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

by Eric Barker

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

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.

Never betray anyone initially. Why make someone question your motives? But if a person cheats you, don’t be a martyr. In the tournament, picking fights resulted in low scores, but retaliating increased scores.

Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things in economics, but we’re now realizing he was also right about some stuff. When you remove people’s emotional connection to their labor and treat them merely as machines that produce effort, it’s soul killing.

Teresa Amabile found, “Our research inside companies revealed that the best way to motivate people, day in and day out, is by facilitating progress—even small wins.” In fact, the data shows that consistent small wins are even better at producing happiness than occasionally bagging an elephant: “Life satisfaction is 22 percent more likely for those with a steady stream of minor accomplishments than those who express interest only in major accomplishments.”

Being a spouse, parent, friend, and neighbor can all benefit from WNGF—doing what is winnable, has novel challenges and goals, and provides feedback. Plus, games are always more fun when played with other people.

Doesn’t trying all these things mean more bad things happen to lucky people too? Sure. But the old saying is true: “You regret most the things you did not do.” Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University found that people are twice as likely to regret a failure to act. Why? We rationalize our failures, but we can’t rationalize away the stuff we never tried at all. As we get older we also tend to remember the good things and forget the bad. So simply doing more means greater happiness when we’re older (and cooler stories for the grandkids).

University of Pennsylvania found that 72 percent of people have new ideas in the shower, which is far more often than when they’re at work. Why are showers so powerful? They’re relaxing. Remember, Archimedes didn’t have his “Eureka” moment at the office. He was enjoying a nice warm bath at the time.

People act differently when they don’t think you’re human anymore. They would pick their nose and eat it in front of him.