Good Life Project - Eric Barker: What If Everything You Knew About Success Was Wrong?

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

What if most of what we've been taught about success was wrong?That's the question we're asking today's guest, Eric Barker. A former Hollywood screen-writer turned blogger, he shares science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life with his more than 300,000 subscribers. Barker's content is also syndicated by Time Magazine, The Week, and Business Insider and he has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Financial Times. His first book "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" is a Wall Street Journal bestseller.Story: Eric dives deep into the psychology of how we act in the world, often focusing on the paradoxes. The weird things we do and bringing research to illuminate why we do, how we do it. and trying to give us good wisdom to how we live our lives. Big idea: His deep fascination with human psychology grew a pretty giant global platform.You’d never guess: He posted a Facebook ad in 2009 when he graduated school to get a job. He also has an undergrad in Philosophy, a degree Entertainment Production and an MBA in Marketing.Current passion project: Reading up on The Dark Triad, the three personality characteristics that are nefarious, or evil: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.Rockstar Sponsors: Get paid online, on-time with Freshbooks! Today's show is supported by FreshBooks, cloud accounting software that makes it insanely easy for freelancers and professionals to get paid online, track expenses and do more of what you love. Get your 1-month free trial, no credit card required, at FreshBooks.com/goodlife (enter The Good Life Project in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section).I'm joining Honest Tea in celebrating the lighthearted ways we're less than perfect through the #RefreshinglyHonest Project. To hear my #RefreshinglyHonest moment, check out this week's episode. Are you #RefreshinglyHonest? Share the fun and funny ways you're less than perfect on social media and tag #RefreshinglyHonest. Want more honesty? You can learn more by visiting honesttea.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the most proven repeatedly things in personality research is the connection between extroversion and subjective well-being, which is a fancy way of saying extroverts are happier. And in fact, there's one study that if you get introverts to act like extroverts, they're happy. My guest today is Eric Barker. Now, if you try and look up information about Eric online, you're not going to find a whole lot except for one thing. He writes a massively, massively popular blog called Barking Up the Wrong Tree. And he has a book out now by the same name where he dives deep into the psychology of how we act in the world,

often focusing on a lot of paradoxes, the weird things that we do and bringing research to illuminate why we do how we do it and trying to give us some good wisdom to how we live our lives. When I was prepping for this conversation, I was fascinated by the fact that I could barely find anything about Eric, the man, anywhere. So we spent some time kind of deconstructing who he was and what got him to the place where his deep fascination with human psychology grew a pretty giant global platform, which led to a book and some really interesting and unexpected stops along the way. Excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project.

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Good to be hanging out. I've been reading you for a long time now, which I'm sure you get a lot. So as I was sort of saying, okay, so let me learn a little bit more about Eric since we're going to be hanging out. I feel like I know what you're working on. I started doing a bit more research on you, the man, and I'm like is is he in witness protection or something i got your linkedin page and it's like okay so there's not really anything here then i'm searching on the web and then i find like a bizarre question on quora about like who is eric barker with two answers only two answers and one of them being that um you're the dude who in 2009 graduated school and posted a Facebook ad to get a job.

Yeah, it was a crazy little experiment I had read about. And it was funny. It was one of the first things I did with social media where I was playing around with it because I realized, oh, wow, you can do ad targeting. And it was fun to play with. I was playing around with it because I realized, oh, wow, you can do like ad targeting and you could like this. And it was fun to play with. And frankly, that was probably like March of 2009. And then- Which was-

It was like months before I started the blog. I started the blog like literally four months later. Yeah. And- And zooming the lens out, one of the worst moments in the history of the economy. Oh, yeah. And you're coming out of school. Yeah. It was just, Oh no. It's just like, you're, you're like, you can see the car headed towards the brick wall. And you know, and so that was one of my first, you know, and it got all this press coverage and stuff. And like, and I was

just like, wow. So, cause I didn't know anything about like really about social media. And then when I put the blog together that summer while unemployed and then i kept doing it and um and then uh tyler cowan a marginal revolution started like you know really recommending my stuff and it started accelerating and that was that was really how it started that was my first phrase yeah that's amazing all right i want to take a bigger step back though um because you also, you have this really interesting, it seems like you deep dive into topics and spend chunks of time. You're in LA right now. Undergrad in philosophy. What was that about? It was funny because I knee jerk picked it. And when I was filling the form out i was there with actually

one of my professors and and it's like why did you pick philosophy and i just kind of it just just knee-jerk i was like well if i don't understand that i don't understand anything and just kind of fundamental questions and and it's funny because ever since then people will be like wait so you have an undergrad in philosophy you have a degree and in like entertainment production and then you have another master's and you have a degree and in like entertainment production and then you have another master's and you have an mba in marketing it's like how do those three line up and i'm like well you've never read my blog i guess have you and i mean because those that is what i think i try to think about big questions i try to make it entertaining and you know you gotta gotta get the

word out so it's funny i've i've ended up ended up in an odd way sort of using all the the education i've had yeah which also makes me really curious like who you are as a kid were you like the deep thinking like entertainer because i mean from the way that i've heard you describe yourself and it kind of comes through in your the depth of the way that you write it doesn't seem like you were that kid well it seems like you were probably very much in your head but maybe i'm wrong oh no no no i was very much in your head, but maybe I'm wrong. Oh, no, no, no. I was very much in my head. I was a big reader, always been pretty introverted. And, you know, I was just very much in my head. I don't think I've left my head. I think I'm still in there.

