Cultural Availability Bias

In "Runnin' Down a Dream", Bill Gurley describes the historically ambitious journey of Bob Dylan hitchhiking to NYC with $10 and a guitar. The year was 1961, humanity had yet to reach the Moon, and Bob Dylan was only 19 years old...in fact, his legal name was still Robert Zimmerman.

A friend recently told me a similar story. To get started in his tech career, he had to first break out of an environment that was holding him back. He moved across the country to a new city, from the East Coast to California. He quit everything and left behind friends, family, and default patterns.

I praised his courage for this momentous act. I was impressed with my friend, just like Gurley is with Dylan. But another friend jumped in to immediately question, "Why are you calling this courageous? Shouldn't we see everyone else as simply having a lack of courage?"

This statement shows a strong default frame of competence and excellence. It took me a moment to process why I came at it from the other side, and how sadly rare it is to see principled action in the wild.

But I fundamentally agree with this reframe—there's always room for improvement against the correct north star. And moreover, I believe self-flagellating a bit can be healthy. It's more pragmatic to raise the ceiling instead of moping about the floor.

But how come getting off the floor is so hard?

Kahneman and Tversky taught us how humans are irrational creatures subject to availability bias. If we can't immediately think of examples, we discount things we perhaps shouldn't.

This is why our standard for excellence is often only as high as the most excellent person we've heard of or worked with so far. And why we might see a move to pursue one's dreams as incredible or brave, as opposed to commonplace. (The density of commonplace courage is part of SF's beauty.)

Lex recently interviewed Pavel Durov. With a net worth well in the billions, he doesn't need to do 300 pushups a day. Nor does Travis Kalanick need to build a backgammon empire. Maybe creating Telegram or Uber seems out of our reach, but these little side-quests in excellence are certainly on the table for any of us mortals who dare to try.

Our daily actions quickly compound. If we surround ourselves with examples and people who elevate our bar—who so starkly point to our deficits as small fish in a big pond—we can't help but start to improve.

~~~
Thanks to Abundance House for inspiring me and this post.