Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. And now it's a great
Speaker 1: pleasure to have Eric Barker on the podcast. Barker is
Speaker 1: the creditor of the blog aptly titled Barking Up the
Speaker 1: Wrong Tree, which presents science backed answers and expert insight
Speaker 1: on how to be awesome at life. His work has
Speaker 1: been mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: The Atlantic Monthly, Time magazine, The Week, and Business Insider.
Speaker 1: A former Hollywood screenwriter, having worked on projects for Walt
Speaker 1: Disney Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, and Revolution Studios. He's a
Speaker 1: graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Whoo and holds It
Speaker 1: holds an MBA from Boston College and a Master of
Speaker 1: Fine Arts from UCLA. His latest book is Barking Up
Speaker 1: the Wrong Tree, The Surprising Science behind why everything you
Speaker 1: know about success is mostly wrong. Hey, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for chatting with me today. Eric. Oh, it's great to
Speaker 1: be talking to you, Scott. Great to be talking to
Speaker 1: you too. I feel like I've known you from Afar
Speaker 1: for a while, so it's nice to finally chat with you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely fascinating, fascinating book. I'm a scientist myself, but you know,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot, always learned a lot from your
Speaker 1: blogs and thought we could discuss a lot of the
Speaker 1: contents of it, maybe leave some of the goodies out
Speaker 1: so people will still buy the book. That's fantastic. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a great balance. Great, so we'll say I
Speaker 1: like about you review multiple sides of every story. There
Speaker 1: are multiple sides to every story. That's the truth of
Speaker 1: the world, and you acknowledge that and then you I
Speaker 1: think we probably can bond over our mutual love of paradoxes.
Speaker 1: I could sense reading this book that you get excited
Speaker 1: by things that I get excited about too. You know,
Speaker 1: like the question like do nice people finish the last?
Speaker 1: Or you say nice guys, but you can be they
Speaker 1: could apply to the women as well, right, So do
Speaker 1: nice people finish last or first? And all you could
Speaker 1: find depending on your dependent measure. You know, if your
Speaker 1: dependent measure is cheating, well, you know, it's almost like
Speaker 1: a tautology, like to win at cheating you have to
Speaker 1: be bad in a way. But if you want to
Speaker 1: have really satisfying intimate relationships at some point you have
Speaker 1: to be good. So just like how you go through
Speaker 1: all these nuances. So let's go through these various topics
Speaker 1: today and then yeah, we'll talk about these various sides
Speaker 1: of the story. So one topic you can talk about
Speaker 1: is in terms of success, perhaps having flaws can be conducive,
Speaker 1: but not only having falls. I love the extreme you
Speaker 1: go through the ear. Your stories are very well crafted,
Speaker 1: by the way, I thought he did a brilliant job
Speaker 1: with this, really truly brilliant job with the stories and
Speaker 1: matching them up. Can you tell a story about this
Speaker 1: person who literally went crazy and how maybe that was
Speaker 1: not detrimental to creativity? Yeah, Uriobicic. There's the Race across America,
Speaker 1: which is Outside magazine called it the most extreme performance
Speaker 1: event out there where basically and approximately around ten days
Speaker 1: or so, these people ride literally from Atlantic City on
Speaker 1: bicycles to San Diego that cross the entire United states,
Speaker 1: and once the clock starts, it does not stop. So
Speaker 1: anytime you stop to sleep, to eat, to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom, anything you know that's counting against you, people
Speaker 1: are passing you. And it's insane. These people like destroy
Speaker 1: themselves literally doing this. Two people have actually died doing this.
Speaker 1: And there's one guy he has now since passed away.
Speaker 1: But Uriobic who's one multiple times. And his secret isn't well,
Speaker 1: you know, oh he's got grit or you know, oh,
Speaker 1: he's an incredible super athlete. His secret is that he
Speaker 1: actually loses his mind. Dan Coyle wrote a fantastic piece
Speaker 1: for The New York Times describing it, and Uri Robitch's
Speaker 1: superpower is he loses his mind. He actually goes crazy,
Speaker 1: He gets into fistfights with mailboxes, he sees things. But
Speaker 1: what this allows him to do is actually disassociate from
Speaker 1: the pain and not experience the problems that a lot
Speaker 1: of people do in this extremely grueling event. So something
Speaker 1: that most of us would consider a negative in this
Speaker 1: very weird scenario becomes a positive for sure. And then
Speaker 1: you kind of asked this question, is playing it safe
Speaker 1: or doing what we're told the path to success? I
Speaker 1: think this relates to this, right, like, not necessarily always
Speaker 1: playing it safe is going to get you success, depending
Speaker 1: on how you define success. But yeah, so that's a
Speaker 1: super interesting example, and I I think it's a common
Speaker 1: theme throughout your whole book, right about various different kinds
Speaker 1: of quote falls. But you're saying they're not really necessarily
Speaker 1: flaws in that context. You know, once we get to
Speaker 1: the extremes, you start to see that, you know, if
Speaker 1: what might be say, stubbornness in a lot of situations,
Speaker 1: if you're in an extremely difficult scenario where ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent of people giving up, extreme stubbornness might
Speaker 1: be required, or any sane person would give up and quit.
Speaker 1: So you have these kind of things that exist at
Speaker 1: the edge of the bell curve, you know, and they
Speaker 1: seem like they're in the left hand tail, but they're
Speaker 1: also in the right hand tail depending upon the context.
