What Anyone Can Do Eric Barker 1005

Welcome to our new show, What Anyone Can Do Podcast, with Leo Battari and me, Randy Cantrell. Our new show picks up where our last show, Year of the Peer, left off, highlighting the simple truth that who you surround yourself with matters, and that if we enlist the support of others, give back to those who give to us, and pay it forward for the next generation, we can do anything. Author and keynote speaker Leo Bottari and I will interview a diverse group of thought leaders who will share stories and insights that will help you succeed in business and in life. How? By doing the things anyone can do, but most of us never will. Eric Barker is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is Mostly Wrong. He studied Japanese in college because he thought it would be cool. He blogs at a URL that I can't pronounce because I don't speak Japanese.

It's bakadesuyo.com.

Based on the Japanese translation of his last name, which of course means I am an idiot. To be fair, it also means I am Barker. Eric's blog presents science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life. We welcome Eric to the show.

Eric Barker, welcome to What Anyone Can Do. So happy to have you here today.

It's great to be here.

Yeah, well, it's, um, it's exciting because of course, um, so much of the work you've done recently really so aligns with what we're talking about this year and what we'd like to, you know, engage our audience with. But, and I do want to of course start with your book that you released last year, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. It was a whole look at success and this idea that what we think we know about it and maybe what we mostly know about it and why maybe that's a bit misguided. So if you could kind of tell us, what do you think that the prevailing sentiment is about, or definition people have of success? Why is it wrong and what's right? So if you can kind of walk us through that, that'd be helpful.

Well, I mean, the key thesis for the book was the idea that we grow up with a lot of these maxims of success, you know, everything from nice guys finish last to it's not what you know, it's who you know. When we hear them, they're not empirically validated. It's just stuff that gets bandied about and we don't know if that was true to begin with, if maybe it was true in the past and isn't true now. They don't necessarily hold up. For instance, Adam Grant at Wharton found that nice guys actually are disproportionately represented at the top and the bottom. Of success metrics. So nice guys finish last, they also finish first. And, you know, when you look at a lot of the research in terms of, you know, networking— networking is really valuable, but it's not what you know, it's who you know. You know, no, not, not so much. It's like when I look at the research on extroversion and introversion, extroverts are fantastic at making connections. Introverts are usually the people who are the experts in their field. So it, it, it varies. You know, there's not like these evil— these easy kind of, you know, one quick pithy answers to success that we often hear. It's usually a little bit more nuanced than that.

So, well, how would that translate for me now? Let's say that I buy into the idea that I'm not going to accept, you know, a lot of these maxims as you suggested. So how do I think about success? How do I think about it for myself and how do I go about getting there?

Really, the issue is, it's an issue of self-knowledge, you know, aligned with context. You know, it's like really getting to know yourself, knowing your strengths, your weaknesses. Another concept I talk about in the book that Gautam Mukunda from Harvard Business School talks about is intensifiers. Weaknesses or things that are generally considered weaknesses that in the right context can actually be positives. Knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, your intensifiers, and then finding an environment, a company, a context that actually rewards you for those. Because a lot of people might have valuable strengths, but they're not necessarily respected or rewarded at the company or the institution they work for. And other people might be working at a fantastic company, but they're not really aligning themselves great with what's going on there. And so I think most people think about one or the other. Hey, I want to get a job at a great company, or hey, I know what I'm good at, but they don't necessarily think about how to best align the two because that's where you see like the big kind of results is when what you're saying is also what's being heard. It's a two-sided conversation.

So what's the best way for someone to actually really get a fair sense of themselves? Obviously there are assessments out there and there's feedback you hear from other people and there's some knowing yourself, just in the ability to have some reflection. But yeah, how many thoughts about some good ways to really get to know ourselves and who we are and probably get a sense of what cultures we may be able to fit in versus other places? We all know that there are great people that I've seen who have left companies, not because they were bad, but they were for the company, and then it was somewhere else and they're wildly successful, right?

