More on the Golden Rule of Success

Or how to copy the successful

In previous articles, I argued that copying the successful is one of the keys to success. This is true both for societies and for individuals. I want to follow up with another article to clear up a common misconception. The first is that knowing what part of a successful person’s behavior to copy is not obvious. The second is that copying the successful often does not lead to exactly the same results.

Let’s get back to the analogy that I used in the first article on learning to dunk a basketball by copying Michael Jordan. What about Michael Jordan should you copy?

• Was it his baggy shorts?

• Was it the number 23 on his jersey?

• Was it his clean-shaven head?

• Was it his technique?

• Was it his relentless work ethic?

• Or was it his 6 feet 6-inch height (2.0 meters) and 48-inch (1.22 meters) vertical leap?

Nike wanted you to believe that “Its’ Gotta Be the Shoes.”

The famous Nike advertising campaign was taking advantage of the normal human behavior of copying other people in fashion trends. Apparently, it worked because Air Jordans sold like crazy in the 1990s.

Of course, no one actually believed that wearing a pair of Nike Air Jordan shoes would enable them to dunk like Michael Jordan. What they were really doing was buying a product that gave them elevated social status because it copied the dress of someone with high social status.

It was not really that different from the ridiculous dress of aristocrats in the 18th Century:

As I mentioned in the earlier article, a good way to get around this problem is to:

• Copy many different successful people instead of just one

• See what they have in common and then copy that

• When in doubt lean towards the most successful

But we still have to take into account some other factors.

A large part of success is genetic

Another problem that is obvious in the example of Michael Jordan is his ridiculous height and vertical leap. Michael Jordan was 6 feet 6 inches tall (2.0 meters), and he had a 48-inch vertical leap (1.22 meters).

For those who do not know, a 40-inch vertical leap is exceptionally athletic. Even among NFL players, a 40-inch vertical leap is very unusual. Given the importance of jumping in basketball, a 40-inch vertical leap is much more common in the NBA.

But Michael Jordan’s vertical leap is likely the best in NBA history. And so is his combined 6 feet 6 inch height plus 48-inch vertical leap. So Michael Jordan was an outlier among outliers.

So what Michael Jordan him an outlier?

It should be obvious to anyone who is not totally deluded that both Michael Jordan’s height and vertical leap were largely due to genetics. No amount of practice will change your height. Practice will improve your vertical leap, but at some point, your vertical leap is what it is. And “what it is” is largely defined by your genes at birth.

Or as a scientist would say:

“Common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are predicted to collectively explain 40–50% of phenotypic variation in human height, but identifying the specific variants and associated regions requires huge sample sizes. Here, using data from a genome-wide association study of 5.4 million individuals of diverse ancestries, we show that 12,111 independent SNPs that are significantly associated with height account for nearly all of the common SNP-based heritability. These SNPs are clustered within 7,209 non-overlapping genomic segments with a mean size of around 90 kb, covering about 21% of the genome.”

Because of the difficulty in capturing measurements, the genetic component of the vertical leap is much less studied, but I seriously doubt it is not similarly determined by genetics. So a regular person copying Michael Jordan’s technique and expecting to be able to take off at the free throw line is almost as ridiculous as thinking that buying a pair of Air Jordan shoes will get a similar result.

Michael Jordan was a genetic freak even compared to the other genetic freaks who play in the NBA.

Knowing and doing are not the same thing

In my youth, I was a fairly decent basketball player. I was 5 foot 11 inches (1.8 meters) and had an average vertical leap. In grade school and junior high, I played basketball quite a bit. By high school, I shifted to other activities that I enjoyed more.

I am sure that by studying all of Michael Jordan’s game as well as other NBA stars, I could have learned a tremendous amount of valuable information. But in itself, that would not have been enough.

Doing requires practice

To maximize my genetic potential, I would have needed to practice relentlessly. If I had practiced 40 hours per week what I had learned shooting, dribbling, passing, and defense, I would have gotten pretty good at the game.

Maybe, I could have been a pretty good dunker, though that is a skill that has a pretty stark genetic floor. “Almost” does not count in dunking.

Coaching optimizes the practice

And I would have benefitted just as much from a good coach. Coaching is a form of copying where the person with more knowledge and skill deliberately makes it easier for others to copy the optimum behaviors.

Coaching consists of a large number of complex tasks:

1. Explaining important concepts related to mastering a skill

2. Breaking the skill into manageable chunks

3. Demonstrating the proper actions

4. Carefully watching their student attempt to copy those actions

5. Noticing incorrect actions taken by the student

6. Explaining to the students how they can improve

7. Emotionally reassuring the students after they fail, so that student will keep trying.

8. Understanding the psychology of the athlete well enough to know when they need reassurance and when they need to get chewed out.

My coach could see flaws in my technique that I could not see, and help me correct them. And being surrounded by other boys who enjoyed basketball would have encouraged me to keep trying when I was gasping for air.

Competition leads to success

Now if I had practiced by myself for 40 hours per week, I would likely have improved. I might have thought that I was as good as Michael Jordan. If I never walked out onto the court with others, that false belief would have persisted indefinitely.

So another key to my success would be playing in a competitive league. Only in that way could I actually learn how well I stacked up against the competition. If I was better than most, this would have propelled me to work harder. If I was worse than most, I might have tried harder initially, but over time I would have eventually gotten the message that I was not good enough to make basketball my career.

Either way, the competition would have given me valuable feedback.

Your results may vary

I am sure that with relentless practice and good coaching, I could have become a quality high-school player and maybe even made the team at a small university. But there is not the slightest chance that I could ever have been an NBA star, or even an NBA player, or even a big-time college player. My genes are simply not up to standards.

Of course, all my effort would not have been wasted. My genes may place a ceiling on how far I could get as a basketball player, but copying the best players, relentless practice, and coaching would have gotten me much closer to that ceiling.

So why does this matter?

Now I am not going to claim that becoming a better basketball player is a good means to increase human material progress. Athletics, like music, art, politics, and other fields is a “winner-take-all” field where a tiny minority earn huge salaries while the vast majority struggle in obscurity. For this reason, these fields are poor career choices for the vast majority of youths.

Whether one is trying to promote progress for society or upward mobility for the individual, those careers are dead ends for the vast majority of the people. The career path is really one of entertainment, not creating wealth.

But focusing on a highly visible career like basketball enables us to more easily see some things that are not so apparent in most other fields. I chose basketball as an example because it is easy to see the:

• Role in genetics in placing a ceiling and floor on human potential

• Benefits of copying the behavior of the successful

• Benefits of copying multiple examples rather than just one

• Traps of copying the wrong behavior, particularly outward appearance

• Difference between understanding what to do and the ability to actually do it.

• Importance of hard practice over a long period of time

• Importance of teaching/coaching by others

I believe all the above lessons are important regardless of what career or hobby you choose.

See also my other articles and podcasts on Copying:

• Why copying is essential to Progress

• Why copying is essential to individual success

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to read my “From Poverty to Progress” book series: