When I was working on this book, I came upon a story that I loved, one of my favorite bits of reporting. The tale involved Malcom McLean, the man who essentially created the modern shipping container. McLean died in 2001, but he left behind videotapes and numerous records, and I spent months reading about him, as well as interviewing members of his family and dozens of his former colleagues. They described a man who had relentlessly chased an idea—that shipping goods inside of big metal boxes would make docks more productive—and how that insight eventually transformed manufacturing, the transportation industry, and the economies of whole continents. They explained that McLean was so productive because he was fanatically obsessed with a single idea.
I devoted many, many hours to learning about McLean. I wrote several drafts of his story, determined to fit it into this book.
In the end, however, none of them worked. The lesson he offered—that a single-minded devotion to an idea can spur massive change—turned out not to be as universal and important as the other concepts I wanted to explain. McLean’s story was interesting but not vital. What worked for him doesn’t work for everyone. There’re lots of examples where fanatical devotion has backfired. His insight wasn’t big enough to be included among the other eight ideas in this book.
And yet the time I spent researching McLean was worth it, because discarding that work helped me understand the mechanics of focus. My mental model of this book kept conflicting with what I was learning about McLean. My SMART plan for the McLean story didn’t match up with my stretch goal of describing universally applicable lessons. In other words, researching McLean helped me figure out what this book was supposed to be about. It served as a valuable reminder of how productivity actually functions: Productivity doesn’t mean that every action is efficient. It doesn’t mean that waste never occurs. In fact, as Disney learned, sometimes you have to foster tension to encourage creativity. Sometimes a misstep is the most important footfall along the path to success.
But in the end, if you learn how to recognize certain choices that, to many, might not be obvious, then you can become smarter, faster, and better over time. Anyone can become more creative, more focused, better at framing their goals and making wise decisions. Schools can be transformed by changing how people absorb data. Teams can be taught how to learn more from mistakes, or use tension to their advantage, or make what seems like misspent hours into lessons getting them closer to their goals. Schools can be remade by empowering the people closest to a problem. The lives of senior citizens can be remade by teaching them to become subversives.
We can all become more productive. Now you know how to start.
To Harry, Oliver,
Doris and John,
Andy,
and, most of all, Liz
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The truth of the matter is that most of my own ability to become smarter, faster, and better relies on the kindness of other people, and so there are many of them I wish to thank.
This book exists because Andy Ward willed it into existence by, at first, buying an idea and then, over two years, helping mold it into a book. Everything about Andy—from his graceful editing, to his unyielding demands for quality, to his genuine and heartfelt friendship—inspires the people around him to become better and to want to make the world more beautiful and just. I’m incredibly thankful that I have a chance to know him.
I am also incredibly fortunate to have landed at Random House, which operates under the wise and steady guidance of Gina Centrello, Susan Kamil, and Tom Perry, as well as the superhuman efforts of Maria Braeckel, Sally Marvin, Sanyu Dillon, Theresa Zoro, Avideh Bashirrad, Nicole Morano, Caitlin McCaskey, Melissa Milsten, Leigh Marchant, Alaina Waagner, Dennis Ambrose, Nancy Delia, Benjamin Dreyer, and the ever-patient Kaela Myers. And I owe a huge debt to all of the people who are so talented at taking these words and putting them into people’s hands: David Phethean, Tom Nevins, Beth Koehler, David Weller, Richard Callison, Christine McNamara, Jeffrey Weber, David Romine, Cynthia Lasky, Stacy Berenbaum, Glenn Ellis, Allyson Pearl, Kristen Fleming, Cathy Serpico, Ken Wohlrob, and everyone else in Random House Sales. I am equally lucky to work with Jason Arthur, Emma Finnigan, Matthew Ruddle, Jason Smith, Nigel Wilcockson, and Aslan Byrne at William Heinemann and Martha Konya-Forstner and Cathy Poine in Canada.
I am also indebted to Andrew Wylie and James Pullen at the Wylie Agency. Andrew is steadfast in his desire to make the world safer for his writers, and I am grateful for his efforts. James Pullen has helped me understand how to get published in languages I would have almost certainly failed in high school.
