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

by Eric Barker

The filtered leaders didn’t rock the boat. The unfiltered leaders couldn’t help but rock it. Often they broke things, but sometimes they broke things like slavery, as Abraham Lincoln did.

They didn’t need a more filtered leader; they needed someone the system would have never let in the door. The old ways didn’t work, and doubling down on them would have been disastrous. To fight a menace like Hitler, they needed a maverick like Churchill.

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.

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 because those children often don’t do what they’re told. Does this sound like a great employee to you? Hardly. So it’s no surprise that creativity is inversely correlated with employee performance reviews. Creative people are less likely to be promoted to CEO.

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

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.

Being the most productive or getting top grades isn’t the only thing Givers seem to excel at. It also appears to make them rich. When Arthur Brooks looked at the connection between charitable giving and income, he found that for every dollar donated, income for that person went up by $3.75. There was a clear relationship between how much was given and how much was earned that year.

Volunteering even just two hours a week predicts increases in life satisfaction. Even more surprising, those who donate their time to help others feel less busy and like they have more free time.

When you take a job take a long look at the people you’re going to be working with—because the odds are you’re going to become like them; they are not going to become like you. You can’t change them. If it doesn’t fit who you are, it’s not going to work.

Studies show that your boss has a much larger effect on your happiness and success than the company at large.

Frankl said, “What is to give light must endure burning.”

If I asked you how your day was or how you met your spouse, what would you tell me? A story. What’s your résumé? A story. You even tell stories when you sleep: dreams. And research shows you have about two thousand daydreams every day, telling yourself little stories about this or that.

You may not be able to overhaul how your company does things, but like Joe Simpson, you can define a game for yourself that is winnable. Is your game to learn as much as possible at the office so you’re ready for that promotion? Do you want to get better at giving presentations or acquire another skill set? All of these are winnable.

WOOP—wish, outcome, obstacle, plan—is applicable to most any of your goals, from career to relationships to exercise and weight loss.

Most simply, we’re friends. Friends are just family we choose. This allows us to collaborate on a scale that’s impossible for other animals. This is the secret to our success as a species. It’s also the secret to your success as an individual: friendship.

And what about forming friendships with coworkers? This is another excellent idea. You can’t rely on HR team-bonding exercises; studies show they’re only effective at building distrust. Research also shows the best predictor of work team success is how the team members feel about one another. What’s something that improves team communication and effectiveness that you won’t read about in most formal manuals? Joking around with your coworkers.

Clinical psychologist and workplace consultant Al Bernstein says, “You can’t not play politics; you can only play them badly . . . the only place where relationships don’t matter is on a desert island far away from the rest of the world.”

Harvard researcher Shawn Achor found that the workers least likely to develop workplace friendships were also the least likely to get promoted. (Feel free to read that sentence a few hundred more times so it sinks in.)

You and I make the same mistakes. Granted, we’re not dealing with emotionally disturbed people. Actually, hold on. Often we are dealing with emotionally disturbed people; we just call them coworkers and family members. They’re not terrorists making demands (although sometimes it seems like that too). Usually they’re just upset. They just want to be heard.

Thank the people around you. Relationships are the key to happiness, and taking the time to say “thanks” renews that feeling of being blessed.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is this odd phenomenon of people with the least experience being the most confident because they don’t have the experience to judge just how challenging something is.

A study aptly titled “Power, Competitiveness, and Advice Taking: Why the Powerful Don’t Listen” showed that just making someone feel powerful was enough to make them ignore advice from not only novices but also experts in a field.

Hubris has the double whammy of making you so sure you’re right that you don’t listen, and over the long term you act like such a tool that nobody wants to talk to you, let alone disagree with you.

Research suggests that having this forgiving approach allows you to take more responsibility for problems while being less saddened by them. Studies show that because people with self-compassion don’t beat themselves up, they have less fear of failure, which translates into less procrastination as well as more grit.

As researcher Kristin Neff explains, “Who is the only person in your life who is available 24/7 to provide you with care and kindness? You.”

We don’t need to see ourselves as larger than life and it’s often better if we don’t. You don’t want to fall into denial or be a jerk. You want to keep learning but not feel bad about yourself.

