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I hit delete on almost every newsletter I have found myself subscribed to, but I have never hit delete on anything written by Eric Barker. Eric is one of my favorite writers in the area of human behavior, and I am not alone. Over three hundred and fifty thousand people
subscribe to his newsletter. Eric's the author of Barking Up the Wrong Tree and more recently Plays Well with Others, two books that take some of the most fundamental ideas, platitudes, and niceties that society has to offer and puts them
under the microscope. Eric's convinced that too much of the world coming out of the self help, productivity and health arenas is vague and confusing, and he's using his blog and his books to help make self help feel more like an ike emmanual, which, trust me, is a good thing.
So given Eric is.
Immersed in human behavior research every day and writes about it for the masses, I wanted to know which strategies he actually uses himself. My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral Science Consultancy inventium and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. So Eric is not a fan of work life balance, and I wanted to know if he's not striving for balance, what is he aiming for with his work life?
Yeah, I don't. I don't really believe work lithe balance. I mean I think that. I mean, in the end, you're going to have to draw a line like That's That's what it comes down to, is that, you know, the in the past, we we could have better work life balance simply because you know, the office closed at five pm, or you know, there was no email, the mail only came once a day, the newspaper only came once a day. It's like, now you can work as
long as you want to, you know. So in the end, you you you kind of have to draw a line yourself if you want it. But I don't know. For me personally, imbalance is more of the way to go.
Like I well, I think if you if you really want to if you really want to excel, if you really want to go hard on something, you know, I think you need to devote a positively disproportionate, if not obsessional, level of energy towards something and and a lot of people I think here that and they it's you know, they they they might reject it, but I think actually a lot of us live like that. It's just not deliberate.
I think a lot of people, you know, miss that email, miss that phone call, you know, maybe don't pay that bill. They do let balls drop, but it's not deliberate, it's not strategic.
Okay, So I like this idea.
It's interesting of being consciously unbalanced or imbalanced, and I think that for people that are that way, there's often a lot of guilt associated with it, but it sounds like for you there's not. So how have you deliberately leant into that imbalance?
Like?
How is your life deliberately crafted? Differently?
I think the issue here is having to face and make tough decisions. I think one of the reasons why, well why a lot of people want, why a lot of people do drop balls but they make it feel accidental, is that prevents them from having to make hard decisions. That prevents them from having to say, you know what, I really don't want to talk to that person who called me, and they if you have to say that in order to make it low priority. You have to make that decision and say, you know what, this isn't
that important. I know it's supposed to be important. I know everybody tells me it's important, but it's really not that important. And you have to make that decision for yourself. So for me, like I know, you know, if I'm working on a book, if I'm if I'm you know, working promoting promoting a book, if I'm working on a
blog post. It's like every day I wake up and I know what is number one, and for me, what is number one is usually also number two, three and four, and so I am I try and structure my life so that I am monotasking and I really don't have to think about anything else, and most of what could come up, like I said, I have already I've already become comfortable with like like like like a samurai, I'm comfortable with the idea of death. I know this could happen.
That's fine. Now I can just move forward. And for me, it's literally, uh, every day I wake up and I have a countdown time around my iPad and it's set for five hours. And when I start working, I hit the start button and it starts coming down from five hours, and if I get up to pee, I hit the pause button, and if I check email, I hit the pause button. I have to take a phone call, I
hit the pause button. And by the end of the day that needs to get to zero, and if it doesn't get to zero, then I guess I got more work to do. And it's that way I know. I've designated this is what's work. And if you're doing anything but work doesn't count. And because I think it's so easy to rationalize, it's so easy to rationalize and trick yourself, or you accomplish something and you feel good and then it's, oh, yeah,
let's I did six good minutes of work. I deserve three days off, and like, it's all too easy to do that, and this keeps me accountable, and it's ruthless, it's ruthless, but it works five hours.
I am freaking out about that.
So I do deep work sprints almost every day of one to two hours in length, typically close to a sixty to ninety minutes in length, and maybe two or three of those, and then sort of the day will progress into more shallow work. So why five hours? That seems like a lot in a way.
Well, like I said, it's not one continuous stretch. I can take a break whenever I want, but you know, and I could take a break, I do whatever I have to. So five hours of solid work usually takes more like eight to ten hours if I'm really kicking, if I'm really kicking ass, it's like I could do it in seven. But no, it's like I mean, part of that is a cumul like is built up stamina over time, where you know, once you can do it.
