How Your Personality Can Sabotage Your Success | Eric Barker on Impact Theory

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Eric: What you see consistently in terms of bad behavior and good behavior?
There's a lot of research that frames it in terms of time, a short-term strategy versus
a long-term strategy.
Tom: It's actually a really good point.
Eric: If you think about it, in general, what's the reputation of used car salesman?
Not very good.
Why?
They are probably never going to see you again, very short-term, versus what's the general
reputation of moms?
Moms are going to be with you throughout the rest of your life.
It's a longer [00:00:30] term type of strategy.
When you look at these kinds of things, that's where all of a sudden the bad and good behavior
starts to make a little bit more sense.
Tom: Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.
You are here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless,
but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with
it.
Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that
will help you actually execute on your dreams.
[00:01:00] Today's guest is a reformed screenwriter who traded in his tenure a luminary studio
such as Disney and Fox to pursue his passion for fact-finding, which he turned into one
of the most popular blogs in the internet.
Over the past eight years, his humorous and wildly informative articles have garnered
him massive attention and help him amass an army of dedicated followers numbering over
300,000 strong and I am not the least bit surprised.
His content is aimed at providing readers with [00:01:30] science-based answers and
expert insights in how to be in his words, awesome at life, and he certainly delivers.
I was so captivated by his debut book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science
Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong, that we had him scheduled
on the show before I've even finished reading it.
His work challenges many of the long-held platitudes about what makes people successful
and reveals the real usable secrets to success.
They are often surprising.
At times, a little unnerving if I'm completely honest, [00:02:00] but always useful and his
insatiable curiosity and wondrous ability to succinctly summarize often hard to digest
data has made one of the most sought after speaker educators working today.
He has been invited to speak at such prestigious institutions as West Point, Yale, and MIT
and his writing has been featured everywhere from the New York Times to the Wall Street
Journal and prestigious publications such as Time Magazine and Business Insider regularly
syndicate his content.
He is quite literally redefining the rules of success.
[00:02:30] Please my friends, help me in welcoming the best-selling author whose book was selected
as The Financial Times' business book of the month, the creator of bakadesuyo.com, which
in Japanese ironically translates both as, "I am Barker and I am an idiot."
The insightful, funny, and decidedly not idiotic, Eric Barker.
Eric: Great to be here.
Tom: Good to have you.
I have to say [00:03:00] I love that after learning what ... How do you pronounce it
by the way?
That was my best.
Eric: Bakadesuyo.
Tom: Once you learned that that translates into I am Barker and I am an idiot that you
still made it your URL.
Eric: First day of Japanese class, I found out my last name means idiot in Japanese.
Watashi wa baka desu means I am Barker.
Watashi wa baka desu means I am an idiot.
I've never had a Japanese person forget my name.
In fact, they seem to love saying it.
Tom: That is hilarious.
[00:03:30] What made you take Japanese in the first place, which doesn't sound easy?
Eric: I want to do something different.
I wanted to try something that was really out there and just so different and having
three character systems and just something that existed like in parallel rather than
Latin-based romance language and just really see what I can learn there.
It was a lot of fun, but it wasn't easy.
Tom: Was this in high school or college?
Eric: This was college.
It was challenging, [00:04:00] but it was really interesting because from a language
you also learn a little bit about the culture and you learn so much.
It's really fun.
I'm glad I chose it even though it made studying a little harder.
Tom: I can imagine.
I actually really like how well that personality trait of you of not looking for the easy path,
of always being willing to look underneath the hood and then embrace what you find whether
it's what your last name means or one of the most interesting things it was in your book
is the concept [00:04:30] that feeling powerless at work can actually kill you I think is the
exact quote from your book.
Tell us about that.
Eric: There's plenty of research that shows that stress in small amounts can be a performance
enhancer.
When you're feeling groggy, when you're feeling tired, you're not 100%, a little bit of stress
is good.
A lot of stress, especially a lot of stress over a long period of time, we all know this
isn't good and when you feel powerless at work, when you feel like you don't have [00:05:00]
autonomy, when you feel like nobody is listening to you, don't feel respected, stress level
or cortisol levels go up.
Over a period of time, not in a day or week, but over period of years, feeling like what
you do doesn't make a difference and feeling like you're not respected.
Having stress levels elevated like that, what you see is over time, years, decades, people
are much more likely to have garner incidents.
Tom: It's so interesting.
It was one of the things in the book that as you are detailing, I'm like, "That actually
make sense, but having such [00:05:30] a fine point on it."
I found really, really surprising.
You've been doing this blog for eight years, started as a blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree,
evolves into the book that it now is.
In all of that research, which by the way for anybody discovering him for the first
time right now, you're going to love how thoroughly he researches all the stuff and the fact that
the book is about how the things you've been taught about success are mostly wrong I think
really comes from the fact that you encounter these platitudes and as you dig deeper [00:06:00]
realized that they just don't hold up to the scrutiny of the data.
What have you found most surprising in the data?
Eric: One of the things that was most surprising to me was Adam Grant's research in terms of
nice guys finish last.
Adam teaches at Wharton and Adam is a very nice guy himself.
He split it up into givers, matchers, and takers as the three groups he made.
Givers are people who give altruistically, love helping people.
Matchers are people who strongly believe in fairness so they try to keep an even balance
and give and take.
Takers are people who want to get as much as possible and give as [00:06:30] little
as possible.
Adam looked at a bunch of careers and he looked at a variety of success metrics.
The initial results didn't make a nice guy like Adam feel very good because the initial
results showed a disproportionate number of nice guys showing up at the bottom of success
metrics across a number of fields.
This is a little depressing.
When he did the thorough analysis, what he found out the results were actually bimodal.
It was basically a disproportionate number of nice guys were at the bottom, a disproportionate
number of nice guys at the top.
That might sound initially confusing, [00:07:00] but really I think it's something we can all
relate to because we all know a martyr who gets taken advantage of, gets walked on, does
too much for others, doesn't do enough for themselves and gets exploited.