Absolutely. And that's what some of the research shows is that people don't take context into consideration. Boris Groysberg at Harvard did research showing that if you look at like top stock traders, even top doctors, surgeons, when they switched investment banks, they switched hospitals, they stopped being number one because it's not just a matter of who you are, it's a matter of the people around you, it's a matter of the policies, it's a matter of the ins and outs of the day-to-day, the relationships around you. So, that's really critical. I definitely think there are tests that people can take to try and get to know themselves better, but two things I would definitely recommend is number one, survey those around you, preferably in an anonymous form. You have somebody filter it for you, but the thing is we are very— most of the research shows we're terrible at really knowing ourselves. But other people close to us can actually be very good at it. So do the survey. You don't want to know that Bob or Sally was the one who said this thing, but getting that and then looking for trends, because you're gonna see some. You know, the same people are not gonna say, "Oh, incredibly loud," "incredibly quiet." You know, you're gonna see trends. And the other thing to look for is, you know, trends in terms of your life. In terms of your— in terms of what you've done. Most people think they know, but most people have not sat down and said, hey, at job number 1, I got fired because of X. At job number 2, I got fired because of X. Job number 3, I got fired because of X. You're going to see trends and patterns. And, and again, having friends look over that with you can help you stop from rationalizing that. Uh, this ladder system kind of is called feedback analysis. Peter Drucker talked about it, where it's like taking decisions, and you can move this into the future as well, making predictions and seeing like how good are you at predicting how you're going to behave, how you're going to do in upcoming situations. You're going to realize in some you're pretty bad, but in others you're pretty good. And again, that's an arena where you can start to say, hey, my friends said I'm good at this, my past decisions that I'm good at this, and when I projected into the future, eventually I realized, hey, my predictions were right about this. So it could take a little bit of work, but it can be done, and it can be done in a in a scientifically valid way.

Eric, did you have any epiphanies in your own journey towards self-awareness?

Yes. And I won't be discussing those here today.

Oh, come on. What about the process? Did the process mirror what you just said or did you discover it differently?

That's it. It is one thing I will, I will say is it's very effective. It's very illustrative. Uh, and, and it's not, it's not always very pleasant. People should prepare themselves for that. I think that, You know, just getting blunt truths, it's really valuable. It could be, it could be tricky at first.

That can shatter all your myths, huh?

Yes, I like my myths. I think we all do. But, you know, but given that the book was about, uh, was about shattering myths, uh, you know, you kind of, you kind of have to go there. Yeah, exactly.

This is where the, I think, the concept of trends can be a little bit comforting, right? I mean, I've always been told never let a single assessment define who you are, and nor should you let a single person define who you are, or whatever, right? So If we think we're doing some great things, and maybe we are, but we run into somebody who just wants to tear us down for whatever reason, I think we should know to take note of not paying not too much attention to that one individual who decides they want to, you know, lob a grenade into your life, right? You know, so absolutely.

Yeah, because like one person will have an agenda unless you believe there is a vast conspiracy out to get you, uh, you know 5 people all saying that you've got these same 2 weaknesses or these same 2 strengths. That's unlikely unless they're coordinating behind the scenes. I don't think they are. But yeah, one person, I mean, you look at any scientific research, you never know what any one person is going to do.

The environment and the people that surround us, assuming that we've got some sense of of who we really are and we've got it mostly accurate, then what's the trick to putting ourselves in that right environment? I mean, is it trial and error? Is it something else?

I think first and foremost, I think most people don't get that far along. I think first and foremost, the critical thing is doing the homework to find out which one is that critical environment. You know, it's like first and foremost, like I said, if you get the— if you get a good awareness of your signature strengths, of your weaknesses, great. And then doing the research, not only, you know, like reading about, you know, company from their materials, but talking to people who have worked there, you know, looking at, you know, what have they actually done? What do they value? What do they value in terms of actual results versus what they're telling you? And then, yeah, of course, then trying to get into the company. I think it actually gets a lot easier once you start to have that information, once you do that homework. Usually by that point, you're already talking to people inside the, inside the company. Are you speaking about different channels?

