The Role of Luck in Life Success
blogs.scientificamerican.com
blogs.scientificamerican.com
You can look at this from many directions. Did the natural hustlers hustle their way to Google, while the naturally complacent stayed put? Did the Googlers just go there because that's where their friends went, or because they thought it was cool? Did the Mountain View people catch the fever after the fact, and become hustlers, while the Redmond people absorbed the relatively relaxed culture there? Did everyone just go where they thought was best and then it turned out one of those places was saturated in money?
Luck does always belong in the conversation - "All great events hang by a hair, I believe in luck, and the wise man neglects nothing which contributes to his destiny"
The greatest predictors for success in life are industriousness and intelligence. Over time (and that's important, over time), the intelligent and industrious are expected to beat the odds, and achieve success. Ultimately there are so many outside forces in life that are beyond your control, that achieving success is always predicated on some level of luck. But eventually, smart and industrious people will rise higher than others. Life typically lasts for many years, you can blame luck if you want for any particular individual outcome (even though that's not entirely productive), but not for having a major influence on lifetime success.
Yes persistence pays, but however unpopular it might be around here, we are nearly all one or two rolls from disaster - be that business failure, major illness, or whatever, that can easily escalate into life ruining proportions.
I am far less inclined to simply spout "work hard and make your own luck" now than I would certainly have done in my 20s. Thirty more years of experiencing life, and seeing what sheer luck, good and bad, has done to friends, family and their businesses has changed my perspective on luck quite dramatically.
You need hard work and luck.
I think I'd phrase it as you need work and luck.
The vast majority of people in the US are healthy and the environment in the US is the most conducive in the world to success. Stop making excuses.
I'm happy to tell you the good news that the overwhelming majority young adults in American are not suffering from debilitating health problems nor have their lives been saved by incredible emergency care.
I think it depends on what is success. It's at least arguable about the us being the most conductive to success. We have less regulation in a lot of ways than other western countries, but if you have troubles, like say a car wreck that hurts you, it sucks to be in the us compared to say germany. In the us, there are a lot of built in advantages for the existing successful companies, it's harder to challenge. For example there are few large internet providers. But at the same time, there are many more new startup companies here, and there seems to be much more risk tolerance.
Getting in the game is a choice you make.
If you are lucky enough to make that choice ;-)
After over 30 years of work, and business, I have become vastly more tolerant and understanding of those who were diligently "out there swinging" until it broke them, and sometimes their families too. There comes a point where anyone will break.
What of those who were swinging improperly due to their year of birth and graduated during a recession? The effect of taking something when jobs are not available can lock them into poorer quality jobs for decades. Earnings for some never catch up over a whole career, at least according to some studies. Potential employers only take interest in your previous role, and current salary, so this isn't unduly surprising.
Of course you have to be "in the game", but the effects of your swings, regardless of how many, are often outwith your control.
Discussed in 'How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use'
As for the larger point of the article, I always frame this conversation in this way: if you were lucky enough to be born in a first world country, you can become a millionaire through hard work with relatively little luck involved, but you have to get very lucky to become a billionaire.
In other words, the kind of large scale success that it takes to become a billionaire is nearly always dependent upon numerous factors outside of your own control, any one of which could easily put billionaire status out of reach. Becoming a single digit millionaire, however, can be done by anyone of at least average intelligence, that is willing to work long and hard in a field that has historically paid its workers well. Jobs in technology, finance, medicine, and even some trades (master plumbers/electricians etc.), pay well enough that anyone who manages their money properly should be on track to become a millionaire at some point during their lifetime.
Anyone born in the US, regardless of social status or ability, can become educated as an electrician, gain work experience up to master status, then incorporate as a subcontractor business to employ both less-experienced and less-ambitious electricians. Between the value of the business and index fund investments, and judicious use of insurance, that person will be a millionaire (by net worth) by the time they reach age 65.
If you choose to work at McDonald's when you graduate high school instead of the journeyman program of IBEW Local X, or even choose a less valuable skill in the building trades, the path is more difficult, more competitive, and less forgiving, but is still theoretically possible. If you go to college and get an engineering degree, the path is easier, but requires more up-front investment. If you go to college and get a degree in art history, that might be one of those avoidable mistakes that I mentioned earlier.