We also know people who are really awesome, really great, go out of their way to help
others, everybody feels indebted to them, everybody loves them and everybody is so happy
to go out of their way to support that person and to do whatever they can.
It's not an issue of nice being bad or nice being weak.
It's just an issue of how you handle [00:07:30] that balance of wanting to give to others
and doing it while not being a doormat, while not getting exploited.
Tom: One of the things that you detailed along those lines is the computer programs, the
algorithms that they had compete.
Talk to us about TFT, what that is.
I found this really interesting.
It resonated with me a lot.
Eric: This was the research by Robert Axelrod that basically during the prisoner's dilemma,
which is a standard thing where are you going to work with the other person or are you going
to [00:08:00] defect to try and cheat them.
He reached out to a lot of different experts in math and sociology and wherever to come
up with an algorithm.
Tom: Let's go into more detail about the process.
It's something like you're being interrogated and there's two of you that are in the crime.
If you say nothing, you get one year?
Eric: Basically, you both went to bank robbery, [00:08:30] you both get arrested.
You are being interrogated in separate rooms.
If you both say nothing, then you both get like one year in prison.
If you defect, if you basically say, "He did it", then you do better, he does worst.
If you both turn the other guy in, then you both do pretty bad.
If you could coordinate with the other person, [00:09:00] but you can't.
If you could coordinate, you could both keep your mouth shut.
The question there becomes, what's the optimal way mathematically speaking?
What's the optimal way to negotiate the prisoner's dilemma.
They had a bunch of different algorithms that would try different things.
You had some that were like always nice.
They always cooperated.
They never betrayed the other person no matter what because it is multiple rounds.
Then, you have ones that always try to screw the other guy [00:09:30] no matter what.
Then, you had sneakier ones that would like, "See, hey, on this round, can I cheat a little
bit and then back pedal?
How much can I get away with?"
Tom: Those are meant to replicate the givers, matchers, and takers?
Eric: Axelrod did this research like in the '80s.
This was around the time the Cold War because they were trying to figure out was there some
way the US and Russia could cooperate.
What was the optimal way?
What they basically found was comically, all these complex algorithms [00:10:00] and the
one that by far did the best was something we all learned when we're kids.
It was Tit For Tat.
Basically, it was, "Okay, we go one round.
I'm going to start off cooperating.
If you cooperate, the next round I'll cooperate.
If you defect, next round I defect and I will have no memory, so all I'm looking at is the
last round.
If you defect, fine, then I'll defect.
If you cooperate, then I'll join you again, just tit for tat.
I'm going to start out cooperating, then I'm going to do whatever you did in the last round."
[00:10:30] Tit for tat destroyed everybody.
What was interesting was initially tit for tat would lose.
The bad guys will get the high ground very quickly because they were immediately attacking,
but over time, tit for tat had some great things going forward in the sense that, first,
it always initially cooperated.
It showed good will.
Pass that, it wasn't a doormat.
If you defected, it would defect right back.
It had that balance of, "Hey, I'm going to show good will, but I'm not going to take
any [00:11:00] crap."
The really thing I think we can really take away from that's valuable is it also educated
the other person in how to play as opposed to punishing.
There were other algorithms that would start off cooperating and we all know people like
this.
Start off cooperating and the minute you defected, "That's it.
I'm never going to trust you again, defect, defect, defect, defect.
I don't care what you do.
I don't trust you now."
This was a kind of an educational process.
If you [00:11:30] think, it make sense.
It maps on to longer term negotiations.
If you know you're going to have to deal with somebody over a longer period of time, this
educational process where, "Okay, you're going too far."
We are teaching each other how to talk to one another.
"If you cooperate, I'll be defecting.
I'm going to defect back.
You're going to cooperate now?
Okay, I'm going to cooperate now."
There was ongoing conversation.
In a short-term, the bad guys took the high ground, but the long-term, very often whenever
tit for tat would meet another good program, the gains [00:12:00] were exponential.
When I met a bad program, I was going to take any crap, so the loses were small and the
programs that were in the middle, it managed to teach them, "Hey, if you're going to screw
me over, I'm going to screw you back.
If you're good, I'll be good."
They realized being good was in their best interest.
Tom: One of the funniest parts of your book is where you go into like this long like page
after page after page [inaudible 00:12:23] all the ways that being nice can be punished.
You finally [00:12:30] ended by saying, "I would keep going, but my publisher won't let
me release this with antidepressants."
Talk to us about that early lead the jerks can get and how does that play out like in
a concrete business environment.
Eric: Very often, bad traits.
What you see consistently in terms of bad behavior and good behavior?
There's a lot of research that frames it in terms of time, a short-term strategy versus
a long-term strategy.
Tom: It's actually a really good point.
Eric: [00:13:00] If you think about it, in general, what's the reputation of used car
salesman?
Not very good.
Why?
They are probably never going to see you again, very short-term.
If we map that on the prisoner's dilemma, if there's only one or two rounds, I get the
high ground, I can just win.
You're not going to get a chance to retaliate.
Versus, what's the general reputation of moms?
Mom is going to be with you throughout the rest of your life.
Mom is going to take care.
Mom is going to be there.
It's a longer term type of strategy.
[00:13:30] When you look at these kind of things, that's where all of a sudden the bad
and good behavior starts to make a little bit more sense.
Initially, you look at narcissists.
Narcissist do better in job interviews.
They do better on first dates and initially, these things look really good, but by the
same token, if you go a few weeks in to starting a job, narcissists are generally regarded
as untrustworthy.
After a few months of relationship, relationship satisfaction of the other partner tanks.
It's this shorter term strategy, [00:14:00] grab all I can.
One of the strategies that people can use for take away from this is that if you find
yourself and then you are involved and encounter a deal or whatever with somebody who you are
not so sure if you can trust them.
They call it lengthening the shadow of the future.
If I build more steps into the contract, if I stretch this out, if they know there's going
to be a chance for retaliation, there's going to be a chance for renegotiation, then people
[00:14:30] behave better because they know they have to.
How do people behave?
If you meet somebody off the street, that's one thing.