Well, whether it's, whether it's a work thing or whether it's, you know, two guys like Leo and I, who two years ago didn't, didn't even know each other. And, you know, uh, and we've, we've talked about that in the past. I won't rehash it here, but even, even just those kinds of people, the people that, that we, we look and say, I'd like that person to be in my life in some way, shape, or form. I'm supposing, and would I be right? I may not be, that if our self-awareness, the more accurate that gets, I would assume that our behaviors may be congruent in such a way to facilitate putting us around people that might benefit us.

I think that once you have an aware— I mean, I'm speculating here, but I think once, once you get that level of self-awareness, then I think your behavior is actually going to be more consistent. Once your behavior is more consistent, then yeah, you probably will resonate more with specific people. That's definitely a possibility. But I don't know. I find we often click with a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. But there's no doubt that similarity is probably the single most demonstrated reason why two people connect with one another. I don't think there's anything as powerful. Similarity, but then again similarity can exist in many different ways, you know, background, personality, education, sports teams.

So yeah, I think what you said about culture and the fact that most people don't take it that far, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that people who are trying to leave a job, yeah, mostly they're not trying to go to something. Oftentimes they're just trying to get away from—

that's an excellent point.

And, you know, so next thing you know They're like, it has to be better than where I am. And even though I'm hearing all of these negative things, it's like, ah, it can't be that bad, you know. And people will rationalize being able to say, I can fit into that culture. Of course, only to learn that if they just believed what people told them about what it would be like to work there, they might have. But that's not always the luxury they enjoy. And so from a leader's perspective, right, so I'm going to put now the onus on people who aren't burdened with that necessarily, right? They get to pick who they believe would be the best fit for their culture.

Yeah.

So, so that means a little self-awareness about what it's like to work in that company and what are the, you know, traits or of the people who are successful here versus those who don't make it. So, so what does that look like on the leader side of the equation in terms of trying to get to get the right people together that will match the culture?

I didn't go into the specifics of that research, so I can speculate, but I didn't look at in terms of leadership recruitment. So, you know, I would definitely say that the really— when you look at what you see in some of the hiring practices, you know, that people often talk about, where they talk about like quick to fire, slow to hire, that kind of thing. Actually makes a lot of sense because I think one of the most recent studies I read was something to the degree that a bad apple is actually like somewhere between 4 and 8 times more of a negative than an A-player is a positive. So bringing in the wrong people, at least again as far as the academic research is concerned, is far more devastating than missing quote-unquote the perfect person. You know, and that's something that's key and consistent. You see a lot of that in like Bob Sutton's work at Stanford, is that just the bad people can be devastating. So I'm not sure in terms of like cultural fit. I, I'm often skeptical of when companies talk about culture because I think, you know, I think often what they say a culture is and what a culture is are very different things. And so I think often Often companies and leaders aren't really the best judges of culture fit, and I think therefore one of the reasons they have problems with cultural fit is because here's our core values, and it's like, are those really what we hire and fire by? Are those really what we promote by, or is that what's on the fancy letterhead? And I think that distinction is really critical. I think when you survey a group of rank-and-file employees, you often get a much better idea of what a culture is than by what a company says their culture is.

Yeah, it is a bit of that, um, like when the, the, uh, core values of Enron, you know, were etched into the granite in the lobby, you know. Yeah, yeah, not exactly.

I mean, to me it's like real core values, uh, or at least some of the, some of the best core values, the, the alternative needs to be an option. In other words, like, we want to do things that are good. Well, who would want to do things that are bad? No one. Versus if one of your core values is transparency, well, I could see the CIA or the NSA's core values not being transparency. The opposite is, that's an alternative, that's one you could pick. But I want to do things that are good, I don't want to do things that are bad, those aren't core values, they actually don't say anything. You know, versus, and do companies actually act on them? You know, in terms of hiring and firing, in terms of promoting. Do they actually act on that when it's a very difficult situation? When your top salesperson violates your core values, do you let them go? I think a lot of companies struggle when it's something that clear and difficult to core value versus the person who's bringing the most revenue in the door.

