Motley Fool Money - The Secrets of Being Productive

Episode Date: March 11, 2016

What's the key to being really productive? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Duhigg offers some insights from his new book, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being More Productive in Life and Business. And our analysts weigh in on earnings news from Bojangles, Shake Shack, and Dollar General. For Jeff Fischer's free crash course on options, go to OptionsRadio.Fool.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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progress right in the app, which makes it so much easier to stay on track. And you can get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit turbotax.com to get matched with an expert today, only available with TurboTax full service experts. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money Radio show. I'm Chris Hill and joining me in studio this week for Million Dollar portfolio, Jason Moser, from Motley Fool Pro and and for Motley Full Deep Value Ron Gross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, Chris. How do you do? We have got the latest earnings from Wall Street. We will dip into

the full mailbag. Plus, as always, we will give you an inside look. the stocks on our radar. But we begin with the week in restaurants. Let's start with Bojangles. Fourth quarter profits coming in higher than expected, revenue higher than expected, and the stock up more than 17 percent on Friday. I know you like the chicken, Jason. How you like in the stock? I just like saying the jangler. It takes me back to my childhood. So I think the important thing here, investors want to focus on the fact that Bojangles management is meeting the targets and expectations that they set.

So let's not worry about really what Wall Street. The expectations maybe Wall Street is setting for this business. Really, we want to focus on whether they're meeting their own benchmarks. And they certainly are. And I think that you look at the growth that's coming from new stores. In the short run, that's okay. In the long run, we really want to see their ability to grow beyond just opening new stores. And I think that remains the biggest question.

If we look at their market opportunity, they see their market opportunity is around 1,400 stores in the States where they have a presence today, and around 3,500 stores total around the United States, versus about 660 or so that they have today. And that always has been really the big question is, does that market opportunity really extend that far? I'm still not sold on that. I do love the chicken. I love the iced tea.

And honestly, I think with the stock today, it's trading around 20 times full year, 2016 estimates, which is pretty reasonable. If they are able to get close to that market opportunity that they see, then I think today's stock level is actually a pretty attractive opportunity. Are there any remotely near where we are right now? I think that's the biggest problem. I don't think there really are. I got a taste. There are some in this area, but not really close by. It is very much a southeastern concept. I know that they went through and shut a bunch down in Florida recently. So that's the biggest

question, does this reach across the country? Better than Chick-fil-A? Where do you put it? Nothing's bad than Chick-fil-A. Yeah, I'm going to defer my answer until the later time. Jason, did you say they shut a bunch of stores down in Florida? They did. They shut down a bunch of stores down in Florida, which I thought was a bit odd, given Florida is a southeastern state. What? They just weren't performing? Just underperformers. On the flip side, Shake Shack falling 15% this week. Their fourth quarter results look pretty

good, Ron, but their guidance, not so much. about the guidance here, but the actual performance was amazing. Revenue up 47 percent and comp sales up 11 percent. The company did really, really well. Guidance, as you said, was weak. There's no way they can maintain those comp sales at those levels. And that's what investors are focusing on and have sold the stock off. This is one of those stocks that was priced to perfection for quite some time. When public at 21, reached a high of maybe 96-ish and has come down to 35 over the recent period, just because it was just not priced appropriately. It's still at 28 times EBITDA, still an expensive stock.

Wait a minute. It was almost $100 a share. I get that it was overpriced then. Now that it had 67 percent shaved off its value, it's still overpriced? It's still overpriced. It's very minimally profitable. They only did about a million dollars and profits for the quarter. So that's what we have to focus on. The growth rates were and still are pretty impressive, but they're not bringing that to the bottom line yet. They've got some work to do. It was one of those IPOs that was so over-hyped. We looked in Motley Fool Pro at shorting the stock, and you could either not get shares, or if you did, it was a 20-30 percent annual

fee to short. And it's a pretty small company. Seventy-five-ish restaurants, $500 million market cap. It's a microcap company at this price. But to Jason's point about Bojangles, they've got over 600 locations. I mean, if you are looking at ShakeShack and thinking that they can get from 75 to, I don't know. 450 is their goal. Okay.

