Speaker 1: As a listener of how I work.
Speaker 2: You've hopefully picked up a few tips on this show
Speaker 2: to help you work better? But do you want more?
Speaker 2: And maybe in a book form, because let's face it,
Speaker 2: books are the most awesome thing on the planet. Well,
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Speaker 2: uncover a wealth of proven strategies that anyone can use
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Speaker 2: with the world's greatest thinkers, including Adam Grant, Dan Pink,
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Speaker 2: Wise is launching on July five, but you can pre
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Speaker 2: I'm running on June twenty nine, where I will be
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Speaker 1: To pre order now.
Speaker 2: I hit delete on almost every newsletter I have found
Speaker 2: myself subscribed to, but I have never hit delete on
Speaker 2: anything written by Eric Barker. Eric is one of my
Speaker 2: favorite writers in the area of human behavior, and I
Speaker 2: am not alone. Over three hundred and fifty thousand people
Speaker 2: subscribe to his newsletter. Eric's the author of Barking Up
Speaker 2: the Wrong Tree and more recently Plays Well with Others,
Speaker 2: two books that take some of the most fundamental ideas, platitudes,
Speaker 2: and niceties that society has to offer and puts them
Speaker 2: under the microscope. Eric's convinced that too much of the
Speaker 2: world coming out of the self help, productivity and health
Speaker 2: arenas is vague and confusing, and he's using his blog
Speaker 2: and his books to help make self help feel more
Speaker 2: like an ike emmanual, which, trust me, is a good thing.
Speaker 1: So given Eric is.
Speaker 2: Immersed in human behavior research every day and writes about
Speaker 2: it for the masses, I wanted to know which strategies
Speaker 2: he actually uses himself. My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 2: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral Science
Speaker 2: Consultancy inventium and this is how I work a show
Speaker 2: about how to help you do your best work. So
Speaker 2: Eric is not a fan of work life balance, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to know if he's not striving for balance,
Speaker 2: what is he aiming for with his work life?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't really believe work lithe balance.
Speaker 3: I mean I think that. I mean, in the end,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to draw a line like That's
Speaker 3: That's what it comes down to, is that, you know,
Speaker 3: the in the past, we we could have better work
Speaker 3: life balance simply because you know, the office closed at
Speaker 3: five pm, or you know, there was no email, the
Speaker 3: mail only came once a day, the newspaper only came
Speaker 3: once a day. It's like, now you can work as
Speaker 3: long as you want to, you know. So in the end,
Speaker 3: you you you kind of have to draw a line
Speaker 3: yourself if you want it. But I don't know. For
Speaker 3: me personally, imbalance is more of the way to go.
Speaker 3: Like I well, I think if you if you really
Speaker 3: want to if you really want to excel, if you
Speaker 3: really want to go hard on something, you know, I
Speaker 3: think you need to devote a positively disproportionate, if not obsessional,
Speaker 3: level of energy towards something and and a lot of
Speaker 3: people I think here that and they it's you know,
Speaker 3: they they they might reject it, but I think actually
Speaker 3: a lot of us live like that. It's just not deliberate.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people, you know, miss that email,
Speaker 3: miss that phone call, you know, maybe don't pay that bill.
Speaker 3: They do let balls drop, but it's not deliberate, it's
Speaker 3: not strategic.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I like this idea.
Speaker 2: It's interesting of being consciously unbalanced or imbalanced, and I
Speaker 2: think that for people that are that way, there's often
Speaker 2: a lot of guilt associated with it, but it sounds
Speaker 2: like for you there's not. So how have you deliberately
Speaker 2: leant into that imbalance?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: How is your life deliberately crafted? Differently?
Speaker 3: I think the issue here is having to face and
Speaker 3: make tough decisions. I think one of the reasons why,
Speaker 3: well why a lot of people want, why a lot
Speaker 3: of people do drop balls but they make it feel accidental,
Speaker 3: is that prevents them from having to make hard decisions.
Speaker 3: That prevents them from having to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: I really don't want to talk to that person who
Speaker 3: called me, and they if you have to say that
Speaker 3: in order to make it low priority. You have to
Speaker 3: make that decision and say, you know what, this isn't
Speaker 3: that important. I know it's supposed to be important. I
Speaker 3: know everybody tells me it's important, but it's really not
Speaker 3: that important. And you have to make that decision for yourself.
Speaker 3: So for me, like I know, you know, if I'm
Speaker 3: working on a book, if I'm if I'm you know,
Speaker 3: working promoting promoting a book, if I'm working on a
Speaker 3: blog post. It's like every day I wake up and
Speaker 3: I know what is number one, and for me, what
Speaker 3: is number one is usually also number two, three and four,
Speaker 3: and so I am I try and structure my life
Speaker 3: so that I am monotasking and I really don't have
Speaker 3: to think about anything else, and most of what could
Speaker 3: come up, like I said, I have already I've already
Speaker 3: become comfortable with like like like like a samurai, I'm
Speaker 3: comfortable with the idea of death. I know this could happen.
