Thread by @paraschopra

1/ LOVE reading SUCCESS STORIES?

A thread on how to CRITICALLY DISSECT a success story, to PREVENT you from NARRATIVE FALLACY and to HELP you POKE HOLES in ANYONE-CAN-DO-ANYTHING message that billionaires, Olympians, and famous actors love to throw around.

2/ Stories captivate us because we’re evolutionarily wired to seek stories. Our ancestors who told and listened to stories had a higher survival rate because stories bound them together. Stories helped form groups that killed Mammoths and take over the world.

3/ Stories bind people together because they provide a boundary between us-and-them. Those who share similar stories are ultimately similar people: Christians bound together by Biblical stories

When friends gossip, what they’re really saying to each other is: we belong together

4/ Because stories are compelling, they animate listeners to act. Crusades, Jihad, Putting Man on the Moon, Nazis - all human action is a result of someone telling a good story

A good story is *manipulative*. It can make you do things that otherwise you’d never think of doing

5/ The dangerous thing about stories isn’t just that they’re manipulative. It’s that when you’re immersed in a story, you can’t tell if it’ll do you good or bad.

There’s no way to only listen to the ‘good’ stories. All stories are ‘good’ from the perspective of the storyteller

6/ Whether a story improves your life or makes it worse is impossible to tell because good storytellers can convince you of anything.

We're wired to believe a well told story and that makes us blind.

7/ All this sounds ominous but there’s no doing away with stories. Being human is to tell and listen to stories

But you can arm yourself with a perspective that’ll help you not get swayed away by a story

I’ll focus on success stories but similar ideas apply to failure stories

8/ Let's first talk about BIASES that plague SUCCESS STORIES.

9/ First bias: Successful people RARELY ADMIT that it was luck

– They, like everyone else, desire status, so they want you to respect and like them
– They’re less likely to mention about luck, or foolish things they did. They'll bias towards telling smart things they did

10/ Second bias: Media shapes the story to make it seem like anyone can do it

Journalists love rags-to-riches and against-all-odds stories because they appeal to a wider audience. Otherwise, no one would read their detailed, nuanced and likely boring account of someone’s success

11/ Third bias: You pay extra attention to the parts of success stories that seem within your grasp

Subconsciously, you dont analyze the totality of story but direct your attention to the parts that are within your reach (because those seem doable, and you love being successful

12/ Fourth bias: Because the story is so compelling, you (implicitly) assume that striving for success is a good choice

To pay attention to a story is to buy into its author’s value system. Unless you’re aware of what YOU want in life, a good story can make life choices for you

13/ The bottomline of why success stories are dangerous is that SUCCESS is COMPLICATED and MULTIDIMENSIONAL, while STORIES are SIMPLE and UNIDIMENSIONAL

14/ Think of success as a sequence of coin tosses that have to come up in an exactly right.

So if millions of people are tossing coins, you’ll see someone that gets it right and start rationalizing how s/he was motivated, worked hard and made all the right choices while tossing

15/ Think of it this way: the more the number of events in a sequence that have to go right, the less likely is that a successful person can take credit for all those events

Some decisions or actions may have been deliberate but many may have happened by chance or unitentionally

16/ But, NOBODY tells such BALANCED STORIES because they’re LONG, BORING and TAKE AWAY the SHINE from the successful person.

So all you hear about is how successful people did something special that lead them to their success

17/ What you ALSO DONT HEAR about is success stories that contain a THOUSAND LITTLE DETAILS that had to go EXACTLT RIGHT.

You don’t hear about that because even successful people aren’t aware of all the reasons that contributed to their success

18/ Imagine that you’ve got good athletic genes and you’re unaware of that, you’ll end up attributing your success to your practice or your coach

Or, if a key customer promoted you at a conference without you being aware of it, you’ll attribute your success to your marketing.

19/ The world is complex, success stories are simple.

Even SUCCESSFUL people themselves DON'T FULLY UNDERSTAND WHY THEY'RE SUCCESSFUL.

20/ BEWARE of SIMPLIFIED success STORIES

When you come across a success story, ALWAYS ask following questions.

21/ Q: What is the story teller’s motivation?

Is it to sell you something? Get your vote? Make you like him/her? Make you share the story widely?

22/ Q: Has the storyteller shown evidence (previously) of being a nuanced and deep thinker?

It isn’t necessary for someone to be a deep thinker to be a successful person. But, to know the full set of reasons behind success, the storyteller needs to be a critical thinker.

23/ Q: What is the storyteller not telling you?

What s/he chooses to leave out is as important as what s/he chooses to tell.

24/ Q: What happened to the other people who did things similar to the storyteller?

If someone says they worked really hard to become successful, think about the people who worked hard but went nowhere.

25/ Q: Would you trade all aspects of your life with the storyteller?

The multidimensional aspect of success means that you need to be ready to re-live the story teller’s life in order to achieve the same sort of success

You cannot cherry pick factors that you like.

26/ All this SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF WORK for just a story because Listening to stories critically is difficult.

Dissecting success stories takes deliberate effort because good stories use cognitive biases to persuade and manipulate you invertedpassion.com/hacks-to-avoid…

27/ In fact, storytelling by customers is ONE OF THE BIGGEST types of cognitive bias that impacts product managers and designers invertedpassion.com/cognitive-bias…

28/ WHAT I PERSONALLY DO is this.

Whenever I'm listening or reading a success story, I assume that success was a result of chance events and then derive generic principles and understanding of how the world works (i.e., things that even the storyteller wouldn’t be aware of).

29/ Understanding a success story in all its nuances is similar to understanding how the world works, and doing that takes effort work.

Half-understanding success is dangerous as you’ll waste time and energy looking at only a few sides of the multi-sided dice of success.

30/ Finally, last part of this tweetstorm: IS SUCCESS WORTH IT?

31/ The answer totally depends on how you define success.

Remember: just because someone is able to tell a good story about their success, it doesn’t mean it’s your success too.

32/ My advice is to define success as a process over which you have control over vs an outcome where chance plays a big role.

If you’re honest and put in a good effort, that’s success to me.

33/ Understand that there’s a bias for billionaires to do chest-thumping, media to cover their chest-thumping while convincing you that anyone can be a billionaire and you to give up things you like for an unlikely, but possible, outcome of making a billion dollars.

34/ If you want to be a martyr, chase outcomes. If you want to like fulfilled, chase being the best you can be. Maybe your chances of success are higher when you’re not trying too hard?

35/ That's it folks!

I blog all my tweet threads on invertedpassion.com (SUBSCRIBE on the website for email updates whenever I post something new)

RT if you think you got vaccinated against success stories :)