#322： Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
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Summary
Eric Barker is the author of one of the few blogs I regularly read, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. There, he takes a look at what actual research says about these tried and true maxims of success, and provides a nuanced, often counterintuitive look at them. He s recently taken some of his best writing from eight years, the blog expanded on it, and turned into a book by the same name. And today on the show, Brett and Eric discuss why most of the ideas we have about success are wrong, and what we can do to be better advice sleuths.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we all know those
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collective maxims on success nice guys finish last it's not what you know it's who you know
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and winners never quit we've heard them so often that we often accept them as articles of faith
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but are they really true my guest today says yes and no his name is eric barker and he's the author
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of one of the few blogs i regularly read barking up the wrong tree there he takes a look at what
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actual research says about these tried and true maxims of success and provides a nuanced often
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counterintuitive look at them he's recently taken some of his best writing from eight years the blog
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expanded on it and turned into a book by the same name and today on the show eric and i discuss why
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most of the ideas we have about success are wrong and what we can do to be better advice sleuths eric
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shares for example research that shows why high school valedictorians are less likely to become
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millionaires or influential leaders and what that teaches us about the importance of knowing
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ourselves he then breaks down the idea that nice guys always finish last and how it's both true and
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false at the same time he then discusses why grit can be overrated sometimes why winners always quit
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and we end our conversation discussing why being a glad handing extrovert can both garner success and
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sow the seeds of failure and how the idea of work-life balance is making people more miserable than
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ever and what you can do about it lots of fascinating tidbits in this show that you can
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implement right away to improve your life and there's plenty of great cocktail party fodder in
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this show as well after the show's over make sure you check out the show notes at awim.is
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slash barker where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
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all right eric barker welcome to the show oh thanks brett it's great to be here so i've been a big fan
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of your blog barking up the wrong tree we were talking about this before we get on before we started
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the show that you're one of the few blogs i still have in my rss feed reader i use feedly
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we were talking about how we need to make rss feeds great again like they're due a comeback i think
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that's seriously that's the way i get the majority of of my news i i don't know rss is still king it is
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you know we were talking about facebook has an algorithm so you don't get to see all the stuff
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you're following you're saying twitter's too noisy i i think the same i i don't enjoy twitter
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so if you're listening to this and you have never used an rss feed before you are missing
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out go to feedly.com sign up for an account and subscribe to barking up the wrong tree
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and the art of manliness i wholeheartedly agree all right we both have full feed so you can
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actually read all of our content right there in the feed you don't have to go to our site
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it's all right there absolutely so anyways that's our plug for rss feeds all right so anyways
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you turned your book or your blog barking up the wrong tree into a book called barking up the
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wrong tree kind of condensed some of the best stuff and add some new things as well your blog
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is unique the reason why i like it is because you offer you know success advice on how to be
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successful in different domains of your life but the advice you give like is nuanced and it's
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counterintuitive oftentimes i'm curious why did you start the blog what were you what was your goal
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what you're trying to capture with your writing on barking up the wrong tree i mean the the thing for
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me was i was kind of kind of at a crossroads in my life where i was i was between careers and wasn't
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sure what i was doing and you know we get so much advice we don't know what's real what's not you know
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before the internet you know good information you know information was hard to come by now post
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internet good information is is hard to come by we you know it's like you hear tons of answers but
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you don't know what's legit so i i kind of went down the rabbit hole like looking at research looking
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what experts had to say and there's this great quote from william gibson that i love where he said
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that the the future is already here it's just not evenly distributed and i believe that we have
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answers to a lot of the questions we want to know about happiness success productivity relationships but
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the information is not evenly distributed it's sometimes it's locked up in you know dusty journals or ivory
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towers in academia and you know i just wanted to to get these answers that are that are already out
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there and and it's been a journey for me but but you know basically i was looking for answers myself
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and i'm i'm glad a lot of people have joined me for the ride so we'll get into some specifics here
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in a bit but let's talk generally like high level here why do you think a lot of the advice out there
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on the web particularly the web because there's like just this whole there's whole like genres of
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blogs dedicated to being successful finding happiness it's at best incomplete or at worst just plain
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wrong why do you what's going why do you think like some of these these ideas just keep continuing
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to get repeated over and over and over again even though people know it's wrong i mean you know you