Speaker 3: That's fine. Now I can just move forward. And for me,
Speaker 3: it's literally, uh, every day I wake up and I
Speaker 3: have a countdown time around my iPad and it's set
Speaker 3: for five hours. And when I start working, I hit
Speaker 3: the start button and it starts coming down from five hours,
Speaker 3: and if I get up to pee, I hit the
Speaker 3: pause button, and if I check email, I hit the
Speaker 3: pause button. I have to take a phone call, I
Speaker 3: hit the pause button. And by the end of the
Speaker 3: day that needs to get to zero, and if it
Speaker 3: doesn't get to zero, then I guess I got more
Speaker 3: work to do. And it's that way I know. I've
Speaker 3: designated this is what's work. And if you're doing anything
Speaker 3: but work doesn't count. And because I think it's so
Speaker 3: easy to rationalize, it's so easy to rationalize and trick yourself,
Speaker 3: or you accomplish something and you feel good and then it's, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's I did six good minutes of work. I deserve
Speaker 3: three days off, and like, it's all too easy to
Speaker 3: do that, and this keeps me accountable, and it's ruthless,
Speaker 3: it's ruthless, but it works five hours.
Speaker 1: I am freaking out about that.
Speaker 2: So I do deep work sprints almost every day of
Speaker 2: one to two hours in length, typically close to a
Speaker 2: sixty to ninety minutes in length, and maybe two or
Speaker 2: three of those, and then sort of the day will
Speaker 2: progress into more shallow work. So why five hours? That
Speaker 2: seems like a lot in a way.
Speaker 3: Well, like I said, it's not one continuous stretch. I
Speaker 3: can take a break whenever I want, but you know,
Speaker 3: and I could take a break, I do whatever I
Speaker 3: have to. So five hours of solid work usually takes
Speaker 3: more like eight to ten hours if I'm really kicking,
Speaker 3: if I'm really kicking ass, it's like I could do
Speaker 3: it in seven. But no, it's like I mean, part
Speaker 3: of that is a cumul like is built up stamina
Speaker 3: over time, where you know, once you can do it.
Speaker 3: And part of that is like definitely the you know,
Speaker 3: I always prioritize what I use the technical term of
Speaker 3: thinky work, think ye work that I have to use
Speaker 3: a lot of cognitive forest power for that always comes first,
Speaker 3: you know. And by the end of the five hours,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe it is you know, looking at research
Speaker 3: or something. It's not busy work. It still has to
Speaker 3: be something like constructive, you know, but it definitely tones
Speaker 3: down from like really active. I can probably only like
Speaker 3: really focus on like solid writing probably for three to
Speaker 3: four you know, but it needs to be contributing to
Speaker 3: the to the bottom line and in that sense, and
Speaker 3: the other good thing about it is if you are
Speaker 3: the super productive, uh somewhat anxious type. Then you know
Speaker 3: you can You can do a lot of stuff, but
Speaker 3: you can get to that place at the end of
Speaker 3: the day where you're like, like, did I really get
Speaker 3: stuff done? Did I really move the needle? Did I?
Speaker 3: And that five hours and that prioritization, like when that
Speaker 3: when that buzzer goes off and that bell rings, like
Speaker 3: there's no guilt. I did fine, I know I did
Speaker 3: five hours. You know, pausing for anything was not worth
Speaker 3: and I'm done. I am done and I can relax
Speaker 3: because otherwise I would drive myself crazy?
Speaker 2: And what else do you do to help optimize those
Speaker 2: five hours in terms of planning for what you will
Speaker 2: do during that time?
Speaker 3: I mean, well, a lot of people can give you
Speaker 3: the short term kind of okay, Like I said, do
Speaker 3: the think you work first, do the like I think.
Speaker 3: I think. The advice that I'd rather give people, which
Speaker 3: I think is less discussed and I think should be
Speaker 3: more discussed, is while I am involved in pretty much
Speaker 3: any project, like I have a I have a a
Speaker 3: word doc open where I am kind of taking notes
Speaker 3: regarding process and stuff. I call it kind of like
Speaker 3: the Book of Me, where basically it's like instead of
Speaker 3: these all purpose generally good sort of advice tips. These
Speaker 3: are like specific to me where it's like you Eric,
Speaker 3: you are going to tell yourself that you will get
Speaker 3: to this later and you never do so, do not
Speaker 3: fool your sa It's like it's like it's like doctor
Speaker 3: Jekyl like chaining himself when he knows that mister Hyde
Speaker 3: is coming. Where it's like, okay, how do you lie
Speaker 3: to yourself? What are the rationalizations you usually tell? Oh,
Speaker 3: you know what today, I'll start off with something simple,
Speaker 3: I can do that really hard work.
Speaker 2: Late.
Speaker 3: No, you can't, and you know it, and we have.
