Guest Charles Duhigg – business journalist, author of Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better
How to think is more important than What to think
Power of Contemplative routines – habits to give us space to think about right things
eg, on way to work, think about upcoming day
Jerry Robbins (sp?) wrote nightly letters to friends – a habit to think about what happened to him that day
Charles’s own: every evening he tells his wife everything that happened that day, describes those things in detail to her, pushes him to think more deeply
Jordan also does verbalization – explaining his day, his problems – with podcast guests, business partners, romantic partner
Laptop notes vs Longhand notes
Laptop 3x more info from lecture, copy verbatim
But longhand notes score much better on recall test later
“Disfluency” – act of thinking, encodes more deeply
Productive people have checkin systems – eg, Sunday afternoon, review what happened last week, plan for next week
Productive people perceive choices where others see just chores
eg, Marine Corps changed basic training to force recruits to make lots more choices – you figure out where the cleaning supplies are, you determine whether to throw something out or keep it
eg, when going through your emails, look for ways to exhibit agency, make a decision, turn chores into choices
eg, grading papers is a boring task, before doing it, one professor goes through his mental mantra to internalize that grading papers > helps university > funds his research > helps to cure cancer
Brain is a tool we can choose to change and manipulate
Carol Dweck – internal locus of control, growth mindset – instead of complimenting a kid on how smart they are, compliment how hard they worked (effort is a choice, being smart isn’t)
Google’s quest to build a perfect team – the result? They found WHO was on the team didn’t matter as much as HOW the team interacted
Two behaviors always helped
1. equality in conversational turn taking – one person doesn’t consistently dominate, and others aren’t always silent
2. ostentatious listening behavior – show you that I’m listening, mirror back what others say
Creates atmosphere of psychological safety
Google – a tech company completely reliant on computers – has a rule where everyone must close computer before start a meeting – they know this is more effective
Visualize what’s coming in specificity / detail – what we expect to occur, what exactly we’ll do or say – which helps prepare us and mentally primes us for that behavior
Why are some people more creative on a fixed schedule?
It’s a product not of creative individual but a creative process – commit to the process, yielding ideas on a schedule
Disney movie Frozen – was on brink of disaster just months before release – “anyone can be creative if they have the right process” – take your own experiences and frame in new original ways
They held an offsite – took turns to share your favorite cliches / ideas – lots of women on the team – realized key themes were Princess + Sisterhood – sisterhood is complicated, relationships can be nuanced
the breakthru was realizing the movie’s heart was about the sisters’ relationship and helping each other
Most creative people collect ideas and fit them together – “creative brokerage”
Hamilton = Hip hop + Founding fathers
Wrote this book because he wanted to improve his own productivity
At that time, his book Power of Habit was doing better than he expected, he was also writing an award winning series of articles, but he felt miserable, too busy, stressed, felt overwhelmed by minutiae and process
How to find better balance while still accomplishing major goals?
Developed contemplative routines
-each evening, he tells his wife about his day, what he liked and disliked – looks forward to this chance to review with his wife
-on subway in morning, he visualizes how his day will unfold, which better prepares and primes him
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More change than ever in world, people are anxious about it
Answer is to think more, focus on right goals, build mental models to focus better