Sure. We had an example of that here in Dallas with the Dallas Mavericks. $75 million producer, but a bit of poor behavior in the workplace caught up with him.

Poor behavior in the workplace.

Exactly. Eric, talk to us about— there's a ton of conversation about work-life balance, and there's every conceivable point of view about it. And I know you have a unique one. Tell us about it.

Well, The really challenging thing about work-life balance, it's first and foremost, if people are wondering about the idea, like they shouldn't think that they're insane because the truth is one of the stats I cite in the book is on how often the term was used. And 30 years ago, the term was almost never used. And now we can't get away from it. And that's because the world really has changed. And one of the problems is that you combine, A, when you look at all the research, All the things being equal, the more you work, the more you perform, the better, the better you'll do. Harder work does help. And we also have the issue of now, you know, the doors to the office don't shut at 5 PM like when you're watching Mad Men. You know, it's like, people are— the office is closed, sorry, you know, leave a voicemail. It's like, no, things are 24/7. Everybody's online, everybody can send an email and get an email whenever. This is like putting a brick on the accelerator and cutting the brakes at the same time. I mean, it's like the world doesn't stop. So, work-life balance is incredibly tricky. It's a very serious position and the first thing that people need to realize is when most people look for a work-life balance solution, they're basically wanting the world to solve the problem for them and first and foremost, people need to draw a line, and it's a tough decision, but the world is not going to say stop because usually most employers, most employers at least to an extreme, are going to benefit from you working harder. And that means there's going to be a trade-off. There's going to be a line where you have to say, this is how much I'm going to do, and if that means not getting the promotion, I'm not going to do it. Because like I said, the world is always going to say more. That said, we can do the best, and I detail a lot of elements to try and increase your productivity that have been scientifically validated to try get more things done, get the right things done. But a big challenge we face, and the reason this is such an ongoing dilemma, is that in the past the world told us to stop. The world said 5 PM, doors are shutting. That doesn't happen anymore, and it's not going to happen. We're not, we're not going to go back that way. So we need to make a personal decision.

I, I guess sometimes I— so I work with a bunch of, um, students at Rutgers in a kind of personal branding. Yeah. And there's a lot of talk among the students about work-life balance and they articulate it in ways. And I always think it's though, it's kind of code to a CEO or whomever you're hiring. Imagine a work-life balance is really important to me in a way that comes across as, well, what you do, I'm sure is really important, but I have other things in my life that really matter. Yeah. So I was wondering what you think of, because One of the things I had mentioned to these students, I said, what if you expressed the same idea by saying that I am committed to excellence in everything I do in my life, both personally and professionally? I said, doesn't that in some respects say the same thing without having it look or appear to be framed as a trade-off?

I mean, I think you're right. I think that is a better— I think it's a better way to frame it. The only thing I kind of would say is It is a trade-off. Yeah, I mean, I think that definitely, that definitely sounds better, but I think in the end, it's an opportunity cost equation. Every hour I'm at the office is an hour I'm not at home, and every hour I'm at home is an hour I'm not at the office. So I think that's the fundamental. But I agree with you in that most leaders, most bosses, they don't want to hear it. Like, you know, they don't, they don't want to hear it. And I don't think they're like And I think that's, like I said, the very frank conversation that needs to be had about it is, yeah, every hour you're at home, you're not employing your— your employer's bottom line, and they would like that to be the case, uh, in general, uh, you know. And I, I think it's a difficult trade-off, but I think that is definitely a better way to phrase it, especially at a job interview.

Well, it brings us back though too to this idea of reflection and knowing ourselves, and you know, we kind of talk about it from a company standpoint, but really It also gets down to knowing what we care about. What do we value?

Absolutely.