I love that ShakeShack was so exciting as an IPO. Is this the 1950s? It's Shake Shack. They're not doing anything innovative. Discount retailer Dollar General hitting a 52-week high after putting up record sales in the fourth quarter. I've got to be honest, Jeff, this one kind of snuck up on me. This is a discount retailer that is very quietly put up a pretty phenomenal 12 months. Yeah, and even longer than that, Chris. The stock has had a good five-year performance. The

company actually earns pretty strong returns on equity and capital, especially for a discount retailer. Strong earnings growth in the past and expected in the future, too. They have about 12,000 locations. They expect to add another 900 locations this year. They're looking into opening smaller footprint stores. The large stores will still be their main bread and butter, but they see an avenue into new markets with smaller locations, too. So they're just winning by selling your everyday branded products, typically, everything from Post to Kellogg to Huggies, and at good prices.

And customer surveys are positive, so traffic is increasing. ticket sale, average ticket size is growing. They're doing things right. I can't say from experience that I know the experience because I don't, but I wish I had five years ago. I'm just wondering why Dollar General is able to put up this kind of track record over the last few years when, as we've talked about a bunch of times before, Walmart just continues to struggle. And obviously, Walmart is a much bigger company, a much bigger retailer, and maybe therein lies the problem. But it really seems like from an opportunity from an opportunity operation standpoint, the folks who are running Dollar General just have a better handle on things.

It's anecdotal, perhaps, but part of it is location. With their smaller stores, they're able to put stores closer to customers than Walmart, which needs so much room to put in their giant stores. And so they go in and take market share, and then people realize they can get most of their staples at these stores for a competitive price. And I think they've just been taking market share from the Walmarts of the world. A warmer than expected winter is getting the blame for fall. selling sales at Dick's Sporting Goods. The company says same store sales fell two and a half percent. Fair charge, Jason?

Perhaps. I think we've heard a lot about the bankruptcy of sports authority here. I would advise people to not leap to the assumption that just because the Sports Authority claimed bankruptcy that Dick's sporting goods hasn't made here. I think the biggest challenge Dick's sporting goods faces right now is its position in the value chain there. And so a time ago, Retailers, like exporting goods, had a far stronger competitive position because they were seen as kind of the gateway to a lot of these very popular brands. So the thing is now, with the advent of the internet and just sort of the evolving business models, the direct-to-consumer model is really taking over.

So brands like Under Armour and Nike are able to offer their goods to customers directly. So we focus on those direct-to-consumer sales that Under Armour and Nike continue to grow at rapid rates, 25 and 26 percent, respectively, their most recent quarters. While, I mean, Dix Sporting Goods is doing well growing their e-commerce business, it still pales in comparison to what Nike and Under Arm are able to do. And furthermore, those companies are able to really target their customers a bit more getting the data and understanding really what their customers want. So, again, I think that Dix has caught a little bit here in a tough spot because they need to offer a number of different brands in a number of sort of different areas of the sporting world.

And it costs a lot of money to maintain those big stores that they have. And so while they're continuing to try to tout the experience to bring traffic in, a lot of people are finding their other ways to get those brands that they really like. And so I like the company. I think they will gain share from the Sports Authority bankruptcy. But again, I would caution investors not to leap to the assumption that they've just got it made. Is Sports Authority liquidating or they're just restructuring? I believe it's just restructuring. So there will be a maybe close some underperforming stores, but there'll still be a presence.