I owe a tremendous amount to The New York Times: A huge thanks goes to Dean Baquet, Andy Rosenthal, and Matt Purdy, whose leadership and examples help guide my personal choices daily. Arthur Sulzberger, Mark Thompson, and Meredith Kopit Levien have been great friends and make it possible for the pursuit of truth to occur. I’m so thankful for the time I’ve spent with Dean Murphy, business editor, and Peter Lattman, deputy business editor, both of whose friendship, advice and patience allowed me to write this book. Similarly, Larry Ingrassia’s guidance on nearly every issue is indispensible. Gerry Marzorati has been a great friend, as has Kinsey Wilson, Susan Chira, Jake Silverstein, Bill Wasik, and Cliff Levy.
A few other thanks: I’m indebted to my Times colleagues David Leonhardt, A. G. Sulzberger, Walt Bogdanich, Sam Dolnick, Eduardo Porter, David Perpich, Jodi Kantor, Vera Titunik, Peter Lattman, David Segal, Joe Nocera, Michael Barbaro, Jim Stewart, and others who have been so generous with their ideas.
Similarly, I’m thankful to Alex Blumberg, Adam Davidson, Paula Szuchman, Nivi Nord, Alex Berenson, Nazanin Rafsanjani, Brendan Koerner, Nicholas Thompson, Sarah Ellison, Amanda Schaffer, Dennis Potami, James and Mandy Wynn, Noah Kotch, Greg Nelson, Caitlin Pike, Jonathan Klein, Amanda Klein, Matthew and Chloe Galkin, Nick Panagopulos and Marissa Ronca, Donnan Steele, Stacey Steele, Wesley Morris, Adir Waldman, Rich Frankel, Jennifer Couzin, Aaron Bendikson, Richard Rampell, David Lewicki, Beth Waltemath, Ellen Martin, Amy Wallace, Russ Uman, Erin Brown, Jeff Norton, Raj De Datta, Ruben Sigala, Dan Costello, and Peter Blake, who all provided crucial support and guidance along the way. The book’s cover and interior graphics sprung directly from the mind of the incredibly talented Anton Ioukhnovets. Thank you, Anton.
Thank you, as well, to my stalwart fact checkers—Cole Louison and Benjamin Phalen—and Olivia Boone, who helped format and organize the endnotes.
I am indebted to the many people who were generous with their time and knowledge during the reporting of this book. Many are mentioned in the notes, but I wanted to give additional thanks to William Langewiesche, who provided guidance on the mechanics (and writing) of flight, and Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace, who made the Disney chapter happen.
Finally, my deepest thanks are to my family: Katy Duhigg, Jacquie Jenkusky, David Duhigg, Dan Duhigg, Toni Martorelli, Alexandra Alter, and Jake Goldstein have been wonderful friends. My sons, Oliver and Harry, have been sources of inspiration and joy. My parents, John and Doris, encouraged me from a young age to write.
And, of course, my wife, Liz, whose constant love, support, guidance, intelligence, and friendship made this book possible.
—November 2015
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The reporting in this book is based on hundreds of interviews, papers, and studies. Many of those sources are detailed in the text itself or the endnotes, along with guides to additional resources for interested readers.
In most situations, individuals who provided major sources of information or who published research that was integral to reporting were provided with summaries of my reporting and offered the opportunity to review facts and offer additional comments, address discrepancies, or register issues with how information is portrayed. Many of their comments are reproduced in the endnotes. (No source was given access to the book’s complete text; all comments are based on summaries provided to sources.) Independent fact-checkers also contacted major sources a
nd reviewed documents to verify and corroborate claims.
In a small number of cases, confidentiality was extended to sources who, for a variety of reasons, did not wish to speak on a for-attribution basis. In three instances, some identifying characteristics have been withheld or slightly modified to conform with patient privacy ethics or for other reasons.
NOTES
CHAPTER ONE: MOTIVATION
Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans The facility is now known as the Ochsner Medical Center.
Archives of Neurology Richard L. Strub, “Frontal Lobe Syndrome in a Patient with Bilateral Globus Pallidus Lesions,” Archives of Neurology 46, no. 9 (1989): 1024–27.