And part of that is like definitely the you know, I always prioritize what I use the technical term of thinky work, think ye work that I have to use a lot of cognitive forest power for that always comes first, you know. And by the end of the five hours, you know, maybe it is you know, looking at research or something. It's not busy work. It still has to be something like constructive, you know, but it definitely tones
down from like really active. I can probably only like really focus on like solid writing probably for three to four you know, but it needs to be contributing to the to the bottom line and in that sense, and the other good thing about it is if you are the super productive, uh somewhat anxious type. Then you know you can You can do a lot of stuff, but you can get to that place at the end of the day where you're like, like, did I really get stuff done? Did I really move the needle? Did I?
And that five hours and that prioritization, like when that when that buzzer goes off and that bell rings, like there's no guilt. I did fine, I know I did five hours. You know, pausing for anything was not worth and I'm done. I am done and I can relax because otherwise I would drive myself crazy?
And what else do you do to help optimize those five hours in terms of planning for what you will do during that time?
I mean, well, a lot of people can give you the short term kind of okay, Like I said, do the think you work first, do the like I think. I think. The advice that I'd rather give people, which I think is less discussed and I think should be more discussed, is while I am involved in pretty much any project, like I have a I have a a word doc open where I am kind of taking notes regarding process and stuff. I call it kind of like the Book of Me, where basically it's like instead of
these all purpose generally good sort of advice tips. These are like specific to me where it's like you Eric, you are going to tell yourself that you will get to this later and you never do so, do not fool your sa It's like it's like it's like doctor Jekyl like chaining himself when he knows that mister Hyde is coming. Where it's like, okay, how do you lie
to yourself? What are the rationalizations you usually tell? Oh, you know what today, I'll start off with something simple, I can do that really hard work.
Late.
No, you can't, and you know it, and we have. If you look in the notebook here, you've written this down four times that you thought you could do it and you never did it. And I think that's the advice that no book can ever ever ever give you, no guru can ever give you, no blog post can
ever give you. Is your own idiosyncrasies. You know nobody can kind of maybe a spouse might have some clue or something, or a partner you live with, but overall, really that's there is a wormous amount of good advice that can only come from you to you, and you need to write it down. You need to write it down. You need to review it because otherwise you will rationalize and you will tell yourself things, and to have answers to those questions to be able to say, you know what,
taking you know, an extra day off? Is that the kind of thing that you come back and you are energized and ready to go, and it's such a good idea. Or you take a day off and all of a sudden, you just took three days off and you did, like which kind of person are you? That can have different effects on people? If you start writing down I know that this happens. I know if I wake up after
this hour, you know, stuff doesn't get done. If I go to bed this night, Eric, that third drink is not a good idea, you know, just like having that list is so powerful, and like I said, it's advice that only you can give you. And then reading a lot of productivities stuff like, all of a sudden, there becomes an easy way to implement it. Because once you start having these personal rules and you and you, like I said, you real man, today went really badly? What did I do? And then you can say, oh I
did X? You make a note and all of a sudden, the structure creates itself because like it or not, you're kind of a b testing. You know, maybe you woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. Okay, you're going to learn something today. Maybe you overslept today. Okay, you're going to learn something today. And every time I get a tip, I can now, all of a sudden, it can slot right in like, oh they say break should be this long, and I
let me try that. Oh that didn't work, And you can like all of a sudden, and then what you find is it just kind of all comes together like voltron, Like you got all the pieces and they're just kind of clicking because all of a sudden, you have these rules and you you sort of know, you sort of know what works. And as long as you read the Bible of You, then your productivity religion we'll stay sacred.
You write a lot about happiness in general and just how to live you know, a life that is, you know, less stressful and more mindful, being more present, being more grateful, and being happier and those.
Sorts of topics.
What have been some of the tips and strategies that have impacted you the most in those areas?