Yeah. Did you grow up in Southern California also? No. I was born in Philly. I was raised in South Jersey, and then I went to college in Philly. Ah, all right. So, Philosopher King as an undergrad, which seems to suit you well. Entertainment, though. Yeah, after I graduated college, I spent a decade in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

And I wrote for Disney, I wrote for Fox. I had a couple really bad movies produced. And it was a lot of fun. It was great, but it's like, you know, really up and down and, you know, and kind of crazy. But then again, blogging is not much different, so maybe I can't. Yeah, but I'm curious. I mean, what kept you in it for that long? Because you spent a serious chunk of time doing it. I mean, believe me, if I wouldn't have been able to like make a living or keep going i definitely would have left but it was like you know i always managed to to kind of find the next thing and you know and it was it was exciting it was a fun industry to be

to be involved in but you know it's just it's you're you're fighting man it's in features it's all freelance and you know and i i love writing i love being involved in creative projects but uh basically you spend so much more time looking for work than working and that's that's just not and hollywood's such a kind of closed ecosystem like kind of they just do its own thing whereas you know blogging and even you know writing books uh you know it's much more flexible you kind of you write what you want. People come to the site. Great.

If they don't, okay. Better change something. But you're not beholden to a handful of studios. Yeah. It seems like it's much easier to sort of skip past the gatekeeper in the world that we live in than in the sort of big screen world. Although maybe that's changing to a certain extent. I mean, we're seeing indie films get crowdfunded and stuff like that. Yeah. seeing you know like indie films get crowdfunded and stuff like that so yeah i mean you're you're you're seeing i mean and now with you know i mean you're seeing definitely seeing a proliferation

of options because you know stuff on youtube netflix it's there's there's more options than there than there have ever been yeah it seems like a lot of the great writing is going to tv these days too uh no doubt i mean you know movies are what we used to call summer movies are now pretty much all movies and and budgets have gotten you know through the are what we used to call summer movies are now pretty much all movies and budgets have gotten through the roof and just to do it and trying to please a worldwide audience. And, you know, it's that versus, yeah, the really good stuff is on top. Yeah. And then you hear what was I reading recently? I'm sure you saw this also.

Something like Amazon has like a six billion dollar like media production budget. Absolutely. I mean, Netflix amazon and hbo now are just you know i mean and and they're all looking at quality content yeah it's like they're doing the deep character studies and they're really interesting well i mean you know the big hollywood studios don't make those movies anymore i mean they're kind of happy to almost happy to seed that territory you know you you take the oscars we'll we'll we'll take the capes yeah but on the i mean on the big hand on the big hand on the one that needs coffee on the other hand it's like

they're all going for like the formula that they really feel like it's going to hit like the big thing out of the park but it's also the thing that makes you i mean those movies cost a boatload of money to produce so yeah you know maybe you have a higher likelihood of it you know like box officing well but also if it doesn't you're busted well i mean it's yeah it's there it's kind of the venture capital model yeah you know where you just you expect seven to fail two to break even and one to one to be this huge blockbuster hit but you know you're just it's just the the numbers are kind of staggering but then again now all all the major studios are owned by conglomerates. So it's not like, you know. Everything's different.

Yeah. And it's like you look at, you know, so many of the properties are big IPs where there's merchandising. The movie isn't even – the movie is basically an ad for something else you're really selling. Yeah. No, it is interesting the way that whole thing has changed, especially if you're a writer, which you are. And like you care deeply about language, about story, about character. But it's interesting. So do you feel like that's the time, that's the place where the writing side really bit you?

I mean, it's easy to mock screenwriting because we all see so many bad movies. But the truth is that you you learn a lot from screenwriting simply because mostly because it's the one form of writing that takes place in real time. So you can have a 700 page book and you can and the reader can easily pick it up and read 10 pages a night for forever versus a movie you're probably going to watch it in one sitting you know and and it has to be written to be watched in one sitting so you're very conscious of time and there's a lot of white on that page you don't have a lot to work with uh you know you so economy and and keeping pacing becomes really important so there's there's a lot of valuable skills that get developed in terms of studying screenwriting. It was interesting for me to go from screenwriting

to then blogging, which is a different medium. And then I had to basically teach myself. This is my first book. I had to teach myself, how do you write a book? I've never written a book before. So there were certain things that I could take from screenwriting. And I was like, oh, those muscles are really developed.

And there are other things where I'm like, whoa, I've never done this before and i need to i need to pick this up it was almost i felt like an athlete switching sports yeah where you're conditioned but but there are certain skills that translate well and others that don't translate at all yeah but and at the same time i mean because i'm assuming what a lot of what you're working on was uh it it wasn't wasn't documentary style stuff. This was, you know, like the fiction side of things, which means that you really have to understand pacing and beats and you have to understand how to keep people moving and keep people engaged. Like every 90 seconds,

like there has to be something dropped, which, which is interesting because then you get to take that into nonfiction writing, which is, I would imagine that's one of the things that was really able to help you distinguish yourself earlier is understanding the psychology of needing to keep people consistently moving deeper and deeper and deeper into what you're writing. Absolutely. I mean, being able to be able to grab attention, grab it early, uh, to turn story,

to, to, to utilize, to, to deliberately set expectations, knowing you're counting on reversing them. You know, there's a lot of things that a lot of tools you learn there that you can, you can implement in the nonfiction, but also in, in the book, I do tell stories. So that's some place where it's just like, you know, for, for me, at least throwing the fish into the water. It's like, okay, that's, I don't know. I gotta, now I gotta go back to talking about science studies again. Ah, is there fiction in you is there like a novel or something in you i mean that's it's interesting because i've never really i never really thought about it that would that would be another thing where i'd kind of have to to to study it i wouldn't know

that was one of the funny one of the first criticisms that my editor had about the early draft of my book. She was like, she's like, it's really good. You got lots of information, but, you know, you have space. You can slow down. Because my pacing was so move, move, move, move, move. And she's like, you can give it a paragraph or two. It's okay. But the screenwriting had taught me.

It's like, you know, it's just a shot can't last longer than this many seconds. You got to keep it moving. Don't let them get bored. And I was like, you know, it's just a shot can't last longer than this many seconds. You got to keep it moving. Don't let them get bored. And I was like, all right, you can, you can relax. You relax.