We'll see a presence out there. I think the bankruptcy, honestly, is probably the least of their worries. We've stepped in sports law already before. It's just been a miserable experience from day one. They need to go to marketing school. I think so many retailers in the long-term face getting squeezed more and more by apps by companies that are quicker on their feet and innovative. And if your argument is like a Cabellas maybe, or in this case, entertainment, come on in

be entertained. Well, there are a lot of other ways to be better entertained than a retail store. Before we go to break, I want to go back to something that you had touched on, Jeff, and that is ShakeShack and how hot that IPO is. I'm wondering, you guys are long-time observers of the market. Nothing is cooler in 2016 than the IPO market. I think we've had single-digit. I know we've had single-digit IPOs thus far, and I'm wondering if at least part of the reason we're seeing fewer companies go public is because of what we're seeing with companies like ShakeShack where there's a hot IPO. In the case of ShakeShack, an overinflated, far overinflated

stock price, and retail investors are left holding the bag. I'd say that's certainly part of the case, Chris. If you think about IPOs of the last couple years, two or three years, I would wager a bet that most are down, whether it's Pop Bellies or Pollo Local or noodles and company. Shake-shack. It was a very hot IPO market, and people have realized, you know, that's probably not the time to buy an IPO. Now you might want to look at the IPOs because they might be coming out at a reasonable price. Yeah, in general, when the stock market is weak, you know, almost by definition, demand

for stocks are weak, and therefore sometimes it's hard to take a company public in that environment. And even if you can get it done, you're not going to get it done at the price that you want to get it done at. So you say, you're going to wait this out and you'll take a public a little later down the road. Coming up, one stock. It's a new. all-time high. Stay right here. This is Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here in studio with Jason Moser, Jeff Fisher, and Ron Gross. Shares of Ulta Salon up 17% on Friday after same store sales in the fourth quarter rose more than 12%. That's huge for them, isn't it?

This is a firing on all cylinders moment if I've ever seen one. This is really stellar results. I mean, the same store sales, online sales alone were up 44%. Gross margins up, operating margins up. Earnings per share up 25%. They instituted an accelerated stock buyback with Goldman Sachs for $200 million worth of stock, authorized a total share buyback of $425 million, bought back a million shares in fiscal 2015. The company is just doing really, really well. The stock is at an all-time high. Is now the time to be authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of buybacks? Yeah, low 30s, P.E., 15 times EBITDA, so not cheap, but the growth rates are

impressive, so not ridiculously expensive either. So just to recap from your standpoint, Ulta Salon at an all-time high, still a much more reasonably priced stock than Shakejack. Still a buy. Almost devastating. Let's check out Alta a year from now. You know, public service announcement, one other stock hitting an all-time high. Coca-Cola.

Warren Buffett's happy. Lifetime High this week. You know, I'm glad something finally worked out well for Warren Bucket. We can't do investing. Square issued its first report as a public company. Fourth Quarter sales for the mobile payment. business up nearly 50%. Still no profits, though, Jeff. No profits, and maybe not any until 2017, when they may make a few pennies per share.

But Square is an interesting case study. It's a recent IPO as well. This was its first quarter as a public company. And yeah, growth is pretty strong, Chris, but I don't see yet what the competitive advantage is over the long-term. Square basically offers the point-of-sale device to mostly small merchants or retailers who want to do credit card sales through their iPad or phone. They offer that free and the software is free and then they make money on each transaction. It's typically a 2.7 percent charge, transaction charge, and a part of that money goes directly to the credit card companies, of course. So I don't see what the long-term advantage is. Their competitors are obviously the other point of sale providers, the credit card networks themselves,

on and on. I've heard Square management talk before about, they feel like their advantages in the analytics they can provide for their customers, which are typically small business customers. Now, whether that's the reality, I think time will tell. But I think that's where they see the business really heading. That's going to be one of the strengths that they focus on. I think so too, Jason. And that's Visa and MasterCard are really focused on providing analytics as well.

