Summary: Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi with Tahl Raz
chestergrant.com
chestergrant.com
My issue is not that the advice they give is necessarily wrong, but it's that the format usually goes something like this:
1. Survey lots of "successful" people.
2. Identify common behaviors of these people.
3. Recommend that other people practice these behaviors.
I mean, just look at the title, "Never eat alone". I don't doubt that most successful people have a wide network and rarely eat by themselves. I just don't think that telling an introvert, or worse, someone who is painfully shy, that making them engage in a behavior that is naturally uncomfortable for them will lead to equivalent level of success. I kind of feel like it's the same as telling an alcoholic "stop drinking".
The actual book focuses more on the importance of networking and relationships.
I haven’t finished reading it myself yet, so I can’t say with 100% certainty, but so far it seems pretty clear that the author’s main intent is not to suggest that you should always eat with someone else.
"You're overweight", says the Doctor, "you need to eat less and move more." "No s*t Sherlock with my IQ of 147 I'd never managed to put that one together myself," I replied.
There are definitely better ways to discuss the topic with someone you are trying to help.
The way how I meet people tend to be like, do something interesting then people contact me, simple formula, more introvert style.
Half of the battle in many struggles is convincing the person that it’s possible to change their situation. Telling stories of people who succeeded in changing can be enough to show that the reader has some control.
Some people get stuck feeling as though everything in their life is purely the result of external factors out of their control. This leads to a sense of helplessness and no attempts to change the situation.
Some self-help books really are helpful at inspiring people to believe that they actually do have some, albeit usually not total, control over their situation. This can be enough of a nudge to get people making the changes they need to make to start moving in the right direction.
They’re not usually miracle fixes or one-shot solutions, but they can shake up the status quo and point the reader in the right direction. No self-help book would simply tell an alcoholic to “just stop drinking”, but they might provide steps for identifying triggers that lead to drinking, taking gradually more control and accountability for their consumption, and provide example success stories to show that people really can overcome alcoholism.
But I agree with the GP that strong empirical data would be useful as well.
Yes you're right, this book isn't for a serious introvert. But Keith never claims it is? Writing a book for everyone leaves you with a book that's useful to no one.
If I write a book about compilers, maybe even mention my book will make someone a better programmer, I don't expect the frontend guys to complain it's not accessible to them. I honestly struggle to understand where this mindset comes from.
At the end of the day, the point is book sales, not to actually make you successful (even if that’s the effect for some small slice of the people who actually buy it).
They'd all have the same result: works for some, not for others. Works better for those that put in the work, than for those that expect the product to do all the heavy lifting.
14. In 1973, when the same class was resurveyed, the differences between the goal setters and everyone else were stunning. The 13 percent who had goals that were not in writing were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent of students who had no goals at all. But most surprising of all, the 3 percent who had written their goals down were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent of graduates combined!
It might make a difference, but not 10x in 20 years.
Do we seriously think that if every one of the 84 percent were tasked with sitting down and writing goals they would have morphed into 10x earners? A few would, sure, but not most or even many.
I also personally object to the singular focus on monetary income (I want numbers on how many of the 3/84 percenters reported being happy, doing work they considered important, fulfilled, etc.) but that's just a side note. It's standard cherry-picking fare for this kind of advice.
A steaming pile of trash from the founder of "Success" magazine.
Imagine my surprise when I read the original source of that was an article in the pages of the same magazine.
A common Nice Guy pattern is helping someone else with the (unstated) expectation that they will reciprocate. Glover calls it a "covert contract." I had to learn that I was doing this, and it was embarrassing to learn that I was, in fact, doing it.
Google "Robert Glover" and "Nice Guy Syndrome" if you want to check whether this might have some applicability to your situation.
Specifically to my situation: I help someone I've known for awhile, and afterwards I expect that it will develop a closer working relationship of some sort in the future because they'll remember that I helped them out and that we can work together to accomplish things.
What really happens is that after I've helped them, they're not interested in any collaboration anymore unless it meets their immediate needs, and definitely aren't interested in helping out if I need it in future.
