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

by Eric Barker

“Clearly, this is a game that you win even if you lose.” You can use a game frame perspective to “level up” in other areas of your life as well. 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.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again . . . then give up. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”

The therapist told him to focus on accomplishing one thing a day. If he could do just that one thing, he could feel good about himself. His energy was limited, but if he focused on just one thing, he could still do some of what he wanted. So that’s what he did.

Everything we do in life is a trade-off. Choosing to do one thing means not doing something else. There was no way for Spencer to say “I want to do this” without also saying “And I’m willing to give that up to do it.”

“opportunity cost.” As Henry David Thoreau said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

While grit is often about stories, quitting is often an issue of limits—pushing them, optimizing them, and most of all, knowing them.

“Everything is opportunity/cost.

“Quit” doesn’t have to be the opposite of “grit.” This is where “strategic quitting” comes in. Once you’ve found something you’re passionate about, quitting secondary things can be an advantage, because it frees up time to do that number-one thing.

Whenever you wish you had more time, more money, etc., strategic quitting is the answer. And if you’re very busy, this may be the only answer.

We all quit, but we often don’t make an explicit, intentional decision to quit. We wait for graduation or Mom to tell us to stop or we get bored. We fear missing opportunities, but the irony is by not quitting unproductive things ASAP we are missing the o...

If you quit the stuff you know isn’t working for you, you free up time for things that might. We’re bombarded by stories of persistence leading to success, but we don’t hear as much about the benefits of quitting. No one wants to be the skydiver who pulled the rip cord too late.

When we choose an extra hour at work, we are, in effect, choosing one less hour with our kids. We can’t do it all and do it well. And there will not be more time later. Time does not equal money, because we can get more money.

If persistence works so well, do successful people in the real world ever quit?

I hope you will not think me presumptuous or rude if I say that one of the secrets of productivity . . . is to have a very big waste paper basket to take care of all invitations such as yours.

Drucker thought that time was the most precious resource. And the first line of defense he recommended to people wasn’t better scheduling; it was getting rid of everything that wasn’t moving the needle when it came to achieving their goals.

“The executive who wants to be effective and who wants his organization to be effective polices all programs, all activities, all tasks. He always asks: ‘Is this still worth doing?’ And if it isn’t, he gets rid of it so as to be able to concentrate on the few tasks that, if done with excellence, will really make a difference in the results of his own job and in the performance of his organization.”

exhaustive study of companies that turned themselves around and went from disappointments to huge successes. What he found was that most of the big changes they made weren’t about new initiatives but about the bad things they needed to stop doing.

When we hear about the ten thousand hours of deliberate practice that experts perform to become great, that number seems overwhelming. But it all starts to click once you realize how many other activities successful people are discarding in order to free up more time for improvement. It’s no surprise that hours matter.

If you practice something one hour a day, that’s 27.4 years to reach the ten-thousand-hour mark of expertise. But what if you quit a few less important things and made it four hours a day? Now it’s 6.8 years. That’s the difference between starting something at twenty and being an expert when you’re forty-seven and starting at twenty and being world-class at twenty-seven.

Know your number-one priority. Then start quitting stuff that isn’t as important and see what happens. You’ll learn really fast if something really is more essential than you thought.

Many of the things we desire are simply unattainable. Research shows that when we choose to quit pursuing unattainable goals, we’re happier, less stressed, and get sick less often. Which people are the most stressed out? Those who wouldn’t quit what wasn’t working.

Grit can’t exist without quit. Spencer explained the downside of grit: “I know plenty of people for whom grit is a liability because it allows them to stick with something that makes them or others miserable and towards no long-term good aim. The alternative of which is the thing that you would most like to do that would bring you the most joy and might bring other people the most joy or be the most productive.”

We always think we need more: more help, more motivation, more energy. But in our current world the answer is often the exact opposite: we need less. Fewer distr...

“You can do anything once you stop trying to do everything.”

“But if I just keep quitting things, won’t I turn into a total flake?” Actually, being a flake is another powerful secret to success.

luck isn’t just serendipity or due to the paranormal. A lot of it is about the choices people make.

lucky people maximize opportunities. The study showed they are more open to new experiences, more extroverted, and less neurotic. They listen to their hunches. Most of all, Wiseman says, lucky people just try stuff. It makes intuitive sense: if you lock yourself in your house, how many exciting, new, cool things are going to happen to you? Not many.

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.”

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

Lucky people don’t dwell on failure; they see the good side of the bad and often learn from it. They have an optimistic explanatory style much like the positive-minded baseball teams.

“Keep Your Fingers Crossed!” showed “activating good-luck-related superstitions via a common saying or action (e.g., “break a leg,” keeping one’s fingers crossed) or a lucky charm improves subsequent performance in golfing, motor dexterity, memory, and anagram games.” But it’s not because of magic. These actions give people confidence, which helps them perform better. (So wish your friends luck. It really does help.) This optimism also makes lucky people grittier and more likely to keep trying new things, which over time means even more good stuff happens to them. As long as what they do isn’t too risky and they rationalize the occasional bad stuff, it’s an upward spiral. Eventually something hits.

So keep trying new things. It makes you luckier. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. When there’s no clear path to success, no relevant model for what you’re trying to achieve, t...

They started failing immediately—and learning quickly.

prototype and test, prototype and test, prototype and test—until the time was up. When there is no set path, this system wins.

old Silicon Valley mantra: Fail fast a...

We think we always have to be perfect. One failure and it’s all over. But you’re not Batman. You can fail and quit and learn. In fact, that’s the only way you can learn.

So what happens if you fail at something? You won’t die like Batman, so you shouldn’t act like you’re Batman. Try being more like a comedian or a kindergartener. Try things. Quit what fails. Then apply grit.

historical studies of patent records reveal that “sheer quantity ultimately leads to quality.”

You need to combine strategic quitting with your own personal R&D division.

If you don’t know what to be gritty at yet, you need to try lots of things—knowing you’ll quit most of them—to find the answer. Once you discover your focus, devote 5 to 10 percent of your time to little experiments to make sure you keep learning and growing.

This gives you the best of both worlds. Use trying and quitting as a deliberate strategy to find out what is worth not quitting. You’re not being a total flake but someone who strategically tests the waters.

The things you should opportunity/cost quit, à la Spencer, are things you do every day or week that produce no value. What we’re talking about here are limited duration experiments. Giving something a shot. Taking a yoga class—but not signing up for a yearlong membership just yet. This is what spurs new opportunities and creates good luck. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All life ...

VC firms invest in things that have a comparatively low chance of success but, if successful, could turn into something really, really big. They put money in ten companies expecting seven to go bust, two to break even, and one to be the next Google or Facebook.

“People who switch jobs more frequently early in their careers tend to have higher wages and incomes in their prime-working years. Job-hopping is actually correlated with higher incomes, because people have found better matches—their true calling.” And changing roles is far more likely to get you to a leadership position:

trying stuff outside your field of expertise is correlated with big achievements.

Facing different challenges in different contexts allowed them to look at things differently, to challenge assumptions, and to realize breakthroughs. Getting lots of different ideas crashing together turns out to be one of the keys to creativity.

The same is true for successful companies. They don’t just try new things; they often completely reinvent themselves when their little bets bear fruit.

You need to quit some things to find out what to be gritty at. And you need to try stuff knowing you might quit some of it to open yourself up to the luck and opportunities that can make you successful.

Spending 5 percent of your time trying new things, knowing you will quit most of them, can lead to great opportunities.

How do you know when you should quit something? “Should I stay or should I go?” as the song says.