Have you ever thought that any success that your competition gets is only due to luck. While any success you get is a culmination of your Hard Work. I certainly used to think that while growing up. I would not understand how they were so good without they being lucky. Which made me look at luck as this magic spell that only a few special ones get, while other mortals merely roam in their shadows. I took to buying lucky charms, anything and everything that would bring luck to me from the little pocket money i got.
Oh god! how wrong i was.
While reflecting on what led me to believe that hard work is the only key to success. This one incident that happened a long time ago popped up. It changed my mindset forever. I was never good at studies, not because i couldn’t be but because that didn’t interest me, regurgitating whatever you have memorised on a piece of paper without understanding its applications or uses. So year over year my academic scores were not very high and year over year i used to hear about it from my parents. This particular year, i was determined to make my scores cross a certain number. I asked around what my friends were doing to secure good marks, everyone had some sort of a plan/strategy. Some were taking tuitions, while some used to study everyday for a specific period of time. I worked hard all year round and voila, i was able to clear the scores easily. Now, mind you, I didn’t place First in the class, or even in top ten, not even close, i was above ~75% of the class. But, i achieved what i set to achieve by working hard, that was enough to change my views towards Hard Work and made me realise that if people are getting certain scores it is not because of luck, it is because they have employed strategies to overcome their hurdles, it might be spending focussed on their own or taking help of some tutor. A valuable lesson indeed.
Sometime back, I stumbled upon a video by Veritasium (side note: It is a tremendous channel i have been following, you should check it out) named “Is Success Luck or Hard Work?”, which expanded my understanding on a combination of hard work and luck. I particularly like this video because it explains the concept by using data and running a simulation on How Astronauts are picked in real life.
This is how he does: He generates 2 scores:
- Skill Score: For skill, Hard work and Talent out of 100
- Luck Score: for how lucky they are out of 100 To get the overall score for each individual, based on which they will be selected in the program, he added them into a 95:5 ratio.
Assuming that Astronauts are picked based on the highest scores. This Simulation was run over 1000 iterations and results were gathered. He saw that all the majority of the astronauts selected had a very high luck score. The astonishing part was if we remove the luck factor, 9-10 people out of 11 would not have made the cut. Only ~1.6 people on an average would get in the program purely because of skill score. With only 5% of Luck, 9-10 people get selected instead of people who had high talent. Clearly, luck plays a role in success.
When competition is fierce, talent and skill do matter, but you also need to catch a break.
This brings us back to square one!, if luck is that important factor that 9 out of 10 need then why to work hard to become successful in our world? The answer is paradoxical,
- First, you should believe that your success comes only because of your talent and hard work, Work hard towards your goals & leave no stone unturned.
- Second, once you have done everything under your power to become successful, understand that is not the complete truth. If you end up being successful, you should know that luck played some role for your success.
What were the incidents where you felt extraordinarily lucky?
~P
