The common themes he addresses are eternal and deserve repeating and revisiting – and Duhigg does a good job with the story telling and making the points relevant. He concludes with an appendix on how he personally has used each of these to help him in his own struggles to be more productive in a world full of chores and other distractions. A few new ideas for me – particularly in the innovation and absorbing data chapters. These tools were not new to me, but in his exploration of them, he offers insights and perspectives based on his extensive research that are worthwhile to read and to reinforce important lessons I’ve gotten from experience of other sources. He offers eight major tools for improving productivity and success in one’s endeavors, explored in eight separate chapters. An enjoyable, interesting, and easy read, with a number of great stories to help make his points and back up his arguments. He broke his findings and discussion into 8 chapters: Motivation, Teams, Focus, Goal Setting, Managing Others, Decisions Making, Innovation, Absorbing Data, and he concludes with an Appendix which shares how HE used these lessons. He decided this was a common problem, and decided to explore solutions that went beyond the good habits he’d written about in Power of Habit, so researched what had worked for others to see if their tools might work for him.

Summary in 3 sentences: Duhigg was personally struggling to be well enough organized and motivated to be as productive as he felt he could/shold be, and wanted to explore ways to improve his own productivity.

Why this book: Selected by two reading groups I’m in, based on Jay’s recommendation and the outstanding reviews of Duhigg’s Power of Habit.

Better faster stronger charles duhigg