Speaker 3: If you look in the notebook here, you've written this
Speaker 3: down four times that you thought you could do it
Speaker 3: and you never did it. And I think that's the
Speaker 3: advice that no book can ever ever ever give you,
Speaker 3: no guru can ever give you, no blog post can
Speaker 3: ever give you. Is your own idiosyncrasies. You know nobody
Speaker 3: can kind of maybe a spouse might have some clue
Speaker 3: or something, or a partner you live with, but overall,
Speaker 3: really that's there is a wormous amount of good advice
Speaker 3: that can only come from you to you, and you
Speaker 3: need to write it down. You need to write it down.
Speaker 3: You need to review it because otherwise you will rationalize
Speaker 3: and you will tell yourself things, and to have answers
Speaker 3: to those questions to be able to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: taking you know, an extra day off? Is that the
Speaker 3: kind of thing that you come back and you are
Speaker 3: energized and ready to go, and it's such a good idea.
Speaker 3: Or you take a day off and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you just took three days off and you did, like
Speaker 3: which kind of person are you? That can have different
Speaker 3: effects on people? If you start writing down I know
Speaker 3: that this happens. I know if I wake up after
Speaker 3: this hour, you know, stuff doesn't get done. If I
Speaker 3: go to bed this night, Eric, that third drink is
Speaker 3: not a good idea, you know, just like having that
Speaker 3: list is so powerful, and like I said, it's advice
Speaker 3: that only you can give you. And then reading a
Speaker 3: lot of productivities stuff like, all of a sudden, there
Speaker 3: becomes an easy way to implement it. Because once you
Speaker 3: start having these personal rules and you and you, like
Speaker 3: I said, you real man, today went really badly? What
Speaker 3: did I do? And then you can say, oh I
Speaker 3: did X? You make a note and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: the structure creates itself because like it or not, you're
Speaker 3: kind of a b testing. You know, maybe you woke
Speaker 3: up in the middle of the night and couldn't get
Speaker 3: back to sleep. Okay, you're going to learn something today.
Speaker 3: Maybe you overslept today. Okay, you're going to learn something today.
Speaker 3: And every time I get a tip, I can now,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it can slot right in like,
Speaker 3: oh they say break should be this long, and I
Speaker 3: let me try that. Oh that didn't work, And you
Speaker 3: can like all of a sudden, and then what you
Speaker 3: find is it just kind of all comes together like voltron,
Speaker 3: Like you got all the pieces and they're just kind
Speaker 3: of clicking because all of a sudden, you have these
Speaker 3: rules and you you sort of know, you sort of
Speaker 3: know what works. And as long as you read the
Speaker 3: Bible of You, then your productivity religion we'll stay sacred.
Speaker 2: You write a lot about happiness in general and just
Speaker 2: how to live you know, a life that is, you know,
Speaker 2: less stressful and more mindful, being more present, being more grateful,
Speaker 2: and being happier and those.
Speaker 1: Sorts of topics.
Speaker 2: What have been some of the tips and strategies that
Speaker 2: have impacted you the most in those areas?
Speaker 3: First, let me caveat by saying that I'm terrible about
Speaker 3: all these things. I just like it's it's funny because
Speaker 3: I'll meet people who read my blog and I just
Speaker 3: I feel bad because I think they expect me to
Speaker 3: be a guru or something, and like I am, I
Speaker 3: am not. I am looking for these answers for the
Speaker 3: same reasons other people are I. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: that's why I started. You don't build an Iron Man
Speaker 3: suit because you're invulnerable. You build an Iron Man's suit
Speaker 3: because you're not invulnerable. And you know, I started down
Speaker 3: this journey because I have trouble with these things. But
Speaker 3: I have to say that, you know, as cliche as
Speaker 3: it may sound, pausing, stopping whatever the heck crazy thing
Speaker 3: my circus brain is doing and just thinking about the
Speaker 3: good stuff in my life and feeling gratitude like it
Speaker 3: is an enormous perspective shift, and that I mean, your
Speaker 3: mileage may vary, but you know, the study show it's
Speaker 3: it is one of the single most powerful things you
Speaker 3: can do. And for me, that perspective shift is enormous
Speaker 3: because I am the type who will just go on
Speaker 3: to the no, this is good, this is done, great, Okay, good.
Speaker 3: We want to know about prize. That's nice. What's next?
Speaker 3: You know, like I won't really like appreciate like a
Speaker 3: lot of things. And and it's it's crazy, it's great,
Speaker 3: Like your gratitude is so powerful simply because we spend
Speaker 3: so much time trying to do things to be happier
Speaker 3: that oh, I have to get this. I have to
Speaker 3: accomplish that. I have to you know, you have to
Speaker 3: like reach out and to gratitude doesn't cost anything. It
Speaker 3: think costs a damn thing. You just have to All
Speaker 3: you have to do is change your perspective. And it's
Speaker 3: right there waiting. You just have to just put a
Speaker 3: different lens on it, you know. And just you know,
Speaker 3: I had some internet trouble today, you know, driving me
Speaker 3: crazy this morning. You know what, it could have been
Speaker 3: so much worse, you know, it just it resolved itself
Speaker 3: in the end. Didn't have to you know, it didn't
Speaker 3: have to go buy a new cable modem, didn't have
Speaker 3: to have a repairman. It's like it could have been
Speaker 3: so much worse. I am thankful that it did not.