Doing something and expecting something in return.
Who is a Nice Guy?
* He is the relative who lets his wife run the show.
* He is the friend who will do anything for anybody, but whose own life seems to be in shambles.
* He is the guy who frustrates his wife because he is so afraid of conflict that nothing ever gets resolved.
* He is the boss who tells one person what they want to hear, then reverses himself to please someone else.
* He is the man who lets people walk all over him because he doesn't want to rock the boat.
* He is the dependable guy at work who will never say “no,” but would never tell anyone if they were imposing on him.
* He is the man whose life seems so under control, until BOOM, one day he does something to destroy it all.
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This is very different from someone who does someone else a solid, and then that person "owes him one". Someone gets you free tickets to the game, and 3 months later you get them an introduction that helps them out. It's not a 1:1 thing obviously, but there's an expectation of loose reciprocity over the years.
In all relationships you have to be on the giving part at least some of the time, otherwise you're just a user. And if you're on the giving part all of the time, you're a doormat. Both are unhealthy.
With that pointed out, the top comment in the parent cannot be dismissed by a mere labeling of "Nice Guy". His experience is a valid criticism of Keith's message, and it is a reality that the message is not universally applicable. You definitely will get people who'll take advantage of you. They'll see that you're willing to help them, and they'll keep coming to you for more and more help. There will even be folks who'll get upset when you don't help them. That you have to put barriers between yourself and such folk is not something the book handles well (read it years ago so I may be wrong).
Another one - I don't know if it's in that book - is that people generally feel the need to reciprocate nice gestures. Unwanted help can feel a lot like unwanted debt.
If you are disappointed that nothing came out of it, you might have been making covert contracts as someone else pointed out.
> Of course, the issue is that for every 10,000 appalling, messy, featured-on-rotten-dot-com failures, there's one spectacular success. Since humans are biased to think of successful outcomes as more likely than they actually are, the ingredients for that success become a "recipe," and are slavishly reproduced, without any critical thought, or flexibility.
> It's like a witch doctor's formula for headache cure is bat urine, dandruff from the shrunken head of a fallen warrior chief, eye of newt, boiled alligator snot, and ground willow bark. The willow bark is what did it, but the dandruff thing is the most eye-catching ingredient, so it gets the credit, and everytime the chief gets a hangover, they start a war.
> Somewhere down the road, a copycat substitutes hemlock for the willow bark, and headaches become a death sentence.
But all that said, it's fairly commonsense stuff. Relationship-building is important.
For me, I'm an introvert, and I don't believe that superficial relationships are ideal (but are, nonetheless, often absolutely required). I like to have more meaningful ones, if possible; with deeper human connections.
But I won't start a meaningful relationship, unless I am willing to commit to it.
Part of "commit to it," is that I hold up my end of the relationship, and act with Integrity.
49. Study after study shows that the more speeches one gives, the higher one's income bracket tends to be.
You can’t ever know if the first statement is true without keeping score.
In other words: to get the things you want, convince yourself and others you are being selfless then ask them for stuff.
Anyone who is interested in helping people out truly selflessly can secretly send me money on a regular basis, and I’ll make sure it goes to people who need it and take credit for it. You can be helping and not keeping score just like the book suggested.
Wait… to get the book or a course or coaching I need to pay first? Oh I see… it’s “give me exactly this much stuff first, so I can tell you how you should never do that.”
At some point in your life your time and resources will be quite constrained, and you simply can't help everyone. You need to strategize who to help, and identifying "leeches" requires some level of score keeping.
I've certainly had multiple people speak ill of me to others saying that I stopped trying to connect with them. They fail to mention that in the last N years, they never connected with me. It was always me initiating the phone call/email, etc. And I can say that definitively only because I had phone and email records going back years. Simple thing to script.
(BTW, not recommending you stop calling people because they never call you - merely illustrating people's lousy behavior in response to it).
[1] You're always going to have to give a lot more than you receive. Networking is fundamentally very inefficient, if you make this a metric.
but the first thing i saw when i went to the link was something like:
> Help others. Because when you do, they often help you back.
