The study was discussed yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16496898, but I guess we'll not treat the current article as a dupe, since it's a bit better.
The Role of Luck in Life Success
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Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#12I think it is more about increasing your "luck surface area". If you are well prepared in your craft you will be better suited to exploit a potential opportunity favorably when the moment comes.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#13At the opposite end of the spectrum is modern self-help culture seems to focus entirely on hard work, habits etc. I routinely balk at stuff promoting 7, 10 or 100 habits of successful people, CEO, leaders or otherwise, as if following them blindly will get you any where.
While hard work helps, it takes some luck to succeed.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#14You can improve your chances of success with hard work/perseverance though. 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!
Only if you have enough resources to continue.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#15You can only get lucky if you position yourself to be able to get lucky. In addition, you need that carpe diem attitude to exploit any lucky breaks. 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.
How did you choose who your parents were going to be?
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.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#16That's why you should try you best to enhance your luck factor.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#17You can only get lucky if you position yourself to be able to get lucky. In addition, you need that carpe diem attitude to exploit any lucky breaks. 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.
You can't position yourself to be born a white male, which I believe affords the greatest advantages, and opens the most opportunities of any personal attribute you can have.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#18I've at times stated that anyone who says that luck isn't important has possibly never had any success in life. 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.
"The harder you work the luckier you get..."
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#19You can only get lucky if you position yourself to be able to get lucky. In addition, you need that carpe diem attitude to exploit any lucky breaks. 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.
That is a great example of confirmation bias. The person who positions themselves for luck deserves credit. And in my experience usually get it. The person who positions themselves for luck and is unlucky, is usually considered less capable.
Re: The Role of Luck in Life Success
#20Just read this article. Very cool how the researchers simulated the role luck plays in society with some neat models. The conclusions they reach are fascinating and counter-intuitive e.g.
>"[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.