Is all success worth learning from

Ashim D’Silva
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

At the Super-Bowl this year, in the first overtime in history, after trailing for almost the entire game, Tom Brady threw out a Hail Mary of a pass that was caught inches from the ground by Julian Edelman. That sentence is not hyperbolic enough. You need to watch it, and it’s still hard to believe.

Most Super-Bowl MVPs for Brady, most Super-Bowls for a coach for Belichick, biggest comeback (from trailing 21–0). I don’t watch many sports game matches but I take it this was incredible.

So they won. And it’s not only the moment that counts. Many well played games through the season got them the trophy. But that was a crucial moment. Question is, was it luck?

It’s difficult looking at a victory, to say that a team played poorly. But that perfect moment: was a bad pass, that was intercepted, and very nearly fumbled, potentially costing the game. I can bet there isn’t a coach out there, now training their team to be able to catch a ball inches from the ground with a shoes in their faces.

It’s not a recipe for success

Because of the timing, it’s also worth comparing to Donald Trump winning the presidency. As much as the things he did led to him being president, it isn’t sound strategy to analyse his tactics, or try and replay any of them to learn to be a better leader. Being president isn’t the ability to win an election even though that’s what gets you there. It’s the next four years of boring policy.

When the odds are bad — a game at 21–0, or almost every-poll against you — and you still fight into a win, people want to assign value to the things you’ve done. Even if for every one of those victories, there’s been thousands of failures using those same lessons. Survivorship Bias stacks numbers on the side of incredible successes, because no one wants to read the story of the player who threw a shoddy pass that hit the ground and lost the game.

That’s how the news works. As much as it seems like the news is a representation of what’s going on in the world, in reality, it’s stories of the most unlikely things happening in the world. That’s what makes the news. It’s interesting to know about, but you can’t plan your life based on it.

Every amazing success story is exactly that — unusual. And yet, we read interviews, buy books, go to talks, to learn from the things these people did as if it’s all replicable advice — drop out of school, sell everything you own to start a company, jump and build a parachute on the way down, be an awful person but an eccentric genius, always bet on seven, blow on your dice…. It’s all gambling. And yes, some gambles pay off, and bigger gambles pay off bigger. They’re just not always lessons to learn from.

We may only see the big moments. But all the lessons to learn are in the quiet weeknights, the hours of practice, the everyday work that make the exciting possible. Celebrate the incredible, but learn from the boring.

Half sentence philosopher, and lover/hater of cake

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