Smarter Faster Better Summary By Charles Duhigg

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Blog Title: Smarter Faster Better Summary By Charles Duhigg
Name: Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity
Author: Charles Duhigg
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Book size: 368 pages

Overview:

When Charles Duhigg was completing his book the power of habit, since then he has an interest towards science of productivity,  after those many things happened in his life, because his book was a huge success and he started getting many professional opportunities, and because of all these things he started getting responsibilities from various aspects and handling all those responsibilities was getting difficult for him, he wasn’t getting much time, time was getting less and work load was expanding, thus his productivity was decreasing and he wasn’t able to perform work task properly, and because of all these things he wasn’t getting time for himself and for his personal life, he wasn’t getting time to enjoy his life.

Hence he went to meet Mr. Atul Gawande for help, Atul Gawande was a surgeon, and he is also a new york staff writer, he is one of the bestselling author and also a Harvard professor and not only this he was also an advisor of the world health organization, he was a very busy doctor but still he was very productive regarding his work, he was very good in terms of utilizing time, he used to utilize his time properly,  even after being so busy with his work and with different post still he used to spend time with his family, he used to go to rock concerts with his children and used to plan mini vacations with his wife,  he used to manage everything properly and also was enjoying his success and life.

After knowing all these things, Dduhigg came to know that some people have the skill to remain more productive compared to others, some people have the capability of being more productive compared to other people. After this realization he started doing a research, he took interview of many productive people, which includes airline pilots, military generals, cognitive scientists and many more, from such people he learned a lot and with this learning and he came to know about 8 key areas by focusing it. He able to increase his productivity, and by focusing on those 8 areas anyone can increase their productivity level by becoming smarter faster and better person.

So today I will share some points out of those 8 key areas from Smarter Faster Better Summary. So let’s begin.

Smarter Faster Better Summary Point 1:

Motivation power of choice

A study has been done over few people, where they were asked to play a simple game on a desktop, in that game random numbers will appear on desktop screen and those no. were between 1 to 10, and person needs to guess before appearing of those no, whether that no. will be less and more than 5. And if they guess properly then they will win that game if not then they will lose, and while playing that simple game, researchers were keeping their eye on those players brain activity with the help of scanner, through this what they came to know that whenever those players used to get a choice in that game, whenever they are asked to select a number at that time one part of their brain known as striatum which is responsible for motivation used to get more active however when that game started playing against them, when that game by itself started choosing number, hence players were not getting any option or choice and they just have to see the result with this those players motivation brain part stopped functioning and that part activity stopped,  basically this study shows and teaches that person’s motivation also depends on choices,  meaning if person will not have much choices and if person doesn’t have much to do or if person think that he has not much to do he has no choice so because of this his motivation can go down,  whereas if that person has many choices, and if person has to take many decisions then his motivation will increase.

Similar concept was found in 1980 by French neurologist, he did a research on people who  were normal at start which includes various successful people,  but suddenly their interest motivation was full vanished, they were normal by their brain but they had no interest towards doing anything, they used to spend hours doing nothing,  with study neurologist found that the reason behind of this was, those people brain part which is responsible for motivation was damaged due to some problems or due to accidents, example, there was a couple who were happy in their life for more than 35 years but suddenly her husband gone through the same situation where his entire motivation got damaged, with this his wife was very worried, so  to better the situation of lack of motivation, she did many things but nothing happened,  so finally what she did in order to bring his motivation back, she increased the level of choices and decision in his life,  meaning she started giving daily choices to him like, example whether he wants to wear this shirt or the other one,  whether he wants veg food or non-veg, she started giving daily choices,  because of which his motivation gradually started increasing.`

Well with this you can come up with a conclusion, like if you want other to do your work or if you want to do your work more productively then its best to give yourself or the other person choices or options, so that you or other can choose from that option example, instead of giving a task to any child, give them a choice like whether they like to go to the market and bring something or will they help you with household works. With this chances of doing at least one thing will increase, that child for sure do one thing, every individual in this world loves that things are under their control, by giving choices to other person you will give that control to that person which will give them motivation to finish the work.

Even in politics this principle gets used,  many a times it happens, where there are two party’s one party getting maximum support and the other party gets minimum,  meaning party gives options to public to choose between different party’s with this public think that they have the actual control, they are one who is taking decision, but actually this is as similar to that child example, where that child gets an option between market and household work, with that option child feels he is the winner but actually no matter what he do, both the ways parents are in lead and getting benefit.

