Eric Barker Quotes

The second reason is that schools reward being a generalist. There is little recognition of student passion or expertise. The real world, however, does the reverse.

You need a personal definition of success. Looking around you to see if you’re succeeding is no longer a realistic option. Trying to be a relative success compared to others is dangerous. This means your level of effort and investment is determined by theirs, which keeps you running full speed all the time to keep up.

Extraversion was negatively related to individual proficiency.” What’s that mean in English? The more extroverted you are, the worse you are at your job.

Shawn Achor’s research at Harvard shows that college grades aren’t any more predictive of subsequent life success than rolling dice. A study of over seven hundred American millionaires showed their average college GPA was 2.9.

Are you a nice guy or gal who is having trouble processing all this bad news? Maybe that’s because not having a high status position at the office contributes to a reduction in executive function. Want that in English? Feeling powerless actually makes you dumber.

Ruut Veenhoven said, “The quality of a society is more important than your place in that society.

We always think we need more: more help, more motivation, more energy. But in our current world the answer is often the exact opposite: we need less. Fewer distractions, fewer goals, fewer responsibilities. Is that so we can watch more TV? No. We need less of those things so we can go all in on our priorities. The question is what are you going to do less of? What are you going to quit or say no to in order to make time for what matters most?

Oh, the irony. Cognitive biases prevent us from understanding cognitive biases.

The truth is, we often underestimate by as much as 50 percent how much others are willing to help us when asked. As we talked about in chapter 2, being mistrustful or assuming others are selfish can be self-fulfilling prophecies.

Fundamentally, your brain doesn’t like or want to believe in randomness. It always believes you have some control, even when you don’t.

It may be delusional but we’re happier deluded. And delusion ironically makes us perform better on average.

Neuroscientist Diana Tamir found that your brain gets more pleasure from you talking about yourself than it does from food or money. This is why you should stop doing it and let others do it as much as possible around you.

Kristin Neff explains, “Who is the only person in your life who is available 24/7 to provide you with care and kindness? You.

Mentoring a young person is four times more predictive of happiness than your health or how much money you make.

When we make it win-or-lose, everyone loses.

John Stuart Mill remarked, “That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of our time.