Smarter Faster Better

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distil vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Popular blogger Cal Newport reveals the new key to achieving success and true meaning in professional life: the ability to master distraction. Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves their attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term deep work on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve.

After extensive original research and a decade as the world's highest-paid performance coach, Brendon Burchard finally reveals the most effective habits for reaching long-term success. Based on one of the largest surveys ever conducted on high performers, it turns out that just six habits move the needle the most in helping you succeed. Adopt these six habits and you win. Neglect them, and life is a never-ending struggle. We all want to be high performing in every area of our lives. But how?

Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto flies in the face of conventional wisdom by suggesting that it should be a person's talent and skill - and not necessarily their passion - that determines their career path. Newport, who graduated from Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa) and earned a PhD from MIT, contends that trying to find what drives us, instead of focusing on areas in which we naturally excel, is ultimately harmful and frustrating to job seekers.

A book that will change how you think and transform how you live.Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people – at work, at school, at home. It is wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his paradigm-shattering book Drive, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world.

Anders Ericsson has spent 30 years studying the special ones - the geniuses, sports stars and musical prodigies. And his remarkable finding, revealed in Peak, is that their special abilities are acquired through training. The innate 'gift' of talent is a myth. Exceptional individuals are born with just one unique ability, shared by us all - the ability to develop our brains and bodies through our own efforts.

Why do naturally talented people frequently fail to reach their potential while other far less gifted individuals go on to achieve amazing things? The secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a passionate persistence. In other words, grit. MacArthur Genius Award-winning psychologist Angela Duckworth shares fascinating new revelations about who succeeds in life and why.

Have you ever wished you could reprogram your brain, just as a hacker would a computer? In this three-step guide to improving your mental habits, learn to take charge of your mind and banish negative thoughts, habits, and anxiety - in just 21 days!

In the age of information overload, traditional time management techniques simply don't cut it when it comes to overflowing inboxes, ever-expanding to-do lists and endless pointless meetings. Thankfully there is a better way: the way of the productivity ninja. Using techniques including ruthlessness, mindfulness, Zenlike calm and stealth and camouflage, you will get your inbox down to zero, make the most of your attention, beat procrastination and learn to work smarter, not harder.

In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a handing off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted, and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck? Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time.

Our attention has never been as overwhelmed or in demand as it is today; we've never been so busy while accomplishing so little, and we've grown uncomfortable with boredom and a lack of stimulation and distraction. In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey - described by TED.com as 'the most productive man you could ever hope to meet' - provides profound insights into how we can best manage our attention. He reveals how the brain switches between two mental modes - hyperfocus, our deep concentration mode, and scatterfocus, our creative, reflective mode - and how the surest path to being our most creative and efficient selves at work is to combine them both. 

David Allen reads an all-new edition of his popular self-help classic for managing work-life balance in the 21st century - now updated for the new challenges facing individuals and organizations in today's rapidly changing world. Since it was first published more than 15 years ago, David Allen's Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era and the ultimate book on personal organization.

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Nearly all of us want to be more productive, but finding the method that works for you among the hundreds and hundreds of different tips, tricks and hacks can be a daunting prospect. After graduating college Chris Bailey decided to dedicate a whole year to doing just that - experimenting with as many of the techniques as he could and finding the things that work. Among the experiments that he undertook are going several weeks on little to no sleep; cutting out caffeine and sugar; taking a daily siesta; and more.

Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their successes over and over? People like Martin Luther King, Jr.; Steve Jobs; and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why. Their natural ability to start with why enabled them to inspire those around them and to achieve remarkable things.