conflicting outcomes in your mind and estimate their relative likelihoods. This is an excellent book, suitable for most public libraries.--Whaley, Mary Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books-Rezension
BARACK OBAMA IS a life hacker. When interviewed by Michael Lewis a few years ago, Obama explained that he wears only gray or blue suits so as to cut down the choices he has to make each day, and then he cited research showing that "you need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself." The studies that Obama was referring to suggest that if you exhaust your decision-making capacity with unnecessary choices, you'll end up making mistakes when it really matters. Like many of us, Obama is influenced by the literature that draws upon psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics to tell us how to be happier and more successful. The New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg has already contributed to this genre with his first book, "The Power of Habit," which was an engagingly deep dive into the psychology of how routines are formed and modified. His newest book is broader in scope. It has eight main chapters, each focusing on a single idea about how to increase productivity in business or in life, each telling a story of how the idea works in practice. Many of the stories are terrific; my favorites were about the early seasons of "Saturday Night Live," F.B.I. agents racing to rescue a kidnapping victim, and a poker player competing in a $2 million winner-take-all tournament. And Duhigg is a pleasure to read. Unlike a lot of contributors to this genre, he's a journalist, not a professor, and it shows in his prose, as when he casually describes someone as having "a passion for long skirts and Hooters chicken wings." But it's not clear that his book lives up to its subtitle, "The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business." Many of Duhigg's conclusions seem less like secrets and more like common sense. He reminds us that it's important to set goals, both specific and long-term. We learn that it's good for an organization to allow people to participate and express their views. I enjoyed reading about Annie Duke, cognitive scientist turned poker player, but the upshot of this chapter was: When you plan for the future, try to reason in terms of probability, not certainty. Are there really many people who need reminding that we live in an uncertain world? Other suggestions are less obvious, but they might not be that reliable as practical advice. Duhigg tells of a pilot who landed an Airbus during a huge system failure by thinking about the plane in a different way, as if it were a single-engine Cessna. "Get into the habit of telling yourself stories," Duhigg writes - these stories will tell us what to focus on and what to ignore. But one can easily find cases in which stories make us stupid - indeed, one of the main themes of Maria Konnikova's recent book, "The Confidence Game," is that our appetite for narrative can blind us to reality and make us easy prey to con men. OR CONSIDER CHOICES. Duhigg talks about how the act of making choices invigorates and motivates us, and suggests that we add opportunities for decision-making into our lives. This really is interesting and unintuitive research. But, as Obama realized, choices can also exhaust us, so it's not clear whether the advantages of additional choices exceed the costs. Certainly, Duhigg is sensitive to these sorts of nuances. He tells us about a kidnapping case that was solved in part because an F.B.I. agent acted on his own initiative, and he argues that organizations work better if employees have more autonomy. But he then concedes that "there are good reasons companies don't decentralize authority," and he notes that the agent might have wasted time by following the wrong hunch. As he puts it elsewhere, "an instinct for decisiveness is great - until it's not." He suggests that "forcing people to commit to ambitious, seemingly out-of-reach objectives can spark outsize jumps in innovation and productivity" - but then, on the next page, he worries that such goals might "cause panic and convince people that success is impossible because the goal is too big." Duhigg ends his book with "A Reader's Guide to Using These Ideas," and while some of his proposals are clever - there are some good tips about handling email overload - most have a fortunecookie flavor, such as "Envision multiple futures." Why can't a writer as astute as Duhigg come up with less ambiguous advice? One concern is his method. While his book contains an occasional failure story, the main focus of each chapter is on a person or organization that did well. This makes intuitive sense. If you want to be good at tennis, watch a champion tennis player; if you want to learn the secrets of a successful marriage, look at happy couples. Few of us approach people who do poorly and ask them the secrets of their failure. But we should. As Duhigg himself puts it, "many successful people ... spend an enormous amount of time seeking out information on failures." He should have done more of that in his book. He talks about the great seasons of "Saturday Night Live" and notes that while there was tension and infighting, the cast members still felt safe enough to criticize one another without fear of punishment. This is plainly a good thing, but if the same attitude was present for the lousy seasons of the show, then receptivity to criticism can't be the secret sauce. Annie Duke uses probabilistic reasoning to win at poker, but if the players she beats also calculate the odds, then that isn't what makes someone a poker champion. Also, stories can tell us only so much. I've never read a book from this genre that wasn't filled with stories - stories are memorable and appealing and persuasive - and Duhigg's skill as a storyteller makes his book so engaging to read. But individual cases, whether of success or failure, tell you little about general principles, because you can't distinguish factors that really made a difference from accidental features of the examples you've chosen. My favorite musician might take LSD, but I can't know that it's the acid that makes her so good - maybe she'd be better without it. One needs to do large-scale studies or, ideally, experiments. Take 200 musicians, randomly choose 100 of them to take acid, and force 100 to abstain; if the first group makes better music, well, now you've found a secret of productivity. If Duhigg used such methods, what would he find? Perhaps very little. Plainly, there are things worth knowing about how to live one's life and run an organization. You can learn to become a better poker player, a better pilot or a better manager, and M.B.A. programs aren't entirely a waste of time. But reading Duhigg's book makes one wonder whether there really are any secrets here - any surprising generalizations of broad applicability. Readers looking for quick and dirty life hacks are going to be disappointed. Better to ignore the how-to subtitle and just enjoy the excellent stories. Duhigg talks about how the act of making choices invigorates and motivates us. PAUL BLOOM is a professor of psychology at Yale. He is writing a book about the problems with empathy.
Library Journal-Rezension
Everyone is busy, but not everyone is productive, says New York Times reporter Duhigg (The Power of Habit), who here explores the hows and whys of eight ideas that he feels are most important to expand effectiveness in the workplace. By using case studies, research reports, and experiences from a variety of industries, the author hopes to make everyone smarter, faster, and better at what needs to be accomplished, and to understand why some people and companies are more efficient than others. While the chapters deal with such topics as motivation, psychological safety in teams, focus, goal setting, and absorbing data, the examples are so enjoyable that Duhigg's point often tends to get lost. Other concepts include creative desperation, information blindness, reactive thinking, and cognitive tunneling. Even the notes section at the end makes for a compelling narrative. VERDICT Although a fascinating read in which the pages turn quickly, the author's goals may not have been realized. For readers who enjoy their business lessons disguised as entertaining stories, although in this case, absorbing the main arguments will require diligence.-Bonnie A. Tollefson, Rogue Valley Manor Lib., Medford, OR © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.