Speaker 1: And that's why when we attempt to limit, you know,
Speaker 1: and just get the people in the middle, we get
Speaker 1: rid of these extreme qualities, which sometimes are negatives but
Speaker 1: sometimes be positive depending upon the scenario specifically. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good point. I'm also noticing a trend in
Speaker 1: writing about this topic. Various writers that almost seem these
Speaker 1: days in order to actually be successful in life, you
Speaker 1: almost have to be at those extremes. Like is there
Speaker 1: any hope anymore for people in the middle. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there is, you know, in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: you can still get your kay Anders ericson ten thousand
Speaker 1: hours of expertise if you devote that amount of time
Speaker 1: to it, you know, but in extreme scenarios, sometimes extreme
Speaker 1: qualities are necessary or they grant you an advantage. And also,
Speaker 1: let's not forget times change, contexts change, and you know,
Speaker 1: once again those negatives that became positives could become negatives
Speaker 1: again depending upon you know, helping shift in the future.
Speaker 1: Good point. It's always about the context, isn't it? So
Speaker 1: relate to this? What are intensifiers? That's the first time
Speaker 1: I heard of that term. That's a term used by
Speaker 1: a Gutha Matunda at Harvard Business School who was talking
Speaker 1: about different kinds of leaders And I remember when back
Speaker 1: when I was reading the research on leadership, I found
Speaker 1: it confusing because there was some research that said leaders
Speaker 1: don't matter. Got a team of a players, they'll self organized,
Speaker 1: they'll do well. You don't need a figurehead. There's other
Speaker 1: research that said leaders are enormously impactful, that they energize people,
Speaker 1: unite them, create morale, and it was completely contradictory. And
Speaker 1: what Gotham found in his research is that both of
Speaker 1: those things are true, that it's bimodal. There's two types
Speaker 1: of leaders. There's filtered leaders. So if you look at
Speaker 1: like the CEO of GE, they're going to be highly vetted,
Speaker 1: extremely vetted. I have have had a long career and the
Speaker 1: organization is going to be weeding out people, and so
Speaker 1: the men and women that are finally up for the
Speaker 1: top job have been so thoroughly filtered that has to
Speaker 1: be indistinguishable. So if you hire one or the other,
Speaker 1: they're probably going to do the same things and make
Speaker 1: very similar decisions, and in that way there isn't a difference.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you have unfiltered leaders, so entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: who go through no vetting process, or if a vice
Speaker 1: president steps to the presidency, you know, due to some
Speaker 1: crazy scenario, that person wasn't vetted for that role and
Speaker 1: they may not do what was expected. So what happens
Speaker 1: is you get unfiltered leaders do wilder, crazier things. Sometimes
Speaker 1: those things are great. Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, and he
Speaker 1: won the election by a surprising, crazy confluence of events.
Speaker 1: So intensifiers are those unique categories like uri roach is
Speaker 1: losing his mind when he rides a bicycle. Those are
Speaker 1: those outlier qualities which in some situations can be a negative,
Speaker 1: in some situations can be a positive. And so both
Speaker 1: them talked about how those often distinguish your unfiltered leaders,
Speaker 1: those intensifiers, because those people with those extreme qualities probably
Speaker 1: would have been vetted out by a filtering system had
Speaker 1: they gone through it like trying to be CEO G
Speaker 1: or something. Wow, that's really cool that you just discover
Speaker 1: that literature and then you wrote about it. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And I think that very much applies to an education
Speaker 1: as well well with students, right, and all of our
Speaker 1: filtering mechanisms we have so many, we have so many
Speaker 1: of their standardized right. Yeah. Absolutely, that's my own pet peeve.
Speaker 1: It's like that me crazy. Yeah, So it has a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of implications for that as well. So
Speaker 1: what can we learn from kung fu masters about being
Speaker 1: a flaky quitter? Matt Polly was an undergrad student at
Speaker 1: Princeton and he had always been the schoolyard punching bag
Speaker 1: and he beat up as a kid, and he decided
Speaker 1: that he was going to drop out of Princeton, moved
Speaker 1: to the Shaolin temple and master kung fu, and of
Speaker 1: course his parents were furious. This was, you know, back
Speaker 1: in the early nineties before the internet for yelp reviews
Speaker 1: of shoolin monasteries, and so he did this and it
Speaker 1: was this crazy little experiment, kind of like Peter Simms
Speaker 1: talks about little bets, and it was this experiment and
Speaker 1: it was a crazy, wild, exciting, exciting thing. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, and most people would say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just you know, youthful indulgence, being nuts, but it
Speaker 1: ended up ended up creating his career as a writer.
Speaker 1: His first book, American Shao Linn, was about him dropping
Speaker 1: out of Princeton to go to China, and it created
Speaker 1: this whole career. So rather than following the normal you know,
Speaker 1: undergrad experience by doing something wild and crazy, by trying
Speaker 1: a little bet, he opened up a whole new door
Speaker 1: for himself and created his career. So while you know,
Speaker 1: applying yourself for it, being consistent, playing by the rules
Speaker 1: has definite clear benefits trying things that you know you
Speaker 1: might quit can actually produce you know, great little benefits
Speaker 1: if you balance that out with your dedicated pursuits as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know all these things are interconnected. There is a
Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, how's he going to put this
Speaker 1: all together? How's he going? Because you're like, well, well,
Speaker 1: you're just integrating like maybe four hundred thousand studies. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like because in science we don't most scientists don't
Speaker 1: really try to take that much of a bird's eye view,
Speaker 1: right like they're you're busy doing it's hard to do
Speaker 1: just one study and you figured it out, like it's
Speaker 1: a big jigsaw puzzle. Do you think you put the
Speaker 1: pieces in a way that tells a coherent story about
Speaker 1: when is it good to be grit and when is
Speaker 1: it good to quit? When is it good to be
Speaker 1: a nice person, When is it good to kind of
Speaker 1: not be exploited, when is it etcetera, etcetera. Do you
Speaker 1: think like you have made sense of this world? I
Speaker 1: mean that's something I would love to see a researcher
Speaker 1: like yourself do it. Do a thorough examination of and
Speaker 1: really get a control group and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: But I definitely think that you can see, you know,
Speaker 1: when you look at like, you know, Angela duct Worth,
Speaker 1: who I know you work with, you know her research
Speaker 1: on grid and then you look at like Peter Simm's
Speaker 1: work on little Bets and you realize that, you know,
Speaker 1: while the first impulse might be to put them on
Speaker 1: opposite extremes, the truth is you can balance the two.