If you are introduced to someone by mutual friend, probably they're a little bit nicer.
You don't want your friend to get upset with you.
Very often in this kind of one off type encounters, bad behavior can payoff.
It's sad.
When it's stretched out, very often there's a chance for retaliation and more importantly,
we develop a [00:15:00] reputation.
People talk.
There's gossip.
If you develop a reputation or people say you can trust this person, over time that
benefits us.
If somebody says, "Yeah, they seem really nice.
They're a fast talker, but don't trust them," that comes back to haunt them.
Tom: You talk really well in the book about how one of the most dangerous places for a
giver is to be in an organization full of takers because there's no other givers there
to protect you and create a buffer.
What advice would you give if you had a friend who is a giver in the midst of a bunch [00:15:30]
of takers and they can't leave for whatever reason?
Financially, they're trapped.
They are just right now they can't afford to leave the job.
Would you advise to adopt taker strategies or would you give other advice?
Eric: If they can't leave then, what you get from Robert Axelrod's research was that because
they tried it where they had multiple games going on, circle the wagons is what I would
say, is find a few givers or few matchers that are [00:16:00] there and affiliate tightly
with them and work through them and with them.
Obviously, being surrounded by takers, especially when your natural instinct is to be a giver
is really dangerous.
Number one, you can get exploited.
Number two, over time, you can become a taker yourself.
Robert Sutton who is a professor at Stanford gave some great advice where he said, "Whenever
you interviewed a company, look around at the people at that company because you're
going to become like them.
They're not going to become like you."
Tom: I love that.
Eric: We always talk [00:16:30] about peer pressure in relation to teenagers.
Peer pressure affects us our entire lives.
We are always influenced by our context and by the people around us.
The biggest danger there is we don't realize it.
We are always influenced.
The thing that givers need to keep in mind is that if they find other givers, boom, they're
helping each other, their favors, and they're both on the lookout for being exploited.
Matchers can also be valuable as well because matchers it's not merely that they want to
keep a balance or give and [00:17:00] take.
Matchers typically have a strong belief in justice.
Matchers are very happy to punish takers and to reward givers.
With other givers, givers can do very well.
They can produce great things at work.
If givers managed to surround themselves with matchers, then they end up with bodyguards.
It's basically seek out those people and circle the wagons as best you can.
Tom: Do you think that applies in like interpersonal relationships outside of work?
When you are thinking about looking [00:17:30] for a spouse, is that something to take into
consideration?
Eric: I think it's something to take into consideration in every area of life.
At work, obviously, it's very clear because of the amount of transactional relationships
that go on.
In your personal life, we all have friends who someone do so much for you that you almost
feel guilty.
Other ones seem to only come around when they are asking you for favors and some of them,
"Hey, they help you out.
You help them out."
It really behooves us to always be thinking to some [00:18:00] degree, "Okay, givers,
matchers, takers, who can I trust and win?
Who is there in the good times?
Who is there in the bad times?"
I think it's always valuable.
Tom: You talked about context a second ago.
I want to go back to that.
You've got this notion of intensifiers.
You were talking about genes and like genes aren't necessarily good and not necessarily
bad, but given context, they can really play out differently because I get asked a lot
about, "Do I double the amount of my strengths?
Do I pop up a weakness?
What do I do?"
The notion of intensifier [00:18:30] has really caught my eye because it was ... Maybe that's
fundamentally wrong question.
Maybe you should be asking given the way that I am, what context should I be seeking?
Eric: I totally agree.
I think that's definitely the way to go.
Gautam Mukunda who is a professor at Harvard Business School teaches leadership.
He came up with this notion of intensifiers of the attitudes where we say a lot of personality
traits or qualities are just bad.
That really doesn't hold up the scrutiny.
If you think about it in interpersonal relationships, stubbornness [00:19:00] is rarely considered
a good quality.
That's a bad thing.
You should get rid of your stubbornness.
However, we are also very quick to say, "Entrepreneurs, you've got to greedy.
Stick by your guns.
Don't listen to the haters."
Sounds like stubbornness to me.
In context is where it really becomes critical.
Yes, in your interpersonal relationships, stubbornness is not so good, but if you're
an enterpreneur or if you are doing anything that's really difficult, stubbornness can
pay off as opposed to be smart, which you would say is a universally [00:19:30] good
trait.
Intensifiers are qualities, which on average at the mean are usually considered negative,
but in the right context can be considered very positive being overly aggressive might
be considered negative in general.
If you are hiring a litigator, you might want somebody who is overly aggressive because
that might be, so again, in this context.
A big part of it is realizing what you are saying who you are and then aligning your
context so that your context rewards [00:20:00] both your signature strengths as research
done by Martin Seligman at University of Pennsylvania, what are you uniquely good at?
Also, your intensifiers where here's my negative qualities, here's what I get criticized for,
but here stubbornness is an advantage.
Here, being overly aggressive is a benefit, so I'm going to line up my signature strengths,
my intensifiers with my environment so I'm rewarded for those rather than punished because
it's so hard to bring up your weaknesses.
You see much greater gains by trying to double down on your strengths [00:20:30] and the
first key is knowing what your strengths are, knowing yourself, knowing a bit in your weaknesses,
knowing what your intensifiers can be.
Then, when you align that with the proper context, I call it picking the right pond.
You see that everything, your good traits and your bad traits can potentially benefit
you.
Tom: One of the examples that you give in the book is something like if you want to
be successful in business, pick a drug addict or something like that.
Eric: The thing [00:21:00] is with narcissist, narcissists often rise to leadership positions.
That's where we get a lot of the advice in terms of, "Be overconfident.
Be dominant.
Be everything."
Because narcissist usually rise to leadership positions, however, they don't necessarily
succeed in leadership positions.
There is getting the job versus being able to do the job.
Tom: It's a great distinction.
Eric: Narcissists typically rise or fall in terms of their performance, in terms of the
opportunity for glory.
Tom: That's interesting.
Eric: [00:21:30] What's dangerous there is, obviously, the company is doing well.