Yeah. So interesting. Right. It also seems like it's like you got really focused on paradox. Like what you just said before, you know, this is funny. Like a bunch of years ago,

I sat down with Robert McKee, like a famous story. Right. And I remember a line he's, he's like, I'll butcher it. But he essentially told line, he's like, I'll butcher it, but he essentially told me, he's like, you know, the story exists between

expectation and reality. That's where the story is. If you're constantly made expectation, there's no story. And therein also very often is where the paradox exists. And which is, it seems like so much of your writing over eight years on your blog and in

this book you know for sure um it's all driven by paradox like exploring paradox oh and i mean that's that's how i structured the book where each each chapter i take one of the maxims of success and i look at both sides i i don't i don't like when it's like here's the one answer and it's always true and never wrong and it's like no you know it's like there are two sides of this story and both sides kind of in the right context or at the right time do have advantages. There's reasons why, but we can kind of come to probably a pretty good answer or pretty good approximation. But to almost I almost treat it like a like a legal battle in a way between two sides. And and I think that is that it's it's not this simple one size fits all one skeleton key so no i'm like paradoxes is always intriguing yeah

because it's in it so i have a past life as a lawyer okay so it was interesting for me to to both see there's a really interesting pattern that actually comes out of legal writing that you use in your blog post and your book really Really? Yeah. Which is that, and this is funny because I was taught this my first year, like the classic 1L year in law school, right? And they teach you that the shorthand is IRAC, which is issue, rule, application, application, conclusion. So identify the issue, like identify the rule or rules or a question, and then like application, application, argue both sides back and forth and then conclude.

And that's fundamentally what you do in your blog. And it's also what you do in your book, but like on a macro scale on your chapters, which is really interesting because it gives you this sort of full circle experience. And then let's use zoom the lens out and say, okay, so like, how do I, like, what would I conclude? You know, it's almost like you kind

of want to, you know, you get to, to, to drop yourself into the end of it. I'm going to be thinking about this for weeks now. You just, you're just kind of, no, this is what you're doing. Like, oh my God, you're right. Like that's, wow. I, that's fascinating. It just gave me tremendous insight into what I've been doing. I don't, it's really interesting because it is like presenting sort of like a legal brief to a certain extent, or this is, and I remember this because I memorized that formula and I used that on everything that I did in law school and it actually allowed me to do well. All right. Sweet. All right. So, so 2009, the country's disastrous. The economy is crumbling. You graduate school.

You're looking for a job. And you do this really kind of fun, interesting, different thing on Facebook. That ends up not really panning out. And in the interim, like, or during this whole thing, you start blogging and asking all these big questions. What was your intention at that moment in blogging? I mean, at first I was looking for kind of like interesting insights. Basically, I was combing through academic journals, and I was just looking for what was really interesting.

And what I started to find that really interested me was, you know, questions we'd always kind of all asked ourselves about like life, about how things work, and, you know, from all over the place in terms of, you know, relationships, negotiation, happiness, whatever. And I started seeing that like, uh, there's this great quote from William Gibson. I love where he said, the future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. And I started to see that where I'm like, no, like a lot of these things we wonder about have been answered in these like dusty academic journals. It's just not accessible to people. And I started looking, I'm going'm going oh my god like either proving the kind

of little you know uh things we'd always suspected or disproving things and that's what i really started kind of focusing on was just i i didn't want to write about or look at anything that you couldn't use where it's kind of like oh hey here's here's here's something about your genetics you know you can't change that you're doomed you. Versus looking at things we could use to kind of leverage and just make our lives better. Yeah. Was your intention more, I want to answer these questions personally, or was it, this is interesting for me, I wonder if it's interesting for others, and could I build something more substantial around it? I mean, i wasn't even at first i was just like hey i'm finding this stuff and why don't i put it out there maybe other people find it

interesting and then luckily they did but at first i was just kind of like cutting and pasting like abstracts and then like writing a sentence i wasn't even actually really writing i was just like here's here's here's an abstract and here's an english translation one sentence and if you if you, especially if you look at your earlier work, it's like, there's a ton of eggs. I was doing like five, I was doing like five a day. Were you really? I started out, I just, I would just do like five abstracts a day, maybe a one line or I'd highlight just, oh, Hey, this was, this was the thing. And, and then eventually that evolved into like one or one post where i'd kind of cobble together a few things to show a trend or prove a point and uh and then eventually it turned into one one a week kind of more epic topic yeah like okay here we're gonna go down

the rabbit hole on this one and uh and and i would look at I would go back and comb through the posts I'd done. I'd read a couple books on it, and I would try to just find some overarching idea that I could really explore within that. And then it became really challenging. Yeah, because also you start to develop at some point a massive body of stuff, of knowledge, of excerpts of yeah how do you i mean it's funny there's interesting similarities between you and uh maria popova like from brain papers in terms of you know there it goes at some point from curating and sharing to also your own work starts to become a part of this your own voice your own integration your own synthesis so it's not just hey here's something interesting. So it's not just,

Hey, here's something interesting I found. It's like, you're starting to interpret and share and piece things together in a way where like that has additional value too. And that was the craziest thing for me. It was the, because I started out just kind of cutting and pasting these abstracts and

like 2009, I didn't actually start like writing anything until like 2012. And what I realized was that like once i was kind of like oh yeah that's what i need to be doing i was scared and it was so great what was scary i i i don't i don't know i think i think it was just and i'd spent you know a decade you know as a screenwriter and then all of a sudden i'm like okay well now i need to and it's like i was like oh geez how am i gonna approach this and you know because it was this whole different thing and it was immediate you know

it's like screenwriting it's like you write something you sell it it doesn't necessarily it very rarely does it make the screen you know and then that's and but this is kind of like it's gonna be out there and like everybody's gonna see it and and I realized I was scared. But I just kind of started small. And I just this. And then more and more I just kind of like started realizing like where's the best place for me to let the work show? Where's the best place for me to use my voice? And that just kind of evolved. But it was –

It's like exposure therapy. Oh, exactly. I was not only talking's like exposure therapy. Oh, exactly. I was not only talking about cognitive behavioral therapy, I was engaging in it at the same exact time. I was kind of like – Breathing deeply as I'm writing this. We're going to put you in the same room as the snake. It's okay. He can't touch you.