Seek situations that challenge you to keep yourself humble. Strive to keep an open mind instead of assuming you already know the answer. Be nice. Don’t end up as an emperor in your own mind.

As Alfred Binet, inventor of the IQ test, said about intelligence, “It is not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.”

Think about the wisest people you’ve known. Were they full of bluster and hubris? Or utterly without confidence? They were probably calm and understanding, forgiving and less judgmental. We’d all like to achieve that level of wisdom one day. And self-compassion is a great first step.

In all professional jobs you see a similar effect: “The top 10 percent of workers produce 80 percent more than the average, and 700 percent more than the bottom 10 percent.”

Most people come up with their best ideas in the shower. Scott Barry Kaufman of the 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.

We need fun. We need rest. They increase our chances of success and they benefit your employer as well. Hard work doesn’t necessarily mean good work.

Here’s the problem: We love having choices. We hate making choices. Having choices means having possibilities. Making choices means losing possibilities. And having so many choices increases the chance of regret.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”

You have to make a decision. The world will not draw a line. You must. You need to ask What do I want?

Entrepreneur Ken Hakuta said, “Success is something you will confront constantly in business. You will always be interpreting it against something, and that something should be your own goals and purpose.”

So a plan is vital if you want to be successful and happy. What you’ll find next is a framework of steps for you to implement, starting now. But before we get into the specifics, it’s important to remember one point: this is your plan. And the thing most likely to get in the way of it working is, well, you. Knee-jerk responses of “I can’t do that” and “My boss will never let me” are what got you into this position in the first place. Not everyone can implement the following ideas exactly as written, but just dismissing the things that seem like a stretch is a mistake. Obey the spirit of the law even if you can’t follow the letter. Simply put: try.

Another big mistake people make is looking at a list, seeing the things they already do, and saying, “I do that! I’m smart! I can close the book now.” Reassuring yourself feels nice. But you’re here to improve your life. Focus on the stuff in the plan that you don’t do.

Where are your activities taking you? Is it where you want to go? Note: this will be depressing. I assure you, you’re wasting more time than you think. Beyond that, note which hours are contributing to which of the big four: 1. HAPPINESS = ENJOYING 2. ACHIEVEMENT = WINNING 3. SIGNIFICANCE = COUNTING (TO OTHERS) 4. LEGACY = EXTENDING Or is that hour going in the “None of the above” bucket?

If you really want a better work–life balance, don’t make assumptions. Sit down with your boss and actually discuss it. No, you don’t say “Hey, I want to work less.” Ask your boss for a clear idea of your role and their expectations, and whether this or that change would really be an issue. You’ll probably be surprised by the answer, especially if you think about their needs and try to make it a win-win.

This chat will be good for the boss too, whether they realize it or not. The Harvard Business Review detailed a strategy called “active partnering” in which employees and managers disclosed what they wanted to achieve personally and professionally.

A good way to deal with the busy work is in “batches.” Rather than reactively living in your inbox, schedule a few intervals when you process emails, return phone calls, and shuffle the papers that need shuffling. After that session is over, turn off notifications, silence the phone, and get back to important stuff. Three batches a day works for me, but a job that requires frequent interaction may need more. The point is to be able to control and schedule these periods as much as possible so they don’t creep into the time you’re doing deep work.

To quote Warren Buffett, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.”

Steven Jay Ross said, it’s by dreaming and then doing something about those dreams that we can achieve success. In fact, it’s the only way we can.

What’s the most important thing to remember when it comes to success? One word: alignment. Success is not the result of any single quality; it’s about alignment between who you are and where you choose to be. The right skill in the right role. A good person surrounded by other good people. A story that connects you with the world in a way that keeps you going. A network that helps you, and a job that leverages your natural introversion or extroversion. A level of confidence that keeps you going while learning and forgiving yourself for the inevitable failures. A balance between the big four that creates a well-rounded life with no regrets.

“The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”

If you align your knowledge of yourself with your career and the people around you, it can form an upward spiral that leads to not only career success but also happiness and fulfillment.