Eric Barker | The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships is (Mostly) Wrong

Srini Rao:  Eric welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us

Eric Barker: It's great to be here.

Srini Rao: It is my pleasure to have you here. So you have a new book out called Plays Well with Others, which as I was telling you, is probably my number one book recommendation for the year. For anybody who's listening by far, one of the most interesting books I have read, and we will get into it, but based on the content of the book in the subject matter, I wanted to start by asking you what social group were you a part of in high school and how did that end up impacting the choices that you've made with your life and your career?

Eric Barker: 

Interesting question. I definitely was part of the outsiders not total nerd. Not the go, just the outside little group and, was definitely wasn't one of the, one of the cool kids and it was, it, I went to a very small high school. It was one of the graduating classes, like a 30.

So I think it was, I don't know if it had that much effect on me in that way, except that it does help you see the distinction between Who the kinda cool kids in high school are, and yeah, I'm not really like that. So I did ever think I'd, I didn't ever think I'd be a part of that.

But yeah I think probably, I think my underlying personality probably determined that more than necessarily a group I was in. Yeah.

Srini Rao: And being in a high school of 130 people especially given that so much of your work seems like it's about social science and human beings. I, how did that inform your

Eric Barker: worldview about people?

What did

Srini Rao: you learn from being an environment that was so small? Cause that's not a typical

Eric Barker: high school for most people. No, it was, it highlighted things. It's different when mean, when people who in high school, like over, over a thousand people graduat class, at least the first year or so, you might not know everybody versus, 30.

Everybody. Everybody has a read on almost everybody else because it's small enough. For me for the book, it's like I was never great with relationships. I'm, that was never my strong suit, never my focus. And so I think that was difficult in the sense of things come natural to me.

But on the other hand, I think given what I do, stress testing ideas with social science, it did allow me to take that perspective of being like an anthropologist from another planet where I'm like looking from a distance and saying okay, how does this operate? Because, I don't really feel like I'm a part of it.

I do feel like an outsider. So maybe that'll allow me to give it the Jane Goodall treatment, . Yeah.

Srini Rao: As far as career paths, you and I both know this is not something that we end up in by choice. Usually it's this, non-linear trajectory that puts us here by accident.

Did your parents encourage you to pursue any particular career paths or give

Eric Barker: you advice about making your way in the world? My parents were neither My parents went to college. Both my parents were pretty blue collar and they wanted more than anything for me to go to college and, be a doctor or lawyer that, that was their ambition.

And and I I didn't really go that bad. I took her, I took a more creative route. I left college and went straight to Hollywood. So it was weird. I think they wanted me to go the professional the professional route, and I went more of the artistic route and, it's a struggle.

It was, they were always very supportive, but I could tell they, they wanted that brass ring of like traditional status, career professionalism. And that just wasn't me. And I knew that from the beginning. And I have to say, it did feel really good to, achieve a certain level of success and to be able to have them feel like, okay, he's safe.

He did well, even though he didn't go the route that we wanted necessarily he, he did okay. And that meant a lot to me because I, I think there certainly times when they were worried about, Yeah, I

Srini Rao: didn't grow up in a blue collar family. I grew up the son of a college professor, and

Eric Barker: this

Srini Rao: is something I asked Alec Ross, who had spent a lot of time working in blue collar jobs and then eventually found himself, in charge of technology, international technology policy for the White House.

What do you think it is that those of us who only

Eric Barker: see,

Srini Rao: blue collar workers through the media misperceive about their lives and what they're like as people and then, how is it that as somebody who grew up in a blue collar family, you have this very clearly strong intellectual drive given the subject matter of your books.

I've read, the articles you've written and I read your previous book. Where does that come

Eric Barker: from? I think it comes from the fact that, my, my parents didn't have a, didn't really have a choice. Just the environments they grew up in, you know where their back.

They didn't have the option. And what was great was they gave me the option, but they thought that I think my values would've immediately been their values, and that I would've immediately sought, traditionally traditional status, jobs like doctor, lawyer, something like that. And given that freedom to explore, given that freedom, my intellectual interest and my artistic interest, I pursued them.

And so having that freedom and that flexibility, I immediately figured out in high school, I knew since I was 15, I wanted to be a writer, and I was very focused on it. And because of the freedom that, they gave me, and I, I felt like it was doable. And I, and my guess is that for a lot of people in blue collar situations, whether it's, financial social circle, they don't feel like it's a possibility.

Or at the very least, even if they really want it, they don't know how to break that gap. Like, how do I get from here to there because, I think we've all been in a situation where we say to ourselves like, I'd love to do this, but we, it makes it so much different when you know someone who has done that, when you know someone who's, and you have that model, you have that example, Hey, Gary, good.

Gary's not that smart. You can do it. Then I can it's that kinda natural, intuitive, emotional feeling of this is a real possibility. I knew I wanted be a writer, but it wasn't until I was in college that a friend of mine was like, oh, I move to Hollywood and now I'm working on this and that.

And as soon as he said that, it was like, oh, that's real. Oh, I would always loved movies, but. I, it theoretically. I knew people did that, but it just didn't seem like it was on the menu of options for me. And then to have a, somebody I know say, oh, no, like I'm doing this now, all of a sudden it like that that, that check box popped up on my list.

Now it's oh, no you can do this. It's doable. I think breaking through that barrier where theoretically, it's possible versus practically, I know what steps I can take to get from, A to B. It's just a, it's a huge difference just in our thinking. Yeah two

Srini Rao: questions come from that.

In some cases it legitimately probably isn't possible, right? Because I think that this is one of the things that I have been very hyper critical of in the past, probably year or so, as I, mentioned to, when I was talking about my book, is that you have this sort of, anybody can do anything they wanna do if they put their mind to it, mythical narrative that ignores context in a lot of prescriptive advice where, and this is something I've talked about in the show before I realized that when my parents would give me advice about pursuing careers, they always encouraged us to choose things that were secure and stable.

And in the early years of doing this, I always felt that advice was narrow-minded and misguided until I understood the context from which they were giving that advice. When you grew up in a country like India, particularly when they did your life, choices were binary. It was poverty or security. And I don't think that's not real for people

Eric Barker: even today.

No, there's always the issue of context. There's always the issue of personal ability. It's like some people, some people have off the charts math skills, other people don't that person's probably not gonna win a medal and, be a mathematician.

It's, having that openness for me at least, allowed me to say like, where do my skills lie? Where do my abilities lie? And then build them. But I think, yeah, for context, it is a huge issue. And I think as I talk about the book is the issue of our personal networks, our huge, they can be even bigger factor than underlying personality.

It's like underlying personality, like big five traits make a big difference. But the truth is that's not everything. Context, is huge. The more. Thing isn't to say oh, I'm an introvert, or, oh, I'm, agreeable. So therefore it's always I am. And what that in this situation, some people are more introverted with friends and perhaps they're more extroverted, at a party or they're reverse.

So I think the issue of context, is really underrated and a lot of people need to think more about it. I think it's just not a lever. Most people feel comfortable pulling or being. Deliberate about, cause it can feel sleazy or like social primary to try and deliberately manipulate your network in that way.

But it doesn't have to be like that. But I totally agree with you. I think context, not only is it a big factor, but it just doesn't get discussed at all.

Srini Rao: Yeah. I also think that it forces you to face harsh and uncomfortable truths. Cause I very distinctly remember when I graduated from business school in 2009, I ended moving back to my parents' house and my dad and I are, driving to Costco for his daily, like Costco run.

And he loves Costco. The man's like the unofficial brand ambassador for Costco. He's probably made them hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. He tells me not everybody can be the next Steve Jobs. And I got pissed off because, it's oh, you wouldn't tell my sister that she can't be any kind of doctor she wants.

And it's funny because I just remember looking through my articles. I'm like, wait a minute. I wrote an article titled You're probably Not Gonna Be the Next Steve Jobs.

Eric Barker: Oprah. Beyonce, . Yeah. Yeah.

Srini Rao: You know the very thing that pissed me off, I just found myself agreeing with, because I realized he was right and yeah, I suck at computer science.