Speaker 3: It was not worse. And just taking a moment to
Speaker 3: switch that perspective, it's all you have to do. It's free,
Speaker 3: it's right there waiting, and trust me, I forget to
Speaker 3: do it at least as much as anybody else does.
Speaker 2: But it really works, definitely, And your latest book is
Speaker 2: Cold plays well with others and it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I would expect nothing.
Speaker 2: Less, though, and it's hilarious, like all your writing. I'm
Speaker 2: so curious about, particularly business writers that use humor, because
Speaker 2: sadly it is rare, and I think it was a
Speaker 2: couple of years back, I got to speak to Naomi Bagdonis,
Speaker 2: who was one of the co authors of Humor Seriously,
Speaker 2: and it was really interesting hearing her process for making
Speaker 2: Humor Seriously funny, and that would have been like quite
Speaker 2: odd if it wasn't. But you're writing, like I'll laugh
Speaker 2: out loud when I'm reading your newsletter, which I've subscribed
Speaker 2: to for many years. How was your process for building
Speaker 2: so much humor into your writing? Like I want to know,
Speaker 2: does it come naturally or are there kind of tricks
Speaker 2: and formulas and things that you're consciously using.
Speaker 3: So happy you asked this question nobody, but I get
Speaker 3: a lot of compliments in the Humor, but nobody ever
Speaker 3: asked me about the process regarding it. And I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I was a screenwriter in Hollywood for ten
Speaker 3: years before I ever started blogging or stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and so like, you know, like writing comedy was something
Speaker 3: that I worked on assiduously for a long time. More specific,
Speaker 3: more specific to what you said, like, is this you know,
Speaker 3: like come to this coum naturally or is it like
Speaker 3: really hard? The answer is both. I mean, like very often,
Speaker 3: you know, very often, like my first perspective will be
Speaker 3: to like, rather than just stating something plainly or just
Speaker 3: like what did I see in the book here, I'll
Speaker 3: ask myself, like, Eric, what's your perspective on this? Because
Speaker 3: I know whatever crazy thing comes out of like my brain,
Speaker 3: like I'll just be okay, Like there is an aspect
Speaker 3: of me saying like, oh okay, like what should I
Speaker 3: not be saying now? And I will and it'll just
Speaker 3: be like thank God for everything. But there's a part
Speaker 3: of it that's natural. But there's also part of it
Speaker 3: where you know, I'm always looking for different perspectives. I'm
Speaker 3: always looking at, you know, just different ways of seeing things.
Speaker 3: And sometimes you know, jokes are funny lines and stuff
Speaker 3: will occur to me and I'll keep a list, you know,
Speaker 3: And I'll also keep like words, thoughts, ideas, metaphors, like
Speaker 3: funny things that occur to me where I'm like, oh
Speaker 3: that's a and I have, you know, much my process list.
Speaker 3: I also have my joke list and it is obscenely long,
Speaker 3: and I will just go through it and I'll just start.
Speaker 3: I keep a lot of lists like that, like for
Speaker 3: both of my books. I have a lot of illustrated
Speaker 3: stories there to like try and just you know, make
Speaker 3: clear on a more visceral level, like the what the
Speaker 3: research is conveying and those stories. You know. I'll just
Speaker 3: be reading articles, I'll be reading books. I'll come across
Speaker 3: something and make a note, and then when it's book time, Oh,
Speaker 3: get out the story list and let's go to town. And
Speaker 3: so there is an aspect that for all humor that
Speaker 3: is very spontaneous for me. And then there is a
Speaker 3: time where I will literally, like a sitcom writer, I
Speaker 3: will look at a blog poster, I'll look at a
Speaker 3: section in my book and I will look at it
Speaker 3: much like a like like a like a showrunner on
Speaker 3: a sitcom. I'll just be like, its two jokes per page.
Speaker 3: I don't know, we got to bring that up a
Speaker 3: little bit. Let's say, oh, three jokes per page? Doing
Speaker 3: good here? Like I will say, you know, not really there?
Speaker 3: Or is there another way to get this across, you know,
Speaker 3: or like just something where because I find it makes
Speaker 3: such a difference. It makes such a difference, Like if
Speaker 3: people wanted to just read completely straight up research, they
Speaker 3: could do that. It's out there. People don't want to.
Speaker 3: It's like, you want something accessible, you want something fun.
Speaker 3: And that's how I see. I don't have a p
Speaker 3: I got. I have a PhD from the University of nowhere.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like for me, it's I'm a translator.
Speaker 3: Like I take the stuff and I try and you know,
Speaker 3: add add a little bit of sugar and make the
Speaker 3: medicine go down, Like, try and make it accessible, try
Speaker 3: and make a fun, try and make it human. And
Speaker 3: how I keep trying.
Speaker 1: How do you know if it's going to land?