One of the decisions that must be made is "how many children will I support?" If you want to be a millionaire, the correct answer is zero. If you abandon completely the idea of raising children, you can certainly be a millionaire by the time you retire. The process will usually include establishing yourself as a small-business owner with near-guaranteed local demand. Most professions simply do not earn enough to provide sufficient margins for savings and investment unless you also employ the labor of someone besides yourself.
There's luck in that the government doesn't decide to cut down; I had a lot of engineers apply for retail jobs when I was a kid because the local plant was shut down, and they would have had to leave the state to get jobs in their field.
Luck I feel is the external environment acting in a way that remains favorable to your plans and ideas. It can happen at every tier of life, and the only way to counter it is to have enough individual resources acquired to respond to the change.
But even so, ancestor post was not referring to people who failed to become millionaires due to bad luck, but the level of wealth one can attain without good luck. For those wealthier, someone can always come along, point to a spot in their life story and say, "here is where you got lucky". It might just be at t=0, when they were born to a statistically unlikely set of parents, but there will be something.
Perhaps Mark Cuban's dog liked the smell of your butt. Maybe you were assigned to be Martha Stewart's cellie in the clink. You wore a particularly ugly sweater during a nationally televised political forum. You lost a lot of weight eating sandwiches from one chain, just as that brand needed a new ad campaign, and they forgot to ask around among your former classmates about your non-dietary habits.
For every lucky break, there are plenty more people who toil away their whole lives and never get ahead. The ceiling for those who never catch a break is far, far below those who got lucky at least once.
Many people ascribe the consequences from bad or risky choices to bad luck, but the reality is that those are entirely within your control. You are making the decision to experience negative consequences when you make bad decisions.
Having parents who understand hard work (and can show you what it looks like) and good financial habits makes it easier for you to develop those same traits as an adult, in my experience.
On the point of birth month, there is a cause. Kids born before the cutoff year for kindergarten are younger than kids born after the cutoff. At that age, every month of development makes a big difference in social skills, which leads to more leadership opportunities. Obviously it's not a direct causation but this point should not be ignored.
"As for the larger point of the article, I always frame this conversation in this way: if you were lucky enough to be born in a first world country, you can become a millionaire through hard work with relatively little luck involved, but you have to get very lucky to become a billionaire."
I agree with you and I would add that "hard work and thriftiness" lets most people with average luck become millionaire. This is the sentiment of the Millionaire Next Door.
When development evens out following full development, you're already past the majority of the educational sorting mechanism - you've been scoring higher and formed by your experiences as a high performing student throughout.
Citation? This sounds suspiciously like Malcolm Gladwell, who is a pop psychologist hack and whose arguments hold water like a paper bag.
>"[I]f the goal is to reward the most talented person (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals rather than to give a greater capital only to a small percentage of them, selected through their level of success - already reached - at the moment of the distribution."
My two cents from being an entrepreneur: everyone needs luck to succeed but those who are fortunate to have wealth and a support network get far more opportunities for luck to come by. Or, put another way, those with a fortunate background have more chances to fail and find luck eventually than others. Life is not fair but so it is.
"When luck turns up it better find you with a bag of cash"
I am looking at a great idea that I have been working on, but I am afraid to release it because I know it will be cloned in a matter of months since I can not afford worldwide patent protection.
Can someone define luck?
-I didn't choose my DNA.
-I didn't choose my parents.
-I didn't choose my circumstances.
-I didn't choose which neural pathways were reinforced based on my experiences.
-I didn't choose which environmental factors altered any of my biological systems.
-I didn't choose not to die in my sleep every night from an undiagnosed ailment.
Removing, for the moment whether or not "Free Will" exists...
What can anyone choose that isn't based on prior experiences; Experiences that they couldn't control?
What can't be attributed to luck?
If you roll once or twice, then say "It's just luck", you're completely right.
But if you keep rolling the dice again and again and again, you're eventually going to get a good roll - especially if you can tweak the roll just a bit. Then you say, "Luck is important, but hard work helps, too."
No, this is a pernicious myth. A lot of people roll again and again and never get a good roll. Rolling the economic dice takes a lot of time. You can reasonably expect to get maybe 10 rolls before you age out. Even if the odds of success on each roll were 1 in 10 you'd still have a LOT of people (about a third actually) never getting a good roll. And the actual odds are considerably worse than 1 in 10.
