Once we start asking why, those small tasks become pieces of a larger constellation of meaningful projects, goals, and values. We start to recognize how small chores can have outsized emotional rewards because they prove to ourselves that we are making meaningful choices, that we are genuinely in control of our own lives.”

Charles Duhigg: New York Times Best-Selling Author of Smarter

Something about all those small things occurring together caught Darlene’s attention. She opened the incubator and examined the infant. The newborn was conscious and awake. She grimaced slightly at Darlene’s touch but didn’t cry. There was nothing specific that she could point to, but this baby simply didn’t look like Darlene expected her to.Productive people and companies force themselves to make choices most people are content to ignore.” –Charles Duhigg Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to Singapore. The local time is five minutes to midday on Thursday 4 November, and I think you’ll agree that was one of the nicest landings we have experienced for a while.” De Crespigny returned home a hero. Today, Qantas Flight 32 is taught in flight schools and psychology classrooms as a case study of how to maintain focus during an emergency. It is cited as one of the prime examples of how mental models can put even the most dire situations within our control. There are numerous ways to build a Bayesian instinct. Some of them are as simple as looking at our past choices and asking ourselves: Why was I so certain things would turn out one way? Why was I wrong?” Setting effective goals is another principle you need to implement if you want to increase your productivity. You need to have a clear idea of what you’re working towards. You also need to make sure that you’re aiming for the right results. Complete List of Investigative Reporters and Editors Winners and Finalists". Editor & Publisher. March 29, 2010 . Retrieved May 4, 2010. [ permanent dead link]

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in

The changed engagement with data led to a changed engagement with teaching, and a series of innovative moves to help struggling students. In less than a year, the school’s overall scores had more than doubled. A year after that, Johnson was named Cincinnati’s Educator of the Year. Another important facet of productivity is maintaining focus on your tasks. If you constantly get distracted from your most important work, your productivity will suffer. In a later section on probabilistic thinking, Duhigg delves into another narrative-related skill: the ability to envision multiple futures. In a sense, all decision-making involves anticipating future possibility and probability. Cross-cutting the journey of a star poker player with other fields that rely on forecasting, the author finds that those with the keenest “computational cognition” can “hold multiple, conflicting outcomes” in their minds, and then “estimate their relative likelihoods.”De Crespigny, in other words, was prepared to pivot the mental model he was relying upon, because he knew that the models he had worked out ahead of time were insufficient to the task at hand. De Crespigny asked one of his copilots to calculate how much runway they would need. Inside his head, de Crespigny was envisioning the landing of an oversized Cessna. “Picturing it that way helped me simplify things,” he told me. “I had a picture in my head that contained the basics, and that’s all I needed to land the plane.” In past decades, as computerized automation has increasingly entered our workplaces and the information revolution has remade our lives, the importance of managing our attention has become even more critical. Mark,” he said, gesturing to a copilot, “if you see everyone looking down, I want you to look up. If we’re all looking up, you look down. We’ll all probably make at least one mistake this flight. You’re each responsible for catching them.” Achievable: think if the goal depends on something you cannot affect. Make sure you have enough time and resources (money, free time, energy) to achieve it

Smarter, Faster, Better’: The New Science of Productivity ‘Smarter, Faster, Better’: The New Science of Productivity

Successful people spend a lot of time seeking information on failures. You’ve got to be comfortable not knowing where your life is going. InnovationA few minutes after takeoff, the pilot, Richard de Crespigny, activated the plane’s autopilot. When the plane reached 7,400 feet, however, the pilots heard a boom. Then there was another, even louder crash, followed by what sounded like thousands of marbles being thrown against the hull. There are two types of goals that you can use to enhance your productivity: stretch goals and SMART goals. Type #1: stretch goals. These are ambitious and far-reaching goals that will often take a lot of planning and effort to accomplish.