And I'm not Steve Jobs's level brilliant. I finally had to come to terms with that. It's yeah, there are certain people who are gonna achieve at that level. And I remember we had Justine Musk here and I, she wrote that article, but you probably I'm sure have read about extreme success.

And she said, this is not something that you can learn. And, she said, I don't wanna get all deterministic. But I do think that the idea that genetics play a role or genetic determinism. Is really frowned upon in self-improvement circles, but I'm like, you know what? I'm a scrawny fucking Indian.

I'm never gonna play in the NBA no matter how

Eric Barker: much I practice. Yeah, no, I think this is it's a huge issue. Especially arena,

I think David Epstein's book, the Sports Scheme is probably the only time I've really addressed the issue of genetics because it's something we can't do something about, I don't wanna deny its importance. Its importance is huge. And I get into that, my first book, but I, it's definitely a factor.

But to me that becomes part of the process, becoming part of the process is realizing your strengths and doubling down on them. Where instead of just saying anybody can do any, that's, it's like we, we all know at the tail end of the distribution, in any area, there's going to be outliers.

People who can run rings around, I'm not gonna be magnusson. And, it's that's, it's not gonna happen. Again you're talking about people who are phs, in, but, but I think to give people hope, honest hope, the issue of, oh, you're not gonna be the next Steve Jobs.

It's yeah, but is the next Steve Jobs gonna be anything like Steve Jobs? Are we fighting the last war? In the sense of Steve Jobs, was, coming up in the seventies, eighties, nineties. Are those same traits, those same abilities, what is necessary now?

Certainly some things like ambition and drive and persistence, carry over. But other knowledge, other skills, it changes dramatically. No, no human being, a hundred thousand years ago. Of, having a natural talent for mathematics and computer science wasn't really paying off on the Savannah, things change, times change.

So I think there really is that fighting the last war issue where, oh, they're not gonna be this. Yeah. But is that going to be the killer trait, the killer app, five, 10 years from now, and can you maneuver, create a niche for yourself where your skills do shine? That's a process of personal discovery that people need to proactively, it can happen serendipitously, but proactively engage in to create a path for themselves, versus if you keep trying to be the thing that was successful 20 years ago, especially in a modern age, that's generally comical.

There's some areas that haven't changed, but No, we need to be, you need to dive deep and think about like, where are my strengths? Where do they connect? Rather than Yeah, exactly. You're not gonna be in.

Srini Rao: Yeah I think what's funny is how often these success stories use outliers as our role models for possibility.

And you read about that. Even Paul Graham, his essay on Wealth specifically says, using outliers as role models is not a good idea. Bill Gates is an exception. And not only that, people seem to forget he was the beneficiary of one of the most spectacular blunders in business history. Like you said, he would've been successful, no question, but not nearly as rich as he

Eric Barker: is today.

Oh, no. When people look at Gates, it's it's the intersection of a lot of, a lot of different things. Absolutely. It's like the fact that he was alive right then was a big factor. Number two, his family was already extremely wealthy. Not, obviously not Bill Gates wealthy, but, had a lot of resources going in and also, Huge, smart.

I've read a biography. It was like the first time he took the s a t he didn't score, perfect score, so he took it a second time and then did these three things, I'm sure there are many others, but these three things are incredibly rare occurrences to have them all happen.

We can do things to try and, like engineer that we're in the right circumstances given our abilities, given our background, given our possibilities. But I don't think we're often encouraged enough to do the proactive work to think about that and to try and, ab test in our life to find those right circumstances.

It's treated much more like a conveyor belt, but the conveyor belt doesn't actually go anywhere. So you kind, you kinda have to decide, on your own in the end. But there's no prescriptive path that's like upwards. Yeah. Let's talk

Srini Rao: briefly about one part of your previous book and then we will, get a little bit into your Hollywood Grand and talk about the new book.

But I think that makes a perfect segue to asking you about this essay that you're, which I think I've probably seen over and over again. I think it probably got picked up hundreds of times which was about why valedictorians don't become CEOs because I think that's a perfect con, way to talk about education.

You have this very unusual perspective and you seem to have done a lot of research, cuz I have always felt that the education system is a one size fits all solution that mismatches talent with environment. So you end up getting average performance for the most part. And that's, coming from me, the guy who's been fired from every job I've ever had, where I realize people consistently mismatched my skills and my talent with my environment.

And as a result I was written off.

Eric Barker: I think that you're absolutely right because the issue is we do have a one size, fits all kinda education system, at least, up to high school. And we see that like basically when you look at SAT scores and standardized tests, those are effectively IQ tests.

It's like that's what the research shows, meanwhile, grades in high school are actually a much better test of conscientiousness, your ability to follow the rules. And looking at those two, you can see, yeah, sure. Some people have a very high IQ and they're very score very high in conscientiousness and they do great on standardized tests and school.

But a lot of people, there's a more of a gap there. School and school grades are generally testing people's ability to follow rules, which in general, if you wanna do pretty. It's a great way. So that's what the research showed in terms of the valedictorian study is that those, they went on to do very well, but what they didn't do is become exceptional because they were following the rules.

And again, that kind of fighting the last war issue, we have to break the rules. We have to just see what are the other possibilities. We always hear about disruption. People who, the valedictorian usually aren't gonna be disrupting anything. They're gonna be supporting the current system.

So they do very well, but they don't usually turn into the people who really overturn the system, who lead the system, who become artists. And, and that's the first chapter of barking up the wrong tree. And I point to a lot of other research showing, again, that same principle, that outliers are different.

They're not, perfectly compliant in checking all the boxes because in school you have to. If you wanna be auditor, you have to get A's in every subject. And that kinda basically limits passion. If you are somebody who is exceptionally passionate about, math, you have to stop studying math, practicing math to study history and English and everything else.

Versus the career world is the absolute reverse. Your career world, if you're gonna go to work for Google, you're great at math, you're great at computer science. Awesome. They don't care if you know anything about history, and if you're starting a startup again, you can hire people to be, to perform in the areas that you have weaknesses around.

People can give in an assistant, who can help them be organized if they're not. But you have to be really good at that thing, and that's what we're seeing again and again, is that the people who really double down on their strengths, those are the people who have more of the potential for that outlier success versus the well rounded.

But what rounded means is probably not at the, tip of the sphere in any one arena. So you do pretty good, but they're generally not the people who change the world. Holiday gifting for your friends and family can be hard and for your business even harder At and open, we help companies of all sizes deliver better gifts.

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Visit ikea usa.com/family again for more details. That's ikea usa.com/family. Yeah. Yeah. There's something earlier you said about college about not knowing that what you wanted to do was on the menu of options. And something I have

Eric Barker: said over and over again is that college course catalogs are like a

Srini Rao: fast food menu where the options in front of you blind you to the possibilities that surround you.

Because if you go to a, a school like a Berkeley or a Stanford or places that, most of the people I know went to school. You have this predetermined career path

Eric Barker: where it's

Srini Rao: hey, here are the majors that you can choose from. The only difference between this in high school is there are, quite a few more.

But what's interesting is that you basically have a hundred majors that lead to four potential career paths that lead to three potential jobs. And it's okay, you pick one of these and you either go to law school, med school, get a mba or go to graduate school. And that's pretty much it. Why do you think so many people miss it in college?

Like they don't have that moment that you did. Because I sure as hell didn't. Like I spent years trying to conform to a system in which I was never going to thrive. Like I literally remember to this day walking into a career fair at

Eric Barker: the

Srini Rao: first week of school at Berkeley, which is ridiculous. No freshmen should be going to a career fair

Eric Barker: for all.

Any of you who are freshman listening to this,

Srini Rao: you've got your whole life in front of you and you've hardly lived any of it. And this guy tells me we don't hire any English majors and. I didn't ever take

Eric Barker: a class after that I didn't think

Srini Rao: would help me get a job in. The irony of course, is I never interviewed for a job at Accenture and

Eric Barker: they probably would never hire me.

For me , I'm not necessarily chalk it to any flattering characteristics on my part. I think part of it was, basically, being very low on the person personality, the, of agreeableness, I'm very quick to kinda dispute things or challenge things, so I wasn't immediately board and, but the other thing was I think I was, I think that, and I kind say now, Hey, that seemed to work out for me, but I wouldn't recommend it like I treated college like education.