"Hey, lots of money, lots of rewards."
When companies are at their worst is when you need people to pick up their performance
and it's when narcissist start to least likely be engaged.
"Stock values drop in.
I'm not going to get rewarded here."
They do less.
On the other hand and to some degree I was being funny, but the one researcher at Johns
Hopkins was saying that narcissist is not the personality type that [00:22:00] you would
want for a leader.
The obsessiveness of a junky, the focus of a junky and basically he was referring to
neuroscience research in terms of someone who is just obsessed.
What do we see when every profile you read of Silicon valley billionaires is just always
obsessed, only sleeps four hours a night, only thinks about this, works [inaudible 00:22:23]
reducing their workload to 80 hours a week.
That obsessiveness versus just, "I want to look cool."
[00:22:30] The junky attitude is a better perspective than the narcissist desire for
glory when you are looking for a leader who is going to perform.
Tom: What drives you, you working insane amount of hours?
You said when you were doing the book that you were working four days a week in the book
and then three days a week in the blog.
I thought, "Oh, God ..." The amount of words you have to write, you've written what?
Five thousand articles or something?
Eric: Yeah.
Tom: It's insanity.
What's the thing that pushes you?
Eric: I'm excited by [00:23:00] what I do.
I really enjoy reading.
I really enjoy learning.
I'm always, like your shirt, I'm always questioning everything.
I'm really, really curious.
I'll be trying these things and then very often I have to read five books to find the
one book that's really interesting.
I read five studies to find the one study, but then I called the authors or I'll call
the researchers and I get to talk to the smartest people about like really cool stuff.
[00:23:30] To me, that's just intoxicating.
I guess it's just an issue of perspective where work is not work if you enjoy it.
To me, it's like what's that next thing?
What's that next insight?
Just being able to see how when I apply things to my life and it makes a difference, and
then to know that I can share with hundred thousands of people is it feels good.
There's this reinforcing cycle.
For me, it's just fun.
Tom: Walk me through your career.
You go into [00:24:00] film, working for some of the biggest companies on the planet, but
you've reinvented yourself several times.
Take us inside where your mind was, what you were feeling and how you have the courage
to totally reinvent yourself multiple times.
Eric: I was always somebody who is focused on big ideas and asking questions.
My undergrad was in philosophy, oddly enough.
Then, I did an internship in Hollywood.
I was really excited.
I came [00:24:30] out and I got really lucky really fast.
I came out one year an extra agent.
The next year, I sold script.
The next year, I had two movies made.
Then, I got some great [crosstalk 00:24:38].
Tom: I really try to find you and I'm be like, "Are you hiding?"
Eric: You can see some of the movies I've had produced and some of the projects I have
worked on.
Maybe I'm not so proud anymore of what I was writing when I was 22, 23, but I did for a
while.
[00:25:00] It's like Hollywood writer doesn't have much control.
I just found that that was not fun to be on this roller coaster.
I started asking some big questions on myself.
I got a master's degree at UCLA in film.
I'm really asking a lot of questions and then I step back and then I went oddly enough.
I went and got an MBA.
I didn't fit in there at all, so Mr. Creative Screenwriter ...
Tom: You started doing marketing for video games and stuff?
Eric: Yeah.
I worked [00:25:30] on the BioShock franchise and I work for couple different companies.
It was after I got the MBA and I still felt like, "What am I doing?
I don't know the answers here."
That I started to blog because I didn't want to take a job I didn't enjoy.
I was unemployed for nine months.
I just play around in the internet.
It was just something I wanted to do.
Then, I started doing interviews because I want to talk to experts.
Initially, it was just academic research.
Then, I started looking at the book the researchers had done.
Then, I decided to even take a step further [00:26:00] than that because academic research
in science is great, but they haven't covered everything.
I started looking at experts in particular fields because everything has not been covered
in social science research.
I started drawing on some friends of mine.
My one friend, Chris Voss, a former lead international hostage negotiator for the FBI.
Here's the guy who knows about negotiation, might not be based on formal research, but
people live or die based on whether he is good at his job.
[00:26:30] Good enough for me.
I call up Chris.
How do we negotiate?
My friend, James Waters, Navy SEAL platoon commander.
Let's find out about grit because if you can do what you had to do to get where you got,
I want to know what's the best.
Tom: This is a really interesting part of the book.
Talk about like they were surprised by what they found.
We are post-9/11.
They're really trying to get people in.
They realized we either have to lower our standards or find a way to get more people
to pass.
Lowering our standards sounds like a bad idea.
[00:27:00] What was it that they did?
I found this really interesting.
Eric: Basically, the Navy had set up of this called BUDS, Basic Underwater Demolition training
was basically set up to vet people to see who were the toughest of the tough, who are
the people who will not give up and those were the people who would become Navy SEALs.
The military hadn't done an excellent job of figuring out what those qualities actually
were.
They could vet for them.
Can those guys stay up during hell week?
Can those guy make the runs, do the swims, [00:27:30] put up with all the hazing and
abuse?
Yeah, but what were the qualities that actually allow them to get through and the Navy did
research and what was amazing was it was just a handful of things.
The critical one I've talked about in the book was self-talk, optimistic self-talk.
We all have that voice in our head, which [crosstalk 00:27:51].
Tom: They started training for this, right?
Eric: Absolutely.
Basically, they took the results of the study.
It was like self-talk, whole setting, and they basically [00:28:00] started teaching
students because you don't want to lower the standards.
You don't want to give the answers to the test, but if you can mold these guys to incorporate
these elements, then great.
They started teaching them, and they improved almost like 8% to 10% passing rate improved
once you started teaching recruits how to incorporate optimistic self-talk and these
other habits.
When we talk about grit, when we talk about [00:28:30] persistence for long-term goals,
one of the things that's been most proven is an optimistic mindset is you look at research
by Angela Duckworth, by Martin Seligman at University of Pennsylvania is that having
that optimistic mindset.
When you believe, "Hey, if I show up tomorrow, it's going to work out," then you show up.
It make sense.
