Habits of Successful People (are Nonsense)

I have never liked the concept of following “habits of highly successful people.”  On one hand, you have the rather obvious reaction that people are incredibly different.  What makes different people successful is incredibly different.  (Most entrepreneurs would pride themselves on “thinking different” and bucking against common trends.)

There is another more important concept here:  Survivorship bias.

(Insert the famous pictures of the bombers and their bullet hole pattern)

It is very easy to study successful people, successful companies, and based on commonalities alone, attempts to draw conclusions about causality.

These analyses generally ignore three important things:

1)  Believing the Narrator

While it is all well and fun to ask people “to what do you owe your success.”  There is very little value in the exercise.  Without empirical evidence that the individual being asked has participated in a thorough analysis of their own personal strengths and weaknesses, their own failures and their own successes, there is no guarantee that their answers at the question will be at all accurate.

2)  Statistical Rigor

Just because you can empirically prove that a successful group of people or companies always do one specific thing, you still need to disapprove the statement that unsuccessful people or companies do those same things.  I see this mistake made often in “studies” that claim to “have analyzed the common traits among X-group of successful Y” only to fail to demonstrate that those highlighted characteristics only exist (or exist with statistically significant difference in frequency) in the group that they are analyzing.

3)  Luck

Very, very few entrepreneurs, media sensations, professional sports players, and other extraordinarily successful individuals like to admit it:  Luck always plays a factor in success.  Admitting it does not diminish your accomplishments nor give others the right to diminish them.  However, many, many (if not all) success stories contain a fair bit of being in the right place at the right time in addition to rigor, discipline, and immeasurable amount of hard work.  Success brings both of these into play.

My friend, Dr. Param Dedhia uses this phrase a lot:  “A few things done right.”  I like this much more than “habits of successful _____.”  We are not claiming to be following in exactly the footsteps of someone else nor are we claiming success by emulation.  We are simply establishing a set of habits, actions, and skills that we are committing to do consistently, correctly, and for our own benefit.

Furthermore, these things need to be up to each person, each organization and will certainly vary based on the situation.  (Though, if you are looking for a few good things to do right as an individual, I highly suggest you check out more of Dr. Param’s content).