I really liked this book at the end. Each chapter is something to learn by examples. At first I thought this book was just the same examples as always in Agile books. It turned out it went deeper in these examples and a good portion was examples that were new to me. The examples was more than just something to start with, it was the carrier of the bulk of the information. Charles made a great collection of examples to carry his point across.

Some decent take-aways here.

A most engaging book that drives home the 8 techniques to increasing productivity.
Duhigg does this in the way I like best: through stories.
Woven through the fateful and deadly airplane crash is a lesson about guarding yourself from tunnel vision.
A world-class poker player brings a lesson on probability and the dangers of playing it safe.
And there's six more.
I enjoyed this quite a bit.
Perfect for the non-fiction enthusiast and for the business reader that wants an edge on the competition.

Lacked the cohesiveness that I think the Power of Habit had.

Lots of good takeaways here, not so much about tips and tricks to being productive but rather how we deal with cognitive and psychological factors within our sphere of control that influence productivity. This may be one that I purchase for my personal library, as I'd like to revisit many of these concepts down the road.

I liked this better than [b:The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business|12609433|The Power of Habit Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business|Charles Duhigg|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1366758683s/12609433.jpg|17624817]. Rather than being a series of loosely connected (albeit very interesting) anecdotes and scientific studies, Duhigg makes an effort to connect all of his material, draw conclusions and offer concrete suggestions for applicability in the readers' lives.

Interesting! Made for a good book club with co-workers

In Smarter Faster Better, Charles Duhig talks about effective leadership through motivation, teams, focus, goal setting, managing others, decision making, innovation, absorbing data. Unlike The Power of Habit, the narrative seems is less cohesive until the end when the author applies the recommendations to his process of writing this book. The examples of trainings new recruits, employees at a car manufacturing company, and the Pixar writing process for Frozen were interesting enough and demonstrated the key points of productivity the author was focusing on. Some of the examples used earlier to demonstrate the “secrets” (including a plane crash and an attack on Israel), felt like poor choices. I liked The Power of Habit much more and would not recommend this one.