Speaker 2: I remember in your acknowledgement section, and your acknowledgement section
Speaker 2: is funny, my god, Like literally every part of the
Speaker 2: book is funny. There was this great quote and if
Speaker 2: I was an organized podcas host, I would actually have
Speaker 2: my iPad sitting next to me, which is where your
Speaker 2: book is stored that has the actual quote, but it's
Speaker 2: something like like oh no, you can, you do you
Speaker 2: have it in front of you. It's the one about
Speaker 2: like writing a joke and not knowing if it lands
Speaker 2: for two years.
Speaker 3: Writing a book is like telling a joke and having
Speaker 3: to wait two years to find out if it was funny.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I love that quote, and like for you,
Speaker 2: how do you know if it's going to land?
Speaker 1: If all these jokes are going to land?
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing is that my writing process is bonkers,
Speaker 3: like like and it's not bonkers because it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I am an artiste and I'm like, you know, no,
Speaker 3: I am like like a machine. Like most almost every
Speaker 3: rater I know does like a vombit draft where they
Speaker 3: just kind of like, you know, because most people are
Speaker 3: much more comfortable editing than they are creating. Most people
Speaker 3: are much more comfortable, you know, even if they like
Speaker 3: have to knock out this like very mediocre initial draft,
Speaker 3: but then they have something to hang things on to
Speaker 3: build from. They've got a foundation. Most people are much
Speaker 3: more comfortable with that. But I don't like that that
Speaker 3: like to me, I take I take more of an
Speaker 3: architecture perspective where you would never be like, hey, let's
Speaker 3: build a crappy building and then we'll knock it down
Speaker 3: and then we'll build a good one. Like you would
Speaker 3: never do that, you know. It's like what you do
Speaker 3: in architecture is you have blueprints and you rigorously to
Speaker 3: the millimeter, you know, just figure out, okay, this and
Speaker 3: the screws need to be this long. We need this
Speaker 3: for the you know, for the for the water line,
Speaker 3: the power line. And so my outlines are longer, often
Speaker 3: much longer than the book itself. And like I am constantly,
Speaker 3: like you know, outlining and outlining and outlining and so
Speaker 3: so my first drafts are not really first drafts. They're
Speaker 3: more like third or fourth drafts. You know, they're like
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the way they are, But it takes
Speaker 3: me forever, like months till there's pages, and then like
Speaker 3: in a handful of days, boom there's all these pages.
Speaker 3: And people are like, how long do they take to right,
Speaker 3: there's pages? And I'm like, oh, three days. No, it's
Speaker 3: not to me. Four months of outlining, you know. But
Speaker 3: like so for me, it's really about that outline and
Speaker 3: going this happens and this happens, and this happened, and
Speaker 3: I've gone over it so many times, you know, in
Speaker 3: that outlining prost because it's not this organic type of ty,
Speaker 3: type of ty, type of the type tip type, and
Speaker 3: then edit, edit it. Like for me, my my first
Speaker 3: drafts are very close to the finished product because I've
Speaker 3: spent so much time going to this goes first, Okay,
Speaker 3: this goes before that? No way, Okay, what's going to
Speaker 3: segue from this to this? It's for me, it's like
Speaker 3: Tetris and like, I take so long agonizing over that
Speaker 3: that it gives me a pretty good idea of what
Speaker 3: will work and what won't. And yeah, it's it's mostly
Speaker 3: in the outlining. And then I have a good friend
Speaker 3: who is far, far, far more risk averse than I am,
Speaker 3: and he will read it and he will say, oh
Speaker 3: my god, you can't say that. And fifty percent of
Speaker 3: the time I'll listen to him, and fifty percent of
Speaker 3: the time I'll go, well, hey, probably just lost another
Speaker 3: one hundred email subscribers.
Speaker 2: Well, we will be back soon with Eric talking about
Speaker 2: the strategies he uses to deliberately deepen relationships in his
Speaker 2: life and also how to get better at reading other people.
Speaker 2: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
Speaker 2: that you work. I write a short fortnightly newsletter that
Speaker 2: contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me
Speaker 2: work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving
Speaker 2: through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for
Speaker 2: that at Howiwork dot code. That's how I Work dot co. Now,
Speaker 2: your book is all about really connecting with others and
Speaker 2: friendships and relationships, and you know, there's a whole section
Speaker 2: on making friends, which is a topic as an adult
Speaker 2: that I'm really interested in because, like, it's easy to
Speaker 2: make friends, fairly easy when you're at school or you're
Speaker 2: at university, and maybe in the work place, but you
Speaker 2: know a lot of us don't even work in an
Speaker 2: office now. So I'd love to know how you've applied
Speaker 2: what you learnt in researching and writing your latest book
Speaker 2: around making friends as an adult.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was funny because the well morbid funny,
Speaker 3: I guess. But this deal from my book closed February
Speaker 3: twenty eighth, twenty twenty and two weeks after the deal
Speaker 3: from my book closed, like California where I live completely lockdown,
Speaker 3: and so I had already done the proposal. I was
Speaker 3: set on reading a walk about relationships. But two weeks
Speaker 3: after I closed the deal was around to go, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, it took on an entirely new meaning.
