How lucky are we?
“...luck plays a large role in every story of success; it is almost always easy to identify a small change in the story that would have turned a remarkable achievement into a mediocre outcome.” - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Why do we care about luck?
I think one of the worst things that we can tell a child is that they can be “whatever they want to be.” It seems wrong to me on many levels. To begin with, if they have a low IQ, they won’t be able to be a lawyer. If they are in a wheelchair, they won’t be an NBA all-star.
Now, these might seem like harsh assertions. My concern is that we are setting them up for failure for several reasons. The first is telling, especially a child that they can be anything can be physically impossible. This will be no less than frustrating, causing existential angst or worse yet, driving them to give up. We as humans must be challenged to an optimal degree (too much and we flea, too little and we are bored). The next issue is that by telling them they can be whatever they want without acknowledging their unique set of strengths, we deny who they are. We are all unique individuals with a particular set of aptitudes and abilities. It is our life’s work to figure out what those are. The final point, which I would like to focus on in this article is that we don’t mention luck to these children. I can think of many fantastic success stories (Steve Jobs, and Gary Vaynerchuk) to name two, who were intelligent, voraciously hard-working, and tenacious to the ends of the earth. However, they were also one thing that no one mentions - lucky.
“The idea that large historical events are determined by luck is profoundly shocking, although it is demonstrably true.” - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
These stories of grand success were lucky. These people started their ventures at a time that was not only fertile for growth, but they were there when the wave came, and they created a successful ride. If we try to embark on a journey in our lives and we work ourselves into the ground, yet there is no opportunity, due diligence, and luck, then this will be like trying to chisel concrete with a needle.
I think it’s important to understand what luck is and acknowledge its role in our lives. It is a random variable that we most likely have less control over then we would like to think, but none-the-less, when we know about something, it begins to lose its power over us. I believe this is especially important when it comes to our demeanor. If we are to be successful, we need to be happy, optimistic, and realistic to start. We tend to see more opportunities this way, and people are naturally drawn to us. We will never achieve our dreams alone, so it seems necessary to set up an environment where people want to be around, and they want to see us prosper as much as they would like to.
“Narrative fallacies arise inevitably from our continuous attempt to make sense of the world. The explanatory stories that people find compelling are simple; are concrete rather than abstract; assign a larger role to talent, stupidity, and intentions than to luck; and focus on a few striking events that happened rather than on the countless events that failed to happen. Any recent salient event is a candidate to become the kernel of a causal narrative. Taleb suggests that we humans constantly fool ourselves by constructing flimsy accounts of the past and believing they are true.” - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
What is Luck?
When considering what luck is, the first thing that might come to mind is the idea of gambling. If we walk into a casino and we pull the lever on the slot machine, and we hit the jackpot, we think ourselves lucky. To many, this seems like blind luck. That is to say, luck without rhyme or reason. The interesting thing to note is that we can utilize mathematics to tell us how likely it is that we will win a jackpot on a particular machine after so many folks have played it. So while we are lucky to have walked up when we did, we can also use the tools of science to tell us when we should play a particular machine to gain the highest likelihood of winning. This situation still leaves luck, but we can also very often hedge our bets.
We can think about luck as the set of life conditions that we inherited by being born. It consists of facets such as being birthed at the right time in the right place, having good genetics, or high-quality parents. Luck is being given an IQ high enough to learn something that’s above being a janitor (even as pivotally necessary as custodial work is). Luck is being born in a part of the world where we can afford food, housing, clothing, and clean water.
Let us look at a tech star celebrity. We can consider Steve Jobs and how luck played into his booming success. Steve was in the time and place for a fertile revolution. Scientists and engineers laid the framework for the personal computer. It was Steve who pushed this technology into the mainstream. He did not do this all by himself, but he saw an opportunity presented to him by luck, and he wasted no time to seize it. Now, of course, this is a drastic oversimplification of his story, but it seems like the moral is apparent. He worked extremely hard, but he was also at the right time and place, which was presented via luck. As a wise mentor told me, luck opens the door; hard work keeps it open.