Reach towards the – exactly. I mean, it's interesting also because right around that time, this was a time where a lot of sort of popular writers were going deeply down the interpreting science rabbit hole and coming out with books yeah you know Gladwell was you know certainly started before that but then like right around that time a bunch of other people started sort of doing similar work in book form and they were taking hits for it yeah yeah which makes for a nervous environment when you don't come out of a background of hard science, but you're writing in some way trying to share that science with a popular audience.

Oh, I mean, I think it's, it's, I remember that whole debate and I think to some degree, I think it's still going on, but it's, it's kind of like,

but I think the, you know, the best, the best researchers aren't necessarily the best popular writers. Just like, you I think the, you know, the best, the best researchers aren't necessarily the best popular writers, just like, you know, um, the best football coaches aren't necessarily the best football players, you know what I mean? They're, they're different roles in a way, you know, the people who, uh, the, the news anchors are not necessarily the journalists are actually doing the researching. And I think, I think we like to blur those lines, but,

you know, there, there is a distinction between you know writing writing popular mainstream books and and actually doing academic research and so i don't know i think i think there's it's worthy of discussion but i i think i would think much ado was made of it yeah i mean it i think it's really interesting and and i get what the i get what the hardcore science side is saying is that you know to a extent, some of the work gets bastardized or dropped or there are nuances that don't get passed through. Absolutely. I think, you know, in some cases they've said people have completely misunderstood and misrepresented the work. Yeah.

And I get that. Yeah. And at the same time, you know, I think my sense is a lot of researchers do the work because they're wired to want to do the work. They just, they have a burning question they want to answer it that's what lights them up and that's awesome because we all benefit from that but we don't all benefit from that unless and until the wisdom of that work yeah you know like transcends the walls of academia and moves into some level of popular impact yeah you know or else it's just you know like cognitive you know it's it's personal inquiry which is deeply satisfying for them but you know if they're

discovering something which can have a profound impact on the human condition yeah you know to me the question has always been well let's get it out there and if you know if you need to in some way you know if not all of it gets out there but if it gets out there. And if you need to in some way, if not all of it gets out there, but if it gets out there, if the heartbeat of it gets out there in a way that allows people to interact with it and play with it and have it affect them in some way, I agree with you.

I'm all for that. And I think it's also, it's worth potentially making some mistakes and having some missteps along the way in the name of creating that conduit. No, I mean, you know, look at other areas of science. I mean, like, you know, medicine. I mean, you know, not every drug helps every person, but a doctor will put it out there.

We'll try it if it seems safe and certain. So, you know, we need to be balanced about it. I mean, I understand why you don't want headlines that completely, like you said, bastardize the science. But, you know, it's like, I guess in general, where's the bigger danger? In hiding this valuable information from people or in putting it out there and maybe it gets distorted? I think that's kind of the question we might want to ask. And also, you know, in the academic world, in the science world, there's a ton of siloing that goes on. And I wonder sometimes when you have someone like you, who's not focused in one specific area, but you're voraciously reading across a broad spectrum

of sort of like domain areas of domain expertise, it creates the opportunity to say, well, this lab is working on this, this lab is working on this, this lab is working on this, this lab is working on this. And you can start to see patterns, you know, cross domain patterns that when you're very siloed, you know, you're just not focused on the work of others. So you're, we're completely different fields that may in some way have stumbled upon the answer to your question. That's to me, that's, what's what's so fascinating. Even to take it to the extreme of like the stories I tell in the book, where it's like just finding those principles or those ideas illustrated in real life. Or like you said, to look in different industries, different areas, and you're just seeing these

same things, these fractal-like patterns in every different, you know, arena. You know, and to me, that's why, you know, that's why it's interesting for me to do interviews as well. When I interview, then I can put it in their voice. It's like, you want to talk about the nuance? You want to talk about the exact statistical probability? Great, go ahead. You can say it.

I'll use your words as is. But to look for those trends and patterns, I think that's where it's really valuable because then we can start to say, hey, maybe this is a broader idea and it's not just this isolated thing. And we can pull it out of that silo and say, is this something we need to look around for? Yeah, I love that. There's so much value in that to me.

Just get more people interacting with it. I mean, there's a lot of citizen science going on these days that is really fascinating to me that, you know, it's not peer reviewed, it's not double blind, it's not, you know, it's not, you know, publishable in any way, shape or form yet. You're getting really interesting data from mass participation and sharing. Oh, I mean, and you know, it's like with the internet now, this stuff can be running, you know, 24 seven with, you know, with absurdly large sample sizes. Yeah. I mean, so no, I think that's, I think that provides an excellent first step for, yes, maybe later you do want to do the double

blind. Maybe you do, you do want to put all the controls in, but it's like initially that can help you look for the veins that are worth, you know, worth pursuing. Yeah, totally agree. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So our awesome friends at FreshBooks make ridiculously easy cloud accounting software for freelancers and small business owners who know that making every single moment count is a really important part of getting a lot of stuff done and being able to do the things that they want to do in their business.

By drastically simplifying things like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, FreshBooks has totally changed the game for now more than 10 million people. You can link your FreshBooks account to your credit card and debit card. So next time you expense the business stuff or the tank of gas or lunch, it just shows up automatically. They have notifications and awesome customer service. To claim your month-long unrestricted free trial with no credit card required, go to freshbooks.com slash goodlife and enter the Good Life Project in the How Did You Hear About Us section. So 2012, you've been, you were working on the blog for, it started in 2009, right? Yep. Okay.

You've been working on the book for two years. Yeah, I got the deal, made the deal in January 2015. And it took, it probably took about two years. And, but what was really valuable for me, it was really funny, it was valuable for me, it was, you know, I'd been doing these interviews and i'd interviewed a lot of authors and i would always kind of steal a little time aside to just ask them hey you know i'm writing a book any advice any thoughts and i heard this this one really scary state don't do it it'll kill you we want to know how you're doing it was it was scary because i heard this one sentence over and over again. I talked to one really great, really great, huge academic and author.

