Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

by Eric Barker

Success doesn’t have to be something you see only on TV. It’s less about being perfect than knowing what you’re best at and being properly aligned with your context.

When are our weaknesses actually strengths? Is it better to be an outlier with both handicaps and superpowers? Or do we live better lives at the middle of the bell curve? We’re generally encouraged to play it safe, but is doing the normally prescribed “right thing,” and not risking the ups and downs of extremes, the path to success—or to mediocrity?

There was little debate that high school success predicted college success. Nearly 90 percent are now in professional careers with 40 percent in the highest tier jobs. They are reliable, consistent, and well-adjusted, and by all measures the majority have good lives. But how many of these number-one high school performers go on to change the world, run the world, or impress the world? The answer seems to be clear: zero.

“Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries . . . they typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”

schools reward students who consistently do what they are told. Academic grades correlate only loosely with intelligence (standardized tests are better at measuring IQ). Grades are, however, an excellent predictor of self-discipline, conscientiousness, and the ability to comply with rules.

schools reward being a generalist. There is little recognition of student passion or expertise.

If you want to do well in school and you’re passionate about math, you need to stop working on it to make sure you get an A in history too. This generalist approach doesn’t lead to expertise. Yet eventually we almost all go on to careers in which one skill is highly rewarded and other skills aren’t that important.

valedictorians are intensely pragmatic. They follow the rules and prize A’s over skills and deep understanding. School has clear rules. Life often doesn’t. When there’s no clear path to follow, academic high achievers break down.

Following the rules doesn’t create success; it just eliminates extremes—both good and bad.

there are actually two fundamentally different types of leaders. The first kind rises up through formal channels, getting promoted, playing by the rules, and meeting expectations. These leaders, like Neville Chamberlain, are “filtered.” The second kind doesn’t rise up through the ranks; they come in through the window: entrepreneurs who don’t wait for someone to promote them; U.S. vice presidents who are unexpectedly handed the presidency; leaders who benefit from a perfect storm of unlikely events,

By the time filtered candidates are in the running for the top spot, they have been so thoroughly vetted that they can be relied upon to make the standard, traditionally approved decisions.

the unfiltered candidates have not been vetted by the system and cannot be relied upon to make the “approved” decisions—many would not even know what the approved decisions are. They do unexpected things, have different backgrounds, and are often unpredictable. Yet they bring change and make a difference. Often that difference is a negative. Since they don’t play by the rules, they often break the institutions they are guiding. A minority of unfiltered leaders are transformative, though, shedding organizations of their misguided beliefs and foolish consistencies, and turning them toward better horizons.

these qualities were a poison that under just the right circumstances could be a performance-enhancing drug. Mukunda calls these “intensifiers.” And they hold the secret to how your biggest weakness might just be your greatest strength.

the concept of intensifiers. Psychologists call it the “differential susceptibility hypothesis.” The same genes that lead to bad stuff can actually lead to great stuff in a different situation. The same knife that can be used to viciously stab someone can also prepare food for your family. Whether the knife is good or bad depends on context.

Most people are dandelions; they’ll come out okay under almost any circumstances. Others are orchids; they’re not just more sensitive to negative outcomes but more sensitive to everything. They won’t flourish in the dirt by the side of a road like a dandelion would. But when they’re well tended in a nice greenhouse, their beauty will put the dandelions to shame.

when creative geniuses take personality tests, “their scores on the pathology scales fall in a middle range. Creators exhibit more psychopathology than average persons, but less than true psychotics. They seem to possess just the right amount of weirdness.”

The Israeli military needed people who could analyze satellite images for threats. They needed soldiers who had amazing visual skills, wouldn’t get bored looking at the same place all day long, and could notice subtle changes. Not an easy task. But the IDF’s Visual Intelligence Division found the perfect recruits in the most unlikely of places. They began recruiting people with autism. While autistics may struggle with personal interaction, many excel at visual tasks, like puzzles.

The same traits that make people a nightmare to deal with can also make them the people who change the world. Research shows that very creative people are more arrogant, dishonest, and disorganized.

“When your head is in a refrigerator and your feet on a burner, the average temperature is okay. I am always cautious about averages.” As a general rule, anything better aligned to fit a unique scenario is going to be problematic on average. And qualities that are “generally good” can be bad at the extremes. The jacket that works just fine eight months out of the year will be a terrible choice in the dead of winter.

When it comes to the extremes of performance, averages don’t matter; what matters is variance, those deviations from the norm. Almost universally, we humans try to filter out the worst to increase the average, but by doing this we also decrease variance.

Often intensifiers masquerade as positives because we give successful people the benefit of the doubt. It’s the old joke that poor people are crazy and rich people are “eccentric.”

the venture capital business is 100 percent a game of outliers, it is extreme outliers . . . We have this concept, invest in strength versus lack of weakness.

If you’re good at playing by the rules, if you related to those valedictorians, if you’re a filtered leader, then double down on that. Make sure you have a path that works for you. People high in conscientiousness do great in school and in many areas of life where there are clear answers and a clear path. But when there aren’t, life is really hard for them. Research shows that when they’re unemployed, their happiness drops 120 percent more than those who aren’t as conscientious. Without a path to follow they’re lost. If you’re more of an outsider, an artist, an unfiltered leader, you’ll be climbing uphill if you try to succeed by complying with a rigid, formal structure. By dampening your intensifiers, you’ll be not only at odds with who you are but also denying your key advantages.

knowing yourself, in terms of achieving what you want in life, means being aware of your strengths. Consider the people we’re all envious of who can confidently pick something, say they’re going to be awesome at it, and then calmly go and actually be awesome at it. This is their secret: they’re not good at everything, but they know their strengths and choose things that are a good fit.

second piece of advice: pick the right pond. You’ve got to pick the environments that work for you . . . context is so important. The unfiltered leader who is an amazing success in one situation will be a catastrophic failure in the other, in almost all cases. It’s way too easy to think, “I’ve always succeeded, I am a success, I am successful because I am a success, because it’s about me, and therefore I will succeed in this new environment.” Wrong. You were successful because you happened to be in an environment where your biases and predispositions and talents and abilities all happened to align neatly with those things that would produce success in that environment.

