I think many of you have heard about the survivorship bias. A term that appeared during the war and indicates another cognitive error in our perception. Its essence boils down to the fact that people tend to make fundamental conclusions only on a sample of "survivors" (successful examples), at the same time, ignoring the dead (losers), despite the fact that the sample for dead is much wider. After all, knowing the cause of death, we can avoid many mistakes when making decisions. However, it's very problematic to get a report from the dead, as well as the loser, whose voice will not be heard.

Indeed, who is interested in the stories of defeats when we've examples of winners, with their, at first glance, simple tips "Believe in yourself", "Do not give up" and "Follow the dream". All store shelves crammed with bestsellers on how to succeed in business, in your personal life, or selling water in the desert.

The problem is that success is often a chaotic and random combination of circumstances that worked only for a specific individual. You'll not be able to repeat the success of Elon Musk, even if you have a step-by-step plan of his actions, starting from birth. There are hundreds of great guys, with amazing ideas, who have not achieved success. Failure is a more objective source of information, because it happens to humanity much more often.

This estimation error occurs constantly in our life, including on social networks, and of course here, on Hive. I've seen many posts on the topic "what needs to be done to catch a whale, be popular and notices…". Stories of people whose lives changed after their success here. There are many of them, they are true, and often useless for 99% of other users.

Let's be honest, we're all here at the Normandy landings. There are guys with a storyline like Tom Hanks, who ran to the redoubt without getting a scratch. But, a lot of good guys were left lying on the shore, unnoticed, abandoned, dead in the author's sense, their voices were not and will not be heard.

To the dead, we can add thousands of wounded who don't give up and crawl forward, pulling themselves up on their only surviving arm. After all, they see a successful Tom ahead, who is waving the winning cryptocurrency flag at the top of the ratings. Don't give up fighters, you still have a chance to survive. Perhaps I'm one of these guys, with a torn off hand, but with a strong desire to kick the ass of a couple of fascists. Sometimes I pass out from blood loss and chop off, leaving the platform for a couple of years. But Tom's victory cry brings me back from unconsciousness and I try again to join the winners in this war.

Maybe I'm not as cute as Tom Hanks, or I've problems with coordination and I ran in the wrong direction, thinking that I was the smartest and stepped on the stretch. Rolled away at the wrong time, ducked, didn't hear the order or didn't notice the projectile, or missed the briefing. I'm one of those guys, who tried different tactics, they didn’t lead me to success, stripping a couple of limbs along the way. Nevertheless, I'm still alive, and I can tell at least about some of my mistakes.

#1 Don't try to catch a whale at dawn on the day of the 17th summer solstice

I've seen this in a couple of "successful" tips back in the Steemit era. And I tried. The essence of the approach: most of the whales are North American users, the activity time of which can be radically different from the time of the user, who wants his post to be seen by big fish (sorry, a mammal).

My hourly difference with North America is about 8-10 hours. Well, you can imagine what came of it. Instead of soundly sleeping in my bed and gaining strength, I tried to finish and publish a new post at a certain «magical” time. Did it work? Sure... If you want to increase the level of domestic violence in your family due to the irritability that comes from lack of sleep, just do it.

Seriously, this clearly didn't work even at the time of the birth of Steemit, when there were a couple of hundred active users. With the platform growing and whale activity decreasing these days, this is clearly a losing proposition. Sleep soundly, write for your pleasure.

#2 Don't give up on controversial and unpleasant topics

During my publishing craze, I came up with about 5 topics for posts a day. And almost always 5 out of 5 were rejected by me. Why? Because these were topics that (as I thought) could offend someone, reduce my popularity and reputation (yeah, I thought I had popularity and reputation). And do you know what happened next? I've seen articles from other authors on similar topics who were not shy about expressing their opinions, and they were successful.

It doesn't guarantee that the topic would have been noticed under my authorship. But in any case, don't limit the choice of topics for yourself. Even if you see that someone has already used "your" topic, write anyway. As our mother says to each of us: you are special, as is your opinion… and your terrible English.

#3 Don't ignore the social dimension

Seriously, people, this is still a social network. Publish post after post in the stupid hope that you'll just be noticed by someone... this is not the WAY. Ignore other small authors and write only to whales "cool post, I'm delighted, you're amazing"… It's like getting out of a trench and showing the fascists a naked ass. Most likely, they will simply shoot you with a machine gun, without even realizing what they were shooting at. There will be no one to blame but yourself for the wasted efforts. Look for friends, not patrons.

Ok, if you still decide to follow only Moby Dick, at least read his post and sincerely express your opinion if the published topic touched the strings of your soul. Insincerity is visible even in the Internet word.

#4 Not everything should be published

This looks a bit like a contradiction to #2. However, what might have seemed interesting, exciting and potentially successful to you, can turn into something useless. I often came across a feeling when the beginning of the article was going well, it seemed to me that it would be a bomb. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that it was gradually turning into some kind of shit, not into good post (I feel this effect right now, on these lines).

When you feel like you're doing shit, you can either stop doing it and wasting your energy. Or, finish it, but don't expect to get a medal of courage for scattering feces on the battlefield.

...

It would be logical to stop there, because any next advice I come up with to improve this article and make it useful and insightful, in fact, will be written only to be written. It's time to start following my own tips. All these bla-bla-bla will not make you absolutely successful here, but I hope it will keep your morale and some of your strength for a victorious dash.