And that's why if Square gets big enough and does well enough, I would think, one. one of them may acquire it at some point. Jack Dorsey is the CEO at Square, also at Twitter. Which board of directors, or I should say, which shareholder base should be happier right now, considering that neither stock is performing particularly well? I would think that probably the Twitter shareholder base is feeling pretty good right now, because I think that the number of new features and sort of innovations and relationships that they're forging over at Twitter have really, really accelerate.

since he's taking the position back there again. Square, I think, is in a bit of a tougher competitive position. There's not as much of a differentiator there as something with Twitter. I think Twitter is a very unique property, whereas Square is, like Jeff was mentioning, I think competitive advantage there is going to be a little bit more difficult to pinpoint. Yeah, it's a good question. If you had to buy just one, which one would you buy? Neither. Personally, I own shares of Twitter. I haven't really entertained my shares of Squares. Square, so.

Box, the cloud computing business, surprise Wall Street with better than expected fourth quarter results. Jason, I like an underdog as much as the next guy. But holy cow, they're competing with the likes of IBM. This is a one and a half billion dollar company that's competing with IBM, Microsoft, and EMC. Yeah, you're right. Just like Jeff was talking about with Square, I mean, the jury is still out here as to whether this is potentially a good investment or not. I think the biggest question is what is the competitive advantage here? Because this is enterprise cloud storage and solutions, which is seemingly just dime a dozen at this point. Obviously, a very large market and a very

small company. They make money via the subscription model that they have. The number of paying customers, companies, organizations is 57,000, which is up from 45,000 a year ago. Their user base of 41 million registered users is impressive, but when you consider that only 10% of that user base is actually paying for Boxes. Services, that puts things into a little bit more perspective there. So customer acquisition costs are very high. The key is to acquire the customers, keep them, and upsell them. Very difficult to do in this market because it is extremely competitive. I think leadership is an asset here, but again, I'm not sold on a competitive advantage here, and I would advise shareholders or potential shareholders to sit back and give this one

a little bit of time to play out. Have all non-rectangular names been taken? Is that where we're at this point? Give us time. Circle is the next company. Before we dip into the full mailbag, Jeff, the options investing service that you run is open to new members for a limited time. For those unfamiliar, give us a few seconds on sort of how you go about options investing. Yes, sir. I've been using options in my stock portfolio for about 16 years, and Motleyful

options has existed since 2009. So for the past seven years nearly, we've been teaching members how to use options to generate income month after month to leverage their upside with less money at risk to protect themselves if they want to, and other strategies. So options are a great way to add another tool to your toolbox. They work alongside your stocks. They let you keep your stocks for the long term, but also scratch that shorter-term itch with regular income or maybe buy some two-year calls on a company you really believe in to leverage your upside. So check it out. You can take a free trial and see if the service. is right for you.

To check out the free crash course on Options Investing, just go to OptionsRadio.fool.com. That's OptionsRadio.fool.com. From Greg Rubino in Baltimore, Maryland, thanks for the many hours of entertaining stock and money talk you've provided me. Is there a length of time from when a stock split is announced that it must be completed? Specifically, I'm thinking about the Under Armour split, announced in June of 2015 and approved in August of 2015. That has not yet occurred. Jason, what's going on here? Good question. Typically with a stock split, the management is able to give a date as to when

the stock split is going to actually happen. In this case, with Under Armour, because there were some questions as to why they were doing it. There was a, there were some litigation they had to deal with. And I believe in October, that litigation was resolved. Now, we haven't seen since then the specific date for this to happen, but the litigation being resolved means that it will happen. It's just going to be something where it spins off a C-class of share. Similar to what we've seen with companies like Google and I think Zillow even. But yeah, the data is still hanging out there. I wonder why the interest in the stock split, because it really shouldn't change anything.

Yeah, that's a very good point. Now, I mean, in this case, it will change a little bit in how you own them, because you won't just own twice as many Under Armour shares. You'll own Under Armour shares and then another Under Armour C share, which I believe is going to trade under the ticker UAC. And they're not voting, but there is compensation coming to investors to make up for the fact that there are different. class. In this case, it is a real change. Also, more shares are more fun than less sure.