If you firmly believe, "I'm going to go there tomorrow and it's going to be a waste of my
time."
What do you do?
It feels futile.
Over long term goals, if [00:29:00] you feel like it's going to happen, it's not going
to warp reality necessarily, what you do might.
If you don't show up, if you feel like there's no point to it, you're not going to do it.
It comes down to that belief that positive things are they are personal.
I was responsible.
They are pervasive.
"Hey, I've crossed some range of areas.
I can do this", and it's persistent.
"If I do this, it's going to work out."
People who are pessimistic believed the reverse and so things start [00:29:30] to feel futile.
When things start to feel futile, why continue?
It doesn't make any sense.
What Seligman's research also showed is that if that attitude continues long enough or
hard enough, that's how you actually end up with clinical depression because when life
feels futile when it does not feel like continuing anything is going to pay off, then you start
to shrug your shoulders and say, "What am I doing?"
Optimism is strongly correlated with happiness and pessimism is [00:30:00] strongly correlated
with not only quitting, but also with depression.
Tom: It was at this point in the book, and I remember I hadn't found your blog yet unfortunately
for me.
I'm reading the book, which was Audible just recommended it and I'm, "Look, Barking Up
the Wrong Tree.
What I know about success is wrong."
I had to read your book because I'm all about like find the evidence that pushes you forward
rather than just confirm.
That was way too enticing for me not to read it.
Then, I get to that part in the book and I'm like, "Who is this guy?
This stuff is amazing."
[00:30:30] The notion of optimism being teachable first of all that it had such a huge impact
on the number of people going through and then you took us somewhere, which is like
my personal fetish, especially as a screenwriter.
I was like who has left the field and I'm sort of going in the other way.
I started doing business now going back to screenwriting and saying, "The whole notion
around narrative."
In fact, what is it about narrative that they found was so impactful?
Eric: Stories are basically the operating system [00:31:00] of the human brain.
If you look across the board, across a bunch of areas of research, it's quite fascinating.
John Gutmann who has done bleeding experts in terms of relationships, marriages.
The most indicating thing in terms of whether couple will get divorce or not is how they
tell their story.
It's merely saying, "Tell me the story of your relationship.
How did you two meet?"
If it's, "Oh, my God.
It was so wonderful.
It was this and great.
We had challenges, but we overcame them.
We got to know each other better.
We grew together," [00:31:30] versus, "You know it's like we met up.
We have some problems."
Just hearing that story is a huge indicator in terms of the success of children.
If a child knows its family history, it's a huge impact on how successful the kid in
school [crosstalk 00:31:49].
Tom: Example of that like when you say knows their family story, what do you mean?
Eric: Again, that issue of, "Okay, your great-grandfather immigrated here from this."
Tom: If you tell a story [00:32:00] that's positive and empowering.
Eric: They are a part of something.
It gives reason.
It gives meaning.
What you see across the board with that, when you look at what therapists do very often
is fixing people's stories.
"I'm a loser.
I've always been a loser.
This didn't work out.
That didn't work out.
I can't."
Versus you can take the same events and say, "Oh, this didn't work out, but that's the
day I learned a great lesson, which ..." [00:32:30] Same events, but you are telling them in a
different way.
Very often, it's not about the specifics of what happened.
We've all had failures, but which ones do we choose to define ourselves by?
It's that story in our head that keeps us going.
It's deeply important for meaning, but also deeply important in terms of grit, resilience,
persistent because, again, that story you tell yourself.
Do you tell yourself I'm the kind of person who "I'm never [00:33:00] going to make it
through this.
I quit at this.
I quit at that," or "I'm not a quitter."?
That's the story I tell myself.
People want to seek out things that support their story.
They want to fulfill their story.
We all know someone who has this vision of their self in a certain way.
You present them with that challenge of, "You think you are so smart?
Could you do that?"
People often jump to the challenge.
Why?
Because they want to support their story.
We have this [00:33:30] evolving story of ourselves.
It's really critical for us to feel that we are part of this.
We've all had how many moments in our lives?
How many ups?
How many downs?
We don't remember all of them.
We don't recall all of them and we don't make all of them part of our story.
There's a thousand different ways to frame the decades that have gone by.
We can shape them in many ways.
How we do actually has a huge effect on whether we persist, how happy we are, [00:34:00] and
the decisions we make going forward.
Tom: When you said that one of the most important things that a therapist does is spend time
fixing people's stories, that is so important to understand like, A, how malleable the stories
are and really where their importance lies.
One of the things you talked about in the book, which I love, I took so many notes on
this, was what make stories so effective is that they abstract.
That they are not necessarily accurate.
That they allow us that you said to put rose colored [00:34:30] glasses on.
Talk about that.
Eric: This was something that Tyler Cowen, a big blogger and economics professor at George
Mason University taught about, which we don't think about the moments we are here that make
sense, which is that stories are always narrowed.
They are always edited.
You've been alive for decades.
You are not considering every second that went by.
You are taking little snapshots to tell a story.
You leave out even if you're telling a joke.
You only tell the parts that are important to that joke.
[00:35:00] Stories are always inaccurate because you might say, "I consider myself a good person."
Never done anything bad?
Never done anything you're not proud of?
Of course, you have, but you are to some degree selecting those things and you feel those
are more representative of who you are.
Somebody who doesn't feel they're such a good person is selecting different.
What's the raw total score of good versus bad versus ... We don't know.
Stories are always inaccurate unless we are going to recount every second of your life
and take [00:35:30] every ... We can't.
Stories are always a reduced shortened version and they usually have a point.
They usually result in, "I feel I'm a good person.
I'm persistent."
Tom: The real power in that and I hope people take away is that, ultimately, it's up to
you as the person telling yourself that story to decide what you leave in and what you leave
out, which I'm sure it's exactly what the therapist is helping them do is either just
reframe the exact same moment or, "Hey, in your [00:36:00] decades of experience, start
pulling different moments.
Those moments that you are proud instead of focusing on the moments that you are not proud
of."
Eric: That's huge.
