Smarter Faster Better

Yesterday, I finished a wonderful book titled Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg.  I’ve written about another of his books that I read earlier in the year titled The Power of Habit.  If I can leverage what I read in this book like I did from the other book I will be much better for it.  As I said in my previous blog I’ve started new healthy habits, largely due to reading The Power of Habit.

Back to the main idea, my reflections on this book.  This book is about productivity in life and business.  There were several universal truths that most anyone can apply in their every day lives.  I want to focus on just a few that really hit me the most.

One is the idea of disfluency.  It’s in the last chapter that talks about how to absorb and use data.  It’s the idea that making data harder to absorb in the beginning actually leads to a deeper understanding later on.  He even mentioned as an example that if you’re reading and find something interesting you should stop what you’re reading and talk about it to someone around you.  Steffani was not thrilled with this statement as I do that frequently to her anyway and it can tend to drive her nuts when it’s about things that she cares nothing about.  Oh well, maybe she’ll find them interesting some day, right?

The idea of disfluency is brilliant if you think about it.  We’re bombarded everyday with truckloads of data that we often don’t know what to do with much less where to start.  They gave the example of using it in a failing school and how it helped turn it around.  I can remember when they introduced using loads of data at my school and how I hated it with a passion.  Perhaps if I had stuck with it though it would have made me a much better teacher.  It’s hard to say at this point; I definitely would have needed to be better guided through how to interpret and apply the data to improve my teaching.  They tried this but it was so new to everyone that all our heads were reeling those first few years.

Another idea he shared in the book is that of an idea broker.  An idea broker basically uses something he’s learned in one area of his life and applies it to a different situation in another area of his life.  For example, Disney’s animation team has their animators draw on their emotional experiences to come up with good story lines.  That’s why a lot of people relate to Disney story lines, because they’re drawn from people’s own emotions, albeit exaggerated for the movies of course.  But if you can get across that raw emotion that people feel about certain subject matters, you’ve gone a long way towards striking a chord and having a decent chance at a blockbuster.

One of my favorite chapters was about SMART goals and stretch goals.  I’d heard of both of these, just in different terms.  The SMART goals was the classic Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and a Timeline.  The stretch goals are designed to help you not fall into the trap of setting goals that are really too easy and give you a false sense of accomplishment when you haven’t really done much.  Another term I’ve heard used are BHAGs; big, hairy audacious goals.  If you have only SMART goals, it’s easy to fall into a rut and only achieve small victories.  If you have a stretch goal though, that really gives you something to shoot for.  They have to be goals that seem almost impossible without actually being impossible.  That’s a tough line to draw but can in fact be drawn if you sit down with some discernment, wisdom and time to think about it.

There were many other chapters that were awesome as well.  Looking back I should have written about each chapter as I was reading through but hindsight is 20/20, right?  I don’t want to write about each and every chapter though because I want to suggest you go get this book.  Thankfully my library had a copy already which is surprising because it just released in March so I was pleasantly surprised to find out they had it.  Even if your library doesn’t have it, I’d still suggest buying it because it’s that good.