The Horizon Bias

Inside of you, me, and every high performer you’ve ever met is a powerful little piece of programing that, if you let it, will cut the legs out from underneath you.

I call it ‘The Horizon Bias’.

It describes the situation where a person has some idealized goal in mind of something they want and strive towards. However, instead of becoming a positive ‘North Star’ to orient your actions, it becomes something that causes angst and depression because you never feel like you ‘measure up’.

For business builders, that idealized goal might be to become Richard Branson or Mark Cuban. For athletes, that might be to become Michael Jordan. Or maybe you just want to be a globetrotting renaissance man like Tim Ferriss. This is a problem.

The reason that this is a problem is - like the horizon - none of these people are real.

Or rather, our perceptions of them aren’t real. Each one of those people has demons. They all have problems and inadequacies and despite any claim (truthful or not) to hard work, there was a lot of luck involved with their success.

We see curated images on magazines and online and our brains leap to the conclusion that they’re like that all the time.

A prime example is the cover of any Bodybuilding Magazine. The cover model has to train specifically for that photoshoot months ahead of time. Then professional photographers are hired to take thousands of photos. From which one image is selected.

We’re left thinking that they have those abs 12 months of the year, and many of those models immediately put on 10-20 lbs of bodyfat within the month that follows that shoot.

It’s not real. Much like ‘the horizon’ is not real. Stand out in a flat field and look in any direction and you can see where the earth meets the sky. It “looks” like a real place, but no matter how far or how fast you run, the horizon will be exactly the same distance away from you.

Arriving at the horizon is exactly as impossible as reaching that idealized goal.

On the one hand, it’s important to realize this in ourselves so we not fall victim to a negative downward spiral of thinking ourselves inadequate. The true path to fulfillment is realizing just how far you’ve come and how much further you can go.

On the other hand, as marketers, we need to realize that everyone else - especially our customers - make this same mistake.

One we understand what their horizon looks like, suddenly we have very powerful persuasion ammunition.

We can use this to paint a picture in the head of our clients.

This doesn’t have to be done in a manipulative way. But we can lean on this proclivity towards desiring some idealized version of ‘perfection’ to find remove barriers of inaction and get our clients to strive forward towards a good/service that will actually solve problems and move them closer to where they want to be.

Then turn around and show them how far they’ve come. Do that, and you’ll have more than a satisfied customer, you’ll have a fan shouting your praise from the rooftops.