Guys, we'll see you later in the show. Up next, a conversation with best-selling author, Charles Duhigg. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. I'm Chris Hill. Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, a best-selling author, and his latest book is smarter, faster, better, the secrets of being productive in life and business. Charles, welcome back to the show. me back. A lot of ground has been covered when it comes to the world of productivity. You are someone with many varied interests, so I'm curious, what got you interested in writing a book about productivity? Well, you know, I was writing this series about Apple, and as I was talking to

executives who worked at the company, what I initially figured, because they weren't supposed to talk to me, right? I'm a reporter for the Times, and no one was supposed to return my phone calls. And And what I figured is that like the low level or mid-level folks would give me a call back because they would have time on their hands. But what I found was that all of those executives, they were just too busy. They didn't have time until I got to the upper echelon, at which point I realized that there were all these people who, the reason they had been successful at Apple was because they actually, in many ways, weren't less than everyone working for them.

And it wasn't that they were lazy or unproductive. it was that they were actually making different decisions, that they were thinking differently, and as a result, they were getting more done with essentially less time and stress. Well, that's one of the things you get at in the book, because there's productivity and there's efficiency, and I think sometimes people confuse the two. They think, well, I'm being efficient, so therefore I must be productive, but that's not actually the case, is it? That's absolutely right. And in fact, one of the characteristics of the characteristics of the age we're living through is that it's so easy to conflate efficiency and productivity.

But they often turn out to be at odds with each other. One of my favorite examples of this is an excerpt that we recently ran in the New York Times magazine about how Google spent four years and millions of dollars studying how to make the perfect team. And what they found is that who is on a team matters much less than how that team interacts. And in particular, the best teams, they do these things that to an outside observer might at quick glance look inefficient, right? People tend to spend more time talking about their lives outside of work on great teams. They spend more time getting to know each other. They usually have

rules where everyone at the table has to speak up before they can end the meeting. And those might look inefficient, right? We would think that it would be much better to just kind of get down to business. And if you don't, if you're the expert, then you speak up and if not, don't have anything to say. But it turns out that that's how you make a terrible team. That on those teams where people feel like they can speak up in roughly equal proportion and that other people are actually listening to them and they know something about their lives, those are teams that tend to become much, much more productive over time. Well, and you mentioned Google, but one of the other examples that you get into in the book

is Saturday Night Live, which has, you know, it has its ebbs and flows in terms of the quality of the show, but the fact is it's been on the air for four decades. And some of the things you write about with respect to Saturday Night Live and the cast, you just sort of look at it and you, if you didn't know anything about the show and you see how the cast interacts with each other, with the writers, with Lorne Michaels, who is the executive producer, if you didn't know anything about it, you would think there's no way in the world this group of people is going to produce a television show this week. Right. And not only that, but it's a live TV show that they have prepare in seven days. It's amazing, right? And even more so, when you realize that it's filled

with all these like ego-maniacal actors and comedians, the types of people who aren't supposed to get along well with others to begin with. But when I was talking to people from the early seasons of Saturday Live, they all said the same thing. They also said that Lauren Michaels runs his meetings in these very specific ways. He forces everyone in the room to speak. If you're you're not, if you're not piping up, Lauren Michaels will look at you and he'll drag you into the conversation. And he also kind of ostentatiously demonstrates what's known in psychology as high social sensitivity. So if someone looks upset or if they look particularly excited, he'll stop the meeting and he'll ask them, you know, Jim, why are you looking like so down?

Or Susan, you look really into this idea. Do you want to take the lead on it? And that's because what we know is that when everyone can speak up and when people feel like there's this high social sensitivity that other people are really listening to them, it creates what's known as psychological safety. And psychological safety is the single greatest correlate with an effective team and an effective meeting. It means that everyone feels like they can participate in that they're being listened to, and it tends to make teams much, much more productive. I'm going to use a sports movie analogy for this next question, because I think there are two schools of thought when it comes to leading teams and how to get the best result out of teams. And one is the Mighty Ducks,

and the other is the Bad News Bears. And the Mighty Ducks approach is it's the coach who needs to sort of work out his or her stuff. And once they do that, they become a better leader and therefore the team produces better. And in the Bad News Bears, the coach looks at the talent on the team and says, you know what we need? We need a couple of ringers. And that's when the team starts to produce. And I'm wondering, from where you sit, is one approach better than the other, or do both schools of thought work? Well, I think both schools of thought work if they're in tandem, right? So one of the most interesting pieces of reporting for the book came from looking at Disney Studios, in particular, looking at the story of the making of Frozen.

