Taking Control Of Your Day

I’m reading a book by Charles Duhigg called Smarter Faster Better: the transformative power of real productivity.

As you can tell from the title (quite a mouthful, right?) the book is in the self-help genre. But it reads like a like a page-turning thriller.

That’s because many of the stories involve people in life-and-death situations. The chapter I read this morning was about two airliner disasters. One flight ended in the death of everyone aboard. The other ended with a safe landing after what has been described as the worst mid-air disaster in aviation history.

The difference?

When the pilot and crew that crashed experienced a problem, they froze up and couldn’t figure out what to do. Right up to the time the plane hit the ocean, they were still dithering.

The other pilot saw that he had lost 23 of the 24 systems needed to fly the big plane. So he imagined he was flying a little Cessna with no computers on board. The mental exercise helped him make flying decisions that saved their lives.

The author calls this process Narration and suggests we will be more alert and decisive if we continually narrate what's happening. The narration should include imagining possible moves and outcomes and then testing the narration against what's actually happening and the outcomes of our actions.

I got a nice jolt of recognition when I read that suggestion, because I already do that instinctively. To tell you the truth, I’ve always been reluctant to admit it, because it feels like daydreaming. And the Sister Marie always told us to stop daydreaming and get back to our classwork.

But according to Mr. Duhigg (a graduate of Harvard and Yale business schools, bestselling author of The Power Of Habit, and a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist at the New York Times, so the guy’s not a slouch) narrating our life keeps us thinking.

And thinking is good.