When you choose your pond wisely, you can best leverage your type, your signature strengths, and your context to create tremendous value. This is what makes for a great career, but such self-knowledge can create value wherever you choose to apply it.

Toyota’s engineers had dedicated countless hours to fine-tuning processes and realized that while any company could donate cash, they had something unique to offer: their expertise. So they decided to donate efficiency. Journalist Mona El-Naggar described the results: At a soup kitchen in Harlem, Toyota’s engineers cut down the wait time for dinner to 18 minutes from as long as 90. At a food pantry on Staten Island, they reduced the time people spent filling their bags to 6 minutes from 11. And at a warehouse in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where volunteers were packing boxes of supplies for victims of Hurricane Sandy, a dose of kaizen cut the time it took to pack one box to 11 seconds from 3 minutes. You can do this too: know thyself and pick the right pond. Identify your strengths and pick the right place to apply them.

If you follow rules well, find an organization aligned with your signature strengths and go full steam ahead. Society clearly rewards those who can comply, and these people keep the world an orderly place. If you’re more of an unfiltered type, be ready to blaze your own path. It’s risky, but that’s what you were built for. Leverage the intensifiers that make you unique. You’re more likely to reach the heights of success—and happiness—if you embrace your “flaws.”

Do people who cheat and break the rules succeed more often? Is the world fair? Can good people get ahead or are they doomed to be suckers? Do nice guys really finish last?

People surveyed say effort is the number-one predictor of success, but research shows it’s actually one of the worst.

managing what your boss thinks of you is far more important than actual hard work.

good ol’ ass kissing. Is flattering the boss effective? Research has shown flattery is so powerful that it works even when the boss knows it’s insincere.

as long as you keep your boss or bosses happy, performance really does not matter that much and, by contrast, if you upset them, performance won’t save you.

men low in the personality trait “agreeableness” make as much as ten thousand dollars a year more than men high in agreeableness.

Why do jerks succeed? Sure, some of it’s duplicity and evil, but there’s something we can learn from them in good conscience: they’re assertive about what they want, and they’re not afraid to let others know about what they’ve achieved.

seeing others cheat and get away with it increases cheating across the board. We start to see cheating as an acceptable social norm. It’s a concept we can all relate to. After all, do you really drive under the speed limit all the time? Why not? Well, it’s like the old joke about ethics. There are three categories: “right,” “wrong,” and “everybody does it.” Once we see others getting away with something, we assume it’s okay. Nobody wants to be the sucker who plays by the rules when no one else does.

individual shenanigans can pay off—but it’s only a matter of time before other people start cutting corners too. Then everyone suffers, because you end up with a self-centered Moldova-like culture where there is no value being created by people contributing to the common good.

street gangs don’t create crime. It’s the exact opposite: crime creates street gangs.

What happens when you go total Tony Soprano and start whacking everyone who causes problems? Everyone will respect you and no one will want to work with you.

according to Blackbeard expert Angus Konstam, that famed pirate, over the course of his career, killed exactly zero people. And there are no cases on record of anyone walking the plank. Nope. Not one. So why do we have this impression of them as bloodthirsty savages? It’s called marketing. It’s much easier, cheaper, and safer to have people surrender quickly because they’re terrified of you than it is to fight every battle, so pirates were sharp enough to cultivate a brand image of barbarity.

treating those around you well can lead to far greater success than selfishness—even if your goal is to make mischief.

Do nice guys finish last? Yes. But they also finish first.

We all know a martyr who goes out of their way to help others and yet fails to meet their own needs or ends up exploited by Takers. We also all know someone everyone loves because they are so helpful, and they succeed because everyone appreciates and feels indebted to them.

ethical people are happier.

Studies show spending money on others makes us happier than spending it on ourselves. Volunteering even just two hours a week predicts increases in life satisfaction.

totally selfless Givers exhaust themselves helping others and get exploited by Takers, leading them to perform poorly on success metrics. There are a number of things Givers can do to build limits for themselves and make sure they don’t go overboard. That two-hours-a-week volunteering? Don’t do more. Research by Sonja Lyubomirsky shows that people are happier and less stressed when they “chunk” their efforts to help others versus a relentless “sprinkling.”

In the short term, being a jerk has benefits but eventually poisons the well since others become jerks around you. In the long term, being a Giver pays off big, though you risk exhausting yourself helping others.

the simplest program submitted won the tournament. It was only two lines of code. And it’s something we’re all familiar with: tit for tat. All TFT did was cooperate on the first Prisoner’s Dilemma round, then in every subsequent round, it did whatever the opponent did previously—that

going from straight tit for tat to “generous tit for tat” made the program even more successful. Rather than always repeating the opponent’s last move, it would occasionally forgive and cooperate after being betrayed.

TFT, paid attention to prior moves and responded accordingly, eventually punishing bad behavior. This happens in real life. We get a reputation. The majority of our dealings are not anonymous. Most of us deal with the same people over and over again. Betray them and they remember it.