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

by Eric Barker

So why are the number ones in high school so rarely the number ones in real life? There are two reasons. First, schools reward students who consistently do what they are told.

Grades are, however, an excellent predictor of self-discipline, conscientiousness, and the ability to comply with rules.

The second reason is that schools reward being a generalist. There is little recognition of student passion or expertise. The real world, however, does the reverse.

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.

School has clear rules. Life often doesn’t. When there’s no clear path to follow, academic high achievers break down.

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.

“Eccentrics are the mutations of social evolution, providing the intellectual materials for natural selection.”

To be great we must be different. And that doesn’t come from trying to follow society’s vision of what is best, because society doesn’t always know what it needs.

The same traits that make people a nightmare to deal with can also make them the people who change the world.

Creative people are less likely to be promoted to CEO.

First, know thyself. This phrase has been uttered many times throughout history.

knowing yourself, in terms of achieving what you want in life, means being aware of your strengths.

This is their secret: they’re not good at everything, but they know their strengths and choose things that are a good fit.

“What are you good at that consistently produces desired results?”

To find out what those things are, he recommends a system he calls “feedback analysis.” Quite simply, when you undertake a project, write down what you expect to happen, then later note the result. Over time you’ll see what you do well and what you don’t.

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,

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.

“People feel like valedictorians can take care of themselves, but just because they could get A’s doesn’t mean they can translate academic achievement into career achievement.”

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.

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 t...

You’ve now got a better idea of who you are and where you belong. But life isn’t all about you, you, you.

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?

The lesson from cases of people both keeping and losing their jobs is that 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.

they’re assertive about what they want, and they’re not afraid to let others know about what they’ve achieved.

“discipline of continuous dealings.” When you know and trust someone, it makes a transaction smoother and faster.

Yes, on average jerks do better, but at the very top we see the Givers.

those who gave more to others lived longer.

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.

Even more surprising, those who donate their time to help others feel less busy and like...

Optimism is associated with better health and a longer life. Levels of optimism can even predict which survivors of cardiovascular disease are likely to have a second heart attack.

Optimists and pessimists shape their stories of the world very differently. Seligman called this “explanatory style,” and it comes down to three Ps: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization.

What Viktor Frankl realized was that in the most awful place on Earth, the people who kept going despite the horrors were the ones who had meaning in their lives: A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.

He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

We’ve all worked harder on something for someone else than we would have for ourselves. Mothers do things for their children you couldn’t pay them for. Soldiers die for their country.

When we step outside the wish for comfort, when we live for something greater than ourselves, we no longer have to fight the pain; we accept the pain as a

It’s the stories we tell ourselves that keep us going. They can be a higher truth. Or, in many cases, they don’t need to be true at

One study showed that we feel meaning in life when we think that we know ourselves. The key word there is “think.” Truly knowing oneself didn’t produce meaning but feeling one did created the results. The story doesn’t need to be accurate to be effective. That’s a little unnerving and maybe even depressing, right?

meaningful work is the number-one thing people want from their jobs.

Thinking about death reminds us of what is truly important in life.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

often our beliefs come from our behaviors.

“If you want to be a knight, act like a knight.”

Very often our stories are stronger than we are, and if they’re meaningful ones, they can carry us through the tough times.

It’s a game. You’ve got to have fun with it and you’ve got to keep your eye on the bigger picture.”

work, as we know it today, is a really lousy game.

We can apply game mechanics to our lives and turn dull moments into fun ones. Can this make us grittier at work and lead to success in life? Oh yeah. Work doesn’t have to be a lousy game.

we feel like what we do is futile or pointless, motivation and happiness plummet. We become like the dogs in Seligman’s study.