Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive - Charles Duhigg

CoLab Book Club - April 2026

Our April #CoLabBookClub wrapped up the month with Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. And yes, that's the same Charles Duhigg whose Supercommunicators we loved back in August 2024. Turns out he's become a bit of a CoLab favourite!

Overview

Smarter Faster Better looks at what drives productivity by understanding more closely how we think and make decisions. Duhigg's journalistic instincts come through strongly with every concept grounded in real stories and meticulously fact-checked. The result feels less like an instruction manual and more like a series of genuinely fascinating case studies.

The book covers eight key concepts: motivation (and locus of control), teams, focus, goal setting, managing others, decision making, innovation, and absorbing data. Some of the stories hit particularly hard. The pilots who crashed because automation lulled them into cognitive tunnelling. The FBI transformation that only worked when people closest to the work were finally trusted to make decisions. The Google research showing that psychological safety, and specifically equal voice in conversation, is the single biggest predictor of team performance.

Our Key Takeaways

✔️ The writing and storytelling are exceptional - Duhigg brings every concept to life through real, memorable stories rather than theory, and the group felt this consistently across the whole book.

✔️ Locus of control matters - when people feel they have genuine agency, motivation and quality both go up.

✔️ Cognitive tunnelling is a real risk - over-reliance on automation (think AI, GPS, self-driving anything) can leave us dangerously unprepared if and when systems fail. Proactive visualisation and scenario planning help.

✔️ Psychological safety isn't a nice-to-have - equal voice and empathy are the foundations of high-performing teams.

✔️ Empowering those closest to the work - drives quality and culture, whether it's an FBI transformation or a factory floor.

✔️ Give people choices - autonomy increases motivation and productivity in ways that direction alone never can.

Who is it For?

Anyone who wants to think more deeply about how they work and why. It’s especially useful for leaders, coaches and product people grappling with team dynamics, decision-making culture, or the very real challenges of working alongside AI and automation.

Thank you!

Thanks to Charles Duhigg for another brilliant read. It's a real gift to have a writer who can make behavioural science this accessible and this enjoyable. Two from two, Charles!

Big thanks to this month's #CoLabBookClub crew: Dan Gauld, Elisabeth Stiller, John Allen, Kat Debney, Kyla MacDonald, Paul Salmon (host!), Pete Tansey, Peter Bink, and Toni Wilson. More great conversations this month.

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