That is true, of course, but increase relative to what? There is huge variance in the baselines, starting with, for example, whether you live in the U.S. or, say, Bangladesh.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it's hopeless and that you should just give up and play video games. But I believe that dumb luck is a bigger factor than effort. Luck is necessary, and can be sufficient for success. Effort and skill are neither. (And, BTW, this is a consequence of deep problems in the system we have set up, and we ought to try to change those. But you can't solve a problem without first acknowledging that the problem exists.)
Make no effort, and your odds of failure are 100%. Your odds get better and better as you make smarter choices, put out the effort, and position yourself for success.
> A lot
Yeah, some fail. But most succeed in SV, the proof is in the housing prices.
That's not true. There are plenty of trust fund kids shopping at Prada.
> Your odds get better and better as you make smarter choices
That is true, of course, but better relative to what? There is enormous variance in the baselines, starting with, for example, whether you live in the U.S. or, say, Bangladesh.
I feel like this statement gives more backing to the arguments on luck. Those lucky enough to by an apartment in the peninsula in the 80s, who are gaining the most off of soaring housing costs, are now reaping remarkable 'success' with no proof they predicted, with skill, foresight, or intellect, the housing market of 2018.
Being in the right place at the right time, is probably worthless without the necessary skill/s (where studying/learning/education can come in) and attributes to take advantage of the opportunity in question.
Maybe you meet an elite investor in an elevator and have an opportunity to pitch them. You lack the technical skill or experience to bring it home. You perhaps never really had a shot at that right place + right time moment (so was it ever an opportunity at all? Is it a sliding scale? debate loop).
Some of what we can be is defined at birth. If your brain wiring is very heavily tilted toward being an artist, you likely will not be the next John Carmack. Adrian Carmack could not do what John could no matter how hard he tried (I know they're not related, I couldn't resist). I know there are exceptions to these rules, they're exceptions however.
E: Actually I should say there are influences outside of experiences, genetics for example. But you're a slave to those as well.
I've been very lucky in my life.
I was introduced to programming at a young age and found it immensely satisfying.
I've been conditioned to work hard towards my goals, and have seen the benefits therein.
I'm quite happy with my level of success, though I do intend to get much more. I believe that my lucky strokes have and will continue to multiply.
But I also believe that anyone else with my circumstances would have nearly identical results.
There's no "blame" to dispense.
Then there was no need for you to make any effort. After all, success just dropped on your head.
You say you were "lucky" to be "conditioned to work hard"? I find such statements astonishing. Anyone can work hard, or not. It's a choice. Nobody is "victimized" by laziness. Jeez. How far will people go with excuses?
By the way, people who find themselves in a terrible situation, like war came and the food supply is gone, seem to discover in themselves a fine capability for hard work.
Wouldn't I then be lucky that we were both in this forum at this time?
We'd be so fortunate that you didn't get into a car accident yesterday that would have prevented my epiphany...
that you weren't abducted as an infant and never seen from again....
That your parents were together that fateful moment...
or maybe I misunderstand?
As I stated earlier, every detail of one's life is luck, but one chooses to position oneself in situations where one is likely to get lucky.
As for our interactions, I'm not saying anything unique that you cannot find in plenty of other places if you choose to look. If you are out looking, it's highly unlikely you won't run across my views.
In my life, I see people choosing to fail all the time, and they always claim to be victims. I also know many who take responsibility for things that happen to them, the good and the bad. It's empowering for them, as when bad things happen they pick themselves up, figure out what they did wrong, and try to choose better next time.
Do you have a plan for success? Are you executing that plan? If you don't have a plan, or don't execute your plan, how do you expect to succeed?
[0]: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91644-is-free-will-really-free...
"three different universities...did not observe the same results as in the original study....The effect...may have been due...to unconscious cues...or may simply have been due to chance. They are very careful in their language to not discredit the original study but they advise that future researchers be more cautious...
Then the conclusion is "The original study still stands"!?! and deserves "slight skepticism"?
Sorry, I'm going with "outright disbelief" until shown credible evidence otherwise.
From 12-step programs, “Accept the things you cannot change. Change the things you can”. To my mind this means, accept the external circumstances you find yourself in - especially other people (since most can’t really exert sufficient force to change other people, at least not in a positive way), and work on changing your own reactions to the world. (This is a view that aligns with Stoic philosophy btw)
I guess for me the biggest questions are:
1. What is “success”? As a Stoic, success for me should be “contentment”, which is far more likely to be achievable than perhaps other definitions of success.
