Active Recall!

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03: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

May 29, 2017

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Wally and I discussed Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker. We focused on the first chapter, which explains filtered leaders, unfiltered leaders, and the environments they succeed in. Filtered leaders get filtered through school, more school, and then the corporate ladder. These are your valedictorians. The only issue? They end up successful, but they aren’t the world changers. Unfiltered people shake things up. They make their own ladder and come in through the window. So you should quit your job and aim to be unfiltered to really succeed, right? Well… Barking Up the Wrong Tree reminded me to think about what success really means. The first chapter talks about unfiltered leaders changing the world. A few chapters later you see unfiltered people going too far to succeed. They aren’t happy and they can make the people around them miserable. Maybe a filtered approach is better in the long run. I’d bet the answer is somewhere in the middle. Which, of course, gives us a lot of choices. I loved this line from the book:

“Here’s the problem: We love

having

choices. We hate

making

choices.”

Good choice: reading this book. If reading alone led to results, I’d be captioning a sponsored post of my 8-pack for fitness IG instead of writing this. Good choice: applying principles from this book.

  • You: Learn who you are so you know which pond to swim in
  • Your friends: Be grateful for the friendships you have with good people
  • Your work: Align your work with your values

Easier said than done, but the effort will lead to success. However you define it.

As far as the podcast goes, we’re applying some advice from the book:

“Good enough is good enough.”

It’s a great book and this episode doesn’t do it justice. I want to do another episode down the line when we get more reps in and are better at this. I tried out using podcast chapters to help jump through parts of the episode. Then I learned that Apple’s Podcast app stopped supporting chapters a few versions ago. I’ll list them out here:

  • 0:00 – Wally talks lengua and Ces talks podcasts
  • 5:40 – Do you remember your graduation walk?
  • 7:34 – Ces sends Wally a book: Barking Up the Wrong Tree
  • 16:11 – Sorting out the clip mic situation
  • 20:26 – One book at a time or many?
  • 33:04 – Getting back to the book
  • 39:09 – Ces talks Drama

And some links from the show.

Next week we’ll be talking about The Slight Edge. Thanks for listening!