A lot of this research has worked by Tim Wilson at UVA and he talks about, again, therapist
story editing, reframing, looking at different events, but there's also something else we
can do.
Some people can do that very well.
If somebody has done great things, but they feel like a loser, then reframing can work
really well, highlighting different things.
Other people might feel like, "I haven't [00:36:30] accomplished much."
For that, Tim Wilson recommend something I think is wonderful, which is called do good,
be good.
They've done research to show this works where rather than people were always thinking, always
thinking, always thinking.
"No.
You want to feel like a better person?
Start volunteering once a week.
Go out and do it."
Then, what will happen is the story will follow because it's going to be really hard if you
start saying, "Hey, every paycheck, I'm going to donate [00:37:00] X amount to charity.
Every week, I'm going to volunteer to help people."
All of a sudden, you're going to find after a few months, it's hard to tell yourself,
"Oh, yeah, I'm a terrible person."
Because you're going to tell other people, "I'm a little short of money because I donate
to charity.
I can't go Sunday.
That's when I volunteer."
You're going to start to follow, your story will follow your behavior.
If you have trouble changing your story, first change your behavior.
Don Quixote, it's like, "You want to be a knight?
Act like a [00:37:30] knight."
Tom: I love that.
I absolutely love that.
You had a research on that that talks about like chunking that time up?
Eric: Yeah.
Tom: Walk us through that.
Eric: That ties in with Adam Grant's research in terms of givers and takers.
The givers were disproportionately represented at the top and at the bottom.
Who are the ones at the bottom?
The ones at the bottom were the ones who did too much.
They were always focusing on others.
They were martyrs.
Chunking is the idea of, "Hey, [00:38:00] how am I going to sustainably be able to help
other people if I'm doing pretty well in myself?
If I make more money, I can donate more money."
Basically, the idea of saying, "I am going to devote my Sundays to ... That's when I
do my good deeds" or at work basically saying, "Okay, Thursday afternoons, that's the time
when things are a little not crazy like Monday.
It's not get everything done by Friday.
Thursday afternoons, anybody who needs me or anybody who is 'Hey, can I pick your brain?'
[00:38:30] That is devoted to that."
By saying chunking, "I'm going to do my good deeds here.
Number one, it make sure that they happen.
Number two, it make sure that they don't just keep going."
Once you say to people, "Hey, I want to help," you might get more requests than you can possibly
fulfill.
Having a budget of time, any resource to assist people and designating it allows to make sure
it happens so you are a giver, but also make sure [00:39:00] that it doesn't take over
your life.
Tom: I love that.
Talk to me a little bit about knowing when to quit.
That was one of the things I really found fascinating in the book and I think this is
so important is what's the difference between quit and grit.
How do you know when to lean where?
Eric: Because grit and quit is huge.
Grit is having its moment in the sun now where everybody is talking about grit.
You have to quit some things.
We only have 24 hours in a day.
If I never quit anything, I'd still be playing with action figures and I'd still be playing
tee-ball.
[00:39:30] You quit things.
You move on.
The truth is that strategic quitting.
Quitting the right things can actually benefit grit because you have more time.
If you want those K. Anders Ericsson 10,000 hours of expertise, there's only 24 hours
in a day.
That's it.
The more stuff you quit that isn't delivering value to your life, the more resources, the
more time and energy you have to really become good at something.
Quitting becomes critical, but that leads us to the tough question, which is how do
you know what to quit, what to stick with?
[00:40:00] We have our passions.
We have our interests.
We have what clearly provide value, but there are some fascinating research that came out
of NYU that basically this wonderful little word, WOOP.
It was basically a plan for how people can take their ideas using research, take their
ideas from a dream to an actual plan.
What they found basically is we think like, "Oh, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming about dreaming."
The thing that's dangerous about dreams is on their own dreams were good first step,
[00:40:30] but wishing on its own actually saps energy.
It doesn't create energy because our brain is not very good at telling fiction from reality.
That's why movies are exciting.
If we just saw it as, "Oh, that's pixels in the screen."
That wouldn't be exciting.
You get thrilled because we are not always good at that.
When we dream, our brain starts to think we already have that and energy levels go down.
Tom: It's so interesting.
Eric: We can start by wishing, but then the next thing that needs to happen is we need
to crystallize what [00:41:00] we want.
Tom: I have my own answer, but why do you think if wishing, fantasizing, dreaming about
it pacifies you because some part of your brain doesn't realize you don't actually have
it?
Why do we start there?
Eric: We start there because we are looking to what do we want, what do we desire.
Tom: You think it is important to paint a picture of what you want.
You just can't get lost them.
Eric: Just the problem is when you stop there.
Wishing and dreaming is critical.
You need to think about what you want.
You want to have dreams, but the problem is [00:41:30] that basically, if wishing by itself
it's the equivalent of like alcohol, feels good in the moment, but doesn't necessarily
make you more productive.
We need to take the next step.
The next step is to think outcome.
WOOP, wish, second thing is outcome, which is what is the specific thing I want.
"I want to be rich and famous when I ..." What's the final outcome?
What is that thing going to be?
Once you have a specific idea, this is what I want to be, then [00:42:00] the critical
part, which is obstacle.
What's in the way?
What is that thing I have to overcome to get what I want?
Most people don't, "That's tough.
That's not as fun as just thinking about [inaudible 00:42:12]."
Wish, outcome, obstacle.
Once you think about the obstacle, you can make a plan.
How can I overcome that?
What's the next step?
What's great is that leads people towards what's called implementation intentions, which
is basically a plan for how you can get your dreams.
What's also fascinating is in terms [00:42:30] of the grit of quit question.
When the research was done, what they found was that how people felt after doing the exercise
was very telling.
People who felt energized and excited, that was generally an indicator that this was a
realistic possibility.
That they have a dream, but when they thought about the obstacle, it was surmountable by
their plan, great.
When people realized that, "Wait.
This plan is not going to get over this obstacle and it's not going to get me my dream."
People [00:43:00] didn't feel as energized and it became a litmus test for determining,
"Do I need a new plan?
