'Resulting bias' halted my entrepreneurial journey

Resulting bias is: our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome.

For example, if you drive drunk and end up parking alongside the road to vomit and find $10,000, resulting bias says that you'll think that the driving drunk was a good idea. On the other hand, if you followed all the rules of safe driving at safe hour in a safe place but someone drunk hits you, then you'll think that your decision to drive then was a poor one. However, we can see that the drunk driving was a poor decision that led to a great outcome, and the safe driving was a good decision that led to a poor outcome.

"When I started playing poker, more experienced players warned me about the dangers of resulting, cautioning me to resist the temptation to change my strategy just because a few hands didn't turn out well in the short run." -Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke

I did this with starting businesses. My first few didn't work and I got scared. I equated results with poor decision making and deep inside, I felt that I just wasn't made for being an entrepreneur.

Since then, I've asked successful founders about their backgrounds and it's clear that every single one of them went through a learning curve that looked very similar to mine. The difference is, they didn't quit because of resulting bias.

I hope you don't quit either.