Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

  Eventually, Connell began noticing something similar at the center of each pocket of biodiversity: There was often evidence that a large tree had fallen. Sometimes he would find a decaying trunk or a deep indentation in the soil. In other verdant pockets, he found charred remains underneath the topsoil, suggesting that a fire—perhaps caused by lightning—had blazed for a brief but intense period before the rain forest’s dampness had extinguished the flames.

  These fallen trees and fires, Connell came to believe, played a crucial role in allowing species to emerge. Why? Because at some point, there had been a “gap in the forest where the trees had come down or had burned, and that gap was big enough to let sunlight in and allow other species to compete,” Connell told me. Retired now, he lives in Santa Barbara, but he remembers the details from those trips. “By the time I found some areas, years had passed since the fire or the tree fall, and so new trees had grown in their place and were blocking out the sun again,” he said. “But there had been a time when enough light had made it through that other species were able to claim some territory. There had been some disturbance that had given new plants a chance to compete.”

  In those regions where trees hadn’t fallen or fires hadn’t occurred, one species had become dominant and had crowded out all competitors. Put differently, once a species solved the problem of survival, it pushed other alternatives away. But if something altered the ecosystem just a little bit, then biodiversity exploded.

  “Only up to a point, though,” Connell told me. “If the gap in the forest was too big, it had the opposite effect.” In those parts of the rain forest where loggers had cleared entire fields, where a huge storm had wiped out whole sections of the forest, or where a fire had spread too far, there was much less diversity, even decades later. If the trauma to the landscape was too great, only the hardiest trees or vines could survive.

  Next, Connell looked at reefs along the Australian coast. Here, too, he found a similar pattern. In some places, there was a dizzying assortment of coral and seaweed living in close proximity while, just a few minutes by boat away, one species of fast-growing coral had dominated every square inch. The difference, Connell found, was the frequency and intensity of waves and storms. In those areas with high biodiversity, midsized waves and moderate storms came through occasionally. Alternately, in places with no waves or storms, just a handful of species dominated. Or, when waves were too powerful or storms came through too often, they would scrub the reef clean.

  It seemed as if nature’s creative capacities depended on some kind of periodic disturbance—like a tree fall or an occasional storm—that temporarily upset the natural environment. But the disturbance couldn’t be too small or too big. It had to be just the right size. “Intermediate disturbances are critical,” Connell told me.

  Within biology, this has become known as the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which holds that “local species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent.” There are other theories that explain diversification in different ways, but the intermediate disturbance hypothesis has become a staple of biology.

  “The idea is that every habitat is colonized by a variety of species, but over time one or a few tend to win out,” said Steve Palumbi, the director of Stanford’s marine station in Monterey, California. This is called “competitive exclusion.” If there are no disturbances to the environment, then the strongest species become so entrenched that nothing else can compete. Similarly, if there are massive, frequent disturbances, only the hardiest species grow back. But if there are intermediate disturbances, then numerous species bloom, and nature’s creative capacities flourish.

  Human creativity, of course, is different from biological diversity. It’s an imprecise analogy to compare a falling tree in the Australian rain forest to a change in management at Disney. Let’s play with the comparison for a moment, though, because it offers a valuable lesson: When strong ideas take root, they can sometimes crowd out competitors so thoroughly that alternatives can’t prosper. So sometimes the best way to spark creativity is by disturbing things just enough to let some light through.

  “The thing I noticed, when I first became a director, was that the change was subtle, but at the same time, very real,” Jennifer Lee told me. “When you’re a writer, there’s certain things you know a film needs, but you’re just one voice. You don’t want to seem defensive or presumptuous because other people have just as many suggestions and your job is to integrate everyone’s ideas.

  “A director, though, is in charge. So when I became a director, I felt like I had to listen even more closely to what everyone was saying because that was my job now. And as I listened, I started picking up on things I hadn’t noticed before.”

  Some of the animators, for instance, were pushing to use the blizzard at the end of the film as a metaphor for the characters’ internal turmoil. Others thought they should withhold any foreshadowing, to make the ending a surprise. As a writer, Lee had viewed those suggestions as devices. But now she understood people were asking for clarity, for a direction in which every choice—from the weather on-screen to choices about what is hidden or revealed—reflected a core idea.

  A few months after Lee’s promotion, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the songwriter, sent Lee an email. They had been speaking almost every day for a year at this point. They talked at night and sent each other texts during the day. Their friendship didn’t end when Lee became a director. But it changed a little bit.

  Kristen was riding a school bus, chaperoning her second-grade daughter on a class trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, when she pulled out her phone and typed a message to Lee.

  “Yesterday I went to therapy,” she wrote. She and her therapist had discussed the Frozen team members’ differing opinions about how the movie should end. They had talked about Lee’s ascension to director. “I was discussing dynamics and politics and power and all that bullshit and who do you listen to and how do [you] start,” she typed. “Then she asked me, ‘Why do you do it?’

