Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

  America’s top workplaces In 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2014, Google was ranked number one by Fortune.

  one of the effort’s researchers In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Julia Rozovsky wrote: “I worked on several other efforts prior to joining the Project Aristotle team. Here’s a quick bio that I use internally: ‘Julia Rozovsky joined Google’s People Analytics team in August 2012. During her time at Google, Julia has advised teams on workforce planning and design strategies, analyzed the impact of workplace flexibility programs, and conducted research on empowering leaders. She is currently the [project manager] of Project Aristotle, which aims to improve team effectiveness at Google. Prior to Google, Julia collaborated with Harvard Business School academics on competitive strategy and organizational behavior research focusing specifically on game theory, ethics and financial controls, and organizational structure. Earlier in her career, Julia was a strategy consultant with a boutique marketing analytics firm. Julia holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, and a BA in mathematics and economics from Tufts University.’ ”

  made a team effective In comments sent in response to fact-checking questions, a Google spokeswoman wrote: “The first thing we had to start with was the definition of a team, and we arrived at groups of people collaborating closely on projects and working toward a common goal. Then, since we knew a hierarchical team definition would be too limiting in our environment where people collaborate across reporting lines, we had to figure out how to systematically identify intact teams and their accurate membership so we could study them. In the end, we had to do it manually, by asking senior leaders to identify teams in their orgs and ask the teams’ leads to confirm the members.”

  “appropriate behavior” David Lyle Light Shields et al., “Leadership, Cohesion, and Team Norms Regarding Cheating and Aggression,” Sociology of Sport Journal 12 (1995): 324–36.

  deference to the team For more on norms, please see Muzafer Sherif, The Psychology of Social Norms (London: Octagon Books, 1965); Jay Jackson, “Structural Characteristics of Norms,” Current Studies in Social Psychology 301 (1965): 309; P. Wesley Schultz et al., “The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms,” Psychological Science 18, no. 5 (2007): 429–34; Robert B. Cialdini, “Descriptive Social Norms as Underappreciated Sources of Social Control,” Psychometrika 72, no. 2 (2007): 263–68; Keithia L. Wilson et al., “Social Rules for Managing Attempted Interpersonal Domination in the Workplace: Influence of Status and Gender,” Sex Roles 44, nos. 3–4 (2001): 129–54; Daniel C. Feldman, “The Development and Enforcement of Group Norms,” Academy of Management Review 9, no. 1 (1984): 47–53; Deborah J. Terry, Michael A. Hogg, and Katherine M. White, “The Theory of Planned Behaviour: Self-Identity, Social Identity and Group Norms,” The British Journal of Social Psychology 38 (1999): 225; Jolanda Jetten, Russell Spears, and Antony S. R. Manstead, “Strength of Identification and Intergroup Differentiation: The Influence of Group Norms,” European Journal of Social Psychology 27, no. 5 (1997): 603–9; Mark G. Ehrhart and Stefanie E. Naumann, “Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Work Groups: A Group Norms Approach,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, no. 6 (2004): 960; Daniel C. Feldman, “The Development and Enforcement of Group Norms,” Academy of Management Review 9, no. 1 (1984): 47–53; Jennifer A. Chatman and Francis J. Flynn, “The Influence of Demographic Heterogeneity on the Emergence and Consequences of Cooperative Norms in Work Teams,” Academy of Management Journal 44, no. 5 (2001): 956–74.

  discouraged by our teammates Sigal G. Barsade, “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior,” Administrative Science Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2002): 644–75; Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff, “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups,” Harvard Business Review 79, no. 3 (2001): 80–91; Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff, “Group Emotional Intelligence and Its Influence on Group Effectiveness,” in The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace: How to Select for, Measure, and Improve Emotional Intelligence in Individuals, Groups and Organizations, ed. Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 132–55; Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, “The Emotional Reality of Teams,” Journal of Organizational Excellence 21, no. 2 (2002): 55–65; William A. Kahn, “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work,” Academy of Management Journal 33, no. 4 (1990): 692–724; Tom Postmes, Russell Spears, and Sezgin Cihangir, “Quality of Decision Making and Group Norms,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 6 (2001): 918; Chris Argyris, “The Incompleteness of Social-Psychological Theory: Examples from Small Group, Cognitive Consistency, and Attribution Research,” American Psychologist 24, no. 10 (1969): 893; James R. Larson and Caryn Christensen, “Groups as Problem-Solving Units: Toward a New Meaning of Social Cognition,” British Journal of Social Psychology 32, no. 1 (1993): 5–30; P. Wesley Schultz et al., “The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms,” Psychological Science 18, no. 5 (2007): 429–34.

  put her on guard In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Julia Rozovsky wrote: “This is how the study group felt from time to time. Not consistently.”

  equally successful group In comments sent in response to fact-checking questions, a Google spokeswoman wrote: “We wanted to test many group norms that we thought might be important. But at the testing phase we didn’t know that the how was going to be more important than the who. When we started running the statistical models, it became clear that not only were the norms more important in our models but that 5 themes stood out from the rest.”