Like when you're talking about it, that's kinda this assembly line towards, towards getting to a job. I don't see it like that. Like I looked at it as, oh, I learn stuff IED in philosophy. There's no what do you do to graduate and find a mountain top and contemplate joblessness?

Like there's no like end result. Like anybody majors in philosophy. Either you become a philosophy professor or you go to law school. But I wasn't thinking about that. I was just like, great, I'm here to learn. And I had one of my freshman year, I remember one of my professors asked me, why are you majoring in philosophy?

And I was like cause if I dunno anything about that, then I dunno. And he was, and of course as a college professor, he liked that answer. I don't think my parents like that answer. My parents, thought I was crazy. It's here I am, I have the opportunity of going to an Ivy League school and I'm choosing to major in philosophy.

It's I was like, what are you doing? So it's like taking a fantastic cut of meat and then just him making it well done. It's just you're killing it. And my, my parents weren't thrilled about that, but I just treated it like, Hey, great. I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn some stuff.

And like I said I think the vast majority of people that do and did, think I was very naive and I was naive and, it paid off for me. But there was no guarantee of that. I can't recommend to other people like, oh, absolutely take this path. It'll look, no the other path is safer because yes, it's safe.

It does. You may not, you may not find fulfillment, but you'll be able to pay your electric though. And for me I just treated it like, great, I'm gonna learn philosophy. I'm gonna take classes that interest me. And, and I did not really think about it because I still had this, at that point, very delusional idea.

It's oh, I'm gonna be a writer, so this is fine. It's an issue. I was not thinking about the, that whole like money and putting food in your mouth thing. Yeah.

Srini Rao: It's funny because I feel like in a lot of ways elite schools, like Ivy League

Eric Barker: schools, even places like Berkeley are paradoxically breeding ground,

Srini Rao: conformity, even though you have the smartest people in the world

Eric Barker: there.

Absolutely. Again, a lot of those people. If you were to straight up measure on Q you might get slightly different results. But it's like all those people did well in high school and high school is basically a test for can you show up on time, can you do what you're told?

And that, that is a big part of it. And so no, absolutely. Like that. That is what some people crack, crack through, and do something very different. Or some people are successful quick enough that they can get past kinda a safe career and then they move on to something, bigger.

But no, I think largely you're right. Yeah.

Srini Rao: So how the world you get from, Ivy League school to working in Hollywood to writing books. Tell me about the time in Hollywood. What did you do there and that, how in the world did it lead you down to, this path

Eric Barker: of blogger, author, writer?

I just literally I, once I was my friend David was working in Hollywood, between my junior and senior year, he was like, Hey, why don't you come out, you can do some internships. And I was like, sure. So I like went out there for the summer, basically slept on his, did I did two or three internships at the same time, and then I was like, yes, this is what I wanna do.

So I like finished up my final year and one semester and immediately moved out and I didn't know how I was gonna pay proposal. I wasn't even thinking about that. But, I got lucky pretty fast in terms of writing basically after I was out there for a year, I got an agent. After two years I sold a script and after three years I had two movies made.

But this was all like small indie stuff and I managed to seek out a living, but I was in this really weird, I was in this really weird, very small demographic that nobody ever talks about. Where like in Hollywood, 98, 90 9% of people experience no success. Like 1% of people like are the people in movies and tv.

And I was in that very narrow band where I consistently worked. I could pay the bills, but I wasn't winning Oscars or anything, millions of dollars. And so that is actually the toughest place to be because the next decision is very hard. If you're winning, Oscars are making millions of dollars. You keep doing what you're doing.

And if you. Sell a script or get an acting job to save your life after a few years, you wise up and leave. I was always in this difficult situation where I was saying like, God, what am I supposed to do? And I'm like, should I? And it was always very difficult for me. But, eventually I, I did, after about 10 years, I was like, you know what?

I don't know if this is ever gonna happen or if I'm just always gonna be wondering. And so I went off I went and got an mba. And I was, it was like a comedy, it was literally like a comedy film, like Total Fish out of Water. Here's this guy. Majored in philosophy, worked in Hollywood, writing like action movies and kids movies for 10 years.

And now I'm in business school with a bunch of people who majored in business in undergrad or used to be engineers. And like I, I'm literally first day of MBA school, I'm opening up my laptop and I fire up Excel and it actually gave me that window that's you've never used this application before, would you like a tour?

And I'm like, yeah, this probably isn't gonna be thing. But it was. It was actually in business school that I first got exposed to social science because I took a class on negotiating and I was really interested in that. And then after I graduated and was unemployed because I didn't want to take a standard job, I did my internship at Nintendo, which was a good thing cause they were doing some fun, creative stuff.

But that's when I started my blog, and that was in 2009. And I started looking at social science research, posting it up on the internet, and my blog grew from there. But meanwhile, I was working a job in marketing in the video game industry, which was cool, but it was a big shift for me to no longer be on the creative side.

Things for me to be, the suit was really strange. And I was embedded in a studio, so I was surrounded by the creative team, but it was funny to not be one of the creatives. And that was tough for me, that, that internally, that, that caused me a lot of emotional difficulty. But every day I was doing the blog, and video game lunches are insane.

So I was just not getting a lot of sleep, working really hard. And I, Had some fun, worked in the video game industry. Then I worked on I worked at a rational, I worked on a bio shock franchise. I worked in the right fashion franchise. They do some really cool stuff, but eventually the blog blew up and so it just kept growing and growing.

And I was like, you know what? This is more what I wanna be doing. This is the writing. I kinda put my I wanna be a, I wanted to be a writer since I was 15. I kinda put that aside and go to business school and work in video games. And it was strange to to leave that and then come back to that.

And in 2013, I put my job I, focused on the focused on the blog. It kept growing. I started getting syndicated by, time Magazine and Business Insider and the week. And then everybody kept telling me, you gotta write a book. You gotta write a book. And so in 2014, like I had already shifted from, okay, I'm writing stuff personally in high school.

And then it was, okay, I'm writing screenplays in Hollywood and then, okay, I'm writing blog posts and now I'm like, okay, I need to teach myself how to write an nonfiction book . And so I sat down and kinda reverse engineered okay, what do nonfiction books of the type, what type do I like?

What type of successful, what's the Venn diagram overlap? What do I contribute to that in terms of style? And I like broke it down scientifically and said, okay, here's what I wanna do, here's how I'm gonna do it. And I spent months writing the proposal and then I started working on barking Up the Wrong Tree.

Came out in 2017. And, that was the journey from from college to Hollywood to video games to to blog, to book. Yeah. Now you see why

Srini Rao: I told you I would need two hours to talk to you, . Talk to me briefly about your writing process, because, you were telling me even going through this book, it was excruciating, and I promise we'll get to the book right after this

But the thing that I think really struck me, the times that I've come across your blog, and I noticed a handful of writers seem to have this tendency down to an art form. I would probably say you and James Clear really have this really abi amazing ability to one right in a way that is clear.

Resonant but also incredibly useful to the point where, I remember looking at your blog. I'm like, what is this guy doing that he's getting like thousands and thousands of shares on these blog posts? Cause I'd come across your blog many times over the years just searching for random things.

And I was like, who the hell is this guy? So what goes into this that allows for that and why is it that you have, people who just linger in obscurity for years? Cause I know there are re writers who are far more talented probably than you and I will ever be who are lingering in obscurity.

Eric Barker: I don't think I have any magic power. I think that, the thing I focused on initially is just like finding the research. Cause everything I'm writing is, self-improvement from, peer reviewed signs or occasionally like unquestionable experts.

I really focus on kinda what's that bedrock? Where's it coming from? What's the insight? And then, it's just clarity. Cause for me, everything I write is, I write with a voice that's very conversational, very accessible. I try to make everything a balance of clarity and entertaining.

Make it fun, make it readable. Because that's the crazy thing is when I first started looking at a lot of the social science stuff, cause I was going through this like difficult transition, in terms of having, gone from a philosophy degree to a mba, from being, a writer to working in marketing.