Speaker 1: You can take a certain amount of your day and
Speaker 1: dedicate it to really hard work, deliver practice, and move
Speaker 1: the needle forward in terms of what's important to you.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't expl trying new things to always make
Speaker 1: sure that you're you're growing, you're learning, and you know,
Speaker 1: with little Bets you can use like a venture capital
Speaker 1: model where you try ten things, you know seven of
Speaker 1: them aren't going to work, two of them might be okay,
Speaker 1: and one's going to be the next Google or Facebook.
Speaker 1: And to balance those two, you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: to go to either extreme. You can take you know,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of your time dedicated to what's to what
Speaker 1: you want to double down on, and then take ten
Speaker 1: percent and try new things to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: not kind of you know, just doing the same stuff
Speaker 1: and never learning and growing cool. Yeah, and also I
Speaker 1: get a message from your book a couple of things.
Speaker 1: One thing is that life is not fair. You know,
Speaker 1: like we kind of we should just accept that. Like
Speaker 1: if we're going to adding that to the subtitle, I
Speaker 1: think that's matter that wouln't that big a good book title, though.
Speaker 1: It has to be like the surprising reason why your
Speaker 1: life is not fair. You can't like you're not You're
Speaker 1: not allowed these days in popular books, You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to just say something. It has to be you have
Speaker 1: to like explicitly say to the reader. It's going to
Speaker 1: be surprising what I'm going to say. I love that
Speaker 1: you added your the surprising signs of why you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: has to be. Personal lives are fair, but yours not
Speaker 1: so much. I'm sorry that's your kind of the exception
Speaker 1: here don't count exactly. I'm glad you picked up I'm
Speaker 1: glad you picked up on that. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: myf and Robert Cursben wrote a book Why Everyone Else
Speaker 1: Is a Hypocrite, And the word else is in parentheses,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of like that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, like we all think that we're the
Speaker 1: only one whose life isn't fair. There's another psyche book
Speaker 1: what was called was it Mistakes were made? But not
Speaker 1: by me exactly. Yeah, that's by Aarons Elliot Aronson, who's
Speaker 1: actually going to be on the podcast later this year. Oh,
Speaker 1: I recorded two part series with him already. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to put that out. Very cool, You're very well read.
Speaker 1: I mean I gotta say, like maybe I could back
Speaker 1: up a second, we get to know you a little
Speaker 1: bit better. Is your full time job the blog? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the blog and for the for the past two years
Speaker 1: writing the book. And you know, the book is basically
Speaker 1: MythBusters for success. You know, I take the old maxims
Speaker 1: we all grew up with of nice guys finished last
Speaker 1: it's not what you know, it's who you know. You know,
Speaker 1: quitters never win, winners never quit, and kind of look
Speaker 1: at the research, look what the experts say, and see
Speaker 1: if they're true, if they're not true, of when they're true.
Speaker 1: And because the issue for me was, you know, I
Speaker 1: came out of pen with a degree in philosophy, which
Speaker 1: did not prepare me for the typical work world, and
Speaker 1: I had a very unconventional career. I was a screenwriter
Speaker 1: in Hollywood for a decade, or for Disney or a
Speaker 1: for Fox. I worked in video games, and it didn't
Speaker 1: seem to me like those rules always applied so well.
Speaker 1: And I didn't, you know, nice guy. Sometimes nice guys,
Speaker 1: you know, do terrible, sometimes they do great. I've got
Speaker 1: exceptions to all of these little maxims. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to know what are the real rules of success or
Speaker 1: at least what did the research say that really would
Speaker 1: have made a difference, because I was as curious as
Speaker 1: anybody else, and I wanted to see what is the
Speaker 1: legitimate research experts have to say. Oh, absolutely, and there
Speaker 1: are no rules. I mean, there are very few rules
Speaker 1: in science. There are some, there are some and be
Speaker 1: able to genet experts the feel to be able to
Speaker 1: ex We're starting to actually figure out some rules that
Speaker 1: seem to hold. But a lot of these things you're
Speaker 1: talking about, really in this book, you're talking about correlations,
Speaker 1: and there's lots of variation and contexts that matter as well.
Speaker 1: So putting that nuance in there was huge. So that's great,
Speaker 1: You're kind of living a dream in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: It's great. It's one of those but I tend towards
Speaker 1: I tend towards workaholism. So when you don't have any
Speaker 1: restrictions on you, you tend to do too much, which
Speaker 1: is good in terms of output. But sometimes I have
Speaker 1: to sort of restrain myself because there's nobody else to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, but it's exciting to be able to
Speaker 1: kind of be on your own clock and have your
Speaker 1: own autonomy is really wonderful. So he had the little
Speaker 1: intro alude to get to know more about you. Let's
Speaker 1: jump back into some more of these in terms of things,
Speaker 1: So how long could I be Batman? Yes, this actually
Speaker 1: has been researched, and you know, I think it relates
Speaker 1: to an issue some people deal with in terms of perfectionism,
Speaker 1: you know, in the issue of trying a little bit
Speaker 1: so trying different things. Sometimes we're a little too focused
Speaker 1: on being perfect and that limits us because we don't
Speaker 1: want to try anything where we might want to fail.