Now, most of us know Frozen as like this huge mega hit, right? That, like, it's earned more money in the box office than any other animated feature. anyone with children knows Frozen very, very well. But what's really interesting is that Frozen was on the brink of catastrophe until just a few months before it appeared in theaters. And the reason why is because most films at Disney, they'd have like five years to develop. But because of another film had fallen through, Frozen only had two years to make it into the theaters.

And the team that was working on it, they kind of freaked out. They didn't have enough time to actually figure out how to make this movie, and they kept on hitting these creative roadblocks. And so the folks that were running that team, who believed deeply in the Disney creative process, they said, look, we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We don't have to be the most creative people on Earth. But what we do need to do is we need to find and talk about things that we know.

And this is something that has happened again and again when we study the most productively innovative companies, They seem to do this over and over again. They have a creative process that relies on drawing on what people already know. So at Disney, what happened was that they said, look, we know princesses, right? Like Disney knows princesses like nobody's business. And what was interesting about Frozen is that there were a usually large number of women working on that particular project. In fact, one of the directors was female, and it was the first female director in Disney's history.

And as those women were trying to figure out, what do we know, what can we draw on? A lot of them said, look, we have sisters. Like, we know how relationships between sisters work. And so Frozen became this thing where they said, let's take these two ideas, the ideas of princess and the idea of sisters, and let's jam them together. And instead of having a prince come in and save the damsel in distress, let's have the sisters, these two princesses, save each other. In fact, we can make the prince the bad guy, the villain, and reveal that at the end. And that's frozen. And it goes on to do amazing business at the box office, but it's because Disney has a system in place that says anyone can be creative if you know how to draw on those things in your background and your experiences that seem real and true.

You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Charles Duhigg. His new book is smarter, faster, better, the secrets of being productive in life and business. this, one of the things you write early in the book is about motivation and contrary to conventional wisdom, you write that motivation is more of a skill. It's something that can be learned. Absolutely. And actually, study after study has shown that this is true. And this really came home for me when I was learning about the Marines. So most of us think about the Marine boot camp as a place where people go to learn discipline, right? We've all seen those movies. You show up and like someone yells at you and you learn to follow orders.

And at one point, that's what boot camp was. But in the last 15 years or so, they've actually completely redesigned boot camp, particularly as millennials have started coming into the armed forces. What happens now is that they're trying to teach people how to generate motivation, particularly self-motivation. And the way you do that is you teach people to start seeking out choices that make them feel like they're in control. How do they do that?

Well, it's really interesting. So when you show up for boot camp pretty early, like in your first week, usually your drill instructor will take you into the mess hall or some other place, and he'll say, okay, your job is to clean this place up, but I'm not going to tell you how to do it. And you have to go and you have to figure out how to straighten everything up where the ketchup bottles go and how much detergent to put in the washing machine. And you have to kind of take control.

And then what they do is they only complement people for unexpected acts of leadership. for unexpected successes. So they'll never tell someone you're a natural-born leader. Because being natural-born, that means that you don't have to work hard at it. Instead, what they'll do is they'll go to the shyest guy and they'll say, you did a great job of leading. Or they'll go to the guy who has a real trouble running and is kind of puny and say, you did a great job on that obstacle course.