  Boston hospitals Amy C. Edmondson, “Learning from Mistakes Is Easier Said than Done: Group and Organizational Influences on the Detection and Correction of Human Error,” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 32, no. 1 (1996): 5–28; Druskat and Wolff, “Group Emotional Intelligence,” 132–55; David W. Bates et al., “Incidence of Adverse Drug Events and Potential Adverse Drug Events: Implications for Prevention,” Journal of the American Medical Association 274, no. 1 (1995): 29–34; Lucian L. Leape et al., “Systems Analysis of Adverse Drug Events,” Journal of the American Medical Association 274, no. 1 (1995): 35–43.

  “slip through the cracks” In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Edmondson wrote: “It’s not MY insight that mistakes occur because of system complexity (and its challenging combination with patient heterogeneity)….I am merely the messenger bringing that perspective to certain audiences. But yes, the opportunities for slipping through are ever-present, so the challenge is building awareness and teamwork that catch and correct and prevent the slips.”

  teammates behaved In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Edmondson wrote: “My goal was to figure out whether the interpersonal climate that I’d found to differ in this setting would differ in other organizations, especially in terms of differing between groups within the same organization. Later I called this psychological safety (or team psychological safety). I also wanted to discover whether, if it did differ, whether that difference would be associated with differences in learning behavior (and in performance).” For more on Edmondson’s work, please see Amy C. Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1999): 350–83; Ingrid M. Nembhard and Amy C. Edmondson, “Making It Safe: The Effects of Leader Inclusiveness and Professional Status on Psychological Safety and Improvement Efforts in Health Care Teams,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 27, no. 7 (2006): 941–66; Amy C. Edmondson, Roderick M. Kramer, and Karen S. Cook, “Psychological Safety, Trust, and Learning in Organizations: A Group-Level Lens,” Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches 10 (2004): 239–72; Amy C. Edmondson, Managing the Risk of Learning: Psychological Safety in Work Teams (Boston: Division of Research, Harvard Business School, 2002); Amy C. Edmondson, Richard M. Bohmer, and Gary P. Pisano, “Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementatio
n in Hospitals,” Administrative Science Quarterly 46, no. 4 (2001): 685–716; Anita L. Tucker and Amy C. Edmondson, “Why Hospitals Don’t Learn from Failures,” California Management Review 45, no. 2 (2003): 55–72; Amy C. Edmondson, “The Competitive Imperative of Learning,” Harvard Business Review 86, nos. 7–8 (2008): 60; Amy C. Edmondson, “A Safe Harbor: Social Psychological Conditions Enabling Boundary Spanning in Work Teams,” Research on Managing Groups and Teams 2 (1999): 179–99; Amy C. Edmondson and Kathryn S. Roloff, “Overcoming Barriers to Collaboration: Psychological Safety and Learning in Diverse Teams,” Team Effectiveness in Complex Organizations: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches 34 (2009): 183–208.

  1999 paper Amy C. Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1999): 350–83.

  her Google colleagues In an email responding to fact-checking questions, a Google spokeswoman wrote: “We found Edmondson’s papers on psych safety very useful when trying to figure out how to cluster norms that we saw popping up as important into meta-themes. When we reviewed the papers about psych safety, we noticed that norms like allowing others to fail without repercussions, respecting divergent opinions, feeling as if others aren’t trying to undermine you are all part of psychological safety. This became one of our five key themes, along with dependability, structure/clarity, job meaning, and impact.”

  would never stop For my understanding of the early days of Saturday Night Live, I am indebted to those writers and cast members who were willing to speak with me, as well as Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, Live from New York: An Uncensored History of “Saturday Night Live” (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2008); Ellin Stein, That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick: The National Lampoon and the Comedy Insurgents Who Captured the Mainstream (New York: Norton, 2013); Marianne Partridge, ed., “Rolling Stone” Visits “Saturday Night Live” (Garden City, N.Y.: Dolphin Books, 1979); Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of “Saturday Night Live” (San Francisco: Untreed Reads, 2011).

  “never be heard from again” In an email sent in response to a fact-checking question, Schiller wrote: “It was an intense experience for me since I had never lived in New York or worked on a comedy-variety show. A lot of us were new to Manhattan and as such, hung out a lot together not only because New York at that time was sort of dangerous and scary, but also we didn’t know that many people and we were formulating the show. We were in our midtwenties and early thirties. Yes, we’d eat at restaurants and go to bars together even when out of the studio. We moved en masse, trying to make each other laugh.”