Is this plan not really addressing the issue or is this dream completely unrealistic?"
It can be useful in terms of grit or quit because if you feel energized by it, great,
go do it.
This is something you should be sticking with.
If you don't feel it, okay fine.
Maybe you need to reevaluate your plan or maybe you need to reevaluate your dream.
Tom: That's the first [00:43:30] effective strategy for breaking down when ... When people
asked me about that, then I said, "Look, you've got to know when to stick with something and
when to give up, if you're not enjoying it."
In that, I'm always like, "God, I don't really know what I'm telling them to do because it's
like sort of like God instinct."
That's like an awesome process.
Do you have a similar process because the other question I get asked all the time is
how do I find my passion, which I'm a fiery believer that you don't find it, you develop
it.
Do you have [00:44:00] a process for people figuring that out?
Eric: I think what you said is exactly right.
It's the issue of development.
Peter Sims wrote this great book called Little Bets where it turns out to be a system that
you used across the board in many different areas for people to find their passion, find
their interest, find things they are good at.
Basically, it's like treating your time almost like a venture capitalist where little bets
are small, little efforts.
You're not going to put in a ton of time, energy or money.
You [00:44:30] are going to try a bunch of things and you are going to see what works,
what you enjoy or what you're good at.
Like a VC firm might say, "All right, 10 companies, I know seven are going to fail.
No problem.
Two are probably going to break even and one is going to be the next Facebook or Google
and that works for me."
To say to yourself, I'm going to try 10 different things.
I'm going to take a yoga class.
I'm going to take a martial arts class.
I'm going to read this book and seven of them and probably going to say, "Uh-uh, no thanks.
Uh-uh."
Two, I might say, "There's potential here."
One might be that great new [00:45:00] opportunity because the world is changing.
The world is changing so much that we can't afford to be left behind.
You want to be trying stuff.
If your grit and focus is fantastic, but you don't want to be working on horses and buggies
when the car is being developed.
You don't want to fall behind.
To always be devoting 5 to 10% of your time, to trying something new in a low investment
sort of way to give it a shot.
That's what's going to help you find the next big thing, find what you are passionate about.
If you are not trying, [00:45:30] you can't find your passion.
Tom: I like that a lot.
You are very excitable.
That's clear.
Has there ever been a time where you were stuck, there was nothing really calling for
you?
I'll put it back in the context of your normal writing the blogs here, going to other research
papers and things like that.
You are not necessarily doing small bets and looking for something.
How do you within that universe if your excitement is flagging, do you [00:46:00] have a process
to tap back into something?
Eric: Basically, for me, it's about just getting some kindling that curiosity where it's like
asking that question because I definitely get times where not feeling it.
It's not happening.
What I need is something that starts me asking a question because even if I read a book and
I'm like, "There's nothing here.
This isn't really going to help me."
[00:46:30] Sometimes I'll find myself going, "What was I'm looking for?
Oh, I was looking for this.
Is there anything on them?"
All of a sudden, I'm on Amazon.
I'm going, "I can't believe.
Nobody is reading a book on this subject.
There's got to be some reading.
I'm a Google scholar and I'm like, 'Oh, wait a second.'"
Once I start that question asking, once I get a question that makes me go, "Now, I need
to know."
We've all felt that to some degree where all of a sudden you find yourself on Wikipedia
and then somehow [00:47:00] half hour went by and I'm clicking around and now I know
more about the Peloponnesian War than anybody.
For me, that's what it's about is if I'm not feeling that I have to start to say like,
"What am I curious about?"
Anything that I can do so I want to start throwing stuff at myself.
I want to start watching a documentary.
I want to start reading a book, reading an article that makes me start asking question
and then sometimes if it is more general, then I can just go down that rabbit hole.
[00:47:30] If it's more specific, then I literally have to try like trick myself into how does
that relate to what I'm ... "I'm curious about this."
Redirect that passion because I know once I get going, I'm like a terrier with the frisbee.
I'm just not going to let go, but I have to get that curiosity engine going where there's
like, "Okay, I need the answer to this question."
Tom: Now, you've had some articles that have really popped.
What do they have in common, the ones that just really knocked it out at the park?
Are there any [00:48:00] threads?
Eric: First off, it's things that interest most people, so issues of happiness, connecting
with others, things that are universal.
Second, I think it's having really legitimate science where people are like, "Okay, I'm
comfortable with this."
Then, I think beyond that is having a level of warmth and accessibility because the [00:48:30]
truth is so much of what I post ... Sometimes the book you might have to find them by, but
most of these research studies, you can just Google.
You don't have to listen to me.
You can just Google, but it's not fun.
They are not interesting.
They use big words.
It's not this kind of fun journey.
It's like highlighting the stuff that's counterintuitive, asking the questions that I might [00:49:00]
ask as a reader, which people can probably relate to.
Making it accessible, making it a little fun, throwing a little humor.
That's just like having a little sugar to make the medicine go down or just like you
are feeling it.
You are enjoying it.
I think it makes all the difference in the world to make it accessible.
I think finding that balance of something which is useful, something which is accessible
and something which is legit.
If you can combine those three, I think that's a really [00:49:30] great starting point for
something that's really going to garner a lot of attention.
Tom: Why do you think having this is so universal?
Why do you think people struggle with it so much?
Eric: It's really tricky because I think that we have so many competing interests in our
lives.
I think a big part of it is that issue of my book is about success, but I've talked
a fair amount about happiness because we often just conflate the two [00:50:00] and that
doesn't really work.
Just because somebody has a lot of money doesn't mean they are happy.
Then, just because somebody is happy doesn't mean they have a lot of money.
Obviously, we often get this feeling like if we get power, then that will relate to
happiness and that's not necessarily the case.
If you look at the research by Sonja Lyubomirsky, it showed that happiness leads to success
more often than success leads to happiness.
That vision [00:50:30] of power, power is obviously for influential and helps us, especially
thousand years ago helped us live longer lives, but power is very different from like ability,
from connecting with others.
