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

by Eric Barker

His friend Uroč Velepec described Robič as “Completely uncoachable.” In a piece for the New York Times, Dan Coyle revealed the edge Robič had over his competition that rendered him the greatest rider ever in the Race Across America: His insanity.

an unsound mind can help an athlete ignore pain and push his or her body beyond its naturally conservative limits.

You already know strategies to get you there that are very likely to work (consistent effort) and very unlikely to (waking up at the crack of noon every day).

Much of what we’ve been told about the qualities that lead to achievement is logical, earnest—and downright wrong.

Sometimes what produces success is raw talent, sometimes it’s the nice things our moms told us to do, and other times it’s the exact opposite.

the most networked employees are often the most productive but that the greatest experts almost invariably classify themselves as introverts (including an astounding 90 percent of top athletes). We’ll get insights from the most connected guy in Silicon Valley and learn how to network without feeling sleazy.

The Wikipedia entry on “Congenital insensitivity to pain” puts it quite simply: “It is an extremely dangerous condition.” Dane Inouye writes, “Most children dream about being a superhero when they are young. CIPA patients can be considered Superman because they don’t feel physical pain but it is ironic that what gives them their ‘super powers’ also becomes their kryptonite.”

is doing the normally prescribed “right thing,” and not risking the ups and downs of extremes, the path to success—or to mediocrity?

Mom says study hard and you’ll do well. And very often Mom is right. But not always.

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.”

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. 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. In an interview, Arnold said, “Essentially, we are rewarding conformity and the willingness to go along with the system.” Many of the valedictorians admitted to not being the smartest kid in class, just the hardest worker. Others said that it was more an issue of giving teachers what they wanted than actually knowing the material better. Most of the subjects in the study were classified as “careerists”: they saw their job as getting good grades, not really as learning. 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. Arnold, talking about the valedictorians, said, “They’re extremely well rounded and successful, personally and professionally, but they’ve never been devoted to a single area in which they put all their passion. That is not usually a recipe for eminence.”

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.

intellectual students who enjoy learning struggle in high school. They have passions they want to focus on, are more interested in achieving mastery, and find the structure of school stifling. Meanwhile, the valedictorians are intensely pragmatic. They...

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

Following the rules doesn’t create success; it just eliminates extremes—both good and bad. While this is usually good and all but eliminates downside risk, it also frequently eliminates earthshaking accomplishments.

Churchill was a maverick. He did not merely love his country; he displayed a clear paranoia toward any possible threat to the empire. He saw even Gandhi as a danger and was beyond outspoken in his opposition to what was a pacifist rebellion in India. He was the Chicken Little of Great Britain, passionately railing against all opposition to his country, great, small—or imagined. But this “bad” quality is the key to why he is one of the most revered leaders in world history.

Churchill’s zealotry—the thing that had nearly ruined his career early on—was exactly what Britain needed heading into World War II. And thankfully the British people realized this before it was too late.

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, like the kind that got Abraham Lincoln elected. This group is “unfiltered.”

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. They are effectively indistinguishable from one another—and this is why much of the research showed little effect for leaders. But 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 are the leaders that the research said have enormous positive impact.

Schools wanted a conventional professor who could teach Political Science 101—they wanted a filtered academic. Mukunda’s outside-the-box approach made him an unlikely candidate for traditional professorships. Only schools looking for superstar outliers, with the resources to support a diverse and well-rounded faculty, were interested in someone like him. Harvard Business School made him an offer, and he accepted.

what made the unfiltered leaders so much more impactful, he said often they had unique qualities that differentiated them. Not the flattering descriptors you might expect, like “incredibly smart” or “politically astute.” These qualities were often negative at the mean—qualities you and I would consider “bad”—but due to the specific context, they became positives. Like Churchill’s paranoid defense of the British state, 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.

hallmark of a true eccentric—not thinking you’re all that eccentric, even when your every thought, word, and deed seems to set you apart from the rest of the world.”

Dandelions are resilient. They’re not the most beautiful flowers, but even without good care they thrive.

Orchids are different. If you don’t care for them properly they wilt and die. But if given proper care, they bloom into the most gorgeous flowers imaginable.

Psychologists call this the “diathesis-stress model.” If you have this bad gene and encounter problems in life, you’re predisposed to end up with a disorder like depression or anxiety, so pray you don’t have the awful gene that can turn you into a monster. There’s only one problem: more and more it’s looking like this perspective might be wrong. Recent discoveries in genetics are turning this bad gene vs. good gene model on its head and pointing toward what looks a lot more like 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.

Most people have a normal DRD4 gene, but some have a variant called DRD4-7R. Uh-oh. 7R has been associated with ADHD, alcoholism, and violence. It’s a “bad” gene. Yet researcher Ariel Knafo did a study to see which kids would share candy without being asked. Most three-year-olds are not about to give up tasty treats if they don’t have to, but the kids who had the 7R gene were more likely to. Why were the kids with this “bad” gene so inclined to help, even when they weren’t asked? Because 7R isn’t “bad.” Like that knife, it’s reliant on context. 7R kids who were raised in rough environments, who were abused or neglected, were more likely to become alcoholics and bullies. But 7R children who received good parenting were even kinder than kids who had the standard DRD4 gene. Context made the difference.

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.

“the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.”

“A hopeful monster is an individual that deviates radically from the norm in a population because of a genetic mutation that confers a potentially adaptive advantage.”

Nature occasionally tries something very different, and if that “monster” finds the right environment and succeeds, it might just end up changing the species for the better. Again, it’s the intensifiers theory.

As writer Po Bronson said, “All of Silicon Valley is based on character defects that are rewarded uniquely in this system.”

geniuses might be considered hopeful monsters too.

Creators exhibit more psychopathology than average persons, but less than true psychotics. They seem to possess just the right amount of weirdness.”

Too often we label things “good” or “bad” when the right designation might merely be “different.”

While autistics may struggle with personal interaction, many excel at visual tasks, like puzzles.

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

We spend too much time trying to be “good” when good is often merely average. 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. More often being the best means just being the best version of you.

In the right environment, bad can be good and odd can be beautiful.

Bird revealed his plan to address the creativity crisis: “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.” Translation: Give me your “unfiltered” artists. I know they’re crazy. That’s exactly what I need. Bird’s new “Dirty Dozen” of animation didn’t just make a film differently. They changed the way the entire studio worked: We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here. For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets and had everything that was hard to do. All this because the heads of Pixar gave us leave to try crazy ideas. That project was The Incredibles. It grossed over $600 million and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

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. They also get lower grades in school. Despite what teachers may say, they dislike creative students beca...

Creative people are less likely to be promoted to CEO.

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. Chopping off the left side of the bell curve improves the average but there are always qualities that we think are in that left side that also are in the right.

mildly creative people are mentally healthier than average—but extremely creative people have a far higher incidence of mental disorders.

Studies show people with attention deficit disorder (ADD) are more creative.

Impulsivity is a generally negative trait frequently mentioned in the same sentence as “violent” and “criminal,” but it also has a clear link to creativity.

a study titled “Personality Characteristics of Successful Artists” showed that top performers in creative fields demonstrate markedly higher scores on measures of psychoticism than lesser artists. Another study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that successful U.S. presidents also demonstrate higher scores on psychopathic characteristics.

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.” Traits like obsessiveness are framed as positives for those already in the...