Key learning: how teams work is more important than who is on them. A shared belief that the group is a safe place for taking risks.Open communication everyone speaks equally.What are the characteristics of strong, successful teams?

Key learning: to motivate yourself you must learn to see your choices as expressions of control and affirmations of your values and goals.Ĭase studies: the quest to build the perfect team at Google and the original cast of Saturday Night Live.

See chores as choices ask yourself “why am I doing this?” so meaningless tasks become part of meaningful projects, goals and values.

Receive praise for effort rather than ability.

Make choices and take control of situations to develop an ‘internal locus of control’ (the belief that our choices influence our destiny).

How do you generate motivation in yourself? Krulak transformed new Marine Corps' recruits into extreme self-starters. To make these new learnings “sticky” (and following the advice of chapter 8 ‘Absorbing Data’) I engaged with the book’s content by summarising each chapter, documenting the key learnings, and drawing a visual summary, below.Ĭase study: general Charles C. The principles are illustrated through a diverse range of case studies including: motivating troops in the US Marine Corps, Bayesian reasoning in poker, and innovation on a time limit at Disney. The book’s eight chapters each cover a principle that governs productivity. Productivity, in Duhigg’s words: 'isn’t about working more or sweating harder is the way we choose to see ourselves and frame daily decisions the stories we tell ourselves, the easy goals we ignore the sense of community we build among teammates the creative cultures we establish as leaders: these are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive.' This book is about the science of productivity it explains how we can transform our individual, team or company performance by managing how we think.

Duhigg is a New York Times reporter, author of the best-selling ‘The Power of Habit’, and HBS alumni. My latest book was ‘Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business’ by Charles Duhigg. It’s been a while since I’ve created a visual book summary I forget how helpful they are for consolidating learning and how much I enjoy being in ‘flow’ during the creative process.

Smarter faster better key concepts