Why strategies used by successful people don’t work for you
How to reduce the influence of survivorship bias
Do one or more of the following statements apply to you?
👉 To become successful you have tried in vain to apply the strategies and methods that successful people use.
👉 You have regularly tried unsuccessfully to follow the advice of self-help gurus.
👉 You often compare yourself negatively to others on social media.
If so, you have probably become a victim of survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias is our tendency to focus on the successful outcomes (survivors, winners) of a particular situation, while overlooking the unsuccessful outcomes (failures, losers).
For example, during World War II, to determine which parts of bomber planes needed reinforcements, researchers initially focused on the damaged parts of bomber planes that had returned safely. But when they realised the planes that didn’t come back were the worst hit, they started focusing on the undamaged parts of the surviving planes, as these were the parts that needed reinforcing.
Effective decision making requires us to see the whole picture. Survivorship bias distorts our perception of reality by leaving out the failures. By focusing only on the winners, we may draw wrong conclusions based on incomplete or inaccurate information. The focus on survivors can make us overly optimistic about our chances of success. By emphasising the individual characteristics of winners, we might underestimate the role of external factors like luck and unique circumstances. And by ignoring the losers we don’t gain any insight into their failures, such as the pitfalls they encountered or the strategies that didn’t work for them. In this way, it becomes almost impossible to assess which strategies contribute to success.
Let’s look at a few examples.
👉 Many books claim that we can become successful by applying the strategies of the rich and famous. These books fail to mention that for most people these strategies do not work. Most people don’t get rich or famous. If it turns out that these strategies don't work for us either, this could frustrate us and affect our self-confidence.
👉 To promote their services, self-help gurus usually share success stories from a handful of clients who have experienced a personal breakthrough. Bringing up non-breakthrough clients wouldn’t help their business. In addition, breakthrough clients will be happy to share what they have experienced, while non-breakthrough clients don’t have an interesting story to tell and may blame themselves for their perceived failure. Looking only at success stories could lead us down a self-improvement path that doesn’t help us achieve our desired outcome.
👉 There are aspects we like about ourselves and our lives, and aspects we don’t like. The negative aspects generally outweigh the positive ones because of our innate negativity bias (see the References section). On social media, people tend to highlight the aspects they like (their ‘winners’), and leave out everything they don't like (their ‘losers’). Comparing ourselves to these improved, unrealistic versions of other people can make us feel dissatisfied about our own life.
👉 By only focusing on successful startups, we overestimate the chance of creating a successful startup. In the long run, about 90% of startups fail. Success is never guaranteed. This doesn't mean we shouldn't try, just that we should be realistic about our chance of success.
👉 By focusing exclusively on a few old smokers who are still alive, we might mistakenly assume that smoking doesn’t damage our health.
👉 By paying a lot of attention to successful entrepreneurs that dropped out of college, we might erroneously conclude that they became successful because they dropped out. But most college dropouts don’t become successful entrepreneurs. And on average, graduates tend to earn higher salaries than non-graduates. So for most people, dropping out of college is not a good idea.
👉 It is a widely held belief that setting specific goals is the best way to achieve what we want in life. The problem is that winners and losers have the same goals. For instance, every sports team wants to win the championship, and every player wants to be selected for the national team. This means that having a goal is not what differentiates winners from losers. Goals are required for setting a direction, but processes lead to the results we want to achieve. For further details see Atomic Habits by James Clear (see References section).
Survivorship bias shouldn’t stop us from taking action. But before we decide what actions to take, we should try to get a full picture of both winners and losers, especially in situations where the stakes are high.
So how can we reduce survivorship bias?
Reducing the impact of survivorship bias starts with acknowledging its presence, and then creating a comprehensive view of the situation by including not only winners but also losers in our analysis. Here are some tools to help you reduce the adverse effects of survivorship bias.
🛠️ Become aware of the bias
The first step is to become aware of the potentially negative impact that survivorship bias can have on the decision you are about to make. Be especially alert when you only have a limited number of success stories to base your decision on.
Ask yourself questions such as:
🤔 Am I drawing a conclusion based on only a limited number of success stories?
🤔 Am I overestimating my chance of success as I only focus on success stories?
🤔 How might luck, timing or other circumstances affect a successful outcome?
🤔 What could the failures of others teach me about the best strategy to use or about the pitfalls to avoid?
🛠️ Gather data of winners and losers
Create a comprehensive view of the situation by gathering information on both successful and unsuccessful cases. Don’t look only at what you can easily see, but try to include unsuccessful cases that may not be easily visible, like startups that failed, athletes that didn’t reach the top, or clients that didn’t experience a personal breakthrough. Study the details of these cases to learn as much as possible from these failures. Using tools such as the possibility grid can help you understand what important information you may be missing.
🛠️ Consult others
Input from others can help you identify any biases in your analysis. Consult others who are not directly involved in the situation and who have expertise in the subject matter. Be curious about their perspective and try to understand their point of view. Be open to data that contradicts what you believe to be true (for information on confirmation bias, see the References section). Be as objective as possible and stick to the facts.
References
Atomic Habits; by James Clear.
Negativity bias: Why you are addicted to bad news, A3 Life Design, by Adrie Kuil, https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/how-to-counteract-the-negativity-bias
How to reduce confirmation bias; A3 Life Design; by Adrie Kuil; https://www.a3lifedesign.com/blog-english/how-to-reduce-confirmation-bias
5 Common Mental Errors That Sway You From Making Good Decisions; by James Clear; https://jamesclear.com/common-mental-errors
Survivorship Bias: The Tale of Forgotten Failures; Farnam Street; https://fs.blog/survivorship-bias/
How to Recognize Survivorship Bias and Avoid the Pitfalls of Success (#1 of 200); by K.C. Barr; https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-recognize-survivorSship-bias-avoid-pitfalls-success-k-c-barr