So when you get into talking about whether you want the promotion or not, I mean, be thinking about your career and your life and timing of all these things. You maybe have kids at home, maybe you don't. Yeah. You know, all kinds of things that, um, you know, so I— so would you recommend also that people, in terms of getting to know yourself, to really think in terms of what, what do I value? What are my priorities? What really matters to me most?

Yeah, I think one of the critical things there I talked about is in the research they looked at metrics in terms of how people are going to evaluate their lives, how they feel about it, people who had achieved a level of work-life balance. And the thing they ran into was a lot of people tended to kind of evaluate their success either by happiness, am I happy, but that can be misleading because what makes us happy in the short term is not necessarily what makes us happy in the long term. And also, being too happy in the short term doesn't always lead to achievement, which was the second thing a lot of people used was, I'm accomplishing stuff, you know, I'm miserable, my health's going to hell, but, but I'm accomplishing things. And so what they found was the people who really had achieved a level of work-life balance and had— were on their way to successful lives had 4 metrics: happiness, achievement, than significance and legacy. And significance is, am I being a positive in the lives of the people I love, the people around me? And legacy, am I to some degree making the world a better place, some kind of positive thing in terms of a larger sphere of meaning? And looking at those four, I think that's a really helpful kind of way because we all realize that it's like, yeah, you can always work harder and longer. Is that really a benefit to you? And where do you draw the line? And by looking at those 4 metrics and the writers recommended looking at your calendar, basically saying, of what I'm doing with my time, which buckets do those fit in? You could be doing a lot of things that lead to happiness, not so much lead to achievement, or a lot of things lead to significance but not a lot of things lead to legacy. I think that can provide the beginnings of a healthy framework for people to realize, hey, here's what I'm obviously valuing because I'm spending a lot of time here but not so much there. I think that's one lens to look through.

And it's not a static— it's not a static thing either. You know, I mean, the 30-year-old me that had 2 little kids at home is now the 60-year-old grandfather of 5. That's a very different picture. So when people have to make those changes and those adjustments, what have you found the challenges or the secrets to High on legacy right now?

Is that what you're thinking?

Oh, I'm very— I'm listening on 3 and 4. I'm all in on significance and legacy.

And I think that— I think you're absolutely right, and that is the shift that you normally see. I think, you know, a lot of young people are overly focused on happiness and think nothing of, you know, significance and legacy. Some very driven people, and especially people more in middle years, be very focused on achievement to the detriment of their relationships, of their health. But I think a lot of people have difficulty kind of balancing that. And like you're saying, where it's like really asking themselves, what should the balance be given the time of life I'm in? Because if you're all in on happiness or achievement, in later years, that might be a signal of significance, legacy, trying to make the world a better place. And it's like asking yourself kind of where am I, where do I want to be, and then kind of figuring out that distribution. Because in the same way that you're saying there's a chronology issue, where am I in my life, there's also a personal issue where some people, you know, I'm the kind of person You know, on day 4 or 5 of the vacation, I'm already kind of like, all right, I need— I gotta accomplish— I'm a sled dog. Like, I need to be pulling something. I need to be doing things. Like, I'm not accomplishing anything. You know, there— some people have a higher drive for achievement. Some people, you know, need, need other people and really need to feel like, hey, I'm not, I'm not impacting anyone. So I think looking at, you know, getting a baseline, you know, where it's like, what's my normal week like? Looking at 2 or 3 weeks And then kind of saying, where am I lacking? Where could I be more? And maybe I think, you know, something in terms of what you're saying might be interesting to say, like, where do I feel like I was 5 or 10 years ago? And where do I feel like I want to be, you know, in 10 years? And then saying to myself, what would I have to do? Which, which buckets are getting a little too much attention and which ones not so much? I think that would be a very useful, useful skill.