2. Does free will actually exist? If it doesn’t, and our brains are deterministic, then even our reactions are not in our control.
I’m trying to focus on 1, and not sweat about 2.
The difference in success between you and that identical twin could be attributed to what we might call "situational luck".
All else (those things that give you initial equal footing, making you better or less off than other members of society) would be "inherited luck" or "background/baseline luck".
I think this article is more about this "situational luck" whereby someone does much better than someone else, even though neither is from a disadvantaged background relative to the other (both have similar "baseline luck").
I'm wondering what would be the formal definitions of these two. Is birth separating them? From a mathematical standpoint, could there be continuity between these two?
Thanks.
This lets us reason about the probability of new events separately from the probability of having arrived at that situation.
Does anyone believe that they are in full control of all of these? Any of these? Any control?
Now, where’s this independent entity taking actions on its own? I’m still seeking this mythical beast.
I have done everything well and with diligence but when I look at the flow of my life, the financial success came primarily from luck. Being at the right place at the right time. Having a good idea at the right time. Knowing the right people at the right time. Having the right product pivot in the right market conditions.
Many of these things worked out because of circumstances beyond my ability to predict and control. I have had a similar amount of failures and my ability to predict what will be successful is limited to nil.
Yes, I worked hard and put my all into everything, but so do many others I know. I was also fortunate (lucky!) to have support systems and friends which allowed me to take risks that turned out to be rewarding. I also try to spread the rewards and recognize those people who have allowed me to find this lucky success.
I also have the luck to be in a country that has reasonable government and infrastructure (perhaps notwithstanding the last year or two), lucky to have chosen economically stable parents who gave me a top education without debt at the end, lucky to have chosen (ha) white privilege which I didn’t fully understand or appreciate until the last decade and try hard to expand to everyone now.
Yes, I made some circumstances to benefit from the luck. But so have others who have not experienced the luck. I am grateful for my luck and work to enable others to have a good life without the same luck. There but for the grace (of god or gaia or luck) go I.
However, it does help when one can recognize a rare opportunity, and can quickly act on it (take that meeting, show up at that event, say the right thing).
A business opportunity is not gonna magically appear if you are not constantly looking for one and you won’t be able to exploit it if you haven’t learned relevant skills and built a network.
What part of your carpe diem attitude helped your mom not do drugs and destroy your gestating brain before you were born?
How did you bootstrap your country so that you weren't a victim of war or starvation at a young age?
What part of your attitude ensured you were born into a modern society at the right time to be educated, instead of being a pre-agrarian human ancestor?
What part of your free will in life ensured you'd be the sort of tech person who'd post on HN rather than perhaps an ascetic who'd be living a life of poverty on the streets of Bangladesh to combat consumerist attitudes? Would that be a wrong choice to make?
That said, correlation and causation. The movers and shakers of society are likely to believe they had more control in their life. Not necessarily the other way around. But it can be helpful to envision yourself as being in control of more of your life than you really are.
I never implied that anyone could do those things.
The point was that you’re not automatically participating in the “get lucky to become successful” lottery.
What wealth 'class' you are born into has by far the biggest effect on your chance of success.
Attaining wealth is much easier if you're born into a specific race, thus your chances of being born wealthy are directly correlated with your chances of being white.
Attaining wealth is much easier if you're male. Among the many reasons are increased career opportunities in general, less chance of a stalled career because of child rearing, greater status in negotiations, etc.
All I'm saying is it is incredibly lucky to be born a white male in a society which so highly values them, and try as hard you might, you can't position yourself to get that advantage if you weren't born with it.
The comment said it is not a race or gender issue, which I disagree with.
Sure, but having a white doctor for a parent is very likely more beneficial than both of those examples. This should not be a very controversial point.
You're trying to elevate one factor above others and derailing the higher conversation people are trying to have here. It's just not productive.
People tend to think luck is heavily about positioning yourself to succeed.
I think that's true, but I also believe that the most important factors to putting you in those lucky positions are not in your control.
Someone who is not already born into a lucky position has to get even more lucky to succeed.
You telling me to simply stop talking about something that I believe is an important point to make is very strange.
