You may be like me in
the sense of wanting to get more done and falling short. I realize I can’t do
all the things I imagine I might do. There aren’t enough hours in life for it
and I can let much of it go. However, there are some things that are important
to me. It bothers me that I make so little progress on them.
Journalist Charles Duhigg considers this problem of productivity in Smarter Faster Better. Rather than turning to standard self-help fare, he sought out scientifically
supported strategies.
For instance, there is a
lots said in self-help books about motivation. Duhigg makes the interesting point
that motivation can be learned. We can learn to push ourselves to make decisions
and take action.
That is a neat concept.
If you see motivation as a skill, you can quit beating yourself up and
accept that you are not good at motivating yourself yet. Instead, you can focus
on improving the skill. You can reward yourself for the effort—however imperfect—and seek lessons to
do better next time.
You might start with
Duhigg’s tip to think of what it feels like to be in control and how good it
is. The memory, and the positive emotion attached to it, may be the boost that
gets you moving. Also ask yourself why you are doing something; uncover why it
is meaningful to you.
You can learn to pay attention to the right things at the right
time, too. Productive people have good mental models that help them ignore the noise and
see the details that make a difference. You can develop these models by telling
yourself stories throughout the day about what you expect, why you expect it
and how your experience matches or varies from the tale.
This imagination can help you make decisions. We can’t
know the future, but if we accept uncertainty and imagine the possibilities—good
and bad—we can make good guesses.
Another bit of advice
from Duhigg is that when you learn something new, you should do something with
it. In the last chapter of the book, he recaps by showing how he used the
strategies to get his research and writing done.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Duhigg, Charles. Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets to Being
Productive in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2016.
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