What they're trying to do is they're trying to teach recruits to feel this kind of emotional satisfaction that we all get from taking control of a situation. It's the same thing that your brain feels when you're stuck in a traffic jam and you want to turn the wheel and take that exit just to get out of traffic, even though you know it'll take just as long to get home. We all have this craving to take control, and that's how we generate self-motivation. But for some of us, it has to be woken up a little bit. And the way you do that is you put people, whether they be our kids or marine recruits in situations where they get to practice taking control and they get to learn how good it feels until it becomes a, in the automatic almost habit. Was there a eureka moment for you when you were working on this book?

Was there a moment where a light bulb went off, whether it was about productivity in general or something that you saw that you could apply for yourself? There was actually, you know, right when I first started working on the idea, I talked, I was calling other authors to kind of ask for advice because my last book, The Power of Habit was about to come out. and I found that there was one guy in particular that I reached out to this, this writer named to Tulga Wanday, who, now, Atulgawande is like a bestselling author. He works at the New Yorker. He's a surgeon.

And he said, I emailed him, and he said he didn't have time to visit with me. And I said that was fine. You know, we have a friend in common, and I said, you know, I'm sure he's like saving lives. And our friend in common said, no, no, it's not that. It's not that he's going to a rock concert with his kids tonight. And this weekend he's going on vacation with his wife. And when I heard that, I thought to myself, you know, there is some secret that other people have. Because people like a tool Gawande, they get more done than most of us.

And yet he still has time to hang out with his kids and go on vacations. He's always relaxed. And I realize that what's going on is that the most productive people in companies, they actually train themselves to think differently. Right. There are so many potential distractions nowadays between smartphones and email and the internet. internet and everything that's on television and politics, you can be distracted almost continuously. But the people who are most productive, they spend more time thinking about how to govern their thoughts. They spend more time really thinking about how to create processes and time in their life

to be reflective. They know that if they seek out choices that make them feel like they're in control, it's going to be easier to generate motivation. And so, for instance, when they need to do email, they start by in a response typing a sentence that makes them feel like they have some power over this situation, that they can decide whether to go to the meeting or whether to stay home and how long the meeting should last. They know that to sharpen their focus, they can do a better job of paying attention to the right things if they're in the habit of what psychologists call building mental models, sort of constructing these little stories about what you expect to happen today. All of those things take a little bit of time, not much time.

just a couple of extra minutes each day, but it takes us stepping back and thinking about how our day goes, instead of just reacting, being proactive, and asserting ourselves into our schedules and into the choices we make. The most productive people, they don't work harder than us. They still only have 24 hours in the day, but they do work smarter. They do think more about the choices that they're making,

and they make space in each day in order to have the time to do that. So what have you done in your own life as a result of writing this book? Do you deal less with email? I'm just curious how this has changed you, whether in your personal life or just the way you do your job. It's actually changed. It's changed a lot of what I do. I have to say, like, one of the best parts of doing this reporting is learning how I could do things better. And there's two ways in particular.

I mean, one thing that I definitely do is I spend a lot more time thinking about the choices that are in front of me. So now when I'm replying to emails, instead of, you know, waiting until the end of the day and feeling like it's such a chore and just dreading it, what I do is I sit down and I type these half sentences where if someone has asked me to have lunch, I say, yeah, I'll have lunch, but we've got to go to an Indian restaurant. Or if they ask me for a meeting tomorrow, I say, yeah, I'll meet you at 2 o'clock, but only for 20 minutes. Something that allows me to sort of make a choice right away and assert a little bit of control because I know that that's going to make it much easier to get motivated to actually deal with all these emails. And it works. It's cut down how much time I spend actually dreading and then dealing with emails.