Speaker 3: It was just like, oh, this is the next thing. Next,
Speaker 3: it was the next book I'm writing about. It's like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, people are going to need this. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know I need this, My friends know I need this,
Speaker 3: my ex girlfriends know I need this. Uh, but like
Speaker 3: you know, I mean I'm like, wow, people are really
Speaker 3: going to need this. And so like it became this
Speaker 3: really important thing to me. And you know, making friends
Speaker 3: when you're an adult is really hard, and we don't
Speaker 3: like to talk about it, you know, we I think
Speaker 3: we don't like to discuss just how difficult. Like you said,
Speaker 3: like when you're a kid, it's kind of default. You know,
Speaker 3: you start school and it's like hey, there you are,
Speaker 3: and you know, work to a degree. But as an adult,
Speaker 3: you know, as I've write in the book, it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, usually it's around people when people get married.
Speaker 3: Usually they get married, you gather all your friends together
Speaker 3: and they prompably never see them again. You know. It's
Speaker 3: like that's really tricky and it's really tough.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: For me, personally, I'm lucky that I have some really,
Speaker 3: some really good friends, and I have not given that.
Speaker 3: I was, you know, crazed writing a book and now
Speaker 3: you know, crazy promoting a book. What's really been good
Speaker 3: for me is that this has given me like kind
Speaker 3: of a natural, organic reason to start reaching out to
Speaker 3: a lot of people, you know, And so I was
Speaker 3: going to have to contact people anyway. And now I
Speaker 3: maybe I'm not making as many new friends. But for me,
Speaker 3: it's about there are some relationships that went dormant. There's
Speaker 3: some people I didn't connect with during the pandemic, and
Speaker 3: there's some great friendships that I want to sustain. And
Speaker 3: I've been putting a lot of energy into that because
Speaker 3: in the in the book, you know, I do mention,
Speaker 3: you know, like the Dale Carnegie stuff about like making
Speaker 3: new friends. But you know, for me, it's really about
Speaker 3: deepening friendships. It's about getting those friends that really matter.
Speaker 3: As Aristotle called friends, he said that they were another self.
Speaker 3: And you know, after two thousand years, science got around
Speaker 3: to proving him right. You know, It's that's what I'm missing,
Speaker 3: you know, I I'm I'm not necessarily in the market
Speaker 3: for new acquaintances, but like having strong, reliable friends I
Speaker 3: can trust, you know, I don't know a lot of
Speaker 3: other things. The past few years, including the pandemic, have
Speaker 3: told me how important it is to just have those deep,
Speaker 3: meaningful relationships. And that's that's what I find myself really
Speaker 3: working on.
Speaker 2: What strategies have you used to deliberately help deepen relationships?
Speaker 3: I mean, the two key ones I talk about in
Speaker 3: the book, like really do the trick for me? And
Speaker 3: you know, because Dale Carnegie talks about the easy stuff.
Speaker 3: That's why we like the book because his stuff is
Speaker 3: easy to do, but it's really only good for the
Speaker 3: beginning of relationships. To deepen relationships, we need to send
Speaker 3: what economics refers to as costly signals, you know, and
Speaker 3: they're costly because they you know, by being costly, they're
Speaker 3: hard to replicate that and that tells you that they're meaningful.
Speaker 3: And those two costly signals when it comes to friendship
Speaker 3: are time and vulnerability. You know, time is costly because
Speaker 3: it's scarce. You know, if I if I talk to
Speaker 3: someone for an hour every day, I can only do
Speaker 3: that for twenty four people. End a story the end,
Speaker 3: that's it, thank you for calling. You know, they're say
Speaker 3: I do need to sleep, So like that's a costly
Speaker 3: signal when you routinely give people your time. And second
Speaker 3: is vulnerability is you know, the quickest way that we
Speaker 3: can build trust with others is to show them our
Speaker 3: own trust. And if we tell people something that is personal,
Speaker 3: something that scares us, something that might make us look bad,
Speaker 3: if we trust somebody with that, you know, that says
Speaker 3: I'm trusting you, and most likely, very often good friends
Speaker 3: will reciprocate. And that's how you deepen friendships. That's what
Speaker 3: Arthur Aaron, It's Donybrook University found. There's research by Jeff
Speaker 3: Hall that shows just how long it takes dozens or
Speaker 3: hundreds of hours to build good friendships. But Arthur Aron
Speaker 3: was able to make people feel like lifelong friends in
Speaker 3: forty five minutes. And he did it by having people
Speaker 3: be vulnerable, by having people open up, say the things
Speaker 3: that are scary, say the things they're feeling. And we've
Speaker 3: got a good reason to now all been through some scary,
Speaker 3: difficult emotional stuff with the pandemic, so we should we
Speaker 3: should take this this opportunity to do it and that's
Speaker 3: what I've been doing, is I've been I've been more. Hey,
Speaker 3: I got my five hour countdown for my writing, you know,
Speaker 3: and I try to make sure to make time for
Speaker 3: my friends, you know, in the same in the same way,
Speaker 3: like evenings are set aside in you know, for that
Speaker 3: vulnerability I as I right about in the book, I
Speaker 3: now follow the scary rule. Uh, if it's scary, I
Speaker 3: say it. And uh, you know, I do, say, be incremental,
Speaker 3: don't confess any murders at Christmas dinner. But like it's
Speaker 3: it's you know, be incremental. But but uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I've I've I've I've played the distant, tough guy for
Speaker 3: many years and frankly, that didn't work out too well
Speaker 3: for me. So, you know, opening up and being a
Speaker 3: little more honest about what I'm dealing with. I find
Speaker 3: it's a good litmus test. I find it's a really
Speaker 3: good litmus test because if people react well to it,
Speaker 3: they're probably a good friend. Then if they don't react
Speaker 3: well to it, well, I just learned something.