Smarter Faster Better Summary Point 2:

Team

You must have noticed, most of the people when they stay with their parents they behave different and same people with their friends behave different with friends they behave like a human, they take more risk and they behave more open well the reason for this is we feel more safe with our friends compare to parents, here author is talking about psychological safety,  which means with friends we people can easily express ourselves without thinking much about negative consequences or outcome,  because our friends views believes and thinking at some extent matches with us, they are quite similar to us, hence we feel more comfortable and open with them which normally isn’t possible with family for most of the people.

You must be thinking what’s the relation between these things and productivity, well if you want to do any big thing for that you will for sure require a team, and if you want you and your team members to complete work with productivity then you need to understand that every individual must have psychological safety in that team just like being with friends. Where they can openly share their ideas, because when human feel such safety only then person can give their 100 percent along with higher level productivity. Hence do make such kind of team or do work under such type of team where people don’t judge each other ideas negatively, and always stay supportive, this thing is not only realized by author but Google also came to know about this through their Aristotle project where they were doing research about how perfect team can be made, in this research Google has found 5 key factors, amongst those factors Psychological safety was the major and important one.

Smarter Faster Better Summary Point 3:

Focus mental modeling

On 1st June 2000 air France flight 447 was going to Paris from Brazil, as journey started after few minutes that flight faced a huge storm, after that suddenly that plane autopilot got damaged and airplane started bending on one side,  at such situation pilots were not understanding whether they should increase or decrease the speed,  because plane speedometer wasn’t working properly so pilots were very confused and worried, they should have increased the speed by putting plane nose down, but at that situation they were so worried and nervous that instead of putting plane nose down they were keeping it up, and because of this airplane speed was decreasing and unfortunately that plane got crash at Atlanta ocean, and because of this accident every passenger including pilots died,  Another more worst accident has happened, with similar airbus plane with Qantas airways flight no.32,  this plane was going to Sydney from Singapore, just few minutes after the start of journey, that plane engine suddenly caught fire,  and it resulted into blast, in that situation pilot immediately took over the control from the autopilot, as he took the control, at screen error start appearing, alarm started ringing and handling every situation and every passenger in that plane was become very difficult., that plane started facing various problems,  and things were turning more worst, hole occurred in that plane ring and monitor was showing  errors, but even after all such mess and chaos, that pilot kept control and he didn’t lose his calm and didn’t allow himself to get nervous,  and with the help of his training he kept himself calmed and he landed that plane to Singapore and he made that impossible landing possible and saved every individual passengers life.

Now at both situations, plane has faced the malfunction, at one plane malfunction was small and on the other it big chaos,  but still the thing which saved people’s life and thing which has taken many lives was the pilot way of handling situation,  Pilot of flight 447 didn’t able to handle situation properly , because that pilot was suffering from the mental error which is known as cognitive tunneling. This state appears when person mind suddenly changes from relax state to panic state,  at such situations people don’t even understand normal situations and they fail to make proper decisions,  however Qantas flight pilot was into more worst and problematic situation compare to flight 447 pilot but still he able to handle that situation because that main pilot used the concept known as mental modelling, mental modelling is kind of visualization, where person already visualizes what he will do if certain thing happens, where person already visualizes the outcome, what all thing he will do if certain things happens,  example many a times, we ourselves play visual image or scenes in our mind, like what all things we do in a day, where will go at first and after that what will do how I’ll do,  etc. by playing such mental image in our brain which is somewhat small level of mental modelling.  Qantas plane main pilot used to do this every time before getting into the flight, he used to play mental image like if something happens how he will handle what all things he will do etc. this way he use to do mental modelling for every worst cases and situations. And this practice of his saved many people lives,  similarly even you can use mental modelling technique to improve your productivity, with the use of mental modelling use your visualization first play your work scene and images at your mind this thing will help you for sure. And will make you smarter faster and better.

This is the end of Smarter Faster Better Summary.These were some important points from the Smarter Faster Better book By Charles Duhigg. If you like Smarter Faster Better Summary and want to increase or improve your productivity then do buy this amazing book from the given links:

Buy Smarter Faster Better at: Amazon
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Download Smarter Faster Better at: Audible