Peak productivity: How to think more and do less

Western society’s fetish for productivity is running all of us ragged. In his new book, Smarter Faster Better, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Duhigg shows readers not only how to get stuff done, but how to get it done well.

How do you define productivity? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, productivity meant owning tons of land and even people. Then the cotton gin and the assembly line were invented, and productivity changed from what you owned to how efficiently you used each hour of your time. Now we’re asking people to redefine it once more: Is it about getting to inbox zero? Or is it about hitting delete on 75 percent of those emails because you realize you’re training people to rely on you even more if you reply?

It seems that what many of us call being productive is actually just being busy. It used to be that the busier you were, the more successful you were. In many ways, the true mark of success [now] is being able to not be busy. It’s about being more deliberate about your choices.

So it’s less about getting stuff done than how we think about getting stuff done? Right. In reporting this book, I went to incredibly productive people and companies to ask what they do. One guy I talked to ate only once a day, but that’s not broadly applicable. A trend emerged: When people daydream about what they want their day to look like, they train their mind to notice things they need to pay attention to and to ignore the things they don’t.

I’m an office worker. What should I be daydreaming about? Create space during your morning commute to think about the coming day. Think about the meetings you’ll have. Do you visualize which questions you’ll ask first? Where do you think the conversation will go? The very act of thinking about their day tends to improve people’s focus enormously.

In a way, we’re transitioning from “think less, do more” to “think more, do less.” Those who make better first choices don’t waste as much time. One of my favourite lines is from [management] Peter Drucker, who said there’s nothing more wasteful than making more efficient something that never should have been done in the first place.

Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhigg, $35.

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