That put me off.
Just because it seems selfish and/or manipulative and/or it's advising you to corrupt one of the things that makes the world occasionally bearable -- helping people because they need some help.
Instead, this book is saying, help people because you can get something in return.
At least according to that summary.
I guess I don't have _too_ much of a problem with that, but...can we cay 'billionaires'? Their entire lives revolve around helping people in the name of getting something in return -- like Benioff Children's Hopsital. oh gawd. :-D
c'mon, bro. like what evil shit are you doing in your life that you have to sponsor a _children's hospital_??
nevermind. i can imagine.
pretty soon a legion of billionaires is going to be funding a 'child sex trafficking rescue organization'.
oh, wait...
The stereotype of winners and losers stems from social darwinism.
I'd answer with those lyrics from Marilyn Manson:
"Slave never dreams to be free"
"Slave only dreams to be King"
This reads to me as "tactics for those in winning positions". The test is, what if everyone followed these rules?
Those lyrics from Marilyn Manson are quite relevant:
"Slave never dreams to be free"
"Slave only dreams to be King"
A.k.a. social capital, which is another way people of some races and backgrounds are privileged, and others marginalized. And which makes books like these utter nonsense that victim-blames the very people they are ostensibly trying to help.
I was slightly aware of this social isolation before having kids, but you could mostly navigate it by learning what you couldn't talk about. Innocuous things poorer people talk about, like expensive housing, gentrification, problems with extended family, fixing your own apartment/house, foodstamps, my childhood... bring any of that stuff up and it's like you suddenly have two heads.
That always made me feel shameful about growing up poor... but navigating that stuff while trying to interact with my kids' friends' parents has become outright infuriating. I live in a nice little house in a quiet neighborhood and because of my zip code it might as well be a leper colony. If you mention any of this you get ostracized in such a polite way you could almost be convinced that they're doing you a favor.
I feel this is a defensive mechanism against guilt. Those well off feel guilty about not helping their "friends" who are struggling.
Although this ostracization goes both ways, seeing someone talk off handedly about losing more money than your family has seen in a decade doesn't make one feel good or wish to interact with them in the future.
Never Eat Alone is basically a guide to creating and maintaining insincere relationships with others so you can use them to do work for you. Just like Tom Sawyer, it's considered clever if you get all your friends to paint the fence so you don't have to. I personally find it nauseating.
I've recently started my own software business and the reality is that all the work is going out talking to potential clients and understanding their problems.
Writing some code at the end is usually trivial once I've actually understood the problem.
Of course, when a company gets to a certain size, such leeches that you describe very clearly exist. The notion of "failing upwards"[1] is clear once you look for it. However, don't make the mistake of generalizing from the leeches who are in the minority to the others who are performing a useful role.
[1] Including getting fired only to find better jobs. Over and over again.
I think the important takeaway is for those who have extreme networking as the primary focus, lunch & dinner meetings are just one of the things that should not fail to be exploited.
Like anything else there are only so many meal dates you can make, and no matter how hard you try they will not all come true, so you need to put it into accurate perspective how to take action.
Simply one of the best ways to bond with a variety of associates is through common love of good food and service at your favorite restaurants.
It can be a serious advantage when you're born & raised for this.
OTOH I had an exponential growth phase with a marketer who did not like the fancy food & drink but catered to sports-loving clients with game tickets, plus discreetly for our most lucrative client a generous season package with extra seats for whoever they wanted since we actually went to only a few of the games ourselves.
All compliments of Our Co. which everybody ended up knowing since discretion was of course not fully maintained.
Occasional clients became regulars and everyone wanted to "move up in the rankings".
Anyway, top networkers and persuasive salespeople have always had the most unfair advantage when that is basically their entire focus compared to their other highly successful peers.
But it's not a good idea to let any persuasiveness get the best of an organization. Once a goal is established, the networkers should be working purely in service to the creative, engineering, and technical executives. Not the other way around.