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have i think there's a number of reasons i mean number number one is you know we have the cognitive
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biases that we all we all have in our brains or something sometimes we don't want to hear the truth
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sometimes we want we want our beliefs reinforced we don't we don't actually want to want to hear
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something different and you know and share counts like counts are all responding to to what to what
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people often feel you know uh not necessarily what is what is accurate and what is right but beyond that
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you know i mean a lot of websites have agendas you know they're they're not necessarily trying to
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deliver factual information they're trying to they're trying to tell people what they want to hear
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sell things and and then that that those kind of competing interests can cause problems as well
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so you know it's very the issue is right now it's very easy everybody's got a printing press it's
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very easy to get stuff out there and so we're just there's just a deluge of of information and it's
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hard to figure out you know what's legit what's not and frankly most people don't want to read
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academic studies sometimes i don't want to read academic studies so so you know there's there's a lot
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of kind of filters that are are blocking people from getting stuff that's you know not necessarily
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perfect but but more legit than than some of the mainstream information and even if something isn't
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wrong completely oftentimes i found that it might not work for me right because like a lot of the
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advice out there that uses sort of like a blanket advice this works for everybody but that's like as
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we'll talk about here in a little bit like that's not necessarily true oh i i totally agree
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especially when you're talking about you know stuff that relates to psychology you know you there
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are issues of personality i mean one of the things i talk about in the book is you know
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understanding who you are you know to to some degree most personality traits and many fundamental
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personality traits are ridiculously stable over time you know when when when you look at people
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you know when they're a child when they're old many qualities stay the same and so often you know
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it's an issue of accepting who you are and aligning yourself with environments that will allow you to
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thrive and succeed you know not so much changing and when you look at a lot of the research you know
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everything from management gurus like peter drucker to a lot of the work on signature strengths by
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martin seligman at the university of pennsylvania you know what you see is them saying don't spend an
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enormous amount of time trying to bring up your weaknesses you're you're really going to be you
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know swimming upstream trying to do that you're much your your time is much better spent improving
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your strengths you know that's that's where your resources are best spent so honestly it's like
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accepting who you are and moving towards that it's it's a it's a much better way than than trying to
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to you know this general advice isn't always going to work when you know who you are you can start to
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say this will work for me so i'm curious you know with your years of writing for barking up the wrong
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tree and you know the work you did on the book do you have any like heuristics or mental models you
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use to judge whether a piece of advice is useful i mean i think that you mentioned just one like
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know yourself is an important one but any other ones that you use sort of filter things out i mean
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for me for me you know it's like first and foremost it's like okay you know you have you have the basics
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where it's like okay is this from a legitimate university or or is this you know was this a
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corporate sponsored study sometimes those come up or are there are there any you know issues there in
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terms of agendas those are those are obvious ones but i'd say the biggest one i use is you know
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luckily i've been i've been reading this stuff and posting stuff on the blog for like for eight
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years and and i used to post like five study abstracts a day six days a week and luckily i've
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developed a gut of sorts so i'd have to say my biggest one is just that kind of spidey sense
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where it's like when i hear when i see a study that says hey gratitude improves happiness well i've seen a
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dozen other studies that that show the show the same thing that's really not going to raise my
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hackles but when i start to see something that completely contradicts what i've seen before and
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there's not an element that makes me go oh there's not something it's hinging on that makes me start to
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reconsider things you know then i'll start to scratch my head and and those you know eight nine times out of
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ten you know those aren't great studies but on the other side one in ten sometimes things get
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overturned sometimes you know studies get retracted sometimes little things that seem little small
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factors end up you know making a real critical element you know gratitude in this situation might
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not be so good so if for me you know i'm i'm usually looking at you know the where the where's the
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research coming from what does it have around it who's the research who did it but a big part of it
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for me is saying does this line up with what we've seen before or is this some crazy outlier
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and if so you know why is there a legitimate reason or or not okay i love that all right so
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let's get into the specifics here because there's a lot of great uh insights and there's a ton in here
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so if you we can't get into this podcast but um that's why i encourage people to go out to get the