>People tend to think luck is heavily about positioning >yourself to succeed.
>I think that's true, but I also believe that the most >important factors to putting you in those lucky positions >are not in your control.
>Someone who is not already born into a lucky position has >to get even more lucky to succeed.
That we all agree on, what we disagree on is you trying to elevate race above all other uncontrollable factors in ones life. I don't know if it's true or not, but you probably don't have the data to back that assertion up.
> You telling me to simply stop talking about something that I believe is an important point to make is very strange.
Because we are trying to have a civil and deep discourse about an important subject . Any social issue under the sun can be related to racial issue, from violence to education level to health; It's doesn't mean that adopting a racial frame is the best way of discussing,reflecting and solving those issues. We aren't even sure to which part race is a causing vs a correlating factor. What we do know however is that race is such a polarizing subject (in the US at least) that trying to shoehorn race into a debate is a sure way to derail it. Not to mentioned the blatant disrespect to all the other type of human experience that somehow you think are worst than being black in america (mental health and devellopmentale issue for example, and yes see we can all play the game of who as it worst...)...
So ultimately it's not that race is not important, it's that it's not a useful frame for every subject.
And yes i am black, and on my wish list of stuff i want to change about myself higher social status, more money, higher overall sexual attractiveness come way before race...
You cannot discuss luck and success in life without discussing race.
In no way did I suggest that people should want to change their race.
And a better personal ability would be to have supermodel genes :>
Eventually, it all goes back to who you were born as and who you were born to. Your odds of "success" are much higher if you're born as a white male in the US than if you're born as an female in rural India. No amount of effort can change those odds.
That's not to say that effort doesn't play a part, it absolutely does. But a significant amount of success is supported by good fortune layered on more good fortune.
"[I]f the goal is to reward the most talented person (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals rather than to give a greater capital only to a small percentage of them, selected through their level of success - already reached - at the moment of the distribution."
There are a lot of things that can go wrong in any pursuit. Hard work shrinks the error bars in the distribution of success but doesn't make them disappear.
I think it is fair to say that luck ‘compounds’ like interest. Being in a good position generally confers more frequent and higher-value opportunities to get into a better one. Getting lucky early is very important, and the earliest luck you can get is the circumstance of your birth.
Put another way, you can't win if you never get to play the game.
The world no doubt has a bunch of self starting geniuses who are trapped in poverty in some third world country and will never amount to anything. It's an enormous waste of an incredibly rare resource.
So did they not work hard enough?
Another person I knew was kicked out of their parents house when they came out as trans. They were thrown out of their house as a teenager with no money and no relatives to turn to (all the relatives were deeply religious and believed that 'tough love' would make her change her wicked ways). She found work, and eventually got a place to live. But with poor education, and being a social outcast, she could only just make ends meet. It left her vulnerable, and subsequent boyfriends, "friends" and roommates would take advantage of that.
Now you can say these are edge cases. I agree. And for most people, the "hard work" advice pays off. But realize how smug it sounds, to proclaim that all you need is hard work, when some people do everything they can and still get stuck.
because it makes them feel greater, more merits for them and less to fate. They don't want others to think "ah you got lucky with that".
...or want to attribute every part of it to their behavior.
Survivor bias is strong, especially in cultures where people are exposed to the idea of just world, aka meritocracy, from an early age.
Perhaps 95% of Hollywood narratives are around good guys vs bad guys and the good guys always win.
"I'm a self-made man! I turned that $100 million I inherited from my Dad into a billion by picking the right investment firm!"
So I'll focus on events. Most of my success is due to being a programmer. That's not luck (again, disregarding traits!) I was always fascinated with computers and math. I worked my ass off to afford my first computer at age 12. I worked my ass off to learn programming, and I hustled my ass off to break into the industry with no degree.
Within the context of my career, the vast majority of my success comes from a six-month period full of extremely lucky chance events that just fell into my lap. It's like I was blessed for those six months, and every little thing went exactly my way with perfect timing. Working hard, networking, making good decisions - that's all just a baseline. Just the price of entry. Outside of that magical chapter, I was not working less hard, networking less, having a worse attitude, making stupider choices, or anything of the kind. This is why I have a gripe with people who always scrutinize your part in your circumstances. Yes, maybe its a good strategy to focus on what you can control, but in the bigger analysis, if you're trying to be more analytical about it, it seems like BS to me.