And I was asking myself some big questions. The guy who got the philosophy degree was now all of a sudden, head on dealing with this. What am I doing with my life? What do I wanna be doing? It's kinda upended what I thought would happen. And I, when I started looking at social science, I started looking for answers.

That was really what this was for me. And. I was shocked to find that so many of the questions that we ask ourselves, they have been answered like not perfect answers, but we wonder about happiness. We wonder about meaning, we wonder about relationships, we wonder about love, friendship.

A lot of research has been done, but nobody sees this stuff. It's all locked up in every towers and it's written in a way that like, makes legalese look interpretable and so I thought the issue there was like finding the good stuff, finding the answers, and then making it accessible.

Just making this stuff comprehensible to people. And I think even a lot of nonfiction books still don't try and bridge that gap because I think there's a lot of nonfiction books, especially in self-improvement. There's, there's the total crap where they're just telling you what you wanna hear and it's not legitimate.

But then I think even the ones that are more legit, I think there's kinda an inferiority. Because you're not the PhD, you're not the guru. You're delivering it. And so there's this desire to come asate and serious and ifi. Whereas me, I,

and in of I mean I say in plays well with others, I say this is not, I'm a guru, so do what I do book this is, I know hell I was talking about. So I ask people who are smarter than both you and me. Like I try and I don't try and, strike a pose. I'm saying like, Hey, let's go on this journey together.

Come on, you and me. We don't know what we're doing. We both basically kinda want the same thing here. Let's figure this crap out. And I promise you like they've done the hard work in terms of the research. I'm gonna make this accessible and I'm gonna make it fun. So let's on this journey together, and I'm gonna treat conversationally.

It's gonna be like we're hanging out, we're talking, and if something like BS Man's, I'm It, and we're gonna laugh. We're gonna laugh. We're gonna have fun. We're gonna figure this out. And that's the attitude. I don't, I think a lot of stuff is struggling to come across as professional.

Trying to change their style versus I just really try and be made when I'm writing. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Let's get into the book. I think the subtitle really struck me, the surprising science behind why everything you know about relationships is mostly wrong, considering how many, people I've had here to talk about relationships, like the ongoing joke with some of our listeners is that every guest that Trini has is a reflection of some problem that

Eric Barker: he's trying to solve in his life.

That's the only joke. It's not research, it's me search.

Srini Rao: Yeah. And it's funny cuz there was like this steady stream of dating experts. And when I said that on, on a Facebook update, somebody who replied back saying, who's this week's relationship? I'm dating expert, but what what, and what made this sort of the natural follow up to barking up the wrong tree?

Like, why this book? Why

Eric Barker: not? Look, I'm with you, man. I think if you were to look at my blog in terms of the, like tree rings, I think you'd see the same thing you just described in your podcast where it's oh, Eric's talking. Like different, like big questions than dating. And then, oh, all of a sudden there's all this stuff on management.

I guess that's when he was working in marketing and you can literally see that. For me I like for barking up the own tree. I knew there was a bunch of contradictory stuff around success. I was coming outta business school. I'm looking at all this advice people are getting, and I know some of this stuff isn't true.

All these maximums we grew up in know nice guys finished last. It's not what, it's, is it work or work life balance? These are big questions and the pat answers we get I know that you, they're not true or they're not always true. And I'm like, I'm gonna get this research.

I decided to stress test it. And in, in doing this, I remember there was a Freud quote where Freud paraphrasing, he basically said, everything comes down to like work and relationships, like work in your personal life. Those are the two fundamental areas. And After up trade, I kinda decided to take the same formula, five to relationships, because first of all, it wasn't, once again, it was very interest to me cause it was not an area I'd really been very good at, and I knew there was real power there.

I knew there was real question there and it was, There's this big kind of pen and teller aspect to it for me, because I'm like looking at most relationship books and I'm like, I kinda wanna take a bath. Like I wanna, I'm like, this is all, it's like I'll tell you what you want, hear crap. I know there are some exceptions to these rules nobody wants to talk about.

So I'm like, no. Like I'm gonna use the same kind of format I used for Bar. Cause Bark Kept their own tree was the surprising science behind why everything you know about success is mostly wrong. And so for this I was like, great, let's do it again. MythBusters man. Stress test this. You know what like does love Conquer All Is a friend in Need A friend?

Indeed. There's no man in island. Can you judge a book by its cover? Let's test these maximums because I know in the area of relationships because in success, yeah, people have their personal beliefs, but like people are not gonna go to the mat and fight you as much on some of these principles of success.

You're not as invested. With relationships. Oh man. There are some stuff that people want to be true and they do not wanna hear you say that its not true. Yeah. And they will carry your face off and disintegrate you with acid before they will acknowledge that they're wrong. And I was like, great.

Here this is this is where we need to go next. This needs a market correction. And, so I, I decided to pursue that. All right. Speaking

Srini Rao: of which, let's start with judging a book by its cover. One of the things that you say in the book when it comes to first impressions, is the maximum might be don't judge a book by its cover.

And right or wrong, there's a good reason such advice is given because we do judge a book by its cover immediately and instinctively we can't help it. And that cover is usually someone's face. We make up our minds about someone's assertiveness, beauty, competence, likability, and trustworthiness in less than a second.

And like mind reading more time doesn't noticeably change our opinions, it just increases our confidence. You also talk about a number of different biases, like egocentric bias and how readable people are. So two questions. Come from this, how

Eric Barker: do we

Srini Rao: make better first impressions ourselves?

And then more importantly, how do we, judge our first impressions accurately? Because I remember reading that and it reminded me of a friend that I traveled with in Europe. And you know it, and it's funny because he was anal and could be, annoying. And I remember he asked another one of our friends, does Rinni hate me?

I was, he said, no. He's Rinni just thinks you're an anal fuck. And the funny thing is, he's actually a very good friend to this day. And I, first I thought, this guy's annoying as shit, but to this day, he's still a good friend. And my first impression was wildly inaccurate. And then on the flip side of that, like particularly in a dating context, I've met women where I, my first impression was like, this person is amazing.

And it turns out I was

Eric Barker: completely wrong. First impressions are really interesting because that is something, you're the old maximum first impressions matter. It's true. And the thing is that we're pretty good at them. That's in terms of reading what is on people's minds, their thoughts and feelings of people we're close to family members, friends, spouses we're terrible at that, reading their thoughts and feelings.

But in terms of just getting a read on someone holistically, a stranger, first impressions generally, like roughly 70% we're pretty accurate. And there's been a lot of research on thin slicing where if you show somebody a video of a teacher in a classroom, just a couple minutes people's ability to say, is this person confident at their job?

And is, like I said, roughly 70% accuracy. Now, again, that's way above chance, but also seventies, be in school. So it's certainly, there's a lot of room to, to improve. And that is the tricky thing is that first impressions, the double edged sword of first impressions is that we're generally more accurate than we are.

However, whatever impression we get, sticks and as you quoted from the book, we are immediately sizing people up. It is that is, that just happens. There is no not judging people. We do it immediately. And those things tend to set now to your first question where you said, how can we make better first impressions?

What we need to do is we need to think about what kind of impression that we wanna make. Now a lot of people might hear that and think that sounds manipulative or that sounds fake. And I think there's a way to, to balance that, where not to do method acting and pretend to be someone that you're not, but to look at the group of different views.

We're all somebody who's very different with our parents or our family. Much different in dating context. Probably very different in professional context. So I'm not saying pretend to be somebody. I'm saying, which of these people that are in me that I am, how do I need to present myself and comport myself in this situation to make a good first impression?

So you're not trying to be fake. You're trying to say within my repertoire, which is what is appropriate here. And the thing is, it's that is so important to think about because like I said, people are gonna generally 70%, they're gonna roughly read you correctly, but more importantly, that's gonna set.

So making a bad first impression really can last. And it's difficult because of confirmation bias. It's difficult to change those first impressions. And even more and this is advice when thinking about making a first impression, but also about the impression you make on others is that if you make a bad first impression, people might not wanna see you anymore.

And if somebody else makes a bad first impression, you might not wanna see them anymore. In other words, because of kind of more statistics here than human behavior, if I give you one shot, you make a bad first impression and I never see you again. I can't correct my judgment. So you're, when you positively judge someone, those are going to inevitably end up being more accurate because the second time, the third time, you're going to get to see the person again, and you're gonna be able to test your judgments to a degree.

