Secret of Success?
Success fascinates people. Newsagents' shelves are full of glossy magazines that give you a glimpse into the lives of the successful. Similarly, bookshops have shelves of books that claim to provide the secret of success. Typically these authors interviewed a handful of people from the glossy magazines and then wrote a book distilling what they thought made them different from ordinary people. The picture of success they create is skewed towards relentlessly proactive and positive stories. Successful people like to claim their achievements were due to skill and hard work. Very few will admit that chance had any role because it reduces the significance of what they did. Conversely, they do not like talking about their failures, so they quietly leave out any failures from their account. As a result, books about how to succeed are usually little more than a collection of anecdotal stories, and very few survive the test of time.
My approach is different. Success and making progress are closely linked; you cannot succeed if you do not make progress. So it is no surprise that within progress is a formula for success. Rather than looking at successful people, I have focused on what progress says about success, and the message is clear, you cannot succeed without the following:
1. Imagination
Success starts in the brain; you need to imagine what you want to achieve before you can achieve it. As you do this, your brain gets to work thinking about how to get there. Ideas bubble up into consciousness, any of which could be critical to your success. This creative mental process is the spark that ignites success and shapes our actions.
2. Truth
There is no getting around the fact that success needs truth or, put the other way round, falsity creates failure. This statement may be obvious, but very few books about success address how to decide what is correct. Psychologically it is tempting to move from imagination straight to action and not challenge our existing beliefs. When you imagine success, simultaneously, your mind weaves together the ideas it believes will help you get there. You already think these ideas are right; that is why our brain selected them in the first place. As a result, you feel confident and want to start on your path to success. Often your confidence was well placed, and things go well. However, too many times, that same feeling of confidence leads you away from success. The problem is that they both feel the same. It is when things do not go well that confidence shifts to doubt. At this point, you need a more reliable method of deciding the truth.
My book Progress Sabotaged provides the answer. It shows that the best strategy is to let the results of a trial or experiment decide what is true. In practice, this means examining the idea and asking two questions: what does the idea predict will happen if it is true or false. Once you know what the theory forecasts should and should not happen, you can design and complete a trial or experiment to see which occurs and let the results decide the truth. If you observe the outcome the idea predicts should happen, then you can be more confident. However, if you see the outcome your theory predicts should not occur, the test tells you the idea is wrong.
History shows that this is the best approach we have. However, there is a problem. Some ideas do not tell us anything about the future, and others predict all the possible outcomes. The former does not answer the "if true/false then" questions, and the latter only answers the "if true then…" question. In either case, it is impossible to design a trial that will test these ideas. At first, this appears to be a big problem because it means you cannot use the gold standard method of deciding the truth for all ideas. However, it turns out this is not a problem. To succeed, you need ideas that will help you achieve your goal, and to be helpful, an idea must tell you something about the future you want; it needs to make an "if true/false then" prediction.
You can see this relationship at work in a weather forecast. If a weather forecaster says it will be wet and dry, she has not told you anything useful about the future because the forecast included all the possible outcomes. The forecast does not have an answer for the question if it is wrong what will happen. As a result, it cannot be proved wrong. However, the forecaster has made a testable prediction when she predicts it will be dry and warm next Sunday. If her forecast is wrong, then it will rain that day. With this type of prediction, you can look at the forecaster's track record and decide how much trust you should place in her current prediction. If her past forecasts proved accurate, then her current one provides helpful information, and you can be confident about Sunday's weather.
3. Application
Success requires action. Imagining success is not enough; you need to apply the ideas you believe will help you achieve your goals. Many self-help books focus on this stage. They emphasize the characteristics of successful people such as drive, willpower, patience, passion, optimism, etc. These characteristics are essential, but no amount of character will overcome a false idea.
4. The Ego
Paradoxically, to succeed, you need to know about failure. If you do not understand the causes of failure, you cannot protect yourself from them, and therefore you are much more likely to fail. So, what are the most significant causes of failure? The short answer is the ego. If you study the history of progress, you see how the ego blinds people to the truth and poisons cooperation. Both effects sabotage success. Despite its importance, very few books on success discuss the ego, and almost none give you the knowledge and tools to prevent ego from ruining success.
What do you think? Is there anything else you need to succeed?