And he said, well, you know, I took the first year and I just read. And I was like, oh, my God, I have to read. I have to do nothing but read for a year. I'm like, well, maybe he's extreme. I talked to another professor at Harvard who's a published author well i took the first year and i just read and i'm like oh my god that's a newer times best-selling author i took the first year and i'm like oh my god i have to take a year and just read like when can i actually get started and i'm terrified i'm like oh my god i gotta get an extension of my contract what am i gonna do and then I realized I I've been reading this research for at that point, six years. And, and I, and I looked and when I started putting the book together, I realized,

wow, if I hadn't been doing this blog for that, the book I wrote would have taken me four years. If I hadn't been looking at this for so long and it was, that was, that was cause it was a scary moment to have to think i'd have to but i i'd already kind of been doing that work and and it was hard but it but it paid off yeah why a book i mean you're by all accounts you're you were doing something you really enjoyed yeah your work was reaching a a massive audience so why a book i mean i i really do enjoy trying new things writing is kind of the thing i've you know i've always been focused on and and that seemed like the natural kind of next step for for the blog where you know it everything had been growing it had been just abstracts then it had

been like compilation of abstracts then it had been me kind of really exploring issues and um and you know and i would get questions i would get questions from readers that kind of presented this this conundrum that i could never really solve which would be i would talk about a subject and on i'll you know and i'll revisit subjects like negotiation i'll talk to a professor on negotiation i'll talk to a hostage negotiator i'll talk this. And some readers will write to me and they'll say, oh, you cited that study before. Why aren't you showing me something new? I don't want to see that. I've seen that before.

Why are you showing me that? I'd go, oh, okay, that's a good point. Then I get something from another and then I wouldn't show that study again. And I get emails from a different reader. You're not citing that study. That's the most fundamental point. How can you not bring that up? You have to bring that up. It's key. It's critical. It's the most important research out there. And I'm like, how do I resolve? How do I? Because if I'm comprehensive,

I'm going to repeat myself. And if I'm not comprehensive, then it's going to be looking like I'm negligent. And that's when I was kind of like, I want to do something that's not exhaustive by any means, where okay i can really put it all out there this is beginning to end i'm going to cover and it felt like like a book was a natural way to kind of do that yeah that makes sense actually it's sort of like pick a small number topics yeah and then let's go let's have a a fuller conversation where we just put everything in there and now if somebody says that, just be like, page 142. Exactly.

It's all there. Go read it, man. I'm not repeating anything. I say it once. I said it once. I said it. It's done. And then block them.

All right. So I now have to ask this one other question. So between 2012 and, you know, so you get a book deal. You got four years in the middle there. Seems like you're blogging pretty much full-time assuming you're actually not in witness protection how are you actually living but no i i i from 2010 to from 2010 to 2013 uh i was working in the video game industry and um i worked for uh i worked for volition uh which is a studio in Illinois. And then I worked for Irrational Games. What were you doing for that?

I was doing marketing, actually. I was doing video game marketing. So it was after I got my MBA. And it was a big shift for me. So now more is being revealed. Because the psychology of gaming plus marketing in that industry is really interesting. It was also interesting for me personally because I was the embedded marketing guy at the studio. So it was so funny for me to go from a creative role in Hollywood to me being the suit in a creative place with all the creative guys.

And I mean I could speak their language. And that was why I had that role was because I had an MBA so I could talk to corporate. And I had been a creative in Hollywood for a decade so I could talk to corporate. And I had been, you know, a creative in Hollywood for a decade. So I could kind of speak the language of the guys who worked there. And it was it was great. But but I was there was a time, especially crunch on video games. You know, when you're getting to the end, you got to meet that deadline is just notorious as like a death march where just people are working insane hours to to crush bugs and get the game out there and uh it's you know it can be horrible but so there was a long time because i shouldn't think

i shipped we shipped like three or four games and only those those like three years that i was there and there was there was a lot of times where i would i would wake up at like 6 a.m like work on the blog for like three hours or so uh go to work work until like 7 8 p.m and then read uh until i went to bed so that i would have something to blog about the next day and i would do that like six days a week and uh for months you know actually maybe for a couple years and and it was that was pretty punishing but i just always wanted to keep the blog going. But that was like my life. And that was really hard. But then in 2013, I started just focusing full-time on the blog.

So when you leave there, though, because there are no ads on the blog. No. No. It was just no. I mean, there's Amazon affiliate. But that's – so basically, it was literally savings. Right. I just wanted to focus full time on the blog, but I wasn't focused on monetizing, which, you know, maybe my business school professors are shaking their heads right now.

But I don't know, for me, that's like, it wasn't really what it was about. And, you know, and. But by that time also i would imagine you had a pretty decent size readership yeah i mean i i certainly had a big a big readership it was when was it it was in i think august 2014 that my mailing list hit uh a hundred thousand um so so it was it was already pretty so by by end of 2013, it was pretty good. I don't know where it was, maybe like 60,000 or something. But it was showing itself.

It was like there's a trajectory happening here. It was growing at a very consistent rate. But no, it's like for me, I've just always – I mean, my site's not very pretty. It's not – Well, that's the funny thing. I was on your site this morning before we were hanging out and i'm like they're so they're such maniacal for everybody's out there now and like in the internet world saying like everything's visual it has to be beautifully designed and like that nobody will pay attention yeah and like you said your blog isn't hideous

by any measure but it's it's it's like very, very, very simple and streamlined. And then I clicked on your about page and it's basically like a post from 2009, like September or something that hasn't been updated. And I'm like, it's so interesting, right? But it is such a validation of the role of depth of wisdom and how that can still really sustain. And it still matters. Um, in, in a time where everyone is, it's all about visual, it's all about flash and it's all