“to get up in the morning” Michel Habib, “Athymhormia and Disorders of Motivation in Basal Ganglia Disease,” The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 16, no. 4 (2004): 509–24.
movement and emotion emerge This is how Mauricio Delgado, a neurologist at Rutgers, describes the striatum: “The striatum is the input unit of a larger structure, the basal ganglia. I say the input unit because it receives connections from different brain areas which subserve distinct brain functions—putting the striatum in a prime position to influence behavior. The basal ganglia and in turn the striatum are very important in facets of behavior related to motor (deficits in this structure is common in Parkinson’s patients), cognitive and motivation. One line of thinking regarding the striatum and its role in motivation and more specifically reward processing is that it is involved in learning about rewards and using that information to make decisions that help guide behavior, updating the brain along the way whether a reward is better or worse than prior expectations.”
regulating our moods Oury Monchi et al., “Functional Role of the Basal Ganglia in the Planning and Execution of Actions,” Annals of Neurology 59, no.2 (2006): 257–64; Edmund T. Rolls, “Neurophysiology and Cognitive Functions of the Striatum,” Revue Neurologique 150 (1994): 648–60; Patricia S. Goldman-Rakic, “Regional, Cellular, and Subcellular Variations in the Distribution of D1 and D5 Dopamine Receptors in Primate Brain,” The Journal of Neuroscience 15, no. 12 (1995): 7821–36; Bradley Voytek and Robert T. Knight, “Prefrontal Cortex and Basal Ganglia Contributions to Working Memory,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 42 (2010): 18167–72.
motivation had disappeared For my understanding of how brain injuries influence behavior, I am indebted to Julien Bogousslavsky and Jeffrey L. Cummings, Behavior and Mood Disorders in Focal Brain Lesions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
striatal injuries Parkinson’s frequently involves injuries to the substantia nigra, a region that communicates with the striatum. R. K. B. Pearce et al., “Dopamine Uptake Sites and Dopamine Receptors in Parkinson’s Disease and Schizophrenia,” European Neurology 30, supplement 1 (1990): 9–14; Philip Seeman et al., “Low Density of Dopamine D4 Receptors in Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, and Control Brain Striata,” Synapse 14, no. 4 (1993): 247–53; Philip Seeman et al., “Human Brain D1 and D2 Dopamine Receptors in Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s Diseases,” Neuropsychopharmacology 1, no. 1 (1987): 5–15.
see a computer screen Mauricio R. Delgado et al., “Tracking the Hemodynamic Responses to Reward and Punishment in the Striatum,” Journal of Neurophysiology 84, no. 6 (2000): 3072–77.
expectation and excitement In some versions of this experiment, participants were rewarded for guessing right and penalized for guessing wrong with small financial winnings. In response to a fact-checking email, Delgado provided further context for the experiments: “The goal of that initial study was to investigate the human reward circuit. That is, we know from animal research that certain brain regions were important for processing information about reward. We knew less about how that translated to the human brain and how it translated to more common human rewards such as money, which had implications to behavioral addictions such as pathological gambling. Thus, with the guessing game, our initial goal was to compare what happened in the brain when participants received a monetary reward (for a correct guess) and a monetary punishment or loss (for an incorrect guess). The pattern we observe is very characteristic of a reward response. We see activity in the striatum (both dorsal and ventral parts). The response is an initial increase at the beginning of the trial when the question mark appears and they make a guess. We reasoned that it reflected anticipation of a potential reward. Other work using this task (see Delgado et al. 2004, Leotti and Delgado 2011) support that as does the work by Brian Knutson (2001). They don’t know yet if their guess is correct and lead to a reward or incorrect and lead to a loss. So the increase is common for both types of trials. Once the outcome is revealed, we see an interesting pattern where the striatum differentiates between a positive and negative outcome—a gain or a loss. It is increased for a gain and decreased response for a loss. One interpretation of this finding was that the striatum was coding for the value of an outcome. A more global interpretation that takes into account all the neural inputs and outputs of this structure is that it takes in information about the outcome/reward, it matches up with the expectations (e.g., was the outcome better or worse than expected—if you guessed high was the card high, or did you make the wrong guess) and allows for the system to update and inform the next decision (e.g., maybe try low next time).”
