Past-Man correlated flight with feathers and so they built wings with feathers but that obviously didn't work. Flight was only conquered when the mathematical laws were understood and through engineering.
So lesson is that results (including life) like flight is a product of a mathematical formula, and so a person can only achieve a desirable result by making fundamental changes to engineer that result.
The common mistake is not making any changes to the formula and expecting a different result or just copying successful people superficially (correlation) without understanding the deeper causal mechanism in play.