Yeah, I wonder what it would look like. You know, you'd love to have a group of people who at the end of every year when asked the question, what does success look like for you? Like, yeah, or whatever. And they answer that question, then they answer the year after, the year after that. So over 10, 20 years or whatever, we start getting this— these changes about how the way people define success and what that might look like for them. You can see where it would change a lot. I mean, I certainly think of all of those things when you talk about those 4 categories. Very differently today from a priority standpoint, from, you know, just everything, you know. I mean, it's just look at it, you know, you think about bigger things today than I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago, right?

I mean, yeah, when you like— some of the research that's interesting along those lines is Jennifer Acker and a few other researchers at Stanford tried to nail down a better idea of the issue of like happiness and meaning. And it was really interesting to see that the two overlap, but it's not like a perfect Venn diagram kind of overlap. And what they found is that happiness is actually a little bit more selfish in the sense of, you know, I want the thing, I get the thing, yay, I'm happy, versus meaning often involves a little bit more pain. A little bit more suffering. You can be unhappy in the short term on your way to something meaningful. And they found that happiness usually involves a lack of stress, usually involves a lack of questioning. Meaning usually means more stress, more questioning, because you're dealing with difficult questions. It's not as smooth, it's a little rough around the edges. And I think keeping that in mind, Again, we start to say, like, what ratio is good for me? Where it's like, do I just want comfort, smooth sailing, no stress, or would that make my life feel empty? Or am I somebody who's always trying to just move mountains? And you know what? You need to take it easy a little bit and contribute a little bit more to the happiness fund and have some times where you're not asking big questions and you're just appreciating.

Eric, talk to us about the— you talk some about effort versus keeping your eye fixed on the destination. And we've long heard it's more the journey than the destination. Another one of those kind of maxims that sounds good, but practically speaking, I don't see that many people really latching on to that, they're very fixated on the outcome or the result.

Yeah, no, I mean, I really get into that when I'm talking about the issue of like, uh, of, you know, grit and resilience, where a lot of people are, uh, you know, grit is having its moment in the sun right now, and there's no doubt there's a good reason a lot of people, we, you know, we don't always, you know, show grit and resilience in the face of adversity. But it's important to realize the other side where, you know, we all quit things. We have to quit things. Again, the opportunity cost issue. We only have 24 hours in a day. If you, if you just keep adding things, you're going to run out of hours. We need to quit things. It's vital. And I think that's, you know, it's a really, it's a really, really important issue for us to realize, you know, what is really important, what is really critical in terms of that, because more effort is not always, you know, the solution. Uh, one of the, one of the, the studies, one of the studies I showed showed that one of the things that's a huge stress reliever is when people let go of unreasonable goals, is when people realize, you know, it's like, it's, it's one thing when you sit there and you're 20 and you still think you might be a professional athlete one day, it could happen. And then later on you start to go, that's not going to be happening. And "It might be hard to let that go, but also, there's stress. I don't have to have that." We've all had that wonderful feeling where we go, "I don't have to have that." So, the issue of effort and the issue of letting go of unreasonable goals, one of the stories I tell in the book is Spencer Glendon, who's accomplished so much in his life, but he's often been terribly, terribly chronically ill. And one of the most valuable lessons he says he learned is from his illness because it was so horrible, he would only have energy to accomplish like one thing a day. And it made him ask that question that we all know we should and we usually don't, which is I can do one thing today. What's it going to be? Because, because that, that by definition is what's most important to me. So he knew what was most important to him because he had to, and there was no other way. But we always think that like more effort is going to, is going to be it. And we don't think strategically about where do I want to put that effort? What's, what's critical? You know? So I think the issue of grit versus quit is really critical because in the end, They're not enemies. They're actually— they help because strategic quitting, saying I'm not going to do that, gives you more time to do what's important.

There's so much cultural pressure though to not quit.