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book but let's take some of these i don't know i don't want to call them tropes i don't want to call
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them myths either because like what i found with maxims yeah there you go that you know we take for
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something that is true but sometimes they're not true so let's take a look i thought this
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interesting this very counterintuitive research you uncovered about valid victorians like high
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school valid valid victorians are less likely to become millionaires or even high powered or
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influential leaders what's going on there because like you know when you're in school it's like you
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gotta you're just hammered you gotta do really well in school if you want to be a success in life
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you got to be really well in school if you want to be a leader what's going on why aren't why are
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there's so few validatorians that end up being become millionaires or leaders um what the what
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the research found i mean basically what we're conflating there is that success in school necessarily
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maps perfectly onto success in life and and that's and that's not true i think we all know that to some
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degree and the research is proving that out where school has very clear rules check the boxes do what
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you're told give the right answer get an a do well life is much more messy you know than that you know
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the rules aren't always clear the rules can be can be can be broken sometimes sometimes you can go be
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an entrepreneur make your own rules so so that's what we're seeing basically karen arnold did the
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research at boston college and she tracked valedictorians and what she found is they do well you
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know it's like they they go on to get advanced degrees they end up uh doing well in their in
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their chosen fields but what happens is valedictorians settle into the system they do not generally end up
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leading the system or revolutionizing the system and that is because the fundamental thing that school
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does is is reward compliance it is not rewarding necessarily um you know grades only loosely correlate
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with iq scores actually standardized tests like the sat correlate correlate much better with with
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intelligence scores so you're not necessarily choosing the students who who are you know have
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the raw horsepower raw brain power you're rewarding students who are really good at complying with rules
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and school's very good with that but once they get outside of it life's messy you know they tend to work
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in structured environments play by the rules and we all know that that doesn't always lead to to top
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leadership positions and it certainly doesn't often lead to revolutionizing the system if what you're
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focused on is compliance the other issue that's really critical here is the issue of mastery and
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that is that in school you need to be a generalist you have to get you have to get a's in history you
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have to get a's in english you have to get a's in math if you're going to get that 4.0 and and do very
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well whereas the real world generally rewards mastery in one arena if you go to work for you know as a as
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engineer at google yeah your math skills and computer science skills better be top notch but whether
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you're you know really kicking ass in terms of english and history they don't really care so
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the school is actually teaching you to be a generalist whereas life rewards being being an expert
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in one field so if you say i absolutely love math and i want to really dive down in math if you want
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to be valedictorian you need to stop studying math and go study english so kids who and and arnold found
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this in the research kids who are really focused on something and really passionate about a subject
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uh are actually punished by the the school system and they're not encouraged to to dive down into
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uh the areas of expertise that would later reward them so yeah we had william de resawitz on the show
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a while back ago talking about this in his book excellent sheep where he just kind of makes the same
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argument without going to the research basically just showing that schools reward compliance and it's
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really good at producing he calls them sheep um but excellent sheep right people who know how to
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follow the rules but i mean but as i read this chapter though it seemed like you're making the case
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that well okay with this idea in mind this doesn't necessarily mean you need to tell your kid to like
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just do terrible at school and pull them out of school it depends on what their personality is like
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right in a lot of ways right absolutely absolutely i mean it's you know it's it i i think you know the
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it's a very polarizing subject because i i think people that did very well at school are naturally
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going to want to lean towards the valedictorians and and people who didn't do well in school or who
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dropped out might be far more inclined to to say yeah you know and and i and i think what it's
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actually more an issue of what you're saying where it's personality type where if you are somebody
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who is naturally very compliant at rules good at checking the boxes hey the world needs people like
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that and if you're somebody who naturally breaks the rules likes to try new things you're very
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creative you know then you know the world needs people like that too it's it's not that one is good
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and one is bad and we should necessarily shove all of the kids in one direction or the other you know
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that's that's the problem the problem is that the system is only set up to reward compliance
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so yes it's much more about kind of like we were talking about earlier it's much more about
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understanding yourself and then aligning your environment with that because you know if you
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are somebody who you know checks all the boxes complies with all the rules and you find yourself