First, let me caveat by saying that I'm terrible about all these things. I just like it's it's funny because I'll meet people who read my blog and I just I feel bad because I think they expect me to be a guru or something, and like I am, I am not. I am looking for these answers for the same reasons other people are I. You know, it's like that's why I started. You don't build an Iron Man suit because you're invulnerable. You build an Iron Man's suit
because you're not invulnerable. And you know, I started down this journey because I have trouble with these things. But I have to say that, you know, as cliche as it may sound, pausing, stopping whatever the heck crazy thing my circus brain is doing and just thinking about the good stuff in my life and feeling gratitude like it is an enormous perspective shift, and that I mean, your mileage may vary, but you know, the study show it's it is one of the single most powerful things you
can do. And for me, that perspective shift is enormous because I am the type who will just go on to the no, this is good, this is done, great, Okay, good. We want to know about prize. That's nice. What's next? You know, like I won't really like appreciate like a lot of things. And and it's it's crazy, it's great, Like your gratitude is so powerful simply because we spend so much time trying to do things to be happier that oh, I have to get this. I have to
accomplish that. I have to you know, you have to like reach out and to gratitude doesn't cost anything. It think costs a damn thing. You just have to All you have to do is change your perspective. And it's right there waiting. You just have to just put a different lens on it, you know. And just you know, I had some internet trouble today, you know, driving me crazy this morning. You know what, it could have been so much worse, you know, it just it resolved itself
in the end. Didn't have to you know, it didn't have to go buy a new cable modem, didn't have to have a repairman. It's like it could have been so much worse. I am thankful that it did not. It was not worse. And just taking a moment to switch that perspective, it's all you have to do. It's free, it's right there waiting, and trust me, I forget to do it at least as much as anybody else does.
But it really works, definitely, And your latest book is Cold plays well with others and it's awesome.
I would expect nothing.
Less, though, and it's hilarious, like all your writing. I'm so curious about, particularly business writers that use humor, because sadly it is rare, and I think it was a couple of years back, I got to speak to Naomi Bagdonis, who was one of the co authors of Humor Seriously, and it was really interesting hearing her process for making Humor Seriously funny, and that would have been like quite
odd if it wasn't. But you're writing, like I'll laugh out loud when I'm reading your newsletter, which I've subscribed to for many years. How was your process for building so much humor into your writing? Like I want to know, does it come naturally or are there kind of tricks and formulas and things that you're consciously using.
So happy you asked this question nobody, but I get a lot of compliments in the Humor, but nobody ever asked me about the process regarding it. And I mean, you know, I was a screenwriter in Hollywood for ten years before I ever started blogging or stuff like that, and so like, you know, like writing comedy was something that I worked on assiduously for a long time. More specific, more specific to what you said, like, is this you know, like come to this coum naturally or is it like
really hard? The answer is both. I mean, like very often, you know, very often, like my first perspective will be to like, rather than just stating something plainly or just like what did I see in the book here, I'll ask myself, like, Eric, what's your perspective on this? Because I know whatever crazy thing comes out of like my brain, like I'll just be okay, Like there is an aspect of me saying like, oh okay, like what should I not be saying now? And I will and it'll just
be like thank God for everything. But there's a part of it that's natural. But there's also part of it where you know, I'm always looking for different perspectives. I'm always looking at, you know, just different ways of seeing things.
And sometimes you know, jokes are funny lines and stuff will occur to me and I'll keep a list, you know, And I'll also keep like words, thoughts, ideas, metaphors, like funny things that occur to me where I'm like, oh that's a and I have, you know, much my process list. I also have my joke list and it is obscenely long, and I will just go through it and I'll just start. I keep a lot of lists like that, like for
both of my books. I have a lot of illustrated stories there to like try and just you know, make clear on a more visceral level, like the what the research is conveying and those stories. You know. I'll just be reading articles, I'll be reading books. I'll come across something and make a note, and then when it's book time, Oh, get out the story list and let's go to town. And so there is an aspect that for all humor that
is very spontaneous for me. And then there is a time where I will literally, like a sitcom writer, I will look at a blog poster, I'll look at a section in my book and I will look at it much like a like like a like a showrunner on a sitcom. I'll just be like, its two jokes per page. I don't know, we got to bring that up a little bit. Let's say, oh, three jokes per page? Doing good here? Like I will say, you know, not really there?
Or is there another way to get this across, you know, or like just something where because I find it makes such a difference. It makes such a difference, Like if people wanted to just read completely straight up research, they could do that. It's out there. People don't want to. It's like, you want something accessible, you want something fun. And that's how I see. I don't have a p I got. I have a PhD from the University of nowhere. You know. It's like for me, it's I'm a translator.
Like I take the stuff and I try and you know, add add a little bit of sugar and make the medicine go down, Like, try and make it accessible, try and make a fun, try and make it human. And how I keep trying.
How do you know if it's going to land?
I remember in your acknowledgement section, and your acknowledgement section is funny, my god, Like literally every part of the book is funny. There was this great quote and if I was an organized podcas host, I would actually have my iPad sitting next to me, which is where your book is stored that has the actual quote, but it's something like like oh no, you can, you do you have it in front of you. It's the one about like writing a joke and not knowing if it lands for two years.
