I like Malcolm Gladwell and you probably do too; I’ve always been a fan of a certain type of success book, one that is based on science and solid research, and Gladwell did as much as anyone to launch the current genre. But I have to say I don’t like what he has done for social science writing. To be fair, it’s not his fault—it’s the fault of his followers who have tried too hard to copy his success formula.
I’m referring to the “Gladwellization” of science writing, and I think I reached my personal tipping point just a few minutes ago, having just completed Chapter 5 of Eric Barker’s new book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree.
What is Gladwellization? It’s the practice of finding a quirky and fascinating story to anchor each chapter, and then using that story to illustrate the points you’re trying to make. On the face of it, that’s not a bad practice. Stories get our interest, and they can make it easier to absorb and retain their lessons. But there are two problems with this approach:
The first is that all too often the story seems to become the main attraction rather than the vehicle for the lesson. Unless you’re writing fiction for entertainment, the story should have a point—it should not be the point. I enjoyed the story about Joshua Norton, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, who lived in San Francisco in the 19th century, but even just a few minutes after having read the chapter, I can’t for the life of me tell you what the point of the story was. In the long run, what’s more important to remember, the story or the lesson?
The second problem is that when you set out to write a book that will get attention in a crowded market, you have to engage in an arms race of stories. If Gladwell or Pink or the Heaths have used the story, you need to find a better one, usually about an even more quirky or extreme character. But that makes it difficult for the average person to identify with the person, either as a positive or negative role model. As Barker says early in the book, achievement depends to a great extent on the stories we tell ourselves. For this to work, though, we have to believe that we’re capable of acting in accordance with those stories.
We know networking is important, but none of us would ever strive to be like Paul Erdos, a brilliant mathematician whose achievements were exceed only by his bizarre character. We know that it’s important to have a good work-life balance, but we’re unlikely to be swayed by reading about the obsessive and even obscene work habits of the great baseball player Ted Williams, because we simply can’t imagine that happening to us.
When I read a social science book that purports to teach lessons about success, I apply two tests to it. The first is faster and more superficial: did I like reading it, and did it feel like I got good insights? The second test is more rigorous: after I read every chapter I record the lessons I gleaned and my ideas of how I might apply those to practical effect. Often both measures correlate, but sometimes I find that my first intuition was misleading, because the readability of the material obscured the fact that there just was not that much practical, actionable meat.
I’ve long harped on it: Content Is King. Stories are great, but the first rule of communication is to have something worthwhile to say, and then use those stories to make it stick.
Did you brush your teeth this morning? I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb by guessing the answer is yes. I’m also guessing that you didn’t have to schedule a reminder for yourself in your calendar, and you didn’t procrastinate or muster up your willpower to get started. You probably did it without thinking about it at all, and maybe even let your mind wander or think about other things while you were doing it.
Depending on what time you’re reading this, you’ve probably also performed several other habits today; experts estimate that we spend about 40% of our time behaving out of habit. Quite simply, habits shape our lives and the results we produce—for better or for worse. The crucial question is: how many of our habits are the products of careful thought and intention, versus unproductive habits that have arisen without our even knowing?
Brushing your teeth regularly is a high ROI activity; it returns solid health and even social benefits and costs almost nothing to do—because it’s a habit. On the flip side, how many bad habits do you have, those that also cost almost nothing to do, but yield a negative return?
There’s a pretty simple equation here: you can become happier, healthier and more productive if you develop more good habits or kick bad ones.
We all know this, which is why we all strive to we all make New Year’s resolutions, and we all vow that “this time it will be different.” And most of us fail repeatedly.
Unfortunately, when we fail to get control of a habit, we tend to view it as a character flaw, some sort of deficiency in grit or willpower that keeps us from becoming the person we want to be.
Willpower may be part of it, but context matters far more. There are so many hidden or unconscious influences on our habits that willpower is simply outgunned, which is why we run out of it so quickly in most cases. The antidote is knowledge, and that’s exactly what James Clear provides in this excellent and important book: Atomic Habits.
Every habit, according to Clear (and supported by voluminous research), goes through four steps, or phases: our brains respond to a cue, which kicks in a craving and leads to a response that generates a reward.[1] At each step, there are things you can do, to make the habit more or less likely, and that establishes the framework for the book. There are four sections, each dealing with one phase of the habit, address ways to establish good habits and quit bad habits:
| Good habits | Bad habits | |
| Cue | Make it obvious | Make it invisible |
| Craving | Make it attractive | Make it unattractive |
| Response | Make it easy | Make it difficult |
| Reward | Make it satisfying | Make it unsatisfying |
In twenty fascinating and informative chapters, Clear lays out probably the most comprehensive and practical program for good habits that I’ve read. Regardless of how much you already know or do, there is something for everyone in here. In my own case, before reading Atomic Habits, I’d already been making good progress on establishing some new productive habits, but I also gleaned and have started applying some excellent ideas, for example habit stacking (chapter 5) and temptation bundling (chapter 8).