Speaker 2: You talk about quite quite a lot of research in
Speaker 2: the book around how people are surprisingly bad at reading
Speaker 2: other people. And I'm curious, after knowing all that research
Speaker 2: and writing about it in the book, How have you
Speaker 2: become better?
Speaker 1: I guess reading other people, knowing what's going on in
Speaker 1: their minds.
Speaker 3: Well, we're doing a podcast right now, and you know,
Speaker 3: one of the big big things I point out there
Speaker 3: is that deliberately attempting to read body language is you know,
Speaker 3: it's false. God really doesn't work out that well. But
Speaker 3: the voice is very telling. You know, if you can
Speaker 3: hear someone but you can't see them, empathic accuracy only
Speaker 3: drops off about four percent. But if you can see
Speaker 3: someone you can't hear them, empathic accuracy drops off fifty
Speaker 3: four percent. So the voice is really what's telling us versus, Oh,
Speaker 3: we moved his eyebrow. That means he's nervous. It's like no, no,
Speaker 3: like it's all of that. You know, you never know
Speaker 3: if somebody's shivering because they're nervous, because they're cold, like,
Speaker 3: you can't be sure, and especially with strangers, we don't
Speaker 3: have a baseline. You know, it's much more about the voice,
Speaker 3: and it's much more about you know, outside influences, bringing
Speaker 3: other people into the mix, putting people in new environments,
Speaker 3: you know, saying provocative things like those are the things
Speaker 3: that really gives us because our reading ability for others,
Speaker 3: nobody's going to be Sherlock Holmes. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: way too hard to passively read others. But what we
Speaker 3: can do is strategically make others more readable. What we
Speaker 3: can do as well, is we can increase motivation. You know,
Speaker 3: if we're focused, if we see some gainer reward, people
Speaker 3: are much better at reading others on a first date
Speaker 3: because again, there's something to gain. So if we can
Speaker 3: put ourselves in that mindset of like, you know, having
Speaker 3: something to gain or lose, get focused, that can help.
Speaker 3: But in the end, the game is really one by
Speaker 3: making others more readable, not by trying to improve our
Speaker 3: very poor reading skills.
Speaker 2: Now, this is probably like asking you to choose your
Speaker 2: favorite child.
Speaker 1: But are there like one.
Speaker 2: Or two kind of top things that you learned in
Speaker 2: the book that have really changed you know, how you see,
Speaker 2: or how you think about or how you do you know,
Speaker 2: relationships and human connection.
Speaker 3: Now, the one thing you know that that was very
Speaker 3: insightful to me and I think very useful to other
Speaker 3: people coming out of the pandemic is that there was
Speaker 3: there's work I talk about by fail Bertie, who's a
Speaker 3: historian at the University of York, and she basically said
Speaker 3: that before the nineteenth century, loneliness, both as a topical
Speaker 3: word and pretty much an experience, pretty much didn't exist.
Speaker 3: Now that sounds categorically and scene, but she goes through
Speaker 3: and you can find the word lonely in books, but
Speaker 3: what it means is something that is by itself. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have the negative emotional connotation that we add to it.
Speaker 3: And it was only in the nineteenth century when we
Speaker 3: had the rise of individualism, a lot of isms, you know, capitalism, existentialism,
Speaker 3: all these you know, much more individualistic society because before
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, people felt like they were a part
Speaker 3: of a religion, they're part of a nation, part of
Speaker 3: a tribe, part of a family, part of a group.
Speaker 3: Like we were very much in meshed and embedded, you know,
Speaker 3: in these groups. And it was just interesting because it
Speaker 3: tied in with a lot of very modern research on
Speaker 3: loneliness where John Cacioppo, who's the leading leading researcher on loneliness,
Speaker 3: he found that lonely people don't spend any less time
Speaker 3: with other people than non lonely people do. Again, another
Speaker 3: thing that sounds categorically insane. Yet we've all felt lonely
Speaker 3: in a crowd, and that tells you right there that
Speaker 3: just having people like having people around you is great.
