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

by Eric Barker

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

very creative people are more arrogant, dishonest, and disorganized. They also get lower grades in school. Despite what teachers may say, they dislike creative students because those children often don’t do what they’re told.

creativity is inversely correlated with employee per...

Creative people are less likely to be pr...

anything better aligned to fit a unique scenario is going to be problematic on average.

When it comes to the extremes of performance, averages don’t matter; what matters is variance, those deviations from the norm.

but by doing this we also decrease variance.

Much like with Leadership Filtration Theory, reaching the heights of success requires a dip into qualities that are otherwise problematic.

top performers in creative fields demonstrate markedly higher scores on measures of psychoticism than lesser artists.

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.”

hypomania.

efforts to reduce aggressiveness and misbehavior in young boys did improve their grades but also reduced their lifetime earnings.

3 percent

So one of the cautionary lessons of venture capital is, if you don’t invest on the basis of serious flaws, you don’t invest in most of the big winners.

such a tragedy instills in a child the feeling that the world is not safe and that an immense amount of energy and effort will be needed to survive.

know thyself.

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.

Without a path to follow they’re lost.

By dampening your intensifiers, you’ll be not only at odds with who you are but also denying your key advantages.

many of the more fundamental aspects of personality don’t change.

being aware of your strengths.

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

“Yes, I’ll do that. But this is the way I should be doing it. This is the way it should be structured. This is the way my relationships should be. These are the kind of results you should expect from me, and in this time frame, because this is who I am.”

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

“feedback analysis.”

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.

one of the keys to happiness is emphasizing what are called “signature strengths.”

the more hours per day you spend doing what you’re good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you’re being treated with respect.

pick the right pond.

The unfiltered leader who is an amazing success in one situation will be a catastrophic failure in the other, in almost all cases.

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.

Ask yourself, Which companies, institutions, and situations value what I do?

“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.”

they stopped being top analysts.

when the analysts switched firms but brought their team with them, they stayed awesome.

You can do this too: know thyself and pick the right pond. Identify your strengths and pick the right place to apply them.

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.

those who made a good impression got better performance reviews than those who worked harder but didn’t manage impressions as well.

Research has shown flattery is so powerful that it works even when the boss knows it’s insincere.

we need to stop thinking the world is fair.

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.

Unfortunately people who push for more money out of self-interest do better.

men low in the personality trait “agreeableness” make as much as ten thousand dollars a year more than men high in agreeableness. Rude people also have better credit scores.

we’re all inclined to mistake kindness for weakness.

warmth and competence.

if someone is too nice, we figure they must be less competent. In fact, being a jerk makes others see you as more powerful.

sometimes jerks are actually better at their jobs than the nice guys.

They were the ones most focused on gaining power.

being the downtrodden nice guy can kill you.