Why Luck Is the Silent Partner of Success

In hindsight we tend to attribute only talent and hard work to successful careers

As the essayist E.B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” Some people are of course quick to acknowledge the good fortune they’ve enjoyed along their paths to the top. But White was surely correct that such people are in the minority. More commonly, successful people overestimate their responsibility for whatever successes they achieve.

Even lottery winners are sometimes blind to luck’s role. In his 2012 book, The Success Equation (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), Michael Mauboussin describes a man inspired by a succession of dreams to believe he’d win the Spanish National Lottery if he could purchase a ticket number whose last two digits were 48. After an extensive search, he located and bought such a ticket, which indeed turned out to be a winner. When an interviewer later asked why he’d sought out that particular number, he said, “I dreamed of the number 7 for seven straight nights. And 7 times 7 is 48.”

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Comments

Complimentary Article to Kumar's Winners and Losers Article

This article is worth considering in relation to Bill Kumar's article about Winers and Losers and the resulting comments. Another source of thought on the topic is Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers."

Smacks of socialism to me

Looks to me just like more excuses as to why successful people should feel guilty and give free stuff to unsuccessful people so that everyone is equal. The fact is, many of the unsuccessful people had a similar amount of luck come their way over time but chose not to take advantage of it.

Two students get a free-ride to college. One studies hard and gets good grades, and is recruited out of college into a good job. One student goofs off, parties a lot, cuts classes, and isn't offered a good job right out of college. I'm supposed to believe the first student was just more "lucky"? No, the second student was just as "lucky" but didn't take advantage of that luck.

I believe that many more times my example represents what really happens vs. the number of cases where an unusual overabundance of luck is all that made someone successful.

Acknowledging the success

Ofcourse most of the times successful people does`t acknowledge the external factors, definitely they keep in mind because once they express all there work look seems as normal. But some times success will come by external factors which they themselves dont know!.

All in all there are external factors always. That is why there are ups and down in ones life. And its quite common the external factors are attributed to God.