和「成功學清單」說再見（附音頻+雙語）

Stop Reading Lists of Things Successful People Do

By Emre Soyer
∷黃雪芹 譯註

人人都愛聽成功人士的經驗之談。
彷彿聽他們說說，自己便能踏上成
功之路。果真如此嗎？事實證明，成
功往往無法複製。每個個體不同，
所遇到的情形也不同，他山之石，
未必可以攻玉。

W

ho doesn』t love a 「how to succeed」 list? They』re fun to read and easy to share, which perhaps explains why there are so many of them. And the advice they give often sounds reasonable: The World Economic Forum published a post, in cooperation with Business Insider,1 listing 14 things successful people do before breakfast. It includes items such as drinking water and making your bed. A list that Forbes published claims every successful person shares this quality: 「They know when to stay and when to leave.」 This list, from Entrepreneur, advises readers to stop seeing problems, and start seeing opportunities; this one, from Inc., encourages readers to give up needing approval and fixating on their weaknesses.2

But as palatable3 as these lists are, they can do damage. There are several reasons why they may be not only useless but also potentially harmful to decision makers, managers, and entrepreneurs.

1. The World Economic Forum: 世界經濟論壇，是一個非營利性基金會，成立於1971年，總部設在瑞士日內瓦，因每年冬季在瑞士滑雪勝地達沃斯舉辦年會而聞名（故又稱「達沃斯論壇」），論壇聚集全球工商、政治、學術、媒體等領域的領袖人物，討論世界面臨的最緊迫問題；Business Insider: 商業內幕，美國一家商業和娛樂新聞網站。

2.《福布斯》（Forbes）、《企業家》（Entrepreneur）和《Inc.》都是美國知名商業雜誌；fixate: 專註於。

3. palatable:（想法、方法等）合意的，可接受的。

誰不愛讀「如何成功」的清單呢？這類清單數不勝數，因為它們既有趣，又便於分享。他們給出的建議聽來不無道理。世界經濟論壇與商業內幕網站合作發布了一篇帖子，列出了14件成功人士早餐前做的事情，包括清晨飲水和整理床鋪。《福布斯》刊登的清單宣稱每位成功人士都具備這樣的品質：「他們知道何時留下，何時離開」。《企業家》建議讀者不要總盯著問題看，而應看到問題背後的機遇。《Inc.》則鼓勵讀者不要期待他人的讚許和妄自菲薄。但這些讀來好聽的清單卻也是一把雙刃劍。它們可能不僅無用，而且會對決策者、管理者和企業家起到負面影響，原因有以下幾點：

Evidence is anecdotal 4

頓發送到

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Most of the advice these lists contain is based on subjective interpretations of personal accounts, not on systematic, scientific analyses. Unless advice has been evaluated through evidence-based methods, you can』t judge its validity. In addition, half-baked analyses of anecdotal evidence often blur the lines between cause and consequence. Is someone successful because they avoided meetings, or are they able to avoid meetings because they are successful? A host of behaviors that successful people supposedly share—not caring what others think of them, avoiding meetings, putting first things first, saying no to almost everything—may be luxuries that only the extremely successful can enjoy, and only after they became successful in the eyes of others. Thus some behaviors are what success has brought them, and not the other way around.

4. anecdotal: 軼事的，傳聞的。

證據都來自道聽途說。這些清單給出的建議往往是對個人描述的主觀闡釋，缺乏系統的科學分析。只有基於證據的方法才能驗證它們的有效性。此外，對道聽途說的消息做片面的分析，常常模糊了因與果的界限。一個人成功是因為他們不參加各種會議？還是因為他們是成功人士所以不必參加？那些被認為是成功人士會做的事——不在乎他人的眼光、躲避各種會議、要事優先，有權拒絕幾乎所有事——可能只是特別成功的人才能享受的奢侈，而且是在他們取得了別人眼中的成功之後才有權這樣做。所以說，某些做法是由成功本身帶給他們的，而非相反。

Research doesn』t always transfer to different contexts.

Some lists do draw heavily from research, but academic research is often very context-specific. As often happens with complex problems, the solutions and their applications are more nuanced than the forms they』re presented in and depend heavily on the context and circumstances in which people find themselves.

研究並不適用於所有的情形。一些清單的確是根據分析研究數據得出的，但是學術性研究常常局限於特定場景。一般來說，複雜問題的解決方案和實際操作比其呈現的形式更微妙，並在很大程度上取決於人們當時所處的環境。

Failures are silent.

In The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb recounts an anecdote Cicero told about the Greek poet Diagoras of Melos.5 When Diagoras was told that praying saves sailors from drowning, he wondered about those who prayed but drowned anyway. Prayer receives credit for saving sailors because all those who survived prayed. Yet this strategy is utterly useless if those who died also prayed, which is a fair assumption. If everybody prayed and only a few survived, then praying doesn』t really matter. It just seems like it does to those who survived and those who can observe them.

This is what social scientists call 「survivorship bias6」. Taleb refers to the people who didn』t survive as 「silent evidence.」 These are the outcomes that we don』t get to see; their absence leads to a false sense of effectiveness of certain actions. Research suggests that while we are incredibly skilled when it comes to learning from what we can readily observe and experience (such as widely publicized success stories), we are equally incompetent in acknowledging what we don』t see (such as vast numbers of obscure failures). This renders us vulnerable to a biased intuition that success is more deterministic than it really is.

4. anecdotal: 軼事的，傳聞的。
5. The Black Swan:《黑天鵝》，美國金融業人士、風險分析師納西姆·尼古拉斯·塔勒布的金融理論著作，書中研究了高度不可能事件以及不可預期事件的強大影響力；Cicero: 西塞羅，古羅馬著名政治家和演說家。

6. survivorship bias: 倖存者偏差，是一種認知偏差，其邏輯謬誤表現為過分關注於人或物從某些經歷中倖存，而忽略了不在視界內或沒有倖存的人或物。

失敗是無聲的。在《黑天鵝》一書中，納西姆·塔勒布回憶起西塞羅談到的關於古希臘邁洛斯詩人迪亞戈拉斯的一件軼事。當迪亞戈拉斯聽說祈禱可以讓水手免於溺水而亡時，他困惑於那些祈禱了卻仍未幸免於難的水手們。人們之所以認為祈禱能庇佑水手，是因那些活著回來的水手們都祈禱過。但是出於公平假設，如果遇難的水手也都祈禱了的話，這個論調就站不住腳了。如果每個水手都祈禱了而只有一小部分活下來了，那麼祈禱根本沒有用。祈禱似乎只對於那些恰巧活下來且注意到這一點的人有用。

社會學家將這稱之為「倖存者偏差」。塔勒布稱那些未能幸免於難的人為「無聲的證據」。我們無法看到這些結果，而這種缺失造成了某些行為有效的虛假表象。研究表明，人們非常善於從易於觀察到的經驗中學習（如廣為人知的成功故事），而我們同樣不善於承認自己看不到的事實（如大量不為人知的失敗）。因此，我們常常帶有偏見地認為成功是命中注定的，而事實並非如此。

……

……

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即便是遵循看起來無害的建議也有
相應的代價。如果過於在意這些成功秘訣，結果往往適得其反。究竟是為什麼?

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