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in a very chaotic creative unstable environment it's going to be very hard for you to thrive and by the
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same token if you're you know if you're a really creative dynamic person who questions the rules and
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wants to try new things and you find yourself in a place that you know like a you know government
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institution or or an accounting firm where everything needs to be done exactly according
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to these these specifications you're going to struggle you're not going to be happy and you're
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probably not going to do well so it's less of an issue of this is good always good this is always
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bad than it is an issue of alignment right i think this is really it's really important to know
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yourself because there's i feel like there's like two conflicting like narratives out there so on the one
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hand you have school that rewards compliance but on the other hand you have i think you know you
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you're on the internet sort of and like there's like this like people venerate like the the rule
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breakers the entrepreneurs and like those are the people who are famous and are rewarded handsomely
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and so i think there's like people want that but i think there's a lot of people who like you know
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they're not that's not them and they feel bad because like oh i'm not cool i'm not i'm not internet
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cool because i'm not a rule breaker i'm not an entrepreneur so like knowing yourself like no okay yeah
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i'm a i'm a compliance guy i'm a good manager those are important like that that's that i think
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becomes really key because i can feel like you can have like a lot of uh cognitive dissonance going
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on no i i think we you know we we all struggle with that there's a little bit grass is greener
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on the other side of the fence i mean the rule breakers you know you know being a rule breaker
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is very cool as long as you're successful um you know it's it's uh it's the the rule breakers who
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who end up unemployed or in jail you know we're not we're not so quick to reward them and and on the
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other hand you know the people who play by the rules it's like yeah it's like sometimes they're
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seen as you know as oh you're just you know you're just doing what you're told you're sheep you know
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or on the flip side frankly these are the people that keep the world stable these are the key people
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that keep you know everything running and these people generally live good stable happy lives so i
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think there's good and bad on both sides and i i but i but i think it's natural to to want to try
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and emotionally polarize it but like you said it's more of an issue of self-understanding
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and alignment than it is in terms of you know like like objective right and wrong right all right so
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uh let's move on to the next maxim of success which is this is a good one because this is the
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art of manliness it's the idea that nice guys finish last so the idea is if you're not aggressive
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you're not a beast you don't take life by the the bull by the horns uh you're gonna lose in your
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career and love uh is that necessarily is that true what's what's really interesting is is that
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it's it's not an easy answer but it's an answer that makes sense i mean if you if you look at the
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work of adam grant you know he did he did a lot of research on givers people who altruistically give
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to others matchers people who try to keep an even balance of give and take and then takers people who
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try to get as much as possible and and not give back and when he initially did the research what he
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found was seemed to be nice guys finish last he found that givers were disproportionately represented
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at the bottom of success metrics across a number of different fields but then when he did a thorough
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review what he found was the results were actually bimodal that givers were disproportionately represented
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at the bottom and at the top and that and that kind of jives that that makes sense to us or we all
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know some martyr who who tries too much to help others gets exploited by takers doesn't get their own
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work done and we also all know somebody who everybody loves who is really cool really supportive
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and everyone goes out of their way to help this person because they're they're such a mensch they're
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so awesome so we we kind of get that that that nice guys often finish at the very top of the very bottom
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and another another factor that i think is really critical here is short-term long-term and that is
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across a number of personality characteristics and elements in the shorter term bad often wins
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in the longer term good often wins when you look you see when you see a narcissists across the board
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generally score higher in job interviews they score higher on first dates yet when you look over time
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after a few weeks in a job narcissists are generally regarded as untrustworthy and after a few months
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relationship satisfaction with narcissists tanks when robert axelrod did set up he said a bunch of
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algorithms trying to figure out you know what what system would work best in in the in the prisoner's
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dilemma and what he found is that the bad guys took the high ground very quickly but over time
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programs that were good won out and it makes sense because we all know that people who rush out to try
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and get as much for themselves as possible who self-promote who who who lie very often can do
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well initially but over time we usually deal with the same people you know over a period of time
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and we develop a reputation and once you develop a reputation unless you can constantly outpace that
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reputation people are going to figure it out and people are not going to want to deal with you
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and so it makes sense but i think it's critical to realize that nice guys need to make sure that