Versus if you never see somebody again, you're never gonna be able to revise it. So we need to give people a second chance, but also we need to think about what impression we wanna make. Because if somebody writes you off, they're never gonna get a chance to update, their perspectives on it. Hey y'all.

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The other thing you talk about is

Srini Rao: body language and why it's not as

Eric Barker: accurate as we think because I'm sure you've heard that quote of 95% of communication is nonverbal, but you

Srini Rao: do allude to that where you say, pay attention to their, tone of voice less than their body language.

Eric Barker: The issue of body language is definitely, we're always reading people, the issue with is with conscious reading, body language, subconsciously, certainly we're gonna pick up on things that somebody's doing. But when we sit there and try and pretend that we're Sherlock Holmes or there's some Rosetta Stone for, for body language, the research does not show that at all.

Because the issue is first and foremost, you never know. Are they shivering cause they're cold or are they shivering? Cause they're nervous. You dunno. And especially with strangers, we don't have a baseline, with your friends, oh, he's not drumming his fingers because he's bored.

That's his little habit. He's always doing that. Like when we don't have that information, we can't read stuff. So deliberately trying to leverage body language really generally doesn't work. But like you said, one thing we can use is to focus more on the voice because when we can hear someone but we can't see them, empathic accuracy only drops off about 4%.

But when we can see someone but we can't hear them, empathic accuracy drops off 54%. We get a lot more information, from someone's voice than we do from seeing them. So body language just isn't that important. It has almost no correlation with lie detection. The issue is in general with reading, people we're really pretty bad at it.

Nicholas Haplo, university of Chicago, has done a lot of his research and he found that, in terms of reading the thoughts and feeling. Strangers, you're only about accurate about 20% of the time with, friends and family members. 30%. And that hits a peak of 35% with spouses. So whatever you think is on the mind of your spouse or significant other two-thirds of the time, you're wrong.

We're just generally really bad at this. Now. We can get better, we can get better by being motivated. When you're talking about dating first dates, people are actually more accurate than in general. And that is, cause there are states, our brains generally pretty lazy. Once there's something to be won or something to be lost, all of a sudden accuracy improves because now we're focused.

That can help. But the truth is that the ceiling is actually pretty. For how much better we can get at this. What we really need to do, if we wanna be able to read people better, is we need to focus less on improving our reading skills and focus more on improving the other person's readability, getting them to send stronger signals.

And there are a number of things we can do to try to improve that. One is, as you and I were talking about earlier, is the issue of context. Context is really powerful. If you're on a first date, over a drink or coffee, you're not going to get a lot from the person other than like what they choose to tell you.

Versus if you were out playing a sport, you'd see like, how do I make decisions, quickly, do they cheek, how well do they cooperate you? All of a sudden getting a lot more information from that person by watching their behavior in a dynamic environment, that's powerful. So manipulating context is powerful.

Another thing that's powerful is getting other people in the mix. Because I don't think anybody would think that if you only saw someone in the presence of their boss you wouldn't be seeing the whole then. So other people can bring out facets and other sides of someone that you're trying to get a better understanding of.

Finally, the other thing I would tell you is in terms of, I bring up the issue of controversial topics. If you can get people to emotionally react to things, you're probably gonna get more honest, insightful answers than if you're just talking about the weather.

Srini Rao: Let's talk about friendship.

I really, this was another section that really struck me. A couple things that you say about friendship that really stood out to me. You said, being friends means ignoring the strict

accounting

Eric Barker: of favors.

Srini Rao: In fact, reciprocity is actually a profound negative friendship. Being in a hurry to repay a debt is often seen as an insult With buddies, we act like cost and benefits don't matter, or at least not as much.

And then you say the weakness of friendship is also the source of its immeasurable strength. Why do true friendships make us happier than spouses of children? Because they're always a deliberate choice. Never an obligation. Friendship is more real because either person can

Eric Barker: walk away at any time. It's fragility,

Srini Rao: proves its purity.

So I wanted to bring back a clip from a previous episode with Lydia Denworth, who wrote a book about

Eric Barker: the psychology, your friendship. Yeah,

Srini Rao: I figured as much I wanted to bring this back because it was a very interesting moment where we were talking about, what happens when people move away and how friendships change an adult life.

Take a listen. It's

Eric Barker: just much harder to maintain a relationship when people move further apart, but it's not impossible. So it really depends on motivation again and how much it matters and how, I think what does happen is to be generous. We'll say that people get busy and then they get caught up with the new people in their life or their work.

And the longer things go when they haven't seen someone, the less connected they feel, the less up on the day to day of their life that person is. And so it's natural that it can fade away sometimes, and it's not actually the end of the world. This is one of the things I think is important. So when you said that it didn't feel reciprocated in the same way, that's the critical.

Juncture where you can say to yourself, maybe this friend isn't, this friendship isn't sustaining me in the same way, and I'm gonna let it go, or I'm gonna shuffle. I, the analogy I like to use is that if you think of your friends, as you've seen in the book of, concentric circles, the people closest to you, and then a little further out, a little further out.

When you have a friend like that, it doesn't mean that you have to not be friends with them anymore, but you shuffle the furniture of your friendship to an outer room, .

Srini Rao: So I think I, I wanted to bring that clip back in particular because I think that, I have seen, friendships not disintegrate, but we definitely have drifted as people have moved away.

And the effort to stay in touch isn't reciprocal. It's not like when we don't see, when we see each other, it's, not as terrible. It's just like old times. But I'm curious just based on what you have said about reciprocity, like

Eric Barker: how you interpret that. Yeah. The reciprocity issue is just that.

We we aren't focused on that kinda strict account. We, we assume the relationship's gonna be ongoing with a stranger. You dunno if you're, they're, you're gonna see them again. So you dunno if they're gonna pay it back. It's an expression of trust that we don't immediately, think about the accounting favors.

But, the issue with friendship, is that distance does make it really hard. Men are especially bad here because, women's friendships usually involve more talking, more opening up men's friendships, tend to be more focused on activities. As far as research shows they, I think they often talk about like women's friendships being face to face and men's friendships being shoulder.

Shoulder. And so it turns out that it ends up really bad cuz men used to do things together when they're not proximate, when they're not near by each other. You can't do stuff when you can't do. It often falls apart. No, it's, that's the tricky thing about adulthood is that yeah, it's like when friendships are approximate, we do get busy.

It is harder to keep up. And that's why, as I talk about in the book, one of the really critical things is that issue of time. The biggest arguments that friends have, are over time, and time is a costly signal. Time really shows that somebody matters. I only 24 hours in a day, if you spend one hour a day with someone every day, you can only do that for 20 people and Absolutely.

So it, it's showing time is making time for people makes a huge difference because it shows a level of investment. And there's research from Notre Dame that update million phone calls between people and basically said that when people kept in touch every two weeks, Over the course of the study, those were the relationships that persisted.

So I generally tell people it's like trying to stay in touch, if you can, every two weeks or so, is a good way to sustain things because otherwise, yeah, it falls by the wayside. It's great to meet up with an old friend and have that feeling of, it feels like we weren't really apart, but there is a, there is a survivor bias issue there where how many friendships, it doesn't feel like that, or we don't feel we can, we relate to the person anymore, or heck, we forget that they're even there and just buried in our contact list on our phones.

So it really does matter. Time is huge. That gets trickier as we get older. And so what I point to is the issue of having rituals, having something that you do together. Having something that's a part of your schedule, having something that is on the calendar. Where it keeps you consistent that it's not an appointment that's artificial where this is something, Hey, we always watch football together.

Or hey, we always every Tuesday night we do x Having a kind of, comfortable organic ritual, that's a good natural, sustainable way to maintain a friendship over the long haul. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Let's talk about marriage because I think that, I had like a sigh of relief when reading this book.

Cause I remember reading somewhere that, if you don't get married by a certain age, you're probably gonna die sooner at, I don't remember where I read that. And I'm thinking I'm 44 and still single. I'm screwed. I'll be dead within a few years. And then I read your book and one of the things that you say is that if you're unhappily married, your health is likely to be notably worse than if you ever got hitched at all.

