As the years go by, if we look back, we will see that we have spent a lot of hours as students. Primary and secondary education (everyone), higher education (more and more people), master's degrees and postgraduate courses (some), courses and workshops of all kinds (almost everyone). So many hours sitting in front of a teacher/instructor make for many memories. However, memory is selective and with the passage of time only a few anecdotes remain etched in our minds.
I would like to share a situation I experienced twenty years ago. During my time at IESE, I had the privilege of having the former counselor of the Generalitat, Antoni Subirà, in some classes, a great teacher and a well of knowledge. Debating and analyzing one of the cases corresponding to our program, Professor Subirà uttered the expression "good money on bad money". As I was saying, twenty years and I remember it as if it were now. Why that expression? I'll tell you.
The fact is that a certain entrepreneur intended to push forward a bicycle business. But good will was not enough and year after year the business just couldn't get off the ground. And this meant having to invest more and more money to cover the losses. To the point that it was logical to ask the question that Professor Subirà posed to us: isn't it that we are putting good money on bad money? Wouldn't it be reasonable to ask if the best option is to write off the investment already made (bad money) and not lose even more money (good money)?
Human nature is not very fond of surrender. And even more so in cases where we have poured many resources: not only is the will to carry out the initial idea maintained, but there is also the desire (and, depending on how, the need) to recover what has been invested. Making the decision to continue or abandon is not easy and requires a cool head. It is necessary to take advantage of the experience lived to examine which assumptions have not been met and what mistakes we have made. It is necessary to review our business plan once again and redo the initial market study that pushed us to undertake our project.
Now, what should not enter into this careful analysis are all kinds of exogenous factors that have little to do with us and our circumstances. We must isolate ourselves from all this cheap philosophy that pushes us not to throw in the towel. How many messages bathed in a spirit of self-improvement have we all received, urging us to persevere? How many videos advocating no surrender? How many calls to never give up? All cut from the same cloth, that not giving up has its reward: that such an entrepreneur succeeded on the twenty-fourth attempt, that such a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy made a last effort and in the long run the market knew how to recognize its proposal... Let's be clear: for every example of survival, we would find a hundred that have not had the same luck. The fact is that no one talks about these hundred, they don't appear in the photo (or in the video). Only those who have survived transcend. Misery doesn't sell.
Up to here, the business reading. But it is obvious that the reflection itself serves us for the personal sphere. I have already commented in some other post that, individually, our resources are basically two: money and time. The reflection made before for money also applies to time. We can move from the dichotomy "good money – bad money" to "good time – bad time." Over the years we undertake projects that demand effort and dedication. Some come to fruition and others do not. And when they don't quite come to fruition, it is imperative to carry out a serene exercise to know whether it is necessary to invest more time or not.
We would find a thousand examples of this situation: Should we insist on civil service exams because someone passed them on the eighth call? Do we have to push poor kids to kill themselves with a racket in their hands because Rafa Nadal trained a thousand hours every week? Should we drop everything to keep uploading insubstantial videos because Ibai Llanos got rich being a youtuber? Let's see: just because someone who had been buying the same number for years won the lottery jackpot does not mean that we should persevere in buying the ticket week after week because perseverance has its reward. Anyway...
I have grown up in the culture of effort and I am one of its firm defenders. I know that it is necessary to chip away at a lot of stone for things to work out and that success is not the result of chance. For this reason, I increasingly advocate for questioning where I put my focus and where I invest my time. Please, enough with cheap self-help messages. Enough with empty epic with a John Williams soundtrack. Enough with insipid narratives boosted by the ill-fated algorithm. Enough with references to quantum mechanics from people who neither know nor would understand classical mechanics. Come on, man!
Postscript
For the curious: where does this survival bias come from? Let's place ourselves in World War II and in the study that was made of the planes that had returned to base after carrying out the corresponding bombings. At the time, the usual tendency was to emphasize the parts that had suffered the most damage and reinforce them. However, the statistician Abraham Ward recommended armoring the parts that had not suffered any damage. Why? Obvious:because precisely not having suffered any damage in these areas had allowed them to survive!The planes that did not return to base were those that had suffered damage in these parts. Survival had confused engineers and mechanics. It is curious that Abraham Ward died prematurely... in a plane crash!
Epilogue
Although it has nothing to do with survival bias, I cannot miss the opportunity to end this article, returning to the beginning, to anecdotes as a student. Let me explain one of the situations that in my case have survived the filter of time and that after many years I still vividly remember. It was during my BUP and COU years, when our philosophy and Latin teacher, the illustrious José Mateos, a layman in the school I attended as a child, a school of Gabrielist brothers, uttered that forceful sentence: "If they want, I'll pass them: life will fail them." A maxim that at that moment made us all laugh, but that today I myself would sign.Add The New Barcelona Post as your preferred Google source for free
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