  “among the show’s cast” Malcolm Gladwell, “Group Think: What Does Saturday Night Live Have in Common with German Philosophy?” The New Yorker, December 2, 2002.

  team intensely bonds Donelson Forsyth, Group Dynamics (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2009).

  “It was a stalag” Alison Castle, “Saturday Night Live”: The Book (Reprint, Cologne: Taschen, America, 2015).

  “someone else was failing” In an email sent in response to a fact-checking question, Beatts wrote: “My Holocaust joke, which was certainly said in jest because there is no other way to say a joke, had nothing whatsoever to do with the show’s writers. The exact wording was ‘Imagine if Hitler hadn’t killed six million Jews, how hard it would be to find an apartment in New York.’ It was a joke about the difficulty of finding apartments in New York, riffing off New York’s large Jewish population and general ethnic feeling, a la ‘You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye bread. But it wouldn’t hurt.’ Zero to do with the writers. Marilyn Miller took offense at the mere mention of Hitler and the Holocaust, which to her could not be a subject for comedy….[Regarding] competition among the writers, not that it didn’t exist, because it did, but…everyone always had a chance to come back swinging the following week. Also the other writers and everyone in general, despite the competition for airtime, Lorne’s approval, audience appreciation, etc., were always very supportive of other people’s efforts and sympathetic to each other’s failures. No one went around rubbing their hands in glee and going haha, your sketch was cut and mine wasn’t, so there! It was more an attitude of ‘Better luck next time.’ I think everyone felt part of a family, maybe a dysfunctional family, but a close-knit family all the same. I would say that there is more backstabbing and jealousy and rivalry and competition and cliqueishness on the average middle school playground than there ever was at SNL during the time I was there.”

  “stuff for other people” In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Alan Zweibel wrote: “I wasn’t angry because of anything to do with that character or the process in which it was written. She and I weren’t speaking for reasons that I really can’t recall. But after about three shows where I didn’t write with her (and for her) we both realized that our work was suffering—that we were better as a team than we were individually—so we buried the hatchet and began collaborating again.”

  “it could be brutal” In an email sent in response to a fact-checking question, Schiller wrote: “I would say that some, not all, comedy writers and stand-up comedians have some sadness or anger in their life that helped fuel their comedy. They are fast with quips, and the stand-ups were used to hecklers and had to be prepared with a quick comeback. So just as much as they can say something sharply funny, they can also jab you with a quick, hostile (but also funny) remark….The atmosphere at SNL, although we all liked each other, could become highly competitive based on the fact that there were 10 writers and only so many sketches could go on the show, so we all did our best to write the winning sketch or make (in my case) the best short film.”

  58 percent The correct answers to the quiz are upset, decisive, skeptical, and cautious. These images come from Simon Baron-Cohen et al., “Another Advanced Test of Theory of Mind: Evidence from Very High Functioning Adults with Autism or Asperger Syndrome,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 38, no. 7 (1997): 813–22. And Simon Baron-Cohen et al., “The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test Revised Version: A Study with Normal Adults, and Adults with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42, no. 2 (2001): 241–51.

  Science in 2010 Anita Williams Woolley et al., “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups,” Science 330, no. 6004 (2010): 686–88.

  “individuals in it” Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone, “What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women,” Harvard Business Review 89, no. 6 (2011): 32–33; Julia B. Bear and Anita Williams Woolley, “The Role of Gender in Team Collaboration and Performance,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 36, no. 2 (2011): 146–53; David Engel et al., “Reading the Mind in the Eyes or Reading Between the Lines? Theory of Mind Predicts Collective Intelligence Equally Well Online and Face-to-Face,” PloS One 9, no. 12 (2014); Anita Williams Woolley and Nada Hashmi, “Cultivating Collective Intelligence in Online Groups,” in Handbook of Human Computation, ed. Pietro Michelucci (New York: Springer, 2013), 703–14; Heather M. Caruso and Anita Williams Woolley, “Harnessing the Power of Emergent Interdependence to Promote Diverse Team Collaboration,” Research on Managing Groups and Teams: Diversity and Groups 11 (2008): 245–66; Greg Miller, “Social Savvy Boosts the Collective Intelligence of Groups,” Science 330, no. 6000 (2010): 22; Anita Williams Woolley et al., “Using Brain-Based Measures to Compose Teams: How Individual Capabilities and Team Collaboration Strategies Jointly Shape Performance,” Social Neuroscience 2, no. 2 (2007): 96–105; Peter Gwynne, “Group Intelligence, Teamwork, and Productivity,” Research Technology Management 55, no. 2 (2012): 7.

  University of Cambridge Baron-Cohen et al., “ ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test Revised Version,” 241–51.

  “more initials he sees” In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Alan Zweibel wrote: “[Michaels] had said that he likes when there’s a lot of initials at the top of the page because it meant that it had a variety of input and
sensibilities. I believe that the show has lasted 40 years because Lorne is a genius when it comes to recognizing talent, rolling with the changing times, and encouraging everyone (while developing their individual voices) to work with each other so the total is greater than the sum of its parts.”

  “the pain!” In the script that made it to air, O’Donoghue says, “ ‘I know I can! I know I can! I know I can! I know I can! Heart attack! Heart attack! Heart attack! Heart attack! Oh, my God, the pain! Oh, my God, the pain! Oh, my God, the pain!” It is worth noting that the original concept for depressing children stories originated with O’Donoghue, not Garrett.

  CHAPTER THREE: FOCUS

  bound for Paris For my understanding of the details of Air France Flight 447, I am indebted to numerous experts, including William Langewiesche, Steve Casner, Christopher Wickens, and Mica Endsley. I also drew heavily on a number of publications: William Langewiesche, “The Human Factor,” Vanity Fair, October 2014; Nicola Clark, “Report Cites Cockpit Confusion in Air France Crash,” The New York Times, July 6, 2012; Nicola Clark, “Experts Say Pilots Need More Air Crisis Training,” The New York Times, November 21, 2011; Kim Willsher, “Transcripts Detail the Final Moments of Flight from Rio,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2011; Nick Ross and Neil Tweedie, “Air France Flight 447: ‘Damn It, We’re Going to Crash,’ ” The Daily Telegraph, May 1, 2012; “Air France Flight 447: When All Else Fails, You Still Have to Fly the Airplane,” Aviation Safety, March 1, 2011; “Concerns over Recovering AF447 Recorders,” Aviation Week, June 3, 2009; Flight Crew Operating Manual, Airbus 330—Systems—Maintenance System; Tim Vasquez, “Air France Flight 447: A Detailed Meteorological Analysis,” Weather Graphics, June 3, 2009, http://​www.​weathergraphics.​com/​tim/​af447/; Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, “Air France Flight #447: Did Weather Play a Role in the Accident?” CIMSS Satellite Blog, June 1, 2009, http://​cimss.​ssec.​wisc.​edu/​goes/​blog/​archives/​2601; Richard Woods and Matthew Campbell, “Air France 447: The Computer Crash,” The Times, June 7, 2009; “AF 447 May Have Come Apart Before Crash,” Associated Press, June 3, 2009; Wil S. Hylton, “What Happened to Air France Flight 447?” The New York Times Magazine, May 4, 2011; “Accident Description F-GZC,” Flight Safety Foundation, Web; “List of Passengers Aboard Lost Air France Flight,” Associated Press, June 4, 2009; “Air France Jet ‘Did Not Break Up in Mid-Air,’ Air France Crash: First Official Airbus A330 Report Due by Air Investigations and Analysis Office,” Sky News, July 2, 2009; Matthew Wald, “Clues Point to Speed Issues in Air France Crash,” The New York Times, June 7, 2009; Air France, “AF 447 RIO-PARIS-CDG, Pitot Probes,” October 22, 2011, http://​corporate.​airfrance.​com/​en/​press/​af-​447-​rio-​paris-​cdg/​pitot-​probes/; Edward Cody, “Airbus Recommends Airlines Replace Speed Sensors,” The Washington Post, July 31, 2009; Jeff Wise, “What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447,” Popular Mechanics, December 6, 2011; David Kaminski-Morrow, “AF447 Stalled but Crew Maintained Nose-Up Attitude,” Flight International, May 27, 2011; David Talbot, “Flight 447’s Fatal Attitude Problem,” Technology Review, May 27, 2011; Glenn Pew, “Air France 447—How Did This Happen?” AVweb, May 27, 2011; Bethany Whitfield, “Air France 447 Stalled at High Altitude, Official BEA Report Confirms,” Flying, May 27, 2011; Peter Garrison, “Air France 447: Was It a Deep Stall?” Flying, June 1, 2011; Gerald Traufetter, “Death in the Atlantic: The Last Four Minutes of Air France Flight 447,” Spiegel Online, February 25, 2010; Nic Ross and Jeff Wise, “How Plane Crash Forensics Lead to Safer Aviation,” Popular Mechanics, December 18, 2009; Interim Report on the Accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 Registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris (Paris: Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile [BEA], 2012); Interim Report No. 3 on the Accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris (Paris: BEA, 2011); Final Report on the Accident on 1st June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 Registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris (Paris: BEA, 2012); “Appendix 1 to Final Report on the Accident on 1st June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 Registered F-GZCP Operated by Air France Flight AF 447 Rio de Janeiro–Paris” (Paris: BEA, July 2012); Lost: The Mystery of Flight 447, BBC One, June 2010; “Crash of Flight 447,” Nova, 2010, produced by Nacressa Swan; “Air France 447, One Year Out,” Nova, 2010, produced by Peter Tyson.