Speaker 1: And so I think, as e Pol's er, I think
Speaker 1: did this research where he tried to look at comparable
Speaker 1: careers to Batman, and he looked at he looked at boxers,
Speaker 1: mixed martial arts athletes, and running backs, and what you
Speaker 1: saw was that how long? Because the thing about Batman
Speaker 1: is Batman? You know, having a record of thirty and
Speaker 1: one doesn't work for Batman because he can never lose.
Speaker 1: He has to be perfect. The criminals of Gotham wouldn't
Speaker 1: kill him, so he has to have a perfect record.
Speaker 1: So basically, when you look at these other comparable athletes,
Speaker 1: how long can they go undefeated with a perfect record?
Speaker 1: And the answer came down to three years. So when
Speaker 1: you think about the time that it would take to
Speaker 1: develop the skills to be Batman and then you would
Speaker 1: probably have a career of about three years, you realize
Speaker 1: that perfectionism may be a real hindrance. Oh yeah, it's okay,
Speaker 1: So three years is the answer there. That's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like good knowledge's good information to know. There. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of jumping around here a little bit
Speaker 1: because what I like about your book does kind of
Speaker 1: jump around. Then you like tie it all together in
Speaker 1: a boat. It's like, it's really cool. Can grit be
Speaker 1: a game? Yeah? Does it always have to be so serious? No?
Speaker 1: I mean the truth is, it's like we I think
Speaker 1: that's a mistake that a lot of us make. I
Speaker 1: mean I know I make it too, where we say,
Speaker 1: oh God, it's so hard to stick to something. Oh god,
Speaker 1: it's hard to stick to something. Yet you know, you
Speaker 1: never miss an episode of your favorite TV show, and
Speaker 1: you when you get hooked on a game on your
Speaker 1: iPhone or a video game on Xbox or something, you know,
Speaker 1: that's never a problem to stick with through to the end.
Speaker 1: It's it's great. So what's the difference there? And the
Speaker 1: difference is that games impose a structure on things, a
Speaker 1: structure that keeps you interested, keeps you hooked, you know.
Speaker 1: And if we take that same structure where there's feedback,
Speaker 1: there's goals, you know, and impose that structure on our
Speaker 1: other activities which aren't immediately as pleasurable and fun, we
Speaker 1: can create a game in it that gives us the
Speaker 1: same kind of rewarding feeling and makes it much easier
Speaker 1: to persist. Awesome, man. I use this example of this
Speaker 1: rock climber, right, Yeah, I mean that's so traumatic that story.
Speaker 1: I was like on the edge of my seat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this, It's this phenomenal story. If you
Speaker 1: watch the documentary Touching the Void based on his book,
Speaker 1: and it's a true story of they were climbing in
Speaker 1: the Andes and they get all the way up to
Speaker 1: the top of the mountain. Nobody had ever climbed this
Speaker 1: club face before, and on the way down, which is
Speaker 1: actually where most accidents happen, shattered his leg and at
Speaker 1: that height, you know you're dead. You're just dead, and
Speaker 1: not only shatters leg, but then to his partner because
Speaker 1: they're tied together to save to save his own life,
Speaker 1: had to cut the rope and he falls into a
Speaker 1: crevass with this shattered leg and he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: in horrible pain, and he has to go miles to
Speaker 1: get back to the campsite to save his life. He
Speaker 1: manages to do it, and the way he does it
Speaker 1: is by focusing everything on a game setting, giving himself
Speaker 1: time limits to reach certain markers. And it's an incredibly powerful, inspiring,
Speaker 1: moving story, but it illustrates just that framing things in
Speaker 1: terms of a game can keep you going in situations
Speaker 1: that seem impossible. I mean, I love that. As someone
Speaker 1: who's preferred play a lot, I prefer not so good.
Speaker 1: I like intrinsically driven things that they are purely intrinsically driven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm totally down with that. And and that was a
Speaker 1: really cool way of thinking you can almost gammify any
Speaker 1: situation doesn't need to. We do have this dichotomy right
Speaker 1: between work and play, that we don't need to have
Speaker 1: that false dichotomy. No, it was interesting. I interviewed for
Speaker 1: the blog a Navy seal, an Army Ranger, special Forces officer,
Speaker 1: and what was funny is none of them knew each other,
Speaker 1: and they all when I was talking to them all
Speaker 1: about that and obviously the intense vetting process and training
Speaker 1: they go through, they all said the same thing. Every
Speaker 1: one of them said. How I got through it was
Speaker 1: by making it a game. It wasn't personal, it wasn't
Speaker 1: life or death, even though it certainly seemed like it
Speaker 1: at times. They made it a game, and that perspective
Speaker 1: just puts a different lens over what you're doing and
Speaker 1: turns it into something that's, like you said, a little
Speaker 1: more playful, a little bit more fun, and you build
Speaker 1: in that your personal rewards system, and you can get
Speaker 1: through really grueling things, far more grueling and intense than
Speaker 1: most of us ever deal with. Yeah, but you have
Speaker 1: dealt with a lot of it. You did your MFA.
Speaker 1: Does that mean you were an artist? I got a
Speaker 1: master's degree from UCLA Film School. Oh, film school, gotcha, gotcha? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so not a real artists. Yeah, I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: say that, that's obviously. So let's talk about this. You know, introversion,
Speaker 1: amber version, extroversion, and networking. Now, extroverts love networking, they
Speaker 1: just love it. They can't get enough of it. And
Speaker 1: introverts would prefer not to have to do that. Now,
Speaker 1: is that okay? If you prefer not to do that,
Speaker 1: can you still succeed in life? What I found really
Speaker 1: fascinating was, you know, I have friends who are uber extroverts,
Speaker 1: and you know, they get on a plane for a
Speaker 1: few hours, they come off, they've made four or five friends,
Speaker 1: and that's amazing. And you look at the power of networks,
Speaker 1: and you know, networking is essential. I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: important and major. One of those studies I even site
Speaker 1: shows that networking even benefits drug dealers. That the bigger,
Speaker 1: the larger their networks, the more successful their deals are,
Speaker 1: and the less likely they are to be incarcerated. You know,
Speaker 1: so when you look at the data. And then there's
Speaker 1: one study that shows when introverts pretend to be extroverts,
Speaker 1: they're happier, you know, and that in general, extroverts are
Speaker 1: happy and I'm an introvert myself, so it's this is
Speaker 1: not it was not pleasant reading all of this research.