A bad marriage makes you 35% more likely to fail ill and lots four years off your life. I thought, oh sweet. I that, that isn't gonna make my mom feel any better. Yeah. , as an Indian mom. But yeah. So let's talk about this. Like where do we have all these sort of misunderstandings of relationships?

Cause there were so many things in this section that were completely counterintuitive to all the

Eric Barker: things that I had thought. Oh yeah that's why I put a warning at the beginning of the section. Cause I was just like, I remember where's a lot of people who are gonna be surprised or at least at first are not gonna be happy.

They're, and I just try and set people up where I'm like, Hey, you're not gonna everything you hear first, but I promise bro. We're gonna get you back to the just getting some time here. And, we gotta wade through some of this stuff because, we've been sold a bill of goods, in, in a lot of ways.

We've been telling people that wanna hear, there's time of these theses and things have changed. Things have changed and we need to update a lot of those beliefs. But specifically to. To what you're saying about, you always see research that's saying, oh, married people are happi, or Married people are healthier.

But the majority of that research, commits survivor bias. Basically, they're just taking the list of married people, measuring how healthy and happy they're, and then taking the list of single people healthier. And oh, hey, look, see marriage makes people happier. But that's not the correct way to run that study.

What you need to do, if you wanna see if getting married, makes you happy, healthier. You have to include the divorced, the widowed, and the separated people in with the married people. And then what is the numbers are very different. Basically, marriage doesn't make you happy and healthy. A happy marriage makes happy and healthy.

Happy marriage has profound positive effects. There's one study I referenced in the book. It was a recent study from Australia where they said that we may be underestimating just how happy a happy marriage makes you. However, is being divorced is one of the few things that leaves a permanent dent in people's happiness.

Only I can only find divorce and extended unemployment are the two things where people never seem to fully return to baseline. And if people have been divorced, even if they get remarried, we can still see in the data carrying over of that less health, less happiness, so basically marriage has become very much winner take all.

If you are in a happy marriage, the benefits are profound. And if you're in an unhappy marriage, like you said, it's far worse than being single. The unhappy, the people who are unhappily married are far less happy than people who are, who were never married at all. So it's not this kind of panacea, it's more like we need to do it right now.

The upside to all this is research from Eli Finkel at Northwestern says that because we've had this kind of semi dismantling of marriage, it used to be very constraining. It used to be very enforced by culture, by community, by group. There are strict rules. Marriage was very unfair, but it was very stable.

Now we've had a loosening of that. So marriage is much more do it yourself. You can it, it's not as unfair because you can rewrite the rules. However, that's made it less stable, much higher divorce rate, or more recently, fewer people getting married at all. The upside of all of this is that, cause it's due of yourself.

If we roll up our sleeves, we're proactive. The happiest marriages now are happier than any throughout history. If you do marriage right now, you can have the happiest marriages that have ever existed. But the issue is we can't just rely on our context. We can't rely on passively showing up. We have to be a lot more proactive if we want one of those happiest marriages.

Yeah.

Srini Rao: Speaking of which, there's some really funny things you say about the phases through which, a relationship develops. You say running around like a delusional junkie, endlessly professing your love, acting like a maniac, and throwing caution to the wind as you ignore work.

Forget to pay the bills in text your obsession 300 times a day. That's pretty clear in a costly signal. What do people often being would say, show me you're crazy about me. Bingo. Romantic love not only overrides rationality, but also signals the overriding of rationality. And then you say the most vital and the most wonderful form of crazy that love brings idealization.

As we all know, people in love idealize their partners. It's one of the most recognized hallmarks of love. But you also talked about the fact that idealization

Eric Barker: eventually starts to fade. Yeah. Basically that the issue about love is that initially it's passive. It just happens to us. We don't put a love switch.

We don't decide to fall in love with somebody. It just happens, and the danger there is that, cause it's passive, we feel like maybe we could always be passive about it. And what we don't realize is that entropy kind of kicks in, is that basically those feelings for many, not all die down.

And that it's gonna be incumbent upon us if we wanna make a long term relationship for our marriage work to be more deliberate about it. And I point to other research that shows, fairytale visions actually predict negative things because again, passivity, it's just, it's all gonna work out.

It's all fine. We're soulmates. We are meant to be with one another. That kind of tells you that you can wrestle your laurels, then that's not what the research shows, is that in general we need to be more proactive. And one of the things I talk about is that, Basically trying to use what in psychology is called emotional contagion, is the idea that environments, and you and I have talked a lot about context, is that environments, whatever feeling we get from an environment we associate with the people we're with, we can leverage this.

So when time goes by in a relationship, feelings start to die down. Often people get in a ru, people just, Netflix and pizza again. But the truth is, the research shows that when they split couples up in the groups and they had one co one group go on, exciting dates and one going pleasant dates, the exciting dates won because that excitement, going horseback riding or roller coasters, that carried over.

We associated Pavlo style, those feelings with our spouse that can revitalize and keep that energy there. A lot of people think, oh, you. We went on exciting dates because we were in love. That's true, but the reverse is also true. You fell in love because you did fun and exciting things together. And usually as a relationship goes on, people stop doing that.

And when they stop doing that, they stop getting the benefits of emotional contagion. Now it's completely on your partner to be cool, fun, interesting, and vibrant all the time. And nobody's like that. Especially after a hard day at work. We need to like actually be deliberate about having those fun feelings.

And again, we can't flip them on, but we can do exciting, fun stuff to try and, leverage emotional contagion to keep those step ball in the air, to keep those feelings going when they inevitably die down a little bit.

Srini Rao: It's funny cause I quoted that, I remember I put that on Instagram saying you want to guaranteed way not to get laid, take a girl to dinner.

I like, I try to avoid dinner dates like the plague because of exactly what you said. And I didn't realize I, now I have research to back it up. So if any girl tries to challenge me on this and say, let's do something lowkey just

Eric Barker: center this quote from your book. I don't think I've put, I don't think I had a quote in there about, about getting laid but No, you didn't.

Srini Rao: You remember I rewrote it. That said translation. If you don't want get laid, go out to dinner with somebody. . And

Eric Barker: the other issue there is what we were talking about earlier with the issue of reading people where, again, dinner dates, you're just sitting there, it's static.

Yeah. You're not learning as much about the other person. So for both supporting a relationship in terms of having vibrant, energetic, fun, you wanna do that. But when you're both vetting each other in the first few days, you wanna be getting more accurate signals. To your point, it's like you always want to be doing more fun, more exciting stuff, otherwise, it's almost like you're playing on hard mode.

Like you're not gonna be able to read people as well, you're not gonna be able to leverage the emotions and the environment. You are just playing on hard mode. The other person better be like in a great mood and, on amphetamines and energetic and they better be like on their A game because otherwise there's just no margin for getting to know each other, for treating those vibrant feelings.

But you wanna be able to like, really give it a shot. And the thing is, we get lazy. We get lazy. We do what's easy. We don't do what's really effective. And I think that's, it's a big problem. It's a really big problem, especially now coming out the pandemic. It's I think a lot of people are gonna need to find a way to mix up a little.

I, it's funny cuz my default

Srini Rao: go-to these days is bowling. I'm like, bowling is relatively inexpensive and fun.

Eric Barker: Playing a game is a great thing to do. Cause again, yeah, you get a lot of information out the person you see how to make decisions and handle things.

But also it's fun and there's some lively competition in there. Like that's a cool, that's a cool, fun thing to do and I think we all appreciate that. And it's also good if you are not completely reliant on the other person to be entertaining or maybe for the alcohol, but to actually do something which is inherently fun that you enjoy, hey, at least you got a consolation prize.

If the date doesn't go well or you don't like each other, or at least you still manage to have. No I

Srini Rao: remember I was trying to convince this girl to go ice skating and she was like, no, let's do something low key, nothing. And that was it. And we met up for dinner and it just, there was nothing there.

I was like, all right and that was the end of it. I was like, you're not, and she was really sweet and I told her, I was like, honestly, just based on our interaction, it doesn't seem like you're that into me. I don't wanna waste my time with this.