that fast. Yeah. I mean, for me, for me, it's, it's just really about the content. Like in the end, it's just, it's about the content. If people it they'll like it if they don't they don't and and that's where i spend my time and it's like i don't have i get a lot of emails where it's like if you know it's like if you can please if you could please direct this to eric or direct this to the head of marketing and i'm like looking over my shoulder like it's just me you know hi i'm all those things you know it's it's really just me and it's i i i don't know i mean so i i don't i don't code uh i have a friend who's kind who's an it guy who's kind enough to make sure that the site doesn't go down on a daily basis uh but you know i just focus on the content and that's why i mean there's

not even a photo of me on the blog there's no real bio there's not it's like it's like i said if you look for details about you it's not the easiest thing to find. No, no, no. It's not at all. And, you know, I mean, maybe after the book promotion, that'll change. But, yeah, I haven't spent enough time, I guess, talking about. But it almost feels like it's actually so hard to find that it's a deliberate effort by you to say, this is not about me. This is about the ideas. Well, I mean, in the end, that's what it's gotta be. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm, it's,

if, if you like, I mean, I, you know, I, it would be nice if people like me, I guess, but it's like, it's about the content and, you know, maybe the style that it's presented in, but you know, it's like, I don't know. It's not, it's, it's not really important who I am. Which, which actually kind of like an interesting segue, maybe into some of the ideas that you share in the book, um, in terms of, so you,

you share that you're, you're wired more in the introverted side of the spectrum, which kind of like validates everything that you're saying here. It's like, Hey, listen, I'm going to kind of, I'm going to hide behind this thing and put,

put the, you know, my work out there. Yeah. And I want you to interact with the work and not so much me. Yeah no if you if you like if you like what i'm doing you know great it's like there you know that if you like what i find or what i talk about you know great but it's it's not really about me i mean um you know i don't i don't really talk about i'll mention little things vaguely maybe here and there about stuff but it's like i don't i don't delve into like personal stories or whatever it's about I'd much rather it be a

connection for for the reader with the with the material yeah so so so let's dive into some of the work um that you explore around introverts and extroverts yeah because it's interesting and and again it's it's about paradox you know it's not like you know this is good like introvert good extrovert bad yeah um take me into that conversation a bit I mean it's it's it's not like, you know, this is good, like introvert, good extrovert. Yeah. Take me into that conversation a bit. I mean, it's, it's, it's really, it's really pretty amazing. I mean, the amount of research in terms of extroversion is, you know, a positives in terms of extroverts is enormous and gets a lot of publicity. You know, I mean, extroverts, obviously, you know, much better at, at networking, you know, so it helps them get jobs.

But one of the most proven repeatedly things in personality research is the connection between extroversion and subjective well-being, which is a fancy way of saying extroverts are happier. And in fact, there's one study that if you get introverts to act like extroverts, they're happier. Has that been replicated? I don't know. But if you tell introverts, interact more with people, on average, they're going to get more value. Play the extrovert role. And as somebody who's pretty introverted himself, that's sad to me. And I was kind of like, oh, geez, it's like, you know, what, what's going on here. But what's interesting with introverts is what you see is, uh, is that, that hallmark of

expertise of, uh, introverts have all this time that they're not using socializing that if they so choose, uh, that the people, uh, introverts are far more like introversion is correlated with higher grades. Introversion is correlated with PhDs, with, uh, with five beta kappa keys, even athletes in, you know, uh,

athletes who, again, need to spend time on skill training. I think it was a disproportionate number of vast disproportionate, over 80% of, you know, professional athletes considered themselves introverts. And so across the board,

and there was also a study also extroversion is also correlated with gambling, drugs, all these risky, exciting, but potentially dangerous things. And the other one that's a small coup for the introverts is – what was the fancy scientific jargon it was uh extroversion is uh strongly correlated it was it was it is inversely correlated with uh with uh personal sufficiency or anyway point being the more extroverted somebody is the worse they are at their job now i'm sure there are exceptions like maybe sales or something but that your your introverts are spending more time on the work so it it was really interesting to look at the different types. I wonder. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you from meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program.

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fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. I need my to die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk i mean that's raising the introvert hand over here also so i'm like i i so want to believe all of this yeah um i wonder um there's a lot of that research been done in the last five years or is there my curiosity around it is this um completely see how a more introverted sort of wiring can say okay let me

just dive deep into the work that's me like that's you like and and that will over time yield some really extraordinary outcomes hopefully and at the same time that also probably keeps a lot of us um connected digitally for and in isolation for longer windows of time. So I wonder whether that also leads to two things. One is higher levels of feelings of isolation and risk for depression and anxiety. And also, I wonder if the evolution, if research that's similar, if you take that over the very, very, very recent future, I wonder if the opportunity for distraction that's presented to introverts who spend so much more time, you know,

like on machines and in isolation now would actually diminish sort of the potential for like having that same level of like really going deep into subjects and creating super high quality work. Cause I mean, you're like, you can get lost in games and all endless ways to be distracted online. It was, it's really interesting you say that because, uh, I was on Scott Barry Kaufman's podcast and he pointed to research and he had done, and he had actually done research

that showed that it's like, obviously, you know, introverts, uh, if, you know, without spending time as much time socializing, uh, that time is available for, for, for something else. But he had said that they're, they're not necessarily using that for skill acquisition or whatever else. So to your point, um, especially today where you have so many so many free, ubiquitous options for entertainment. Yeah. I mean, you, you, you know, the, the, the, the introverts who, who want to use their superpower wisely need to be choosing to, to, to work on something that is skill-based or effective as opposed to, you know, just playing a new grand theft auto i mean so that's just because that that possibility is there doesn't mean they're they're they're going to use that time wisely and that's what scott was talking about it um so i mean so extroversion could be crowding out

those hours but it doesn't mean that the introverts are using those extra hours wisely yeah and i think the flip side also i wonder if it's true in that whereas you know you would have presumed that the introvert is a disadvantage because they're not spending all that time out there building their quote network yeah if they're and this is the idea behind content marketing if they're creating extraordinary things and then um putting it out into the world through digital channels then people have the opportunity to interact with this is your story right people have the opportunity to interact with, this is your story, right? People have the opportunity to interact with it. So you can, in theory, build an extraordinary network and an extraordinary body of work without having to actually, you know, be the extrovert where, you know, the network is, the network is connected to your ideas rather than you so it's a different network yeah but