Speaker 1: But then you look, you know, it's like, what's the
Speaker 1: introvert superpower? And what was the I forget the specific
Speaker 1: I forget the specifics of the line, but basically it
Speaker 1: was that the higher level of extroversion is what inversely
Speaker 1: related to skill or blah blah blah. Where basically it
Speaker 1: was that the more it came down to the more
Speaker 1: extrovert you are, the worse you were at your job.
Speaker 1: And basically, because introverts are spending less time with people,
Speaker 1: they have more time to gain skills knowledge accumulate it.
Speaker 1: And when you look at a range of studies, introverts
Speaker 1: are more successful in school, they are more likely even athletes,
Speaker 1: you know, across the board as skill acquisition because they
Speaker 1: have those extra hours where they're not spending with people
Speaker 1: to get their Andrews ericson ten thousand hours, right. Does
Speaker 1: there need to be a trade off though, between having
Speaker 1: a positive enthusiasm and assertiveness and still put in the
Speaker 1: time for their practice so that you could still be
Speaker 1: an extrovert and still put in that time right, Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely, And most people, you know, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, you know, insurance extroversion and amber version. You know,
Speaker 1: most people aren't. You know, people fall into the middle,
Speaker 1: and you know, so you can be you know, if
Speaker 1: extreme extroverts might have trouble, you know, sitting down for
Speaker 1: hours at a time every day and you know, doing
Speaker 1: deliberate practice or something, and extreme introverts might you know,
Speaker 1: have trouble you know, spending the time to network. But
Speaker 1: most people are going to just find a balance between
Speaker 1: the two. And if you schedule the time and dedicate
Speaker 1: yourself to finding a balance that works for you, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can claim benefits on both sides. I
Speaker 1: did a study on this that I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: you about. I was very curious about this similar issue,
Speaker 1: and I did an analysis of introversion extraversion and items
Speaker 1: relating specifically to solitary time, spent time alone, as well
Speaker 1: as enjoyment of solitary time. And I found that introversion
Speaker 1: extraversion just that one dimension without looking at other because
Speaker 1: personality dimensions interact with each other. If you're an introvert,
Speaker 1: you were more likely to be alone, but you were
Speaker 1: no more likely in extroverts to actually get anything positive
Speaker 1: out of that alone time, like to enjoy it or
Speaker 1: to I mean, you could just like be alone and
Speaker 1: just like eat bond bonds and watch and binge watch TV.
Speaker 1: So in my analysis actually found it was this intellectual
Speaker 1: curiosity and openness to experience dimension of personality that interacted
Speaker 1: with introversion in predicting things like utilizing that time. More Like,
Speaker 1: the research I think suggests that if you just look
Speaker 1: at that one dimension without looking at interactions, introverts are
Speaker 1: no more likely to like spend more time in deliberate
Speaker 1: practice than extroverts. They are more likely to be alone,
Speaker 1: That is true. Yeah, So I just say that I
Speaker 1: hope that I add some nuance for you. You know,
Speaker 1: Oh no, I would totally spec I'm totally speculating here,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I could totally see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But do you think there could be a crowding out
Speaker 1: function where you know, if you are spending more time socializing,
Speaker 1: you simply don't have those hours to spend on skill
Speaker 1: acquisition or other things, Versus you can certainly waste time alone.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt, Like, could there be a crowding out
Speaker 1: where Yeah, if you're tract collagen, you're going to every
Speaker 1: single party, You're simply not going to have as many
Speaker 1: hours to study. So I mean, this is great we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation because I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 1: I don't know, no one knows the absolute truth and anything.
Speaker 1: But I think that what's interesting about this is that
Speaker 1: like extraversion is like gregariousness is just one small part
Speaker 1: of actually what you're doing is you're equating extraversion with
Speaker 1: one with maybe two items on the extraversion questionnaire, Like
Speaker 1: extra version is a hodgepodge of things that seems to
Speaker 1: be related to how much reward sensitivity do you have?
Speaker 1: Like how much do you get excited excited stimulated by
Speaker 1: rewards in the environment. So maybe what you're saying is
Speaker 1: actually a good point that the more that you are
Speaker 1: like ooh sex, ooh food, networking opportunities, ooh money, the
Speaker 1: more that you are kind of distracted by getting reward
Speaker 1: value from all those things. So I think there probably
Speaker 1: is a very big grain of truth in what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to just think through all of the studies
Speaker 1: I know and see how that could make sense, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that could make sense. But I think that
Speaker 1: the extent to which you really, you know, utilize that time, well,
Speaker 1: I think is going to be moderated by other variables.
Speaker 1: You know, God forbid I use the word talent. I
Speaker 1: mean I feel like the word talent is like s
Speaker 1: it's a dirty word these days. Well, let's talk about talent.