I was consistent. I always worked hard and all that jazz. But sometimes, chance events all went my way and I profited massively from it. Most of the time, either nothing happened, or everything that 'should' have gone right, went wrong. So I personally find the luck angle to be the interesting one - not in the motivational, how-to-live sense. Just in the big picture observation sense.
This is the truth, and very hard to convey in a balanced manner. I typically have discussions with people who only want to focus on luck as being part of my (or their) success, and I also have the same discussion with folks who want to only focus on the hard work aspect.
I've found the same. Most of my financial success in terms of "getting ahead" you can look back to a short period of time where everything went right for you and you got lucky. What many folks completely discount is how your consistent work ethic put you into those positions to take advantage of, and of course no one can see the 9 other times you were in similar situations and it all went to shit. It's about getting back up the next morning and taking that tiny step forward again.
I find these discussions pretty upsetting most of the time as I can look back growing up (background sounds much like yours) and think of the kids I grew up around. You could have predicted with near 100% success rate which of those kids turned out to be financially successful and which would not. I imagine it's much harder in more wealthy environments where poor work ethic isn't nearly as damaging, but in a more austere environment it was completely obvious. Those that partied and never worked hard in their early teens pretty much universally have shit lives now. Those that applied themselves have various levels of what most would consider financial success. I truly think luck is a far secondary factor for this type of success.
The difference is luck truly was the only major indicator of who in that "successful" group went from "decent salary in a nice job" to "building generational wealth" - that seems very much more random than a baseline of "middle class" success.
There are a nearly infinite number of events that had to take place for everything to exist in its current state. We can call it "luck" or "randomness" which then leads to specific actions leading to success. However, in reality we are designed to recognize patterns.
If we recognize a pattern and make an attempt to improve our situation, it's not "luck" or "randomness" its a probability of success. Combine that over a life time and persistence will lead to success, not just one random event. It's a series of events that lead to success, each one moving you one way or the other. It's typically your "choice" which path you take.
I think these articles rub me the wrong way, because it leads a lot of people to think - "If it's all luck, why bother doing anything?" When in reality it's only you that can get anywhere.
Who you are is substantially a matter of luck, too. Somebody who has two driven parents that spend enormous amounts of time and effort raising them is far more likely to be driven and competitive than a person whose parents lay around smoking weed all day.
Your genetic makeup is a product of the genetic histories of two people that (perhaps, but not necessarily) fell in love and had a baby. If they were genetically predisposed to large amounts of self discipline, then perhaps you will be too, perhaps not. I'd say this can count as lucky... or unlucky(?) beyond that, all you've got is your own toil, sweat, tears and guile.
"Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's"
No, luck does not end at birth.
What's success? Often all it takes to improve your situation is a change of perception. Some of the happiest people I've ever met were living in what Americans would consider to be absolute poverty. And some of the most miserable people I've met were the most 'successful'. Sometimes persistence at failure isn't the answer, but rather learning to appreciate what you have in front of you. My dad spent 40 years checking groceries. Most people here wouldn't consider that being a 'success', but he raised two kids and retired and now he's living in Florida and working on his 66 Chevy Malibu convertible, and he's as happy as I've seen him.
On the other hand, you have Trump, who is a billionaire and the president of the US and from all outside appearances seems to be living in a hell of his own creation.
But just because one turn of "fate" if you want to call it that meant that one of those pieces may not have lined up and you'd been somewhere else doesn't make you a different person entirely... you could've exploited some other opportunity and ended up somewhere else, that doesn't mean you wouldn't have been equally or even more successful at it. Where one door closes, another opens... if the first door had opened, you probably wouldn't have opened the second door, but you might have. Who knows?
I think your success is a matter of hard work, discipline, paying attention, being what you need to be in the moment to exploit the opportunities in front of you and having the tenacity to turn them into something useful.
Would you call any of that luck? The specifics may be, sure, but the overall pattern of success is not.
"Combine that over a life time and persistence will lead to success, not just one random event."
Will lead to success? This statement of results simply isn't true. What leads to success in the USA, more so than many other countries, is being born lucky, not hard work. That's your best bet. Many many many people will work very hard for their entire lives - harder than you - and never earn more than a subsistence living, because they had the wrong kind of birth luck.