Writing a book is like telling a joke and having to wait two years to find out if it was funny.
Yes, yes, I love that quote, and like for you, how do you know if it's going to land?
If all these jokes are going to land?
I mean, the thing is that my writing process is bonkers, like like and it's not bonkers because it's like, oh, I am an artiste and I'm like, you know, no, I am like like a machine. Like most almost every rater I know does like a vombit draft where they just kind of like, you know, because most people are
much more comfortable editing than they are creating. Most people are much more comfortable, you know, even if they like have to knock out this like very mediocre initial draft, but then they have something to hang things on to build from. They've got a foundation. Most people are much more comfortable with that. But I don't like that that like to me, I take I take more of an architecture perspective where you would never be like, hey, let's build a crappy building and then we'll knock it down
and then we'll build a good one. Like you would never do that, you know. It's like what you do in architecture is you have blueprints and you rigorously to the millimeter, you know, just figure out, okay, this and the screws need to be this long. We need this for the you know, for the for the water line, the power line. And so my outlines are longer, often much longer than the book itself. And like I am constantly, like you know, outlining and outlining and outlining and so
so my first drafts are not really first drafts. They're more like third or fourth drafts. You know, they're like ninety percent of the way they are, But it takes me forever, like months till there's pages, and then like in a handful of days, boom there's all these pages. And people are like, how long do they take to right, there's pages? And I'm like, oh, three days. No, it's
not to me. Four months of outlining, you know. But like so for me, it's really about that outline and going this happens and this happens, and this happened, and I've gone over it so many times, you know, in that outlining prost because it's not this organic type of ty, type of ty, type of the type tip type, and then edit, edit it. Like for me, my my first drafts are very close to the finished product because I've spent so much time going to this goes first, Okay,
this goes before that? No way, Okay, what's going to segue from this to this? It's for me, it's like Tetris and like, I take so long agonizing over that that it gives me a pretty good idea of what will work and what won't. And yeah, it's it's mostly in the outlining. And then I have a good friend who is far, far, far more risk averse than I am, and he will read it and he will say, oh
my god, you can't say that. And fifty percent of the time I'll listen to him, and fifty percent of the time I'll go, well, hey, probably just lost another one hundred email subscribers.
Well, we will be back soon with Eric talking about the strategies he uses to deliberately deepen relationships in his life and also how to get better at reading other people. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work. I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for
that at Howiwork dot code. That's how I Work dot co. Now, your book is all about really connecting with others and friendships and relationships, and you know, there's a whole section on making friends, which is a topic as an adult that I'm really interested in because, like, it's easy to make friends, fairly easy when you're at school or you're at university, and maybe in the work place, but you know a lot of us don't even work in an
office now. So I'd love to know how you've applied what you learnt in researching and writing your latest book around making friends as an adult.
I mean, it was funny because the well morbid funny, I guess. But this deal from my book closed February twenty eighth, twenty twenty and two weeks after the deal from my book closed, like California where I live completely lockdown, and so I had already done the proposal. I was set on reading a walk about relationships. But two weeks after I closed the deal was around to go, all of a sudden, it took on an entirely new meaning. It was just like, oh, this is the next thing. Next,
it was the next book I'm writing about. It's like, oh my god, people are going to need this. I mean, I know I need this, My friends know I need this, my ex girlfriends know I need this. Uh, but like you know, I mean I'm like, wow, people are really going to need this. And so like it became this really important thing to me. And you know, making friends when you're an adult is really hard, and we don't like to talk about it, you know, we I think
we don't like to discuss just how difficult. Like you said, like when you're a kid, it's kind of default. You know, you start school and it's like hey, there you are, and you know, work to a degree. But as an adult, you know, as I've write in the book, it's like, you know, usually it's around people when people get married. Usually they get married, you gather all your friends together and they prompably never see them again. You know. It's like that's really tricky and it's really tough.
You know.
For me, personally, I'm lucky that I have some really, some really good friends, and I have not given that. I was, you know, crazed writing a book and now you know, crazy promoting a book. What's really been good for me is that this has given me like kind of a natural, organic reason to start reaching out to a lot of people, you know, And so I was going to have to contact people anyway. And now I maybe I'm not making as many new friends. But for me,
it's about there are some relationships that went dormant. There's some people I didn't connect with during the pandemic, and there's some great friendships that I want to sustain. And I've been putting a lot of energy into that because in the in the book, you know, I do mention, you know, like the Dale Carnegie stuff about like making new friends. But you know, for me, it's really about deepening friendships. It's about getting those friends that really matter.