Speaker 1: You know, you make a bold statement in the book,
Speaker 1: you say, effort he makes talent possible. Do you think
Speaker 1: it's one hundred percent through? Oh, I mean not totally.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any doubt. I mean, it depends
Speaker 1: on the area. I mean, you know, it's I think
Speaker 1: we're talking about being in the NBA. You know, the
Speaker 1: height is going to be a strongly limiting factor. So
Speaker 1: you know, merely more hours is I don't think is
Speaker 1: going to is going to make that possible. So you
Speaker 1: have those you also have you know, I know it's
Speaker 1: been debated, but because you've pursued a lot in the
Speaker 1: issue of IQ the threshold old effect, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of that one twenty sort of I know Mahli
Speaker 1: Chick Semihi talks about that. But again, we found no
Speaker 1: threshold in the arts. We only found that there was
Speaker 1: something in the sciences in the sense that probabilistically you
Speaker 1: find that my Q is related to scientific achievement, but
Speaker 1: there's no like hard and fast threshold. Like it's not
Speaker 1: like literally there are exceptions too, they're always there are
Speaker 1: people who But yeah, we've actually found in this study
Speaker 1: we posted in the arts though, there was just literally
Speaker 1: no zero threshold and zero even probabilistic with IQ, and
Speaker 1: we found that very interesting. I wasn't expecting that, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I wouldn't have expected no, you know, no connection,
Speaker 1: but at least at least above a hundred or like
Speaker 1: if you don't have a brain, like if we take
Speaker 1: your brain out of years, maybe like you won't be
Speaker 1: able to those people are hard to come by and
Speaker 1: even harder to study. But I mean, I think you
Speaker 1: have that issue where certain you know, limitations certainly and
Speaker 1: you know, like you're saying in the sciences or stuff
Speaker 1: like that, there may be you know, variable sorts of
Speaker 1: thresholds where there are just certain characteristics or I mean
Speaker 1: it could even go out to personality traits where you
Speaker 1: know those can affect kind of how much capacity you
Speaker 1: might have in an arena. Yeah, I think that's very true.
Speaker 1: So tell me about sm zero four six is a
Speaker 1: zero or oh yeah. This was a story I originally
Speaker 1: heard on the podcast Invisibilia, which is fantastic. And this
Speaker 1: is the reason she does not have a name. This
Speaker 1: is a woman who basically feels no fear and her
Speaker 1: big due to a was a herback. It's a very
Speaker 1: rare brain disorder where basically the migdola calcifies and it
Speaker 1: basically dies, and so she can feel all the other emotions,
Speaker 1: but she cannot feel fear. And again, it's one of
Speaker 1: those kind of things where you might think at first,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that'd be great, it'd be wonderful, I
Speaker 1: never feel afraid again, I'd go to the dent. And
Speaker 1: the truth is it's actually, in many ways a horrible
Speaker 1: curse because most of the things we do to protect
Speaker 1: ourselves are not deliberate, conscious thoughts. They are on a
Speaker 1: very emotional, instinctive level that we do to protect ourselves,
Speaker 1: and so she does things that are very dangerous. They
Speaker 1: took her to a pet store and she tried to
Speaker 1: touch the lethal snakes. And you know, she lives in
Speaker 1: a really bad neighborhood and has put herself in situations
Speaker 1: where she's been assaulted and these because she doesn't have
Speaker 1: that instinctive Oh it is a bad idea kind of
Speaker 1: feeling that we all get, and that really affects, you know,
Speaker 1: her life. And it's a fascinating story. That is fascinating.
Speaker 1: And when I was reading that, I was thinking to myself, Oh,
Speaker 1: she sounds like the similar to like psychopaths don't a fear.
Speaker 1: But then you said that she actually is a really
Speaker 1: really nice person. Yeah, and I thought that was really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a consistent quality through it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she is, you know, very nice, very agreeable. But literally,
Speaker 1: the reason that she she's called sm you know, zero
Speaker 1: four six, is not because she's in a science ficture movie.
Speaker 1: It's because if they release her name, she could totally
Speaker 1: be taken for granted, people could exploit her because she
Speaker 1: doesn't she doesn't feel fear and she really can't protect herself. Gosh,
Speaker 1: people could be so horrible, can't they. Oh, I mean
Speaker 1: that's totally terrible. I mean, what like you're saying in
Speaker 1: the issue of nice Guys finished last, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in short term exchanges and zero sum games, you know,
Speaker 1: bad guys do quite well. I mean, and it's a
Speaker 1: sad fact, and there was kind of an optimal level
Speaker 1: there of nice where you don't want to be too nice,
Speaker 1: where you allow yourself to be exploited all the time.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? I mean what you see is
Speaker 1: when they did the prisoners the iterated Prisoner's dilemma. Was
Speaker 1: Robert Axelrod in the nineteen eighties did the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
Speaker 1: They tried to create all these different holgorithms to come
Speaker 1: up with the most successful strategy for the prisoner's dilemma.
Speaker 1: And there were all kinds. There were nice ones that
Speaker 1: always cooperated, there were evil ones that you know, always defected.
Speaker 1: Then there were ones that were more nuanced, where there
Speaker 1: was one called tester that would see how much it
Speaker 1: could get away with. And what they realized was the
Speaker 1: algorithm that did the best was a simple one from
Speaker 1: childhood we're all familiar with, which was Tit for Tat,
Speaker 1: which is all it did was it started out cooperating
Speaker 1: and then all it did was replicate the other person's
Speaker 1: last move. So if you cooperated, it cooperated, If you defected,
Speaker 1: it defected, and Tit for Tat was amazingly successful. And
Speaker 1: what they found was they could actually make it a
Speaker 1: little bit better if they included more forgiveness so that
Speaker 1: it didn't create these death spirals of defection. But then
Speaker 1: there was another iteration they found, which was that they
Speaker 1: found that if somebody was being too nice and always cooperating,
Speaker 1: you could actually improve it by putting in a little
Speaker 1: bit of exploitation. And you know, that's a little sad
Speaker 1: being too nice because one of tip pro taxed strengths
Speaker 1: was it did retaliate, it didn't hold a grudge. But
Speaker 1: if you exploited it, it exploited you back, but then
Speaker 1: immediately forgot and recent oh some caesar being a computer. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's those the power of algorithms. I thought
Speaker 1: that was really cool though. So it did add a
Speaker 1: lot of new And so you know, Adam granted Adam
Speaker 1: Grant's language, you know, not just being a matcher. It
Speaker 1: was different. You're kind of like a blend of things.