There's— I mean, what do we always hear? We always— quitting is horrible and awful. But like I said, in the end, the statements, you know, never quit, statement's naive. If I never quit, I'd still be playing T-ball. Playing with Transformers and wetting the bed. That's what I was doing when I was 6. Should I still be doing that? I mean, you know, we need to be realistic about like what we can do. And I think, but the real question there, the harder question is what's important? And I think that's the thing we avoid. I think there are things we know are important and we're scared to give them the recognition they deserve because we're scared to fail, we're scared to take it on. And I think there's other things that we're scared to let go, maybe because of how people might think of us or how we'll be perceived. Perceived, but in the end, it's about what's important. And the Spencer question, which if I was sick, if I was ill, if I can only do one thing today, you know, what would that be? And, you know, those are the kinds of questions where you get tough answers, but valuable answers.

You know, I think the people around us too, we talk a lot about how people can encourage one another and give each other advice and hold one another accountable and all that. And then there's sometimes you need your friend to just say, Dude, you're never making it to the NBA. You just gotta— that honesty in your life too, I think.

Oh, it's— I mean, it's, it's really critical to have, you know, have people around you. And especially, you know, that's where other people knowing you better than you know yourself really comes in handy. I mean, somebody being able to say, hey, I'm your best friend 20, 30 years, look, I gotta I got a better handle on this than you do because we all have the stories we tell ourselves in our head. We got the running commentary. We have the incredible ability to rationalize or blur things. Your friends only see your actions. They can't see the running commentary, the excuses, the rationalizations. They see the consistent behavior over time. That's all they got to go by. And that's why in the end, very often, their evaluations of us are far more objective. 'Cause they're not hearing the commentary. They're just seeing you did X, you did Y, you did Z, and you do that every single time.

Eric, let's end with where maybe we should have begun, but I have a habit of bearing the lead, as the journalists say anyway, so it's okay. So what set you on this trajectory? Name and wordplay aside, of looking at this and examining it examining this from the perspective that you did, from a real scientific—

the thing for me was I had a very unconventional career, and, and in many ways I was a very unconventional guy. You know, my undergrad was in philosophy. I was a screenwriter in Hollywood for 10 years. And, and, you know, I reached a crossroads where I didn't know, like, exactly, you know, what, what's going on. I'm really good at some things, but it's like I wasn't sure, like, What am I going to do next? What's going on? I was at a real crossroads and I wanted the best answers I could. So when I started my blog, I started looking for scientifically validated, something that had some substance to it, not some polite stuff I might want to hear, but some hard truths I might need to hear. And I started that blog and the blog grew. And then eventually I kind of said like, all right, you know, I've been posting all this stuff there. You know, there's how many, over 5,000, you know, posts on the blog. Let me really try and make something cohesive and useful and, you know, put it into a reasonable structured format. And I really wanted to go and kind of break, break those myths, or at least further discuss and analyze those myths, you know, where everybody thinks, you know, oh, you know, it's like, you know, never quit. Not so much, you know. Nice guys finish last, actually not always true. So that somebody else would kind of have those, those, those guideposts and those lessons that, that I wish I had had a little bit earlier.

Well, the blog's great. We can't recommend it highly enough. I've been a longtime reader subscriber. So thank you. Thank you for the work. And we'll put links in the show notes to, to the book and, and all of this stuff. Leo, I'll give you the last word.

Hey, just a big thank you. This was a great conversation. I think that this idea of knowing ourselves, knowing what we care about, and having some definition in our minds, what success looks like with the understanding that this is always going to be, you know, something that is going to evolve in our lives. And the hope is that we can, you know, we can be happy, we can achieve things, we can be significant, and we can actually leave a legacy. How nice is that?

Absolutely. That was great to be here, guys. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Eric. To learn more about our show and what we do, to submit questions to us, and to subscribe to What Anyone Can Do podcast, please visit us at whatanyonecandodo.com. Podcast is hosted by Leo Battari and me, Randy Cantrell. Our assistant producer is Katie Rutkin. Music provided by Kevin MacLeod is Vibe Ace, licensed under Creative Commons Commons by Attribution 3.0 license. Thanks for watching or listening What Anyone Can Do. Please share the podcast. See you next time.