  “And after parsing out the money and ego stuff, it all really comes down to the fact that I have things I need to share about the human experience,” Anderson-Lopez typed. “I want to take what I have learned or felt or experienced and help people by sharing it.

  “What is it about this frozen story that you, Bobby and I HAVE to say?” Kristen asked. “For me, it has something to do with not getting frozen in roles that are dictated by circumstances beyond our control.”

  Lee herself was the perfect example of this. Lee had come to Disney as a new film school graduate with little besides a young daughter and a fresh divorce and student loans, and had quickly become a screenwriter at one of the biggest studios on earth. Now she was the first female director in Disney’s history. Kristen and Bobby were examples of people escaping their circumstances, as well. They had fought for years to build the careers they wanted, even when everyone said it was ridiculous to hope they could support themselves by writing songs. Now, here they were, with hit Broadway shows and the life they had always hoped for.

  To earn Frozen’s ending, Kristen said, they had to find a way to share that sense of possibility with the audience.

  “What is it for you?” Kristen typed.

  Lee replied twenty-three minutes later. It was seven in the morning in Los Angeles.

  “I love your therapist,” she wrote, “and you.” All the different members of the Frozen team had their own ideas for the movie. Everyone on the story trust had become locked into their own concept of how the film should end. But none of them fit together perfectly, Lee felt.

  However, Frozen could have only one ending. Someone had to make a choice. And the right decision, Lee wrote, is that “fear destroys us, love heals us. Anna’s journey should be about learning what love is; it’s that simple.” At the end of the film, “when she sees her sister out on the fjords, she completes her arc by the ultimate act of true love: sacrificing your needs
for someone else’s. LOVE is a greater force than FEAR. Go with love.”

  Becoming a director forced Lee to see things differently—and that small jolt was enough to help her realize what the film needed, and to shift everyone else enough to agree with her.

  Later that month, Lee sat down with John Lasseter.

  “We need clarity,” she told him. “The core of this movie isn’t about good and evil, because that doesn’t happen in real life. And this movie isn’t about love versus hate. That’s not why sisters grow apart.

  “This is a movie about love and fear. Anna is all about love, and Elsa is all about fear. Anna has been abandoned, so she throws herself into the arms of Prince Charming because she doesn’t know the difference between real love and infatuation. She has to learn that love is about sacrifice. And Elsa has to learn that you can’t be afraid of who you are, you can’t run away from your own powers. You have to embrace your strengths.

  “That’s what we need to do with the ending, show that love is stronger than fear.”

  “Say it again,” Lasseter told her.

  Lee described her theory of love versus fear again, explaining how Olaf, the snowman, embodies innocent love while Prince Hans demonstrates that love without sacrifice isn’t really love at all; it’s narcissism.

  “Say it again,” Lasseter said.

  Lee said it again.

  “Now, go tell the team,” said Lasseter.

  In June 2013, a few months before the movie was set to open, the Frozen team flew to a theater in Arizona to conduct a test screening. What appeared on the screen was completely different from what had been shown in the Disney screening room fifteen months earlier. Anna, the younger sister, was now bubbly, optimistic, and lonely. Elsa was loving but scared of her own powers and tortured by the memory of accidentally injuring her sister when they were young. Elsa runs away to an ice castle, intending to live far from humanity—but she inadvertently plunges her kingdom into an endless winter and partially freezes Anna’s heart.

  Anna begins searching for a prince in the hope that his true love’s kiss will melt the ice in her chest. But the man she finds—Prince Hans—turns out to be intent on taking the throne for himself. Prince Hans imprisons Elsa and abandons the slowly freezing Anna, intent on killing both sisters so he can seize the crown.

  Elsa escapes from her cell and, near the end of the movie, is running across the frozen fjords, fleeing the corrupt prince. Anna is growing weaker as the ice inside her chest consumes her heart. A blizzard swirls around the sisters and Hans as they all find one another on the frozen sea. Anna is almost dead from the chill inside her body. Hans raises his sword, ready to slay Elsa and put the throne within his reach. As Hans’s blade falls, however, Anna steps in front of the blow. Her body turns to ice just as the sword descends, and it strikes her frozen body rather than her sister. By sacrificing herself, Anna has saved Elsa—and this act of devotion, this genuine demonstration of true love, finally melts Anna’s chest. She returns to life, and Elsa, released from the anxiety that she’ll hurt the people she loves, can now direct her powers to defeat the evil Hans. She knows now how to end the kingdom’s winter. The sisters, united, are powerful enough to overcome their enemies and their self-doubts. Hans is expelled, spring returns, and love defeats fear.

  All the elements of a traditional Disney plot were included. There were princesses and ball gowns, a handsome prince, a wisecracking sidekick, and a stream of upbeat songs. But throughout the film, those elements had been disturbed, just enough, to let something new and different emerge. Prince Hans wasn’t charming—he was the villain. The princesses weren’t helpless; instead, they saved each other. True love didn’t arrive in a rescue—rather, it came from siblings learning to embrace their own strengths.