Speaker 1: You're adaptable in a way. No, I mean, well, you
Speaker 1: know it's matches miss out because you know, they're not proactive.
Speaker 1: They're always kind of waiting for an invitation to the
Speaker 1: party because they're going to match, whereas takers are out
Speaker 1: exploiting givers are out doing favors getting exploited sometimes. And
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of my favorite sections of Give
Speaker 1: and Take. You know, an amazing book is where he
Speaker 1: talks about, you know, how not to be marder, you know,
Speaker 1: how not to get exploited and still be able to
Speaker 1: do good. And I think that that's a really important
Speaker 1: lesson for a lot of people. It isn't a pro lesson.
Speaker 1: And also I love that idea about forgiveness. I was
Speaker 1: so happy you included that. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about self esteem because that's you know, there can
Speaker 1: be pearls to self esteem, isn't that right? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's really funny is that California did this this big
Speaker 1: self esteem initiative where they thought, oh, we're going to
Speaker 1: take kids and we're going to give more confidence and
Speaker 1: they're going to feel better about themselves and they're going
Speaker 1: to succeed. And what they found was it didn't work.
Speaker 1: That self esteem is largely a result, not a cause,
Speaker 1: and that what you usually end up doing is just
Speaker 1: increasing narcissism. And it's funny because I talk, like you're
Speaker 1: saying the book, I try to balance everything almost like
Speaker 1: a court case. You know, I give both sides of
Speaker 1: the story, and confidence is that you know, the other
Speaker 1: side of the story never gets told. Nobody runs around
Speaker 1: trying to be less confident. Nobody says, how can I
Speaker 1: have less self esteem? You know, nobody does that. But
Speaker 1: what you see is there are strengths to having less
Speaker 1: self esteem and less confident. It makes us more open
Speaker 1: to learning, It makes us more open to growing. If
Speaker 1: we think we know all the answers, we don't look
Speaker 1: for new answers. And what we find is when you
Speaker 1: look at all the research is that the paradigm in
Speaker 1: some ways can seriously be questioned just because you know,
Speaker 1: confidence can lead to certainly lead to narcissism, It can
Speaker 1: lead to actually a jerk, to loss of empathy, and
Speaker 1: to overconfidence, you know, I mean when you look at
Speaker 1: Daniel Connon and others have talked about this extensively, and
Speaker 1: obviously lack of confidence. Confidence is very powerful, even if
Speaker 1: it helps you learn and grow. You know, it's in
Speaker 1: job interviews, you know, first dates. I mean, confidence has
Speaker 1: a huge impact on on how others see you. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is if you look at Kristin Neft's research
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas and self compassion, and there's
Speaker 1: also some other research at Stanford on it self compassion
Speaker 1: could be a far better paradigm to work off of
Speaker 1: because instead of you know, self esteem, where you feel
Speaker 1: like you constantly need to justify your level, which means
Speaker 1: either you're going to fail at some point and not
Speaker 1: justify your self esteem, in which case you'll crash, and
Speaker 1: if you do, you just have to keep proving it,
Speaker 1: which keeps you on this treadmill, which is unpleasant. You
Speaker 1: need to slay a dragon every day to feel good
Speaker 1: about yourself. Self compassion is saying that I'm human, I'm flawed,
Speaker 1: I make mistakes, and forgiving yourself as opposed to running
Speaker 1: on this hamster wheel of trying to prove your self
Speaker 1: worth every day. Yeah, the positive psychology class I teach
Speaker 1: at Penn. I wish you were an undergrad here. You
Speaker 1: could be my TA. What do you say? I would
Speaker 1: love to take it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you would.
Speaker 1: I would maybe come in and give a guest lecture,
Speaker 1: though the students would die if Eric Parker cave. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're big fans of your blog. Their favorite lecture
Speaker 1: tends to be the self compassion lecture. There's something about
Speaker 1: students in college campuses today. I think that just don't
Speaker 1: allow the permission, but they don't give themselves permission. Professors
Speaker 1: don't tend to give them permission to have self compassion.
Speaker 1: So it's huge, it's really huge. I'm really I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that you mentioned that in the book. So let's
Speaker 1: kind of wrap up talking about how to strike a
Speaker 1: good work life balance. Yeah, it's such a thing possible.
Speaker 1: It's really tricky because what we see in the modern era.
Speaker 1: You know, in the past, you know in many careers
Speaker 1: that the office stores closed at five pm. You didn't
Speaker 1: have email, you know, decades ago, where you could be
Speaker 1: reached at home. People didn't call you on your home phone.
Speaker 1: You didn't have a cell phone in your pocket twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven giving you emails, text messages, and work
Speaker 1: phone calls. So the issue is that the world used
Speaker 1: to build boundaries for you. Now those boundaries have been lifted.
Speaker 1: We love the benefits. We love being able to order
Speaker 1: things from Amazon at three o'clock in the morning if
Speaker 1: we have to, that's fantastic, But it goes both ways.