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they're in the top of the success metrics not the bottom of success metrics by not letting themselves
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get abused and the second thing to realize is that in the short term hey bad behavior can pay off but
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over the long term uh very often it rarely does so i mean are you recommending here like in the
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beginning like say as a career you're trying to do a career move i don't know trying to go up the
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corporate hierarchy kind of be more assertive or should you just be not like play nice the entire
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time because you know in the end it'll help you in the long term oh no no i'm not recommending that
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that people that people do negative in the beginning and then later play good what what i'm saying is
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that is that people who are intent on you know narcissists people who are much more selfish and
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self-focused early on will do well and then we'll do poorly later the the thing is that what we can
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learn from the the takers what we can learn from the negative is that they're generally much more
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assertive about knowing what they want and they're also very good at self-promoting and those are two
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things that don't necessarily have to be bad you know being assertive again not not deceptive not
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lying not cheating not stealing but being assertive about what you want is a good is a good quality and
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letting your boss and people around you not to the point of being a bragger but letting people
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know the good work you're doing is important to getting ahead now the lying cheating and stealing
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not so much but we we need we need to make sure we're doing those things those are things we can
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take away from the the negative side but overall what you see is people are often i think it was david
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desteno at northeastern university who who does some research into human character what he found
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is that very often upon meeting people we're looking at two qualities we're looking at two issues you
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know number one uh you know can this person uh be trusted and number two how long am i going to be
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dealing with this person and you know if there are more steps built into the contract you're probably
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going to behave better because you know the other per side is going to have a chance to retaliate
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if you're introduced to someone by a friend you're probably more likely you know to treat that person
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better because you know it can come back to to haunt you as opposed to somebody you meet randomly on
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the street so that duration that length of time that you're going to be dealing with someone
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encourages good behavior when you think about you know royal families uh in in the middle ages
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marrying off their kids to one another to to basically say hey you know we have we have family in
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common now we're not going to go to war things are going to be more stable you know it's it's that
00:22:50.700
kind of thing they call it lengthening the shadow of the future that tends to promote good behavior
00:22:55.980
because there's not as much of an incentive to to grab the money and run awesome all right so
00:23:00.920
bottom line be a nice guy but don't be a doormat and you're playing the long game and don't be afraid
00:23:07.680
to like be a little assertive not a little be assertive and promote yourself though those are those
00:23:14.360
are some great tips another thing that is really critical robert axelrod's research found this and
00:23:19.860
adam grant found this as well is to very much think about the environments you're putting yourself in
00:23:25.100
um when when adam grant looked at you know environments if you're if you're a if you're
00:23:30.820
a giver surrounded by takers you know you're going to be in really bad shape you're going to be
00:23:34.340
exploited and it's very likely that you might become defensively become a taker yourself
00:23:38.020
when givers are surrounded by givers the the positive effects are exponential
00:23:42.280
and when givers at least have are surrounded by a number of matchers matchers fundamental belief
00:23:48.080
in justice and equality means that matchers often protect givers so for for those nice guys absolutely
00:23:54.640
everything you said the other thing that's really critical is to just look at the environment you're
00:23:58.820
putting yourself in are these good people when i spoke to bob sutton who's a professor at stanford's
00:24:04.580
graduate school of business he said whenever you walk into a company for a job interview he said look
00:24:09.700
around at the people the people there because you're going to become like them they're not going
00:24:14.280
to become like you and that you know we always think of peer pressure when it comes to teenagers
00:24:19.300
and kids but the truth is peer pressure affects all of us all the time and we're usually not aware of it
00:24:24.100
so putting yourself in environments that you know really aren't you is is not only dangerous in terms
00:24:30.120
of you being exploited but it's dangerous in terms of your character over the long term so if you're
00:24:34.020
giver don't go to maldova and do not do not go to moldova that would not be a good idea you can read
00:24:39.300
the book to find out why but uh yeah maldova not a great place uh okay so let's move on to uh another
00:24:46.480
idea that's it's really hot right now i feel like for the past few years is this idea of grit we've had
00:24:51.100
angela duckworth on on the podcast to discuss her book and her research about grit let's talk about
00:24:56.460
so like is there really a benefit to grit or is it kind of overrated or in some cases or is it one of
00:25:03.480
those things where in some instances you need to be gritty and in some instances grit is not helpful
00:25:08.100
uh i i think definitely the latter i think you know there you you can't be gritty about everything we
00:25:14.460
only have 24 hours in a day if you never gave up on anything you simply put you'd run out of hours in
00:25:20.920
a day you know i if i if i never gave up on anything i i'd still be playing t-ball you know we we need to
00:25:26.700
give up on some things in fact you know one of the things i talk about in the book is the issue of
00:25:30.620
strategic quitting where it's really thinking about how many things are you doing that are you
00:25:36.080
know aren't really providing value aren't really providing good benefit and by quitting those
00:25:40.400
things you're freeing up more time energy and resources for the things you need to be gritty on
00:25:45.500
you you know it's it's it's that issue of realizing what's really important to you what's that number one
00:25:50.880
again aligning with the work of uh drucker and seligman we're doubling down on your strengths
00:25:56.200
doubling down on what's important to you you know there's only 24 hours in a day period the only way
00:26:01.520
you get more hours is by quitting something else you know quitting something else frees up more time
00:26:07.080
to double down on what's important so so grit is critical but this idea of a universal never give up
00:26:14.220
is you know completely unrealistic you know uh actually uh to angela's credit in one of in one of