While hard work helps, it takes some luck to succeed.
Well that and the real lessons (aka, luck has a role) isn't quite as soundbite friendly when written in article format.
Example, success will get you there, but luck is the multiplier.
Example lets say you work super hard and become a millionaire, you run a 2 million dollar company.
I think it's realistic, however your friend with the 20 million dollar company and 200 million dollar company probably didn't work that much harder than you, they just chose better fields and where at the right place at the right time.
Another example non-business wise is genetics. Example: you can work your ass off and be a really good basketball player, you'll have fun, you'll get admiration, but to be an NBA superstar you need a ton of luck involved ie lack of injuries, right coaches, right genetics.
That doesn't mean quit improving as a basketball player or quit that business, it just means try your best and admit luck is a factor.
If you mean the title of the other post, it had the same problem and we edited it in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16497343.
You may not ever be wealthy by trying and working hard because of the role luck plays. But there's value in working hard at it that everyone should know, just like there's value in physical training that everyone should know. It takes training and (very importantly) discipline to stick with it.
"Most of you have the genetics to be an Olympic wrestler. But most of you don't have the work ethic".
Of course that's just an amusing anecdote and there's no reason to think that Dan Gable is an expert on genetics. But it's something to think about.
As far as that goes, we don't even know for sure that we have free will and that we ever actually make any decisions at all. Maybe the whole universe it totally deterministic. I mean, it's hard to see an explanation of how it isn't so. That said I prefer (well, I think I prefer) to believe that we do have free will.
The key is to maximize your own opportunities for luck. For example, when I heard about the very first startup school, I didn't really have the money to go to Boston. But I found a really cheap flight at a terrible time, found a floor to sleep on in Boston, and went.
And in doing that, I met Steve and Alexis and ended up working at Reddit, which made a huge difference in my life. At that point the luck that I can't control kicked in (them wanting to hire me).
But I only met them because I made it a point to find them and meet them and say hello, and it would have never happened if I hadn't figured out a way to get there in the first place and made sure to meet them.
Things like this happen all the time. I look for opportunities were I can "increase my potential for lucky things". Sometimes that means going out of my comfort zone, or asking for something that may be a bit unexpected or there is a good chance someone will say no.
Having said that, those who persevere, by definition are more likely to succeed. They have more changes.
"The harder I work, the luckier I get".
For this, you are right, it is vital to stop from time to time, assess the situation, identify the most important thing, and regardless of how difficult it is, do it.
I'm trying myself to incorporate forced "retreats or slow-downs" to better assess my progress.
"In general, those with greater talent had a higher probability of increasing their success by exploiting the possibilities offered by luck. Also, the most successful agents were mostly at least average in talent. So talent mattered."
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11 ESV
Without proper definitions the entire discussion is useless.
For example, I state that I have already succeed not because of luck, but because of my free will. And all further improvements in my life will be just better grades of success. Argument 'if a raptor didn't kill that butterfly far far ago you would now be slave to the vicious Uganda Empire' doesn't fit, as it can by applied to every statement. Argument that I don't have a yacht doesn't fit, as "yachts are for loosers" and success isn't tied to material posessions.
We're lucky anything works at all. In that context, we succeeded just by being born and living as long as we have, and we'd be pretty narrow-minded to assume that the material success we enjoy is significantly more than a series of happy accidents.
After all, what are the odds of success for a person who smokes dope and watches TV all day, compared with someone who gets an education and is out there swinging every day?
1. Try -> (luck roll) -> fail
2. Give up
vs.
1. Try -> (luck roll) -> fail
2. Try -> (luck roll) -> fail
3. Try -> (luck roll) -> fail
4. Try -> (luck roll) -> fail
5. Try -> (luck roll) -> fail
6. Try -> (luck roll) -> success!
2. Try get resources -> (luck roll) -> fail
3. Try get resources -> (luck roll) -> fail
4. Try get resources -> (luck roll) -> fail
5. Try get resources -> (luck roll) -> fail
6. Try get resources -> (luck roll) -> success!
Try to get resources -> (luck roll) -> fail
Try to get resources -> (luck roll) -> starve to death
You see this with people who always have some scheme in the pipeline and may have even had some modest success (and notoriety) with one of the schemes, but ends up dying alone and penniless anyway. They do the work, but never get the break. The world is just unfair sometimes.