There’s so much more useful information in Atomic Habits than I can include in a short post, so give it my strongest possible recommendation. As Clear says, time magnifies the margin between success and failure, which is why good habits put time on your side and bad habits make time your enemy. So I suggest you waste no time and start reading this book immediately.
[1] This is one more step than Charles Duhigg writes about in his book, The Power of Habit, which I also highly recommend, but if you are going to read only one, I suggest Atomic Habits.
Here’s a test: what single catastrophe killed more people worldwide than any other? It was the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed 50-100 million people, probably more people than the two world wars combined.[1] One contributor to the death toll was the fact that countries then at war suppressed information about it, which made it less likely to be contained. And one reason that we haven’t had a recurrence within several orders of magnitude of that is that governments around the world, especially the US government, gather and freely share huge amounts of data on diseases.
The average citizen is well aware of the dangers of nuclear war, terrorism and crime, so we accept and even embrace the institutions and people who protect us from them, such as the military, Homeland Security and first responders. When risks are vivid and potentially catastrophic, we don’t mind throwing vast sums at them, because we “get it”.
But it’s the less obvious risks that may threaten us the most in the long run, precisely because we don’t think enough about them and we begrudge every penny spent on preventing them. We don’t pay that much attention to weather, contaminated food, or insufficient health care and nutrition, but they have killed far more Americans than the more easily imagined risks.
It takes a gifted writer such as Lewis (Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short) to make us understand and care about the “fifth risk”: project management. This refers to the enormous array of projects that the Federal government runs to address these hidden systemic risks, and the vast amount of data that makes that possible. So many of those projects and data are under threat today.
The average citizen does not understand data in general and does not care about it, unless maybe it’s about their fantasy football team. More specifically, the average citizen does not know:
- How much their safety and prosperity depend on national data—its collection, storage, analysis and application
- Who does most of the collection, storage, analysis and application
- Why that system is under threat today
The book is fascinating because Lewis is a master at telling the stories of interesting, dedicated individuals who work at all levels within the Federal government. Most of us think of them as grey, faceless bureaucrats, even “lazy or stupid” (I have to admit I’ve been guilty of that myself) but many of them are doing fascinating and even thrilling work. Lewis introduces us to unsung heroes who are smart enough to make far more money in the private sector but do what they do for reasons other than money: the mission, wanting to make a difference in people’s lives, a sense of being called to serve.
It also introduces us to the work that Federal agencies such as Commerce, Energy, and Agriculture do that save us from risks potentially as deadly or even worse than foreign enemies. Unfortunately, they’re like the offensive linemen of the Government, because they usually only get noticed when they fail. How many people are alive today because hurricane forecasts have become so much better? How many people are alive today because they did not die from the flu, or because the electricity grid has not succumbed to the half million cyber intrusion attempts it suffers per year? How many kids avoid malnutrition because of government programs, or how many more people avoided becoming victims of violent crime? You can thank government for that, because they are the only institutions who have the resources to collect the data to understand the problems and design and implement projects large enough to solve them.
The book is disturbing because many of those projects are at risk. They’ve always been at risk when politicians strive to cut budgets (and there’s no doubt a lot of fat and waste that needs cutting), but the present administration takes it to a whole different level. It’s a level that is not just oblivious to data, but openly hostile to it—willful ignorance, if you will. It’s the only administration that did not send large transitions teams to learn all about the agencies they were about to take over, to ensure a smooth handoff.
And as this administration took over, DJ Patil, the government’s Chief Data Scientist, “watched with wonder as the data disappeared across the Federal government,” such as links to climate change data, inspection reports of businesses accused of animal abuse, records of consumer complaints, even detailed crime data, and of course anything having to do with climate change. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Democrat or Republican, that’s data that you and I paid for, and they’re taking it away from us.
Why does this matter? The first answer is that the less data you have, the greater the chance that undetected risks will come to pass. The second answer is more fundamental: when government depends on the consent of the governed, how can making the governed less informed be a good thing?
This post is a little outside my usual persuasive communication content, but as a reader of this blog you probably care about clear thinking, supported by hard facts, so I strongly recommend you read The Fifth Risk.
[1] “A Deadly Touch of Flu”, The Economist, September 29, 2018, p.75.
If you read and apply the lessons from the books I’ve recommended so far for your professional sales education, you will eventually get rewarded (or punished, depending on how you look at it) by being promoted to sales management.
You will quickly find out that what got you there won’t keep you there, and one of the most important lessons is that you can’t do everything yourself, as I illustrate with my story about a WWII tank commander and a young private.
To help you navigate the transition from selling to supporting, enabling and coaching your sales team’s performance, you can ask for no better mentors that Dave Brock and Mike Weinberg.
I’ve previously written reviews of their two books, and you will find more detailed descriptions here:
Sales Manager Survival Guide, by Dave Brock
Sales Management. Simplified., by Mike Weinberg