00:26:20.260
her research studies she said that you know quitting things early on in life is really important because
00:26:25.940
you need to try stuff you need to get out there and make a little bets as peter sims calls them
00:26:30.580
to try things to figure out what to be gritty at to figure out what your passion is what you're
00:26:36.260
interested in what is worth you know devoting those k unders ericsson 10 000 hours to so so grit is
00:26:43.900
absolutely a fantastic thing but we treat it like it's the end-all be-all and should be applied to
00:26:49.900
every situation and and that's fundamentally impossible so winners sometimes quit is what
00:26:55.760
you're saying i mean winners winners have to quit well how do you decide that how do you decide it's
00:27:01.180
time to quit something because maybe you are passionate about being in a rock band or maybe
00:27:05.700
you're passionate about your art and you've been at it for years and years and like nothing's going on
00:27:11.360
like how do you decide like i gotta hang up the the proverbial cleats on this so i can go work on
00:27:17.040
something else uh that's a it's a fantastic question uh because once you raise the issue of
00:27:22.780
you know quit and grit both being legitimate options uh vital options then it's how do i decide
00:27:28.480
and gabrielle ettingen did research at nyu and she came up with this fantastic little acronym called
00:27:33.200
whoop w-o-o-p and and it's actually a quick little process people can go through to try and figure out
00:27:39.300
you know what is worth sticking to and and and what isn't and basically what it what it stands for is
00:27:44.740
wish outcome obstacle plan because the the interesting thing is a lot of us wish for
00:27:50.820
stuff and it's kind of fun to dream uh but what the research shows is that spending time dreaming
00:27:56.200
doesn't move you towards your goals in fact it saps your energy because our brains aren't very good at
00:28:01.740
telling what is real what is not real that's that's why movies are thrilling so when we wish we people
00:28:06.940
actually subsequently do less what they need to do is first you wish you dream about what you want
00:28:13.080
but then you need to make it concrete you need to say what outcome do i want from this and make it
00:28:17.960
concrete then all of a sudden you you know it's something that is actually achievable the third
00:28:23.520
thing and here's where it gets tricky is the obstacle what's standing in the way why why can't
00:28:28.680
you have what you want what is the problem that's blocking you and then fourth is a plan you know how am
00:28:34.620
i going to overcome this obstacle now what's interesting about that is it it's a useful little tool for
00:28:39.440
helping you start to get to make a plan and to figure out what you want how to get there but
00:28:44.820
there's a secondary effect that's really powerful in terms of the grit or quit uh issue and that is
00:28:50.720
that when you go through the wish outcome obstacle plan the little whoop exercise if you find that with
00:28:58.600
your plan you feel energized you feel ready to take over the world that means that what you're thinking
00:29:04.580
about is probably legitimate it's probably something you should be doing in her research she saw that
00:29:09.880
when people felt energized that means this plan was realistic when people went through it and they felt
00:29:14.980
kind of you know down or or or they just didn't feel up to it they didn't feel energized often it was
00:29:20.740
because their plan wasn't realistic you know i want to be emperor of australia by thursday you know
00:29:25.860
that's that's not a very realistic goal and you you shouldn't think that that's that's going to work
00:29:30.820
so taking the time to walk through wish outcome obstacle plan often gives people that inkling of
00:29:38.720
is this something i should double down on or is this something i should let go and turn my attention
00:29:43.580
to to other issues all right so don't do vision boards don't do this don't do the secret you can
00:29:50.040
start out there okay you start there don't don't stop there exactly exactly okay all right i'll i'll
00:29:55.300
i'll keep my vision board then no i don't have a vision board i think i did it one time but i don't
00:30:01.120
it's been a long long time i'll admit i had a vision board once all right um so here's another
00:30:06.000
piece of advice that we often hear it's not what you know it's who you know and people often say
00:30:11.680
that cynically it's like yeah well he just he's not really smart he just has connections is that
00:30:16.900
really true um the the issue there is you know what i started out talking about is the issue of
00:30:23.060
extroversion versus introversion and the truth is both are important you know it depends on the
00:30:28.320
environment it depends on the issue so i guess the quick answer is it depends but the the response is
00:30:33.140
is really more nuanced than that you know extroverts you know often often do much better in terms of you
00:30:40.760
know success metrics there are also a lot of downsides in terms of in terms of wasting time and in
00:30:47.360
terms of in terms of you know how they how they spend their time introverts you know often lack
00:30:52.620
in terms of building that great network and across the board in terms of getting a job and get promoting
00:30:56.860
in a job getting a salary increases in a job having a big network is key but introverts across the board
00:31:02.520
are much more likely to become experts in their field you can you can generally on average you can
00:31:07.960
tell whether somebody's grades are good or or are more are better or or worse just by knowing
00:31:13.880
introversion extroversion introverts on average have higher grades they they're far more likely to get
00:31:17.760
phd's they're far more likely to get five beta kappa keys uh introverts you know have all that extra
00:31:23.220
time and it should they choose to spend it in arena experts are they're far more likely to be experts in
00:31:28.780
their field whereas there's one study that showed what was the wording extroversion is inversely
00:31:34.500
correlated with individual proficiency which is a a fancy way of saying the more of an extrovert you are
00:31:40.860
the worse you are at your job so you know there's the issue of networks which can can really be
00:31:47.040
powerful having a big network i even looked at the research on drug dealers and drug dealers who have
00:31:52.100
bigger networks make more money and are far less likely to be incarcerated across the board big networks
00:31:57.220
are helpful on the other hand hey you know being if you're a computer programmer you know that's a very
00:32:03.480
solitary job if you're a writer that's a very solitary job you know so your proficiency is going to be
00:32:09.660
oftentimes more important than your network so which job you pick can become you know critical
00:32:16.760
which arena you're in but the truth is very often most people are not at the extremes most people are
00:32:22.900
not extreme experts or extreme introverts they're ambiverts they're somewhere in the middle and what
00:32:27.520
we need to decide to do ever most individuals who fall into the middle of the bell curve in terms of
00:32:32.440
introversion extroversion need to think about which side of themselves do they need to turn on is this a
00:32:37.040
situation where i need to be more extroverted you know i need to make an effort to socialize or is
00:32:42.080
this a time where i need to you know turn off notifications shut the door buckle down and and
00:32:48.340
and work hard as an individual contributor so you know it's really networks are extremely powerful
00:32:54.320
and introverts need to spend some time there but depending upon which career you're in you need to
00:33:00.580
strike that balance between developing a good network and and becoming an expert in your field
00:33:06.480
to the degree you can yeah you mentioned the research that most olympic high level olympic
00:33:11.220
athletes are introverts right like they're just they just focus on their practice i mean absolutely
00:33:17.420
it's it's funny it was i was surprised to see that but when you think about it even team athletes
00:33:23.060
you know how much time are they spending doing free throw after free throw how many times are they
00:33:28.340
spending more time sprinting on the track or time in the batting cage you know those individual skills
