Is success in life more a matter of luck than anything else?

[ratewhore]

No, success is NOT more a matter of luck than anything else, to answer your question. However, luck is certainly involved.
I would put hard work higher up than luck, and I speak as someone that has made it his life's work to avoid it.

I concur. I didn't accidentally luck into the position I am currently in. I turnover in a month a little less than my dad earns in a year and I got here by hard work. Having said that, I didn't leave school wanting to do infosec, I wanted to join up, which I did. My decisions were made as I travelled through life and weighed up where I wanted it to take me...

[VectraMan]

I'm in the "you make your own luck" category.

Yes but it could be only because of luck that you were born with the "make your own luck" gene.

[Bagpuss]

I think rudimentary probability theory and statistics should be mandatory from primary school. It would certainly have benefited some over-trained but under-educated financiers.

But then many people who have made a fortune might have considered the risk to great. Many entrepreneurs are gamblers who have won against all odds.

[sasguru]

I concur. I didn't accidentally luck into the position I am currently in. I turnover in a month a little less than my dad earns in a year and I got here by hard work. Having said that, I didn't leave school wanting to do infosec, I wanted to join up, which I did. My decisions were made as I travelled through life and weighed up where I wanted it to take me...

Ah but you were lucky enough to be born in a society that had opportunities that you could take advantage of. (Opportunties that are declining rapidly I fear ).
So in that sense you were lucky.

[BrilloPad]

Ah but you were lucky enough to be born in a society that had opportunities that you could take advantage of. (Opportunties that are declining rapidly I fear ).
So in that sense you were lucky.

There will always be opportunities.

[sasguru]

But then many people who have made a fortune might have considered the risk to great. Many entrepreneurs are gamblers who have won against all odds.

Successful entrepreneurs are the outliers. For every successful one, maybe 100 were unsuccesful. They don't tell you that when they extol the virtues of starting your own business.
And it could be that the successful ones were simply lucky e.g. made the right deal at the right time, like Bill Gates licencing DOS.

[sasguru]

There will always be opportunities.

Tell that to someone who lives in Zimbabwe.

[Mich the Tester]

Partly luck, partly effort, partly the influence of peers.

A couple of weeks ago my team played a rugby match. We’re aiming for promotion this saeson and riding high at the top of our league. We went to play a team who have struggled with the availability of their best players this season and are somewhere at the bottom of the league, but actually had their full line up ready at last, so we knew they would pose a threat, and they knew we would give them a hard game

To cut a long story short, we won 13-12 after the opposition kicker missed a penalty 2 minutes from time within easy range of our posts, the ball rebounding off the outside of the post.

Both teams trained and practised, as both teams and all their players take the game seriously and promotion would take us to a level where the club can become one of the big fish in the relatively small pond that is Dutch rugby. Both teams played a hard, for the most part disciplined game. Both teams were positive, with players supporting each other and encouraging each other. Both scored two tries. They were lucky to be awarded the penalty as their number 8 started fighting just after the ref blew his whistle and was warned, but the penalty wasn’t turned over to us. We were lucky because their usually reliable kicker had an off day. If the league positions remain the same as now, we will be promoted and gain lots of new publicity, sponsors and money from the union and might then even be able to afford a couple of imported professionals to help us move even higher. They could be relegated and end up losing their main sponsor who obviously demands a level of publicity and doesn’t want to be associated with ‘failures’.

Both teams put themselves in a position where a little good luck would make them successful, but only one team could win. Fairness would have made the game a draw, but life just isn’t fair.
That’s how close success and failure can be in sport, and other aspects of life can be the same. Business, love, science, art; all can be affeected by alacrity. So go easy on someone who's having a hard time of things; he might just be down on his luck, and some day you might be too.

[EternalOptimist]

[QUOTE=sasguru;729577]Indeed. Taleb makes exactly that point in the "Black Swan" about some in the financial industry.
In one of his footnotes he explicity says that Fannie Mae is "sitting on a time bomb". This was back in 2006 and he was proved absolutely right.
QUOTE]


You'd do better to read my book

EO's guide to successful contracting, vol II (Harper and Collins) 2005

'Anyone born with a F@nny may find themselves sitting on a fortune'


This was back in 2005 and he was proved absolutely right.

[TimberWolf]

If you think success in life depends on luck, try thinking about the luck you had just getting born. You managed it despite the probability of it happening being zero. Every one of your billions of ancestors had to live long enough to find a mate (exactly the right mate) and to reproduce successfully (those that used sex anyway). If a single one of them had died before reproducing, you would never have lived. Countless other billions died so that you would live. The sperm and egg that combined to create you had to combine in such a way to produce not only the genes you have, but how they are expressed. You lucky, lucky, ...