Eric Barker: I think it's tricky. Some people are in habit or have a clear idea about what they expect.

I think, often first date people want something kind, like low investment and like to get outta, but I think we all have to balance it where it's yeah, I understand you investment. You don't know, you don't know this person. You don't want it to be too difficult on the other hand.

You also wanna give it a chance. So that's something that I think we need to think about. But yeah, it's if the other person is just, totally gotta do it this way, then, yeah, it makes a lot harder. Yeah.

Srini Rao: All right. I think the other parts that really struck me were the things about fighting in a relationship.

The fun fact, you mentioned marriage counseling was created by the Nazis.

Eric Barker: Do you gotta say more about that? It totally was, it was part of a Nazi eugenics program initially. It makes people feel any better. It doesn't work. You marriage counseling is not very effective. And that's not to say that the idea of marriage counseling and getting some help is a bad thing.

The real issue with marriage counseling it's terrible origins aside. Is it Most people wait too long to go. Most people, like they're already, it's already mission critical. The cancer has already reached, stage four by the time they're the, and then it's often late.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I remember my first roommate out of college was one of the, earliest guys to get married. And I remember he was going to marriage counseling at the church before the marriage. And I was just like, what? And now after all these years, I was like, oh, that makes all the sense in the world.

Because he said they're inevitably gonna be things that you actually don't talk about unless you have an objective third party who

Eric Barker: forces you to talk about them. That, that can be really helpful if you don't know, if you don't know what to do and you're both stuck in bad habits, it can be really powerful.

It's just, again, most people I think, wait an average of six years to go to marriage counseling. And by then, what I talk about in the book is this is researched by John Gottman, is that basically idealization, the hallmark of romantic love. That is what he refers to as positive sentiment override.

Basically, you are positively biased in favor of your partner if they do something great because they're absolutely wonderful and if they do something bad, they must have made a mistake. . The issue is that over the course of a marriage, if there are hiccups and problems and we don't talk about them, we don't get it out in the open, what can happen is negative sentiment over body where you start to demonize your partner, you start to see them as out to get you or out to sabotage your happiness, is that they don't care their time being.

And that is largely because people aren't communicating. One of the things that Gotman found is that, a lot of people are afraid, oh geez, if we argue we're gonna fight and then that's gonna be the end of the marriage. And that's really not the case for was only 40% of the time do screening matches, result in divorce more often.

What results in divorce is that people aren't communicating and so problems can't be resolved. Complaining is actually a positive as long as you don't personalize it. Raising issues allows them to be dealt with and has gotten found. A lot of issues are never gonna be resolved. 69% of ongoing marital issues never get resolved.

But far from being depressing information, that is true among hack and unhappy couples, meaning that you don't have to solve every problem in a relationship. It is much more about the regulation of conflict than the resolution of conflict. Yeah.

Srini Rao: I think that, that was the one that really struck me the most because my roommate, my, my old roommate and I were rehearsing for somebody here and he was telling me about, the situation with a girl that he broke up with and, he said that they would get into shutting matches.

And he realized from that relationship, the very thing you're talking about here, because, we both had fathers who taught us to deescalate. That is what we were taught. My mother's temper, my, and my dad like, deescalate just ignore it. And he told me, he said what he didn't realize until she You made him really aware of this is that by not fighting it was actually much more terrifying because she's like, who the hell knows?

If you're gonna just erupt and let it all explode or you're gonna kill me, she says, I don't know what you're thinking when you don't fight back. And that had never occurred to me. Cuz I always tended to like, move towards deescalation in any one of these situations.

Eric Barker: No, this is actually a really common fact.

Gottman is a funny line I quote in the book where he says that if you're in a long term relationship and you've never had a fight, please do that immediately. It's because people don't talk, they don't bring it out. And specifically Gottman specifies, what he calls the four horse, the four things that lead to divorce more than 80% of the time.

And two of them are racism and stonewalling. And stonewalling is that issue of somebody raises an issue, somebody you know has something about the relationship they have a problem with and you just shut down. And unsurprisingly, stonewalling is something men are much more likely to do is and show that this actually operates on a physiological level, that women's stress hormones die down quicker.

Men stay higher, longer, and a lot of men get flooded and they just shut shutdown in response. But the problem is when you shut down, the other person doesn't feel like you're listening it. It can be misinterpreted again, communication, it can be misinterpreted as you don't care, you're not listening.

And so there can be a difficult dynamic where men are more likely to stonewall, women are more likely to criticize, and the combination can be really deadly. Where instead of raising an issue neutrally, women are more inclined to personalize it. And men, instead of calmly dealing with something and responding, men are more likely to shut down.

And this can be a deadly combination. So it's like it's really important. To be personalized problems. You just make it about the issue, not about the person's character, and to not stonewall, to respond, to engage. And if you are feeling flooded, like this is a little bit overwhelming, fine.

Take a break. I'm back to it. But yeah, the combination of criticism in stonewalling can be absolutely lethal. And it's exactly what you're talking. Yeah.

Srini Rao: So let's talk about this final section of the book, which is really about community and loneliness. One of the things that you say is that the world is more connected than ever, yet we're more individualistic than we've ever been.

It makes you wonder how much we actually need others and in what ways. And then you go on to say, the health and the happiness effects of sustained loneliness on your body is to use a technical term, poop your pants. Scary. It makes me wanna run

Eric Barker: outside, hug the first stranger I see. And

Srini Rao: maybe reconsider my career choice loneliness since your brain into perpetual high alert mode.

And I wanted to bring back a clip about living in this increasingly individualistic world from my conversation with Alro. Take a listen. The United States right

Eric Barker: now does not have a culture of collective action. We did once upon a time. Now we really don't. We've become collective action.

The key word there is collective. And we have become an increasingly individualistic society. And so part of why I think the labor movement in the United States right now is weaker than it's been since, early in the 19th century, is because of the degree to which we've individualized our social contract.

And the only way to do things like reduce the college of college or graduate school is through you got it. Collective

Srini Rao: action. So what do you make of that? Based on the

Eric Barker: research that you've done for your book? The, our culture is very fractured, and we don't have this clear idea now.

America's always drawn a lot of strength from the idea of being a nation of immigrants, being this like group of dis that creates a lot of creativity and dynamism. And we don't stick to rules as much, just because they've always been the way. So it's been a much more, vigorous and dynamic culture On the other hand.

In terms of accomplishing things, it can be difficult. And again, more personally as I get into in the book, it can be lonely because we don't have those bonds. And what I found fascinating, I didn't believe it at first when I was doing the research, is the who teaches at University of York, she's a historian.

She said, before 19th century loneliness of an experience almost didn't exist. Which, like I said, it sounded crazy to me. But the point is that before that time, we were all embedded in a culture, a religion, a nation, a community, tribe, a family. We had those bonds and that is actually much more critical to the issue of loneliness.

Cause John Patco, who's done, most of the bulk of the big work in terms of loneliness he found that lonely people don't spend any less time with people than non lonely people do. On average, again, sounds crazy, but here's a thing. We've all felt lonely in a crowd. So being proximate to people, it's not, it's good, but you can still feel lonely when people are around.

So loneliness isn't just about isolation and this ties the two together. What Verde said and what said, it's the issue of loneliness is how you feel about your relationships. Just because we travel and we're away from our family or friends doesn't mean we feel lonely because we feel the bonds are there.

We feel like we're still a part of something. People care about us. But if people are around and we don't feel any connection to, we can feel horribly lonely because it's about how you feel about your relationships, how meaningful they are. And again, in the past we had that before the 19th century, you were a part of a religion drive nation community, and you felt like I am a part of something.

And even if I'm apart from those people, I still have strong connection for them thinking about me. I would sacrifice for them. They would sacrifice for me. And that's the issue because loneliness, is the downside. The upside is solitude. Solitude has profound positives. Loneliness is correlated with pretty much every negative health metric you can imagine.

I said in book that I was surprised that insurance companies don't mandate. You put the book down and go see your friends, because it's really bad. The stress hormone elevation due to loneliness is the equivalent of a physical assault. It's like getting punched in the face.