00:33:34.340
that need to be developed it requires you know a lot of time just head down doing the work uh and so
00:33:40.780
yeah it was very surprising to me to to see the percentage of of top athletes that say that they
00:33:45.740
are introverts and i mean so networking is important important if you're not naturally an extrovert and so
00:33:52.520
like networking seems sort of icky to you what kind of research have you come across on how to network
00:33:57.260
without making it seem gross you know you know what i'm talking about it's like hey just pressing
00:34:02.900
your flesh here you know here's my card absolutely and and it's funny there's there's actually research
00:34:08.240
that that supports that uh francesca gino at harvard did research showing that yes it's like most people
00:34:13.320
see transactional networking as icky and and the people who don't see it as icky are often powerful
00:34:19.540
people they are the people who need it least so the people who need it most find it the most
00:34:23.560
repulsive which is which is a sad irony but but there are a number of things people can do to
00:34:28.080
build their network without feeling gross you know rather than going into it with a model of networking
00:34:33.280
which is kind of a formal clinical word to begin with uh taking the perspective of friendship of
00:34:39.140
making friends and the the best first step that i've seen in the research in terms of networking
00:34:44.280
frankly is reactivating dormant friendships you know is going on linkedin going on facebook looking
00:34:50.040
through the contacts on your smartphone who are people uh who who you know who are already your
00:34:55.420
friends who you haven't been in touch with you haven't talked to in six months or a year
00:34:58.480
that doesn't feel icky you already know them you know that you already have a connection it's not
00:35:04.160
going to be difficult all you have to do is reach out say hi and then you know continue to follow
00:35:09.040
up make that person more part of your life that's a very simple way the second step i would say
00:35:14.360
is there's research by uh brian uzi and sharon dunlap on what's called super connectors and what
00:35:20.100
that is is if you look at uh the contact list on your smartphone you're going to find that a
00:35:24.540
disproportionate number of your friends were introduced to you by a handful of people those
00:35:30.680
are your super connectors those are the people who are big extroverts or they're the hub of networks
00:35:35.380
deliberately you want to spend disproportionate amount of time reaching out and talking to those
00:35:40.040
people because they are really you know they're super connectors they have big networks and when
00:35:45.640
you're looking for that next job you're looking for that next opportunity those are the people who
00:35:49.660
are most going to be able to to assist you you know so there's a number of easy things you can do
00:35:55.460
and then past that be a friend you know talk to people try and find things you have in common
00:36:00.220
don't immediately be asking people for things try and find ways to help others be a giver in adam
00:36:05.900
grants terminology it doesn't have to be an icky an icky affair you know if you if you handle it the
00:36:11.220
right way all right let's uh talk about work-life balance so there's this you know idea that you
00:36:17.100
know women are always talking about having it all right like want a career and a good family life but
00:36:22.480
you should highlight research that you know and the assumption is that men can have it all like they
00:36:27.520
have a great career and a great family because there's a wife at home taking care of the family
00:36:30.960
allows them to have their career but you you highlight these stories of men who didn't have it all
00:36:35.780
like they had fantastic careers but their family life was just garbage can you talk about some of
00:36:40.520
those examples of people whose men who sacrificed family for i don't know career excellence yeah i
00:36:46.420
mean you see this across the board uh howard gardner at harvard did did research on a number of you know
00:36:52.000
top performers and what he found was that they almost made like a faustian bargain where they basically
00:36:58.380
gave up everything in order to be at the top of their field and that's the the problem we face
00:37:05.160
is that if you want work-life balance then the issue is balance it's not extreme and that means it's
00:37:10.740
not extreme in terms of results when you look at when you look at so much of the research by dean
00:37:16.420
keith simonton and mihaili ciksemihai and other other people who who focus on on top performers and
00:37:23.240
expertise uh what you see is more hours equals more results uh you know there might be diminishing
00:37:29.260
marginal returns but but overall more effort more hours equals more results so at some point you have
00:37:35.800
to draw a line and when you look at some of the people i detail in the book albert einstein ted
00:37:41.300
williams you know you see that these are people who sacrifice their relationships and that's usually
00:37:47.480
what suffers is relationships because relationships require consistent time and energy over time you don't
00:37:54.580
you don't just have an annual it's like an it's not like an annual doctor's visit you need to spend time
00:37:58.340
with your friends and family regularly for them to be a part of your life you know albert einstein
00:38:02.420
just kind of retreated into his head trying to trying to find you know trying to find that next that
00:38:08.560
next big discovery and he had a contract with his wife about on what terms she could interrupt him
00:38:15.480
and it was it's it's kind of makes your stomach turn he had another son who was institutionalized and
00:38:22.740
i i don't think einstein saw him for the last 10 or 20 years of his of his life his other son
00:38:27.800
said the only project my father gave up on was me um you know he basically just sacrificed we think
00:38:35.760
of einstein as this guy who did some amazing things and he most certainly did but but it was a faustian
00:38:41.200
bargain and ted williams you know just he just played it's like the joke i make in the book is that
00:38:46.840
he didn't play baseball because he wasn't playing he was taking it very seriously and it's all he did
00:38:53.280
and he was great at it but the problem is if you want a well-rounded life you have to draw a line
00:39:00.540
you have to say at some point this is good enough you have to settle at some point and that's up to
00:39:08.060
you and if you're a very driven very achievement uh very achievement focused person it can be very
00:39:13.340
hard to draw that line and and step back from the table so i mean i guess there's a lot of insights
00:39:19.000
or advice we can take from this if you are achievement oriented you might consider foregoing
00:39:23.960
family or if before you get into family like make sure your wife or significant other like
00:39:29.680
knows what they're getting into right before they they jump in with you oh uh ted ted one of ted
00:39:37.540
williams wives he had three threatened to write a biography that was titled my turn at bat was no ball
00:39:45.180
when they when they divorced before the the judge finalized the decision he he turned to the wife
00:39:52.020
and he said is there any way you two can can work this out and uh and his wife delora said are you
00:39:58.200
kidding um you know he was just that extreme a person and and that extremity you know helped him in
00:40:05.340
terms of it helped ted williams in terms of getting ahead uh so yeah i think it's very good if if your
00:40:10.820
partner understands what you're like but more important than that i would say it's still
00:40:15.720
important for for for any achievement oriented person to draw some line because the results aren't
00:40:23.080
this doesn't lead to happiness it was it leads to achievement it certainly leads to achievement but
00:40:27.900
but it may not even lead to being number one there may be somebody bigger stronger faster than you are
00:40:32.700
and and it doesn't lead to a well-rounded life it doesn't lead to to to happiness and uh it's a danger
00:40:40.400
so everyone needs to have a personal definition of success everyone needs to have a line where they
00:40:45.420
say this is good enough for me and that can be an extreme line that can still mean working 16 hour
