Last night, I was reading the memoir of a best selling author. Here’s an excerpt:

“When I was growing up I had the great privilege of being home schooled. For me that meant personalised attention, learning at my own pace, more discipline, and ultimately being able to graduate a few years early.”

“Once I realised that unlike other kids in the neighbourhood I was getting special attention in the speed and quality of my education, I became much more confident and motivated.”

“Rather than having to continue high school for a set number of years, I had a fixed amount of schoolwork I needed to complete to graduate. I saw that as a checklist and dove in.”

“When I was about 12 I was working on an essay with my mom. Frustrated with the entire process, I exclaimed, ‘Why do I have to learn to write? I’ll never be a writer!’ My patient mother calmly explained something about how you need to be balanced in our skills and how writing is very important.”

It got me thinking, gee this guy was destined to become a successful author since he was a kid. Look at me, I got no chance! I was not homeschooled. I never got frustrated with an essay and asked my mom why they are making me write. I so wish that had actually happened. Maybe I would have gotten a chance to become successful as well.

What about you, what do you conclude from this excerpt? Doesn’t it feel like all these factors — home schooling, helping mother, etc — came together and made him successful as an adult? Almost biographies take up this format.

In the biography of Steve Jobs, for example, Walter Isaacson illustrates that Jobs’s success was determined to a great degree by the childhood influence of his father. Paul Jobs, a careful, detailed-oriented engineer and craftsman who would carefully craft the backs of fences and cabinets even if no one would see — who Jobs later found out was not his biological father.

The combination of his adoption and his craftsman father planted the seeds of Jobs’ adult personality: his penchant for design detail, his need to prove himself, his messianic zeal. Wow, what a story! It shows you how the ultimate painting began as just a sketch.

Same is true for business books as well. If you’ve read ever In Search of Excellence or Good to Great or any other book in this genre, you can surely relate. The template is usually the same. X company used Y strategy to get Z result. It gives the impression that if you have a business all you have to do is follow these same strategies for guaranteed success.

This is just one post from a series of articles on cognitive biases. Subscribe here and get the next one delivered straight to your inbox.