In fact, there's this balance where the more powerful we feel, often we tend to dehumanize
others.
Empathy levels decreased.
Now, power affords great things in life, level of safety, comfort, but [00:51:00] like ability
is the thing that is most correlated with happiness, with connecting with others.
When you look at longitudinal studies that follow people their entire lives like the
Grant study and the Terman study, it turns out across the board that relationships are
what brings us the most happiness, brings most lives.
Power is not connected with greatness.
It's connected with having relationships because people want stuff from you, but not with great
relationships.
I think we often conflate the two that very often, [00:51:30] especially when it comes
to the issue of work-life balance, we use what's called the collapsing metric where
it's just simpler if we can just track one thing.
If I can just track that one thing and I can make that number go up, everything will be
good in life.
You know what?
Money is a pretty easy number.
People often think, "If I could just make that number go up, everything will work out."
Whereas in many cases, it actually turns out to be the reverse in the sense that chasing
money means devoting your time to work.
Devoting your time to work usually means taking your time away from relationships [00:52:00]
and relationships are the things that are most connected with meaning in life and happiness.
It needs to be a balance.
Tom: One of your blog articles I found this hilarious.
I don't read Dilbert, but I'm most certain it was a Dilbert comic.
The person said, "What should I do to be successful?"
The woman goes, "Like work every hour of the day, like give everything up, whatever."
The guy goes, "That's not going to make me very happy."
She goes, "You didn't ask me about happiness."
I thought, "Wow!
That's actually really [00:52:30] true."
Relationship is the key cornerstone.
You have the four things that like people should really think about in their life.
Happiness is at the top.
What are the other three?
Eric: This is worked by Nash and Stevenson at Harvard.
They basically looked at the issue like the work-life balance when people led fulfilling
lives.
What they found was that, again, that issue of a collapsing metric, just having one number
that didn't work because we all focus on money, we forgot our relationships.
We all [00:53:00] focus on relationships, maybe you can't pay the rent.
There is a balance here, so the collapsing metric.
The other mistake that people frequently make is they try a sequencing strategy, which is,
"First, I'm going to start out and I'm going to do this job that I hate, but I'm going
to make lots of money.
Then, I'm going to focus on this and then that's not going to work out, but then I'm
finally going to ..." It's just life is not that even because, obviously, it's relationships.
You can't just start them when you're in phase three.
It needs regular consistent behavior.
What they found [00:53:30] was that there were actually four buckets that people needed
to be regularly putting deposits in.
The first was happiness, which is basically, "Are you enjoying what you are doing?"
The second one is achievement.
Do you have goals?
Are you getting closer to them?
The third was significance.
Is what you are doing is having an impact on the people you love and who love you?
Then, fourth was legacy, which is to some degree or another, are you making a positive
impact on the world?
When you think about it, the balance of those four really make sense because you want to
[00:54:00] enjoy life and you do need to pay the rent, achieve goals, move forward.
If we feel like what you are doing isn't benefiting the people you love at all or maybe even a
negative, that's not going to lead to a meaningful life.
Fourth, you don't want to just be selfish and clannish.
You want to think like I'm doing something to really put something out there.
If you look at your schedule for the week, for the month and you say, "I'm making small
deposits in each one of those four," that's [00:54:30] when you start to be on your way
towards the level of work-life balance and towards having a meaningful life.
Tom: It's awesome.
I love that.
Before I ask my last question actually, where can these guys find you online?
Eric: My URL is a little hard to spell.
Tom: Yes, that I will attest.
Eric: If people Google, barking up the wrong tree blog or if they Google, Eric Barker,
they can find the blog.
The book is Barking Up the Wrong Tree [00:55:00] on Amazon or other bookstore or look at my
name, Eric Barker.
Tom: I'll save you guys a little bit of time.
The Eric Barker who died in the '90s, this is not the Eric Barker.
Awesome!
My last question, what is the impact that you want to have on the world?
Eric: I want to help people make better choices that help them lead better lives because like
that William Gibson quote, "A lot of these answers are out there."
There's [00:55:30] a distinction that's made between puzzles and mysteries.
Puzzles are things that have an answer.
How many dollars do I have in my pocket?
There's an answer to that.
You might not know it right now, but there's an answer to that.
There's mysteries.
What is the meaning of life?
There is no clear immediate answer to that.
I think a lot of the things that we think are mysteries are actually puzzles.
What do we have to do [00:56:00] to be more productive?
What do we have to do to live happy lives?
What do we do to have good relationships?
We think often, "Oh, my God.
It's just big mystery."
No, I think [inaudible 00:56:08] puzzles.
Sometimes there are answers.
Sometimes there are things we can do if not to get the perfect solution to at least get
better.
I'm obsessive about doing this blog, writing my book and trying to find these answers so
that I can live a better life.
I would feel guilty if I wasn't sharing that, just putting [00:56:30] it out there that
people can appreciate it and enjoy it and hopefully use those things to make better
decisions that help them live better lives because the answers are very often there.
We just need to connect the answers with the people.
Tom: That's awesome.
Eric, thank you so much for coming on.
Eric: Thanks, buddy.
I appreciate it.
Tom: Guys, it is very rare that somebody's answer of how they want to impact the world
is so in alignment with what they are actually doing on a day-to-day basis.
Dive into his work, check out his website.
The sheer [00:57:00] volume of information is astonishing and everyone of the articles
is well-worth the time.
It is a rabbit hole so deep and compelling, you will go down and not come up for hours
because one thing will lead to the next and he is very good about at the end of the article.
He tells you, "There's another one that you might like to read."
You will just keep going and going and going.
It is utterly fascinating because he really is going that layer deeper.
He is digging into the platitude and asking what part of this is so true that it's become
a platitude and it's carried on for so long and [00:57:30] what part of its false that
actually deserves a deeper look so that we can really find out and take this from being
a mystery to being a puzzle that is ultimately solvable?
Dive in.
You will not regret it.
If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends.
Be legendary.
Take care.
Hey, everybody, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Impact Theory.
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Be legendary my friends.