Another example is to do lists. One of the things that I came across in the research is that there's a right way and a wrong way to write to do lists. that most of us write to-do list by jotting down like a couple of easy tasks at the top of our page, and then we write down everything else we want to do that day, and maybe at the bottom of the page we'll put the hard things, right? And that way when we sit down, it feels so good to cross off those things that we already, maybe already did or that are easy to get done. But psychologists say that's exactly the wrong way to write a to-do list,

that that's using a to-do list for mood repair rather than for productivity. So what psychologists say you should do is that at the top of your page, you should write your biggest goals, what they call stretch goals, sort of these big ambitions of what you really want to get done this week, so that that way you're constantly reminded that there is this thing you're moving towards. And then under that, because that can be kind of overwhelming, is just to write out a plan, like specifically what you want to get done, how you're going to measure it, what you need to change in your schedule to make that achievable and realistic. What's the timeline? Should this take 30 minutes or should it take two hours?

That's why I write my to-do list now every morning, and it has kind of transformed how much I get done, because instead of doing a couple of easy things and then wasting half an hour on Facebook as a pat on the back because I feel like I've accomplished something, I'm always reminded of what my bigger goals are, but I have a plan, so I know how to start right away. The book is smarter, faster, better, the secrets of being productive in life and business. It is available everywhere. It is yet another batch of great stuff from Charles Duhigg. Charles, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Up next, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar. This is Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear. Welcome back to Motley Full Money.

I'm Chris Selling, Joining Meen Studio. Once again, Jason Moser, Jeff Fisher, and Ron Gross. It's time to get to the stocks on our radar on our man. Steve Brodo behind the glass will hit you with a question. Ron Gross, what are you looking at? I recently bought some more shares of Berkshire Hathaway. It's BRK.B if you're interested in the B shares, $139 a share at the moment. Buffett's annual letter recently came out. Always a good read. I recommend listeners take a look. Annual shareholders meeting is coming at the end of April. 2015 earnings were strong. Stocks only trading at 1.3 times book. 1.2 times is the threshold that

Buffett said they would buy back more stock. So we're very close to that. It's a good entry point if you don't own the stock or if you'd like to add to your position. I like that your threshold is higher than Buffett. Steve? Question about Berkshire Hathaway? Sure. Does Berkshire just track the market? I mean, it's very diversified. It's just tracking the S&P. No. They've outperformed significantly over periods of time. Lately, they have not. That is full disclosure. The stock was down for 2015, even though earnings were up. So you can take advantage of that disconnect. I think they will put up numbers that are slightly better than the S&P over long periods of time. Jason?

Sure. I've talked about Ameris Bank Corps before. Ticker is ABCB. It's a little Georgia-based bank down in Moultry, small town living there down in Moultry. But they went into the financial crisis, just a small little Georgia bank. Had it emerged, much stronger and larger and healthier today. A number of FDIC, assisted acquisitions helped them along the way grow with a very low-risk deposit and asset base, which is actually more than a more than a larger. than doubled over the last five years, and the stock has really, really performed well. Smart leadership, conservative leadership have maintained a great capital structure there, healthy ratios all the way around. So if you're looking for bank exposure, I think this is a

better way to go about it than those bigger banks that are much more difficult to understand. Steve? How can you make sure the financials are actually what they are telling you they are? Typically, I like going to actually, you go to management's house, you knock on their door. Just threaten their family. Tell them you're going to hang. them up by their feet or something like that. If they don't really give you the low down there, Steve, I think that's usually what to do it. Jeff, we've got just a few seconds. VNTV. You notice when you go to pay for something with a credit card that's now a chip

a lot of times and you feel like a fool you're trying to swipe. No, put the chip in. Vantive sells the point of sales processors for those chips. So they're doing really well, expected to grow sharply through 2017 at least. That said, the stock is up a lot the past year, so I'm still looking into it. Be careful if you're buying all of a sudden right now. Steve? Could they speed the process along? It seems to take forever to put your card in there. Good Lord, it's 25 seconds later.

I don't know. Maybe the networks need to get faster, but you're right. It takes a while. You can't take your card while you're waiting. You got one you like, Steve? I'm going to have to go with the bank one. That sounds pretty good. I think you just like my answer.

Which bank? They're all kind of banking related. All right, Ron Gross, Jason Moser, Jeff Fisher. Guys, thanks for being here. That's going to do it for this week's show. We will see you next week.