you still get to leverage it in the way that you know in you know 10 years ago a raging extrovert would have been able to leverage their personal connections yeah and and it's and it's potentially infinitely scalable yeah you know as opposed to how many hours in a day can you be shaking hands and maintain versus you know uh you know a mailing list that goes into the six figures you know yeah such an interesting time it's like i'm kind of excited to see where the next wave of because people have got to start to be looking at these questions right i mean we're we're going to start to hit you know real limits where you know mostly on attention where it's just you know people no matter what else we do people only have x number

of hours in a day and if it's the opportunity cost equation where we're if we're spending it here we're not spending it there yeah so interesting another topic that you explore which i'll frame up as sort of the tension between grit and quit yeah you know like going deep into something that we've we've certainly you know the popular media last probably five six seven years spurred largely by angela duckworth's work on grit spin like the people who succeed like they have this one singular quality um yet that is not the whole story no no i mean you know the example i usually use is it's like if if we were all grit no quit then you know you you know, you'd still be

playing t-ball and you would still be doing everything you did when you were nine years old. I mean, you know, we do quit things, you know, we do. And sometimes we have to. So I think it's more of an issue of when, you know, or what and kind of deciding, you know, and there are things that help us with grit. But there's also the issue the issue of, of, uh, you know, of like Peter Sims is a great book, little bets, where to me, that's, that is a strategy that's more focused on quitting. You're, you're trying, you're, you know, they try 10 things taking again, the venture capital model, trying, taking 10 things and knowing that seven things you try aren't going to work out. Two of them might be okay. And one of them is going to be your next career. It's going to be your next big opportunity. It's going to be, it's going to be something

awesome, but you're, you're playing knowing that most things aren't, aren't going to be your next big opportunity it's going to be it's going to be something awesome but you're you're playing knowing that most things aren't going to work out that is a quit based thing not a grit based and uh and i think we we i understand that it's like absolutely you know enormous people from sticking with it people do very well and it's something that can have consistent effort is something people struggle with uh but i think we can't just say, oh, you know, grit's the answer to everything. It's like, no, I mean, if you were, if you were grit focused in the, in the horse and buggy industry, when the car was coming along, that wasn't a very wise decision. There are times where, especially when you look at careers these days, most people,

most people are having multiple careers. They're having many different jobs, many different roles. So in that arena, we need to be thinking options, not necessarily grit 24-7. Yeah. And especially because, you know, once you, I think on two levels. In business, once something proves itself as viable. Yeah. And on a personal level, once something proves itself as this is something I care deeply about. And this is the right, this is a path that feels really good

and that I want to deepen into, then I feel like that's a moment where, yeah, let's figure out how to cultivate grit, which is still a huge open question. And Angela Duckworth says this, she's like, "'Grit matters, but I'm still not quite at the place where I can tell you exactly how to get it.'" So it's like, okay, so there is that window where once you have that thing,

and it is in some way validated by metrics that are meaningful, now let's go all in. Yeah. But to get to that thing, you've got to be open to dropping a whole bunch of stuff, to just running experiments and saying, let me go just far enough so I can figure out whether it's giving me signals that say yes or no.

And then if it's not, I'm going to walk away. And I've seen as many people flame out because they refuse to walk away to something that was clearly showing itself as not what they thought it would be. And it ended up causing tremendous pain in their lives and in their careers. I mean, no, we all have all had a relationship.

Yeah, I'm raising my hand. Yeah, but it's like we've all had a relationship where like, I should have ended that six months earlier. Or a job where, why did I stick around? This wasn't going anywhere and I knew it. And where quitting is really good. I tell the story in there of Spencer Gl, Spencer Glendon who, uh, who had a, you know, a degenerative liver condition. And, um, and he had gotten sick to the point where he, he, he wanted to feel like he was accomplishing something. He wanted to do something. And his,

his therapist told him, it's like, okay, we'll just focus on doing one thing a day. And it was a very vibe. And this is, this is a guy who, who got a PhD in economics from Harvard. So, uh, he was learning the most personal version of opportunity cost. And that's something I kind of advocate in the book is saying, it's like, okay, if you could only accomplish one task a day, what would it be? And so Spencer was actually put in that situation. And some nights all he could do is make dinner. That was the one thing that he would accomplish. And to ask yourself that question, you can start to see, okay, well, what is the thing that I should be gritty at? And what are the things that I go that's really not

important? Because grit and quit are not necessarily opposites. They're complementary. Because the more things you quit, the more room you have to apply grit to that thing that is important. That actually matters. No, it's so great. I mean, it's interesting, too, because it all folds into sort of the bigger exploration of legacy, too. And increasingly, I look at legacy not so much as, as like what's the footprint i want to leave behind but how can i have one good day yeah and then tomorrow and then tomorrow and then

tomorrow and just like operate on the faith that if i do that it'll add up to what whatever legacy it needs to be yeah it'll be yeah but that's not the lens that most of us have. I think because we all want to live forever. Well, and I think our society kind of makes us feel. We don't like to talk about death. We really don't. You see, a lot of cultures have Day of the Dead

or they have something that's built into the culture. We like to act like that doesn't happen here. Americans don't die. No, we don't. Good consumers never die. It's all marketing. Exactly.

And I think that causes us some problems. I think the fact that one of the few inevitable things goes undiscussed. Yeah. No, I do get a sense that there is an opening conversation to it, though. I don't know. I mean, because you're tapped into so many sources. Am I making that up or am I just, is that wishful thinking or have you seen, do you feel like in sort of your scanning and researching, it's bubbling up as sort of like exploring the idea idea of impermanence and in in any way or not so much it's funny i'm that's that's the area that i'm i'm not up on like news and popular culture and like i'm i'm up on you know books and and stuff but that that's books and research and

but it's like i don't i don't really follow the news so it could be and i i wouldn't and i wouldn't be aware but but i think i think there's a, you know, I don't think it gets, I think, I think it makes people kind of cringe. And I, and I think we're, we're much more focused on keeping people alive than quality of life, especially in the medical industry. Nah. Yeah. I can't argue with that. Actually.