Speaker 1: And so the thing you need to do is create
Speaker 1: boundaries for yourself, which of course is much more difficult,
Speaker 1: and we can find work life balance, but it has
Speaker 1: to be by a personal definition of success. What are
Speaker 1: the limits that you have and that you're comfortable with
Speaker 1: in terms of the hours you want to devote to
Speaker 1: different areas of your life. And some of the things
Speaker 1: you see that the mistakes people make in terms of
Speaker 1: work life balance is some people use what's called a
Speaker 1: collapsing strategy, where they have they only have one metric
Speaker 1: for success, like money, I'll just make the number go up,
Speaker 1: make the number go up, and they don't think about
Speaker 1: their health, they don't think about the relationships, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't think about it, and they just money, and
Speaker 1: so they work too much. And hey, if you devote yourself,
Speaker 1: the money number will probably go up, but you're probably
Speaker 1: not going to end up very happy. Other people use
Speaker 1: what's called a sequencing strategy, which is another not good
Speaker 1: strategy where people will say, Okay, for the first ten years,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to focus on my career, and then
Speaker 1: for the next ten years, I'm just going to focus
Speaker 1: on my family. And of course that never works because
Speaker 1: life throws curveballs at us, and if you're for those
Speaker 1: first ten years. If you do get married, have kids,
Speaker 1: you know, by the time you're into your family section,
Speaker 1: your kids don't know you. You know. So it's not
Speaker 1: that it's not that simple, but what you do see
Speaker 1: is was it. Stevenson and Nash at Harvard did some
Speaker 1: research where they found four categories for metrics that people
Speaker 1: can use to develop a decent work life balance, and
Speaker 1: those were happiness, achievement, significance, and legacy. And happiness is
Speaker 1: are you enjoying what you're doing? Achievement is you know
Speaker 1: career goals are you getting ahead? Third with significance, which
Speaker 1: is are you making a positive impact and the people
Speaker 1: you love the people around you? And fourth was a
Speaker 1: legacy are you making the world a better place for
Speaker 1: you having been there? And if you look at the
Speaker 1: hours where you spend your time and you make sure
Speaker 1: that you're depositing a little bit in each one of
Speaker 1: those four categories, then you can make sure that you
Speaker 1: aren't going too much on achievement, too little on happiness,
Speaker 1: you know, or too much on happiness and not enough
Speaker 1: on achievement. You can try and start to build a
Speaker 1: balance that works for you. That's great, And then you
Speaker 1: also talk about the importance of getting a plan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that right? Getting a boy It's an issue there
Speaker 1: of again, building the system where you know, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm going to limit my email checking,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take for these hours, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to have the Facebook app on my phone, you know,
Speaker 1: building a structure whereby you know you in the same
Speaker 1: way that when you look at some of the research
Speaker 1: on you know, willpower and stuff like that, the most
Speaker 1: powerful way to build willpower is just not to have
Speaker 1: to use willpower at all, is to is to build
Speaker 1: habits or to put yourself in a frame, in a
Speaker 1: system where you can't cheat, you can't do the wrong
Speaker 1: thing if you if you put hard limitations on yourself
Speaker 1: where you know, I turn off my Wi Fi at
Speaker 1: a PM, well then I'm not going to be surfing
Speaker 1: the internet at ENVA. And so building kind of a
Speaker 1: plan and a structure for yourself is a superior way
Speaker 1: than having to grit your teeth and trying to use
Speaker 1: willpower to limit yourself. Couldn't agree more And I think
Speaker 1: real balmister would agree with you too. Absolutely podcast recently
Speaker 1: he was the two parter was fantastic. Oh you listened
Speaker 1: to my podcast. Oh yeah, no, that that one was
Speaker 1: was great. I mean hearing him time. He covers so
Speaker 1: many different awesome subject I mean willpower is only one
Speaker 1: of them. You guys covered a lot of territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like all three of us would have a
Speaker 1: fun dinner or something. He's the greatest. So I couldn't
Speaker 1: be more proud of you, man. I think you should
Speaker 1: be very proud of yourself. This is a really a
Speaker 1: meaningful accomplishment you've done with this book, putting together so
Speaker 1: many studies in a way that like it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Like I'm reading the literally the whole way through, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: how's he going to? How's he gonna? How? And you
Speaker 1: did it? You really did it, so huge congratulations. I
Speaker 1: want to ask a sort of like because you run
Speaker 1: the risk, I know, like the feeling you put your
Speaker 1: heart and soul into something right, and you kind of
Speaker 1: you almost like don't even want to like look at
Speaker 1: it again, like a certain topic, like like I bet
Speaker 1: there are some topics in here that you'd be happy
Speaker 1: like does not you know what? I get it. I
Speaker 1: get it, like nice guys, bad guys. I get it.
Speaker 1: I don't even spend the rest of my life, you know,
Speaker 1: like reading those studies, I'm done with that subject no more.
Speaker 1: It's finished. I'm sure architects are just I never want
Speaker 1: to see that building again, am I right? Though? Like?
Speaker 1: What are some what's next for Eric after this? I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to see how everything goes with the book,
Speaker 1: because tipe it out yet as we speak. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I'm really curious to see how things go with that.
Speaker 1: But you know, I definitely want to keep trying little
Speaker 1: bets and see what works. I mean, the book goes
Speaker 1: a little bet for me, and you know, hopefully it
Speaker 1: pays off. But I mean, I'm endlessly fascinated by so
Speaker 1: much of the social psychology research and making it accessible
Speaker 1: and getting into people's hands. So I mean, I just
Speaker 1: like the format of a book where you can actually
Speaker 1: do a deep dive because I mean, my blog posts
Speaker 1: are pretty long, but they're certainly not as long as
Speaker 1: a book, so to be able to really, you know,
Speaker 1: go down the rabbit hole, you know, I think I'll
Speaker 1: I think I'll probably be writing more books in the future. Good,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun to read you're writing. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for chatting with me today, and I wish
Speaker 1: you all the best with this, Thanks so much, Scott.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought per booking and interesting as I did. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to read the show notes for this episode or
Speaker 1: here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot
Speaker 1: com