As Aristotle called friends, he said that they were another self. And you know, after two thousand years, science got around to proving him right. You know, It's that's what I'm missing, you know, I I'm I'm not necessarily in the market for new acquaintances, but like having strong, reliable friends I can trust, you know, I don't know a lot of other things. The past few years, including the pandemic, have told me how important it is to just have those deep,
meaningful relationships. And that's that's what I find myself really working on.
What strategies have you used to deliberately help deepen relationships?
I mean, the two key ones I talk about in the book, like really do the trick for me? And you know, because Dale Carnegie talks about the easy stuff. That's why we like the book because his stuff is easy to do, but it's really only good for the beginning of relationships. To deepen relationships, we need to send what economics refers to as costly signals, you know, and they're costly because they you know, by being costly, they're hard to replicate that and that tells you that they're meaningful.
And those two costly signals when it comes to friendship are time and vulnerability. You know, time is costly because it's scarce. You know, if I if I talk to someone for an hour every day, I can only do that for twenty four people. End a story the end, that's it, thank you for calling. You know, they're say I do need to sleep, So like that's a costly
signal when you routinely give people your time. And second is vulnerability is you know, the quickest way that we can build trust with others is to show them our own trust. And if we tell people something that is personal, something that scares us, something that might make us look bad, if we trust somebody with that, you know, that says I'm trusting you, and most likely, very often good friends will reciprocate. And that's how you deepen friendships. That's what
Arthur Aaron, It's Donybrook University found. There's research by Jeff Hall that shows just how long it takes dozens or hundreds of hours to build good friendships. But Arthur Aron was able to make people feel like lifelong friends in forty five minutes. And he did it by having people be vulnerable, by having people open up, say the things
that are scary, say the things they're feeling. And we've got a good reason to now all been through some scary, difficult emotional stuff with the pandemic, so we should we should take this this opportunity to do it and that's
what I've been doing, is I've been I've been more. Hey, I got my five hour countdown for my writing, you know, and I try to make sure to make time for my friends, you know, in the same in the same way, like evenings are set aside in you know, for that vulnerability I as I right about in the book, I now follow the scary rule. Uh, if it's scary, I say it. And uh, you know, I do, say, be incremental, don't confess any murders at Christmas dinner. But like it's
it's you know, be incremental. But but uh, you know, I've I've I've I've played the distant, tough guy for many years and frankly, that didn't work out too well for me. So, you know, opening up and being a little more honest about what I'm dealing with. I find it's a good litmus test. I find it's a really good litmus test because if people react well to it, they're probably a good friend. Then if they don't react well to it, well, I just learned something.
You talk about quite quite a lot of research in the book around how people are surprisingly bad at reading other people. And I'm curious, after knowing all that research and writing about it in the book, How have you become better?
I guess reading other people, knowing what's going on in their minds.
Well, we're doing a podcast right now, and you know, one of the big big things I point out there is that deliberately attempting to read body language is you know, it's false. God really doesn't work out that well. But the voice is very telling. You know, if you can hear someone but you can't see them, empathic accuracy only drops off about four percent. But if you can see someone you can't hear them, empathic accuracy drops off fifty
four percent. So the voice is really what's telling us versus, Oh, we moved his eyebrow. That means he's nervous. It's like no, no, like it's all of that. You know, you never know if somebody's shivering because they're nervous, because they're cold, like, you can't be sure, and especially with strangers, we don't
have a baseline. You know, it's much more about the voice, and it's much more about you know, outside influences, bringing other people into the mix, putting people in new environments, you know, saying provocative things like those are the things that really gives us because our reading ability for others, nobody's going to be Sherlock Holmes. You know, it's it's way too hard to passively read others. But what we can do is strategically make others more readable. What we
can do as well, is we can increase motivation. You know, if we're focused, if we see some gainer reward, people are much better at reading others on a first date because again, there's something to gain. So if we can put ourselves in that mindset of like, you know, having something to gain or lose, get focused, that can help. But in the end, the game is really one by making others more readable, not by trying to improve our very poor reading skills.
Now, this is probably like asking you to choose your favorite child.
But are there like one.
Or two kind of top things that you learned in the book that have really changed you know, how you see, or how you think about or how you do you know, relationships and human connection.
