Smarter Faster Better Quotes

“The only way to reduce errors by 70 percent was to make every single employee, in effect, a quality assurance auditor. Everyone had to take responsibility for catching mistakes. But most factory workers didn’t know enough about the engines to identify every small defect as it occurred. The only solution, managers decided, was a massive retraining effort. Except”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“In particular, objectives like SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don’t even realize they possess. The reason, in part, is because goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires—or shifting that goal slightly, if your initial aims turn out to be unrealistic. Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can’t match.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“But one week later, when the researchers measured typing speeds again, they found that the workers, on average, were completing 103 lines per hour. Another week later: 112 lines. Most of the typists had blown past the goals they had set.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“People like Darlene who are particularly good at managing their attention tend to share certain characteristics. One is a propensity to create pictures in their minds of what they expect to see. These people tell themselves stories about what’s going on as it occurs. They narrate their own experiences within their heads. They are more likely to answer questions with anecdotes rather than simple responses. They say when they daydream, they’re often imagining future conversations. They visualize their days with more specificity than the rest of us do. Psychologists”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“It focused on those unexpected details and triggered Darlene’s sense of alarm. The other nurse, in contrast, didn’t have a strong picture in her head of what she expected to see, and so her spotlight focused on the most obvious details: The baby was eating. Her heartbeat was strong. She wasn’t crying. The other nurse was distracted by the information that was easiest to grasp. People”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“People who are most creative are the ones who have learned that feeling scared is a good sign. We”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“Rather, Janssen was rescued because hundreds of dedicated people worked nonstop to chase dozens of leads, and because an agile culture empowered junior agents to”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“pursue. People”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“Participants were more motivated to play simply because they believed they were in control.11 III.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“As people began playing, Delgado watched the activity in their striata. This time, when people were allowed to make their own choices, their brains lit up just like in the previous experiment. They showed the neurological equivalents of anticipation and excitement. But during those rounds when participants didn’t have any control over their guesses, when the computer made a choice for them, people’s striata went essentially silent. It was as if their brains became uninterested in the exercise. There was “robust activity in the caudate nucleus only when subjects” were permitted to guess, Delgado and his colleagues later wrote. “The anticipation of choice itself was associated with increased activity in corticostriatal regions, particularly the ventral striatum, involved in affective and motivational processes.” What”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“Delgado, monitoring the activity inside of their heads, saw that people’s striata—that central dispatch—lit up with activity whenever participants played, regardless of the outcome. This kind of striatal activity, Delgado knew, was associated with emotional reactions—in particular, with feelings of expectation and excitement.9 As”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive

“Psychological safety is a “shared belief, held by members of a team, that the group is a safe place for taking risks.” It is “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up,” Edmondson wrote in a 1999 paper. “It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“Self-motivation becomes easier when we see our choices as affirmations of our deeper values and goals.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“Teams succeed when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members show they are sensitive to how one another feels.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“Employees work smarter and better when they believe they have more decisionmaking authority and when they believe their colleagues are committed to their success. A”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“Group norms, the researchers on Project Aristotle concluded, were the answer to improving Google’s teams. “The data finally started making sense,” said Dubey. “We had to manage the how of teams, not the who.”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“Stretch goals “serve as jolting events that disrupt complacency and promote new ways of thinking,”
― Charles Duhigg, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business