Should We Only Learn from Successful People? | What Every Self-Learner Needs to Know About Survivorship Bias

Welcome back Awesome Person,

What to expect in this edition:

• A short story about how focusing on only successful people may lead to failure
• What is survivorship bias
• 3 ways to deal with survivorship bias
• A video explaining survivorship bias (you may want to watch this one.)

__________________________________________________________________________

In 2016, a group of friends and I decided to raise funds to paint a school in Jamestown over the Easter Holidays. We named our project Colour Me Educated and shared tasks and targets. Naturally, I was in charge of social media management, so, I went on and started promoting our project

Since we were also raising funds through social media, I wanted us to have the best page possible.?After a quick google search, I found some organizations I could learn from and quickly narrowed it to Charity: Water.

Charity: Water is a non-profit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing?countries.

What I thought would help me grow our social media page in Ghana, soon became my downfall. I tried to learn from everything that they were doing and implement it the same way on our page.

But, I failed to get as big as I planned to because, after a few weeks of momentum, I would burn out, give up and try again after a few months. A look at our current page is evidence of what happened.

We went on to have a successful program and have since organized 3 more, with the 5th edition happening this year but our social media presence never took off.

It wasn’t until I learnt about survivorship bias last week and started writing this newsletter that I realized what happened. (It gets interesting, hear me out.)

__________________?

What is survivorship bias?

Survivorship bias happens when we only learn from those who have succeeded on the other side of a difficult situation and ignore those who have failed. There is a better definition here .

So for example, the first thing you do when you decide to break into tech as a product manager or UX designer, or a digital marketer is to research the people already in the field and learn from them.

Survivorship bias is assuming that these people are all the people who have made the journey of breaking into Tech in that particular field. While neglecting all the other people who tried, failed, and gave up, those who are still trying and failing, or those who have gone into other fields. Now, how you find these people is another challenge to solve.

It is very important to consider survivorship bias in all your decisions to help you “see what you can’t see.” Or, in other words, why are you doing everything right and still failing?

Even though Charity: Water is a very good role model and does tremendous work all over the world, focusing on and learning from them alone was a huge mistake.

I forgot about all the other charity groups that had started on the same journey, with the same strategies, and had failed or hadn’t grown as much as Charity: Water had.

__________________

WWII aircraft study

There is a famous study about engineers who were trying to build reinforcements for their aircraft during World War II. They had noticed that they were bullet holes in certain areas and none in others, so they decided to build protective gear for those areas with bullet holes to protect their airplanes and pilots.

Then came along Abraham Wald, a mathematician at Columbia University who had been given the tasks of reviewing the data from the planes.?

“I think you are all looking at this from the wrong angle. Why do you think that there are no airplanes with bullet holes in the cockpit or the engines?"

"Don’t you think it’s because the planes that got hit there never came back?”

(At least that’s what I think he said)

And, that’s when they realized which parts to provide reinforcement to: the cockpit and engines.

__________________

3 tips to adjust for survivorship bias in your decision making

Survivorship bias affects every aspect of our lives and it’s very important to adjust for it if you want to increase your chances of success.

1.???Acknowledge that for every successful person that you admire and want to be like, there are many people who did what they did and still failed or did not have as much success as this person did.

2.???Balance advice from successful people, with lessons from people who tried and still failed or had moderate success.

3.???Take and apply advice in the context of your current life conditions.

__________________

Self-learning anything is a hard journey on its own. So, it is important to do everything you can to make sure that as many things, as possible, work in your favour.?

Bonus Video by Eddie Woo

__________________________________________________________________________

Summary

1. Survivorship bias occurs when we only learn from the people who have come out successful on the other end and fail to learn from the people who failed to make it.
2. It is very important to consider survivorship bias in all your decisions to help you “see what you can’t see.” Or, in other words, why are you doing everything right and still failing?
3. ?Adjust for survivorship bias by:

• Acknowledging that for every successful person that you admire and want to be like, there are many people who did what they did and still failed, or did not have as much success as this person did.
• Balancing advice from successful people, with lessons from people who tried and still failed or had moderate success.
• Taking and applying advice in the context of your current life conditions.

__________________________________________________________________________

Your turn

Have you ever heard of survivorship bias? Do you think that it is affecting any of your current choices? Let me know in the comments.

__________________________________________________________________________

Till our next edition, stay awesome.

P.S. ?????If you liked this newsletter don't forget to subscribe so that you receive future editions.

?????If you loved this newsletter share this with someone who could use a pick me up this week