Now, the one thing you know that that was very insightful to me and I think very useful to other people coming out of the pandemic is that there was there's work I talk about by fail Bertie, who's a historian at the University of York, and she basically said that before the nineteenth century, loneliness, both as a topical word and pretty much an experience, pretty much didn't exist. Now that sounds categorically and scene, but she goes through and you can find the word lonely in books, but
what it means is something that is by itself. It doesn't have the negative emotional connotation that we add to it. And it was only in the nineteenth century when we had the rise of individualism, a lot of isms, you know, capitalism, existentialism, all these you know, much more individualistic society because before the nineteenth century, people felt like they were a part of a religion, they're part of a nation, part of a tribe, part of a family, part of a group.
Like we were very much in meshed and embedded, you know, in these groups. And it was just interesting because it tied in with a lot of very modern research on loneliness where John Cacioppo, who's the leading leading researcher on loneliness, he found that lonely people don't spend any less time with other people than non lonely people do. Again, another
thing that sounds categorically insane. Yet we've all felt lonely in a crowd, and that tells you right there that just having people like having people around you is great. But just having people around you, that's not enough to cure loneliness. You can still feel lonely in a crowd, and that's because loneliness is a subjective experience. Loneliness is how you. Loneliness is not mere isolation, because solitude, solitude
is being alone. In solitude we regard as a positive. Solitude, you know, is really strongly tied with creativity, while loneliness is correlated with pretty much every negative health metric you can imagine. Solitude. According to VIVEC. Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States, solitude is you know, a very very positive for you. So being alone it's not about being alone. Loneliness is how you feel about your relationships.
And if you feel good about your relationships, then being by yourself is solitude, And if you feel negative or bad or concerned about your relationships, then being alone is loneliness. And the fact that that difference is a mere perspective shift, and it can be a big one to change if or harmed by it. But that it's a perspective shift that is really changed something for me because if I start to feel lonely, you know, sure I can spend more time with other people, but to me, that's a
canary in the coal mine. To me, that makes me say, Okay, how am I feeling about my relationships and what do I need to do to address that? How can I change that feeling. Sure I can spend more time with other people, but again the lonely in the crowd issue, So I need to make sure that I feel I'm a part of something, not be a part of something on paper, not letter of the law, spirit of law. Like what do I have to do? What do I have to contribute? What do I have to add to? How?
Where can I feel responsible? Where can I feel necessary? Where can I feel that like you know, I'm adding something and that if I wasn't there, people would miss me and people would miss my contribution. How can I add to that to that group, that community. So that's been a really powerful insight for me and how I think about my relationships is whether I feel solitude or loneliness,
especially being a very introverted guy. That has been a really powerful insight from the book in terms of what next steps I take relationship wise.
I love that.
I found that very powerful in the book when when I read that as well, also being someone that is quite introverted. Now, Eric, I don't know where time is gone, but it has gone. And I would love to note for people that want to connect with you and read your brilliant, brilliant newsletter which I just whole whole, wholeheartedly recommend. I've been subscribing for years and I love it, and also get their hands on plays well with others?
How do they do that plays well with others? Is available on Amazon and what a Barnes Noble whatever bookseller should be out there. My first book is Parking Up Throwing Tree. My website has a very difficult to pronounce URL. It's Japanese. It's a Japanese inside joke. I wasn't exact thinking like good marketing when I came up with the name for my r L not. I didn't expect it to become what it did. Then maybe I would have
would have given that. Anyway, you can either google my name, Eric Barker, or if you go to Eric Barker dot org E R I C B R KR dot org. That will redirect you to my blog with its very unique r L.
We will link to all that in the show notes.
Eric, thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to have a chat. I had high expectations, even though you told me to have very low expectations. You've exceeded lower expectations and you've acceited my high expectations.
So it's been an absolute pleasure.
Please keep writing more and more things that make me laugh and make me smarter and have a more awesome life.
So thank you so much.
Thank you. This has been great.
I loved Eric's five our time as strategy. That really was the thing that stuck with me from this interview. It's definitely something that I'm planning on trying this week in my own life, partly as an experiment to see how much deep work I actually get done in a day, but also to be disciplined in stopping it when I'm
doing shallow or less valuable work. Now, if you are not a subscriber or follower of how I work, now might be the time to hit that button, because next week I have got Matt Jones, who is the co founder of four Pillars Gin, which perhaps you've sampled, talking about how he and his two other co founders created what is thought to be the best gin in the world in less than a decade. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan, and thank you to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise.
See you next time.