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

by Eric Barker

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. As John Stuart Mill remarked, “That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of our time.”

Research by Gallup shows that 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.

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.

If you’re more of an unfiltered type, be ready to blaze your own path. It’s risky, but that’s what you were built for. Leverage the intensifiers that make you unique. You’re more likely to reach the heights of success—and happiness—if you embrace your “flaws.”

What quality do people, when surveyed across a number of arenas—work, athletic teams, family members—say they desire most in others? Trustworthiness.

You may be a pirate at heart yourself. Ever get tired of a bully of a boss and think about striking out on your own? Think everyone should have a say in how the company is run? Think a corporation is obligated to take care of its people? And that racism has no place in business? Congrats! You’re a pirate.

Meaningful doesn’t have to be saving orphans or curing the sick. As long as your story is meaningful to you, it has power.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

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.”

“It may be romantic for lovers to think they were made for each other, but it backfires when conflicts arise and reality pokes the bubble of perfect unity. Instead, thinking about love as a journey, often involving twists and turns but ultimately moving toward a destination, takes away some of the repercussions of relational conflicts.”

Journey of love

“Extraversion was negatively related to individual proficiency.” What’s that mean in English? The more extroverted you are, the worse you are at your job. As we saw, having lots of friends has clear benefits . . . but can also be an enormous distraction.

At the university level, introversion predicts academic performance better than cognitive ability. One study tested 141 college students’ knowledge of twenty different subjects, from art to astronomy to statistics, and found that introverts knew more than the extroverts about every single one of them. Introverts receive disproportionate numbers of graduate degrees, National Merit Scholarship finalist positions, and Phi Beta Kappa keys.

It is better to give than to receive. Look for opportunities to do something for the other person, such as sharing knowledge or offering an introduction to someone that person might not know but would be interested in knowing. Do not be transactional about networking. Do not offer something because you want something in return. Instead, show a genuine interest in something you and the other person have in common.

So think back to kindergarten and make friends. Almost all of the principles of influence are based around friendship. Using these techniques isn’t insincere if you’re actually trying to make a pal.

Want to know which CEOs will run their company into the ground? Count how many times they use the word “I” in their annual letter to shareholders. This is what financial analyst Laura Rittenhouse discovered when she evaluated leaders and how their companies performed. Me, me, me means death, death, death for corporations.

James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Compassion for yourself when you fail means you don’t need to be a delusional jerk to succeed and you don’t have to feel incompetent to improve. You get off the yo-yo experience of absurd expectations and beating yourself up when you don’t meet them. You stop lying to yourself that you’re so awesome. Instead, you focus on forgiving yourself when you’re not. Research shows increasing self-compassion has all the benefits of self-esteem—but without the downsides. You can feel good and perform well while not turning into a jerk or being unable to improve.

Being self-compassionate lets you see issues and do something about them. Research suggests that having this forgiving approach allows you to take more responsibility for problems while being less saddened by them.

In a study titled “Self-Kindness When Facing Stress,” they found that being compassionate with yourself was actually correlated with being wise. Not just IQ points or knowledge, wisdom.

But what was the number-one regret? “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

“The people who survive stress the best are the ones who actually increase their social investments in the middle of stress, which is the opposite of what most of us do. Turns out that social connection is the greatest predictor of happiness we have when I run them in my studies.” What was number four in that list of biggest regrets of the dying? “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

Thirty-nine percent of Americans work fifty or more hours a week and eighteen percent work sixty or more, according to a 2014 Gallup poll. What’s the added benefit of all those extra hours? Research from Stanford says close to nothing. Productivity declines so steeply after fifty-five hours that “someone who puts in seventy hours produces nothing more with those extra fifteen hours.” All they are creating is stress.

When students were kept awake for thirty-five hours, fMRI analysis showed their amygdala response to bad things shot up to 60 percent higher than people who had slept normally. When we get our eight hours, our brains “reset” and we are on a more even keel. Without shut-eye, our brains overreact to bad stuff. Plain and simple: when you’re tired it’s harder to stay happy.

You have to make a decision. The world will not draw a line. You must. You need to ask What do I want? Otherwise you’re only going to get what they want. Sorry to have to break this to you but in today’s world “having it all” isn’t possible when others determine the limits in each category. We used to rely on the world to tell us when we were done, but now the balance must come from you. Otherwise you risk ending up with that number-one regret of the dying: not having had the courage to live the life you wanted and instead lived the life others prescribed.

If something doesn’t have priority and there’s just not time for it, you need to say no. To quote Warren Buffett, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.”