Data, the Drunk and the Lamppost

A friend asked me about starting a t-shirt business. He had some designs and wanted to print them on t-shirts to sell online.

For fun? Sure, go for it. But as a business? I cautioned him against it.

It’s a tough business model. There’s tons of competition, and retailers are flooded with options.

He pushed back, confident in his resolve. Too much work? Not for him. His designs were unique, so naturally, he didn’t have competitors. And since he’d sell them online, the problem of finding retailers didn’t exist for him.

He was convinced. He was ready. In his mind, success was just around the corner.

I knew he wasn’t looking for advice; he was looking for validation.

He was like the drunk person leaning on a lamppost for support, rather than using it to shed light on the path ahead.

We all do this. It’s human nature. When we’re excited about something, we look for the data that supports our belief and discard the rest. We tell ourselves we’re making an informed decision, but really, we’re just collecting evidence to justify what we already want to do.

That’s the sneaky thing with data: there’s so much of it. And we have the power to pick and choose. It’s easy to curate the perfect argument that fits our plans and ignore anything that challenges it.

The problems only show up later, when things don’t go as planned. When the t-shirts don’t sell, or the audience isn’t as eager as we expected. We start looking back, wondering what went wrong.

We think, “I missed something important.”

But we didn’t miss it. We saw it.

We just chose to ignore it.