Um, I remember doing some research a while back and, uh, we were looking at like, why are, why are people so focused on, on, uh, legacy? And it was like the terror management theory. It's like they don't want to actually, they want to manage the, basically they want to become immortal. And so I get it, but I do think there's tremendous value to saying, look, someday this is all going to end for me, for those around me. So what am I going to do today to make it as good as I can make it? I absolutely think you're right. And I think that I think in that also built into that is the issue of phases of life where you realize that, you know, you don't value the same things now that you did when you were a teenager. And 20, 30 years now, for now, you're not going to value to the same degree the things you do now

and just realizing that you know there's different phases of life certain times of life and you know when you're in that that stage you know there are things will look different and to count on that you know i think as opposed to we always we always think that we always say oh i made mistakes in the past but today i'm doing everything right and it's like no it's like we're gonna we're gonna realize that we're making mistakes now and that's okay. And that's okay. That's so interesting. The whole phases of life thing, I think is fascinating too. I know. I think you've written about this also, how when you're, when you're younger, you know, like you look at people sort of like in the, the, the later seasons of their life and feel like, well, now's the time where I've got everything,

like I'm the happiest. And then, but the research actually bears out the exact opposite, that it's actually like, you know, the later We will often be critical of older folks for being set in their ways. And we'll also be critical of youth for being so fun-focused and trying new things. It's fun when you find something that's cool, but you miss the target most of the time. You do things and it doesn't work out or this isn't that fun or this isn't. So you do occasionally hit the jackpot, but you also don't do so well. Versus older people spend a lot of time on this planet. They know what they enjoy. They do those things. They play the odds. And so they have a far better hit rate in terms of their happiness

because they know what they like to eat they know where they like to go they know what they like to wear and they know what they like to do and they do those things and they're not running out to parties meeting 10 new people five of whom are lame two are jerks and three are okay they're hanging out with the three people they absolutely know they get along with and you know and that keeps them very happy and so no in general older people are much happier yeah so interesting it all circles back to like your exploration of paradox what's something that you're kind of salivating over these days um i'm doing a lot of reading in terms of the dark triad which is the three personality characteristics that are uh are

uh nefarious are evil uh narcissism machiavellianism and psychopathy and um it's really interesting to to just you know to see what they correlate with what they what they don't correlate with and uh so i've been doing a lot of reading in in that area kind of kind of for uh for fun um has nothing to do with the state of the world or planet. No, this is far more personal. And so another area is I've been wanting to do this post for months, but I've been so busy with the book stuff. There's a post. I did an interview with a Ph.D PhD researcher at MIT on the neuroscience of meditation.

And so he's actually been doing or been involved with brain imaging studies and basically looking at what happens in the brain when people meditate, what do experienced meditators' brains look like, and what is the neurosignatureature the kind of like profile of that what does that most resemble you know otherwise and people just think in people's brains and and basically you know what comes out of that is that the the neurosignature of meditation is actually the flow state they're basically they look the same wow that's fascinating yeah and so it's great stuff and i've and of course I've been way too ambitious about this. And, uh,

basically, you know, so I've been trying to read some of the like old Buddhist texts. I've been trying to read his studies. I've been trying to look at this and figure out how the default mode network gets switched off and all that. And I'm, I'm kind of being way too ambitious about it,

but, but it, but it's, it's really been exciting. Yeah. I mean, that's really neat because if you, if you do go into a lot of

those old texts also across different traditions the state that they you know describe samadhi enlightenment bliss would probably like if you if you deconstructed that what does it feel like um well not feel so much right because the flow state is a state that you know like transcends feel yeah um but if you you you describe the qualities of it, I guess there's probably a tremendous amount of coherence there. Yeah, yeah. It was just fascinating to me. As soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, it makes perfect sense.

It's like where you're not noticing the passage of time. You're fully engaged. It's like that sounds kind of like the ultimate goal of mindfulness. Yeah, in theory, although I've been meditating for a lot of years and I haven't reached that stage yet. So I'm like, when's it going to come, man? Show me the white light. theory, although I've been meditating for a lot of years and I haven't reached that stage yet. When's it going to come, man? Show me the white light. Come on.

Come on. I'm all day. Just give me one day. One day a year. That's it. Just keep me in it. It feels like a good place to come full circle with you. As we said here, the name of this is good life project. Um, and you're a guy who spent a lot of years researching all the different elements.

So if I offer that phrase out to you to live a good life, what comes up? Wow. I wish I had more time to prepare. I, um, it's really interesting cause I did a post recently where I was collecting a lot of like research and kind of like, uh, looking at some Buddhist texts and some stoic texts. And, uh, and one question, uh, that I said people should often ask themselves whenever they're clinging to

something sad about something to ask themselves, it's like, do I, do I have to have this to live a good life and i would ask i think that's a valuable question to ask whenever it's kind of like this or just clinging or i have to have this or i'm so and to just say it's like do i have to have that not not maybe there's a bigger thing behind that like but if it's love does it have to be that person if it's if it's a job is it that job do i have to have this thing to live a good life and i think it's very i think it's very simple um you know uh so i i don't know for me to have a to have a good life i i want to be

i want to be fully engaged i want to be learning i want to be growing. And I want what I do to benefit other people. I don't know if that's the kind of answer, but that would probably be a quick summary. Thank you. Thanks, man. And as we wrap up, I want to give a final shout out to our awesome sponsors and supporters.

Right now, you can post a job on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, for free. Just go to ziprecruiter.com slash good. Today's show is sponsored by FreshBooks, which is a super cool cloud accounting software. To claim your month-long unrestricted free trial with no credit card required, go to freshbooks.com slash good life and enter the Good Life Project in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's

some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens.

And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.