  “When did this movie get so good?” Kristen Anderson-Lopez whispered to Peter Del Vecho as the screening ended. Frozen would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature of 2014. “Let It Go” would win the Academy Award for best original song. The film would become the top-grossing animated movie of all time.

  Creativity can’t be reduced to a formula. At its core, it needs novelty, surprise, and other elements that cannot be planned in advance to seem fresh and new. There is no checklist that, if followed, delivers innovation on demand.

  But the creative process is different. We can create the conditions that help creativity to flourish. We know, for example, that innovation becomes more likely when old ideas are mixed in new ways. We know the odds of success go up when brokers—people with fresh, different perspectives, who have seen ideas in a variety of settings—draw on the diversity within their heads. We know that, sometimes, a little disturbance can help jolt us out of the ruts that even the most creative thinkers fall into, as long as those shake-ups are the right size.

  If you want to become a broker and increase the productivity of your own creative process, there are three things that can help: First, be sensitive to your own experiences. Pay attention to how things make you think and feel. That’s how we distinguish clichés from true insights. As Steve Jobs put it, the best designers are those who “have thought more about their experiences than other people.” Similarly, the Disney process asks filmmakers to look inward, to think about their own emotions and experiences until they find answers that make imaginary characters come alive. Jerry Robbins pushed his West Side Story collaborators to put their own aspirations and emotions on the stage. Look to your own life as creative fodder, and broker your own experiences into the wider world.

  Second, recognize that the panic and stress you feel as you try to create isn’t a sign that everything is falling apart. Rather, it’s the condition that helps make us flexible enough to seize something new. Creative desperation can be critical; anxiety is what often pushes us to see old ideas in new ways. The path out of that turmoil is to look at what you know, to reinspect conventions you’ve seen work and try to apply them to fresh problems. The creative pain should be embraced.

  Finally, remember that the relief accompanying a creative breakthrough, while sweet, can also blind us to seeing alternatives. It is critical to maintain some distance from what we create. Without self-criticism, without tension, one idea can quickly crowd out competitors. But we can regain that critical distance by forcing ourselves to critique what we’ve already done, by making ourselves look at it from a completely different perspective, by changing the power dynamics in the room or giving new authority to someone who didn’t have it before. Disturbances are essential, and we retain clear eyes by embracing destruction and upheaval, as long as we’re sensitive to making the disturbance the right size.

  There’s an idea that runs through these three lessons: The creative process is, in fact, a process, something that can be broken down and explained. That’s important, because it means that anyone can become more creative; we can all become innovation brokers. We all have experiences and tools, disturbances and tensions that can make us into brokers—if, that is, we’re willing to embrace that desperation and upheaval and try to see our old ideas in new ways.

  “Creativity is just problem solving,” Ed Catmull told me. “Once people see it as problem solving, it stops seeming like magic, because it’s not. Brokers are just people who pay more attention to what problems look like and how they’ve been solved before. People who are most creative are the ones who have learned that feeling scared is a good sign. We just have to learn how to trust ourselves enough to let the creativity out.”

  ABSORBING DATA

  Turning Information into Knowledge in Cincinnati’s Public Schools

  Students were settling into their seats as the PA system crackled to life inside South Avondale Elementary School.

  “This is Principal Macon,” a voice said. “I am declaring a Hot Pencil Drill. Please prepare yourselves, prepare your worksheets, and we will begin in five, four, three, two…”

  Two minutes and thirty-three seconds later, eight-year-old Dante Williams slammed down his pencil, shot
his hand into the air, and twitched impatiently as the teacher scribbled his finish time at the top of the multiplication quiz. Then Dante was out of his chair and flying through the door of his third-grade classroom, arms pumping as he speed-walked down the hallway, his worksheet creased in his fist.

  Three years earlier, in 2007, when Dante entered kindergarten, South Avondale had been ranked as one of the worst schools in Cincinnati—which, given that the city had some of the lowest scores in the state, meant that the school was among the worst in Ohio. That year, South Avondale’s students had fared so poorly on their assessment exams that officials declared the school an “academic emergency.” Just weeks before Dante had stepped onto campus for the first time, a teenager had been murdered—one bullet to the head, one in the back—right next to South Avondale during a football tournament billed as a “Peace Bowl.” That crime, combined with the school’s deep dysfunctions, poor academic scores, and a general sense that South Avondale had problems too big for anyone to solve, had caused city officials to ask if the board of education should close the campus altogether. The question, however, was where would they send Dante and his classmates? Nearby schools had scored only slightly better on assessment exams, and if those classrooms were forced to absorb additional kids, they would likely fall apart as well.

  The community around South Avondale had been poor for decades. There were race riots in the 1960s, and when the city’s factories started closing in the ’70s, the area’s unemployment had skyrocketed. South Avondale administrators saw students coming to school malnourished and with marks of abuse. In the 1980s, the drug trade around the school exploded and never really let up. At times, the violence got so bad that police would patrol the campus’s perimeter while classes were in session. “It could be a pretty scary place,” said Yzvetta Macon, who was principal from 2009 to 2013. “Students didn’t go to South Avondale unless there was no other place to go.”