00:40:50.240
days perhaps but when you get to hour 17 you need to stop because it's it just just does not seem to
00:40:57.860
lead to good things for anyone yeah and i think you talk about research about this idea of work-life
00:41:02.540
balance has actually made today's 20 and 30 somethings more miserable than say our parents or
00:41:09.640
grandparents when they were our age right yeah the the thing there is that it was basically the issue
00:41:17.840
didn't really exist before you know and that's and that's something that that me immediately made me
00:41:21.980
scratch my head was that decades you know decades ago people weren't talking about work-life balance
00:41:25.880
and that's because there has been a fundamental shift you know part of that is driven by technology
00:41:30.360
you know part of it's driven by changes in the world but the the key issue here is that the doors
00:41:35.380
used to close at 5 p.m it's like when you watch an episode of mad men and you know the office stops
00:41:40.200
and now the office doesn't stop you've always got your cell phone with you you can always check
00:41:44.860
email you can always be texting that that oh i oh i'll have to get that document from the office
00:41:49.340
tomorrow no the documents are in the cloud you can get them right now you have the option to work
00:41:54.680
24 7 and when i spoke to swathmore professor barry schwartz uh wrote an excellent book called the
00:42:00.500
paradox of choice uh he talked about that where the issue is you have the option to work 24 7 so
00:42:06.380
it's always an option and that weighs on us before the doors at the office closed at 5 p.m it was decided
00:42:14.000
for you so you could just go throw your hands up hey i'm gonna go home and be with my family play with
00:42:19.940
my kids now you know that phone buzzes you know that that project's incomplete and at 9 p.m you have
00:42:27.440
the option to go work on it so it's always a temptation of sorts and that becomes a really
00:42:34.860
difficult uh push pull because you're always having to choose and it's easier when someone chooses for
00:42:41.100
you so the work-life balance conundrum is that we need to make a choice we need to draw a line and
00:42:47.180
and everybody needs to draw it for themselves because the world's not going to draw it anymore
00:42:50.780
you need to say hey uh i'm stopping here i'm going to spend time with my family and if that means
00:42:57.380
i don't get the promotion well that's okay with me but that's a very difficult line to draw
00:43:03.400
and a very difficult decision to make and most of us don't want to make it but but sadly uh you know
00:43:10.280
now the onus is on us right and so i think a lot of that's managing expectations too because i think
00:43:15.220
that research about 30 somethings being more miserable than 30 somethings a decade ago was that
00:43:19.660
i guess like teenagers now are like happier because they have these high expectations right because
00:43:24.240
they're told like they can be anything and do anything they want like that didn't happen
00:43:27.580
30 years ago it was like he went to the guidance counselor and said all right you're you're gonna
00:43:32.980
go be a mechanic and like okay that's what i'm gonna do or you're gonna work in the factory and
00:43:37.280
then when they became an adult like they like realized okay things are actually better than i thought
00:43:41.100
they would be now young people have these high expectations they get into adulthood and they
00:43:45.300
realize their high expectations aren't being met and they're just miserable yeah so it's like i guess
00:43:49.900
like 30 years ago people like had very low expectations for adulthood and they ended up
00:43:55.100
happier because their expectation their reality it's exceeded their expectations young people today
00:43:59.840
have super high unrealistic expectations and they just are miserable because reality doesn't match
00:44:05.020
those expectations oh i totally i think barry schwartz told me the same thing is that you know is that
00:44:10.560
accepting say certain level as good enough and managing expectations is is really key and now what's really
00:44:18.860
hard is is with is with the internet and television we are getting to see the top 0.0001 percent of
00:44:26.540
successful people whether they're the most beautiful whether they're the richest the most accomplished the
00:44:30.860
best athletes the best singers we are we you know expectations are off are off the charts you know and
00:44:36.840
it's it's impossible so when you combine these completely unrealistic expectations with the ability to go to work
00:44:46.040
24 7 then you know ambitious people are are in a really bad shape you know really bad shape because
00:44:53.880
they're they're going to be inclined to overwork they're they're they have these crazy standards
00:44:59.560
and the ability to run on that hamster wheel until they kill themselves and so that's a really difficult
00:45:06.420
combination and uh and i've and so it makes sense why people are struggling with it yeah will have you seen
00:45:13.160
twilight zone do you ever watch like old episodes oh yeah like the willowby episode remember that one
00:45:18.660
really no which one was that it's the guy where he's on a train he has he has a dream that like
00:45:23.300
he's just like overworked off you know corporate drone he has this dream that he uh gets off on this
00:45:28.740
train and it's like idyllic 19th century town where everyone's just wonderful and it's called willowby
00:45:34.680
and it ends up like willowby like he ends up in willowby he finally gets there but it's b it's like
00:45:40.120
willowby's funeral home like he he dies because he got so overworked um it's a great episode with
00:45:48.240
a lot of existential meaning uh i love twilight zone well eric this has been a great conversation
00:45:54.440
there's so much more we could talk about where can people go to learn more about your work
00:45:57.880
the the url for my blog is a little difficult uh for people to to to pronounce so if if they just
00:46:03.660
google barking up the wrong tree blog or if they google my name eric barker they can check out
00:46:08.580
they can check out my blog and the latest i've been posting the best way to keep up with what
00:46:12.000
i'm doing is to to join my email newsletter and my book is available on amazon.com it's called
00:46:18.040
barking up their own tree so you can search for that or my name eric barker awesome don't forget
00:46:22.560
the rss feed oh dude rss is rss is i mean sometimes the older tools uh you know rolling old school uh
00:46:31.980
works in terms of rss man there's no doubt that's right all right well eric thanks so much for your
00:46:35.820
time it's been a pleasure it's been great thanks for having me on man my guest today was eric barker
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he's the author of the book barking up the wrong tree it's available at amazon.com and bookstores
00:46:43.400
everywhere also check out his blog like it's certainly one of the few blogs i read regularly
00:46:47.360
barking up the wrong tree and while you're at it sign up for feedly or some other rss feed reader and
00:46:52.240
subscribe to his blog on your rss feed reader just get all your news in one place there's no facebook
00:46:57.280
algorithm telling you that you're not going to be interested in that because your aunt trudy didn't like it or
00:47:01.300
whatever and there's not all that crap that twitter has in the feed as well and while you're at it sign up
00:47:05.420
the art of manliness rss feed you'll love it also check out our show notes at aom.is
00:47:09.700
slash barker where you find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic
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well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
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make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this
00:47:29.000
show have gotten something out of it over the years i'd appreciate it if you give a review on
00:47:32.140
itunes or stitcher thank you all who have taken the time to give and review there's been some great
00:47:36.320
ones in there also some great constructive feedback we take that into account to help
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improve the show as always thank you for your community support until next time this is brett mckay