This is what Johan Howard wrote. And meanwhile, solitude, the Murphy the certain general in the states, solitude is protected against all these things. So what's the difference? Again, it's that issue of, not necessarily the people approximate, but that issue of how we feel about our relationships. Do we have meaningful connections?

I might not be with my friends and family, but if I know that they're there, I know I have a strong connection, then it's solitude, then I'm just taking some, a breather, taking some time apart. Solitude's really powerful to correlate with. Increase creativity, the productivity, we need some time apart, but when we're apart, we want to feel like those connections are still there.

So really this is something that has dramatically changed, where we used to always feel a part of something. Now our society's become very individualistic since the 19th century, and it's now granted there's been a lot of positive improvement in terms of, technology, the wealth of the planet.

We've unlocked tremendous power by making society somewhat more individualistic. But I, as I talk about the book we also lost something in the deal because we need that feeling of being connected. And it's harder to come by now. It's not the default, it's not passively. There.

You can be on your own and there are downsides to that. Yeah.

Srini Rao: In doing the research for this book and writing this book and learning all these things that you have about human behavior and relationships, how has that impacted your personal, professional and romantic

Eric Barker: relationships? It's funny because like I said, I've been great in this arena, and it was very weird, like writing this during the pandemic.

I often joke people that when I was writing barking up their own tree, the sixth chapter, my first book was all about work life balance. And I was probably sleeping five hours a night and driving myself crazy while writing about work life balance. And here I am writing about relationships during pandemic lockdown.

So I don't know, I'm definitely not gonna write my next book on Mortal. But anyway, like there's, there's some tremendous irony there. Literally the deal for my book closed two weeks before California locked down for the pandemic. So I, all of a sudden I had already decided to write the book, but all of a sudden it took on this new meaning like, oh my God, we're all gonna need this.

I better do a good job. But I have certainly changed the time issue in terms of friends deliberately making time, while I was writing the book. It was crazy because, I had to keep telling, it's don't talk to people, just write. And now of course that flips to stop writing, just talk to people.

And so going from writing a book to marketing a book is a shift. But also in terms of my personal relationships, just making sure that I'm seeing friends, that I'm making time. That's really critical. And luckily in terms of promoting a book, I am reaching out to more people. And that's been helpful.

The second part that I talk about with friendships is the issue of vulnerability. And this is not someplace where I've ever been. I've ever been strong just opening up and, talking more about your weaknesses, your fears, your concerns. This is really powerful. The University of Pennsylvania research shows that, if you don't open up, it's not only bad for the relationship, it's bad for you it prolongs minor illnesses, increases the chance, a first heart attack reduces the chance that you're gonna survive that heart attack.

Being open and vulnerable, having those, and that's what creates close friendships. Cause open and vulnerable. It's another costly signal telling people information that could be used against you that displays trust. And the best way to create trust in someone else is to display trust towards them. To say that this is safe, I trust you.

And not merely by using empty words, but by demonstrating telling them something which may not put you in the best light. That's a really powerful way to communicate, not through empty words, to communicate, on deeper level that I trust you, I care about you. I don't think you'll hurt me. And this really matters.

Robin Dunbar, who lot of people might know through the Dunbar number in terms of friendships, his professor at Oxford he looked at all the research on, friendships and health and in the, and he said, look, you know what's gonna deter you have a heart attack. It's gonna determine whether or not you're alive in a year.

It's basically, do you smoke? And how many friends do you have? You're like, yeah, nutrition, exercise, all that stuff matters. But those first two are so heads and tails above the rest. Do you smoke? And do you have good friendships? That's how much this matters. So to me, I've been thinking a lot about it.

I've been making more time deliberately, conscientiously. And I've been open up, I talk about the book, I talk about the scary rule. If it's scary, say it. You can be incremental, you don't have to confess the murders immediately, but it's but you gotta open up a little bit because the research shows if in a long term friendship if the amount of small talk goes up, the quality of friendship goes down, you need to talk about more serious stuff to heal.

Like you're in a good, deep friendship. Cause as Aristotle said, a friendship is another self. A friend is another self. And the research validates that it is like another you. And so we to treat our friends and ourselves like a little bit better. And I, since writing the book, I've certainly tried to do that.

I have two last questions

Srini Rao: for you. You wrote a book previously

Eric Barker: about why everything we know about success is wrong. And in that time you've become quite successful. Yourself. You, that

Srini Rao: book did extremely well. You've got this wildly popular blog. How has your personal definition of success changed and evolved throughout

Eric Barker: this journey?

I still think at the fundamental level, it's aligned with what I wrote about in the book, in the sense that you need to have a personal definition of success because these days, the doors to the office don't close at 5:00 PM work doesn't shut down. Work will never shut down. Your boss will never tell you, oh, hey, you've done enough.

It's like there will always be more. And that's a dangerous path that didn't exist before. Before work didn't happen. On the weekends, you've got an external signal that you're done. Now you can work 24 7. So just doing more, it will drive crazy. You need to have a personal definition of success. You need to define for yourself when is enough.

And that is something, honestly, I wrote about it, but I've also struggled with it because, especially living a life online you can always do more. And I'm doing, I do a lot of research. I'm not writing a blog about my personal thoughts and feelings and what I ate for lunch and I could always be working harder.

And drawing those lines has been really difficult for me. But, so for me, if anything I've doubled down on that, where I need to draw the lines for myself. Nobody else is gonna tell me, good, you did it, you're done. I need to say where's enough for me. And that was really hard the past couple years because again, pandemic being cut off from people, it's tricky where you try to find a balance and you're just not getting any external signals, cuz you're you're on a moon base.

And I was, praise writing the book for me I need to really draw that line where, okay, what is enough? And I think I've, I think I've reached a point where I'm comfortable in terms of I don't need to have everything. I don't have to be number one in the New York Times Best Auto.

I don't have every blog post, does not have to be a home run. But on the other hand, having high standards, it has benefited me. So I try and draw a line where I can say, as long as I'm able to pay my bills and live my life, am I happy with this work? Am I better than I was yesterday? Am I happy with what I'm doing in the vinn diagram of what I enjoy writing and what my audience enjoys reading?

As long as I can pay my bills, as long as I can, cover that. Am I satisfied with this? Do I think it's helpful? Do I think it's entertaining? That's the North Star that I used. Wow. I can relate . I have one last question for you, which is how we finish all of our

Srini Rao: interviews at the unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Eric Barker: I, there's

jazz news musician who basically said that being a genius was just like learning how to be yourself. And I think this is the through line that has been running through our discussion where we talked about, valor and compliance versus, doing the hard work, but figuring out what your strengths are, what you're good at, how you fit in, how a personal definition of success.

I think being sak. There's really only one way to be unmistakable, and that really is to dive down and be yourself. That may sound cliche or Pat or some, Instagram carousel. But, we are different from other people, but we have to dig a little deeper, what makes you special?

What are your unique strengths? There's so much research on signature strengths. People who do the things that they are uniquely good at are dramatically happier. It's a great way to be more successful. I think being unmistakable, is when you don't try deliberately to conform to the standard default rules of doing things, but you say, how can I do this my way?

It will be I'm going to, not gonna define the laws of physics. I'm not gonna do anything that's, but I'm gonna bring my own something to this. I'm gonna look deep inside myself, find my strengths, develop my skills, find my unique perspective and angle, and whatever I do, I'm gonna iue it with that.

That is in the end, I think the only way that would be unmistakable is to use your own uniqueness and put it out there on.

Srini Rao: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us, to share your story, your wisdom and your insights with losers. As I said earlier, now you can see why I needed two hours to

Eric Barker: have this conversation with you

Srini Rao: where can people find out more about

Eric Barker: you your work, the book, and everything that you're up to? The first book park, I'm Throw Tree. The new book is, plays Well with others available in bookstores everywhere. And in terms of me, the best way to follow the stuff I've been posting and doing with is to join my newsletter.

My URL is a little difficult for most people to remember or spell. Cause it's a, it's. It's a Japanese inside joke. But if people if people go to eric barker.org, that's e r i c b a r k e RT org they will be redirected to my hard to spell, hard to pronounce blog. And joining my newsletter is the best way to keep abreast of of the work on amazing.

And

Srini Rao: for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that