computer guessed for them In response to a fact-checking email, Delgado expanded his comments: “There were three experiments related to this….[In] the first one (Tricomi et al. 2004), they were told that they would see two circles. Upon seeing the yellow circle for example they would guess as before whether the correct answer was button 1 or 2 and were told that a correct response would yield a monetary reward. If they saw a blue circle they were told to press a button (motor control) but that the button had nothing to do with the reward, it was random. In truth, the reward was random in both cases, but if the subjects believed that their button press mattered, as in the yellow circle condition, then they engaged the striatum response much more than if it was a non-contingent reward. This experiment showed that if participants felt they were in control that the reward response was more prominent. The second experiment took this back to the card guessing game (Delgado et al. 2005) and this time added a cue, like a circle, before each trial that predicted if the card would be high or low. Participants had to learn via trial and error what the cue predicted. This experiment showed that the signal in the striatum was related to learning about the reward, rather than just purely processing the reward value….In [the] third experiment (Leotti and Delgado 2005) we presented subjects with let’s say two cues—a square and a circle. When they saw the square, they knew they would be faced with a 50/50 choice (a guess of sorts) and if they chose correctly, they would get a reward (no losses in this experiment, either a reward or no reward). In this condition, they felt in ‘control.’ Much like my participant who felt they could ‘beat the game.’ The other condition was the no-choice condition. Here, they saw a circle and were faced with the same choice. Except this time the computer picked for them. And if the computer was right they got a reward. So in both conditions one could get a reward (or no reward). But the key difference was that participants either had a choice or the computer chose. Interestingly, people preferred the choice condition, even though such condition required more effort (the actual choice) and led to the same amount of rewards. We also saw that the striatum activity was present to the square (compared to the circle). That is, when participants found out they had a choice, we saw activity in this reward area of the brain, suggesting that the mere opportunity for exerting one’s choice may be rewarding in and of itself.”
believed they were in control For more on Delgado’s work, I recommend Elizabeth M. Tricomi, Mauricio R. Delgado, and Julie A. Fiez, “Modulation of Caudate Activity by Action Contingency,” Neuron 41, no. 2 (2004): 281–92; Mauricio R. Delgado, M. Meredith Gillis, and Elizabeth A. Phelps, “Regulating the Expectation of Reward v
ia Cognitive Strategies,” Nature Neuroscience 11, no. 8 (2008): 880–81; Laura N. Martin and Mauricio R. Delgado, “The Influence of Emotion Regulation on Decision-Making Under Risk,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, no. 9 (2011): 2569–81; Lauren A. Leotti and Mauricio R. Delgado, “The Value of Exercising Control over Monetary Gains and Losses,” Psychological Science 25, no. 2 (2014): 596–604; Lauren A. Leotti and Mauricio R. Delgado, “The Inherent Reward of Choice,” Psychological Science 22 (2011): 1310–18.
reported to a boss “Self-Employment in the United States,” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, September 2010, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2010/09/art2full.pdf.
otherwise transitory positions A 2006 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 31 percent of workers were in temporary positions.
allocate their energy Michelle Conlin et al., “The Disposable Worker,” Bloomberg Businessweek, January 7, 2010.
“The need for control” Lauren A Leotti, Sheena S. Iyengar, and Kevin N. Ochsner, “Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 10 (2010): 457–63.
setbacks faster Diana I. Cordova and Mark R. Lepper, “Intrinsic Motivation and the Process of Learning: Beneficial Effects of Contextualization, Personalization, and Choice,” Journal of Educational Psychology 88, no. 4 (1996): 715; Judith Rodin and Ellen J. Langer, “Long-Term Effects of a Control-Relevant Intervention with the Institutionalized Aged,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35, no. 12 (1977): 897; Rebecca A. Henry and Janet A. Sniezek, “Situational Factors Affecting Judgments of Future Performance,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 54, no. 1 (1993): 104–32; Romin W. Tafarodi, Alan B. Milne, and Alyson J. Smith. “The Confidence of Choice: Evidence for an Augmentation Effect on Self-Perceived Performance,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25, no. 11 (1999): 1405–16; Jack W. Brehm, “Postdecision Changes in the Desirability of Alternatives,” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 52, no. 3 (1956): 384; Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, vol. 2 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962); Daryl J. Bem, “An Experimental Analysis of Self-Persuasion,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1, no. 3 (1965): 199–218; Louisa C. Egan, Laurie R. Santos, and Paul Bloom, “The Origins of Cognitive Dissonance: Evidence from Children and Monkeys,” Psychological Science 18, no. 11 (2007): 978–83.
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