In a previous post, I argued that there are some contexts where a 100% rate of success is actually suboptimal. I illustrated the example of casual team sports.

In this post, I want to highlight a couple of further ways that success can breed problems. Specifically, in both personal life (e.g. academic or professional achievement) and geopolitics (e.g. armed conflict), even when a 100% success rate is optimal, there are some ways that success today can interfere with success tomorrow.

  1. Overstretching. This example is commonly given when discussing empires and/or war. For example, in just a few years, the army of Nazi Germany went from an apparently unstoppable force to an overstretched mess of an army taking on much more than it could handle. This is partially due to the unusual ideological atmosphere of high-level Nazi decision-making, which had little room for dissent and honest deliberation (Dörner et al 2011; Braunbeck 1997). Moreover, the very speed of the German advance into the Soviet Union meant that the Germans were underprepared for winter and exposed their supply lines to vulnerability (source).
  2. Neglecting good habits. I can’t remember where I first saw this idea, but I think I read it somewhere during 2018 or 2019. Essentially, good habits—studying diligently, working hard, focusing on the right things, looking after one’s body and mind—often breed academic and personal success. However, this success can subsequently cause the high-achieving individual to neglect these habits that made them successful in the first place. This is captured by the quote by the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella: “Success can cause people to unlearn the habits that made them successful in the first place.”
  3. Trophy addiction. There are many ways that society rewards high-achieving people, particularly students, using extrinsic motivators such as awards and trophies. Dr Ellen D. Fiedler (2015) writes about a sample of high-achieving high school students in their professional lives after high school: “[…] despite their career aspirations, focus, and success, many had experienced sadness and disappointment. […] Though most had won many academic awards and received accolades, they had found few similar external rewards in the workplace. It was as if they had become ‘trophy-addicted’ and struggled with the relationship between their achievements and their sense of identity.”

These are all human behaviours and tendencies. For better or worse, we’re all walking around with human minds inside us. The important thing is to be aware of these dynamics and to work diligently to ensure that they do not cause your success today to become disappointment tomorrow.