Speaker 3: But just having people around you, that's not enough to
Speaker 3: cure loneliness. You can still feel lonely in a crowd,
Speaker 3: and that's because loneliness is a subjective experience. Loneliness is
Speaker 3: how you. Loneliness is not mere isolation, because solitude, solitude
Speaker 3: is being alone. In solitude we regard as a positive. Solitude,
Speaker 3: you know, is really strongly tied with creativity, while loneliness
Speaker 3: is correlated with pretty much every negative health metric you
Speaker 3: can imagine. Solitude. According to VIVEC. Murthy, the Surgeon General
Speaker 3: of the United States, solitude is you know, a very
Speaker 3: very positive for you. So being alone it's not about
Speaker 3: being alone. Loneliness is how you feel about your relationships.
Speaker 3: And if you feel good about your relationships, then being
Speaker 3: by yourself is solitude, And if you feel negative or
Speaker 3: bad or concerned about your relationships, then being alone is loneliness.
Speaker 3: And the fact that that difference is a mere perspective shift,
Speaker 3: and it can be a big one to change if
Speaker 3: or harmed by it. But that it's a perspective shift
Speaker 3: that is really changed something for me because if I
Speaker 3: start to feel lonely, you know, sure I can spend
Speaker 3: more time with other people, but to me, that's a
Speaker 3: canary in the coal mine. To me, that makes me say, Okay,
Speaker 3: how am I feeling about my relationships and what do
Speaker 3: I need to do to address that? How can I
Speaker 3: change that feeling. Sure I can spend more time with
Speaker 3: other people, but again the lonely in the crowd issue,
Speaker 3: So I need to make sure that I feel I'm
Speaker 3: a part of something, not be a part of something
Speaker 3: on paper, not letter of the law, spirit of law.
Speaker 3: Like what do I have to do? What do I
Speaker 3: have to contribute? What do I have to add to? How?
Speaker 3: Where can I feel responsible? Where can I feel necessary?
Speaker 3: Where can I feel that like you know, I'm adding
Speaker 3: something and that if I wasn't there, people would miss
Speaker 3: me and people would miss my contribution. How can I
Speaker 3: add to that to that group, that community. So that's
Speaker 3: been a really powerful insight for me and how I
Speaker 3: think about my relationships is whether I feel solitude or loneliness,
Speaker 3: especially being a very introverted guy. That has been a
Speaker 3: really powerful insight from the book in terms of what
Speaker 3: next steps I take relationship wise.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: I found that very powerful in the book when when
Speaker 2: I read that as well, also being someone that is
Speaker 2: quite introverted. Now, Eric, I don't know where time is gone,
Speaker 2: but it has gone. And I would love to note
Speaker 2: for people that want to connect with you and read
Speaker 2: your brilliant, brilliant newsletter which I just whole whole, wholeheartedly recommend.
Speaker 2: I've been subscribing for years and I love it, and
Speaker 2: also get their hands on plays well with others?
Speaker 3: How do they do that plays well with others? Is
Speaker 3: available on Amazon and what a Barnes Noble whatever bookseller
Speaker 3: should be out there. My first book is Parking Up
Speaker 3: Throwing Tree. My website has a very difficult to pronounce URL.
Speaker 3: It's Japanese. It's a Japanese inside joke. I wasn't exact
Speaker 3: thinking like good marketing when I came up with the
Speaker 3: name for my r L not. I didn't expect it
Speaker 3: to become what it did. Then maybe I would have
Speaker 3: would have given that. Anyway, you can either google my name,
Speaker 3: Eric Barker, or if you go to Eric Barker dot
Speaker 3: org E R I C B R KR dot org.
Speaker 3: That will redirect you to my blog with its very
Speaker 3: unique r L.
Speaker 1: We will link to all that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Eric, thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the
Speaker 2: time to have a chat. I had high expectations, even
Speaker 2: though you told me to have very low expectations. You've
Speaker 2: exceeded lower expectations and you've acceited my high expectations.
Speaker 1: So it's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 2: Please keep writing more and more things that make me
Speaker 2: laugh and make me smarter and have a more awesome life.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you. This has been great.
Speaker 2: I loved Eric's five our time as strategy. That really
Speaker 2: was the thing that stuck with me from this interview.
Speaker 2: It's definitely something that I'm planning on trying this week
Speaker 2: in my own life, partly as an experiment to see
Speaker 2: how much deep work I actually get done in a day,
Speaker 2: but also to be disciplined in stopping it when I'm
Speaker 2: doing shallow or less valuable work. Now, if you are
Speaker 2: not a subscriber or follower of how I work, now
Speaker 2: might be the time to hit that button, because next
Speaker 2: week I have got Matt Jones, who is the co
Speaker 2: founder of four Pillars Gin, which perhaps you've sampled, talking
Speaker 2: about how he and his two other co founders created
Speaker 2: what is thought to be the best gin in the
Speaker 2: world in less than a decade. How I Work is
Speaker 2: produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 2: The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan, and thank
Speaker 2: you to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix for
Speaker 2: every episode and makes everything sound so much better than
Speaker 2: it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.