There is a more modern demigod coming up in the realm of technology. He touts delaying gratification and working our tails off for years or even decades to gain great success. Now to some degree, this advice is gold, especially at a time when young people are less motivated to work than ever. However, we must recognize that Gary Vaynerchuk took an already established business, and through up and coming marketing channels grew it exponentially. This assertion in no way is meant to belittle his accomplishment, but he did start this endeavor at about the exact moment google advertising came on the scene of the wild west that we call the internet. Gary is undoubtedly voraciously tenacious, an incredibly hard-working pioneer of the severest and most cutthroat degree. His sense of competition and wanting to win are astounding in the best of ways. However, I’m thinking luck certainly played into his equation. This story is not only the internet revolution but the fact that he is an immigrant born of a poor family. This genesis instilled in him the undying work ethic that helped him to rise to the top.
“We focus on our goal, anchor on our plan, and neglect relevant base rates, exposing ourselves to the planning fallacy. We focus on what we want to do and can do, neglecting the plans and skills of others. Both in explaining the past and in predicting the future, we focus on the causal role of skill and neglect the role of luck. We are therefore prone to an illusion of control. We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs.” - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Where do we go from here?
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” - Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Luck is like playing the lottery. Sometimes we meet the people that we need to and are faced with situations that strengthen us. Sometimes we meet people who are detrimental to us, and we face burdens that are no less than crushing. It is our choice as to what we do with the hand that we’ve been dealt. Luck is the metaphorical hand that we have been provided, but our ability and perseverance will make the best of what skills we have. Now it’s tough to polish it and make it gold, but we sure can make a beautiful sculpture out of some shitty material.
It makes sense that we need to try to work smart and not necessarily hard. By definition, we can do a lot, but if we come back to where we started, we have done zero work (in terms of physics). This notion is why I am a fan of Jordan Peterson. He mentions that we must know where we are, where we want to go, how to get from here to there, and what that means.
When we are going from here to there, it seems very easy to get caught up in the doing, instead of making sure that we are moving in a direction that will get us to where we would like to be. This idea includes playing to our strengths. It is much easier to see what we are already good at, or already enjoy and then move with full force into that space. Then we are in a good mood most of the time when we work, and doors begin to open. If we instead insist on denying where we are and focus on things that we are bad at, then we can spend a lifetime trying to improve ourselves.
I also think when we use terms like “grind” or “hustle,” we should consider what their definitions are. To grind is to break up into small particles. To hustle is to obtain by force or hurry. Perhaps working in such ways is not only not beneficial, but could be detrimental in the long run.
How to get from where we are to where we want to go
“Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.” - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Luck has a tremendous impact on our lives, but we have little control over its effect on our lives. It makes sense to me that understanding and accepting is all that we can do. If we do not take the stance of gratitude and acceptance, we will quickly become bitter and cynical. As the cliche statement goes, we can hope for the best, but we should prepare for the worst. From this phrase, it seems appropriate that we choose a path that brings us joy and ease in the journey. That way, if luck is not on our side, we are still able to arrive at the end of our lives, having enjoyed the process.
“Stories of how businesses rise and fall strike a chord with readers by offering what the human mind needs: a simple message of triumph and failure that identifies clear causes and ignores the determinative power of luck and the inevitability of regression. These stories induce and maintain an illusion of understanding, imparting lessons of little enduring value to readers who are all too eager to believe them.” - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
This quote makes me realize that the world we live in is extraordinarily complex. We, as humans, were designed to be simplification machines. It is tough to live in a place of not knowing. This can strike insecurity and fear in many. It’s the same idea as the difference between excitement and fear. There is no difference between these two emotions, it’s how we interpret what the feeling means to us. So, perhaps we can learn that the simple and concrete answers in our life are most likely not correct except in concrete and straightforward situations (which seemingly do not exist in reality).
What that means
I am a writer because I enjoy conveying new ideas to people. However, sometimes I cannot say it better, so with that being said, perhaps we can learn something from someone who has endured many more hardships than we can fathom. Viktor Frankl blesses us with these words after surviving time in a concentration camp:
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
So perhaps instead of being upset that luck did not bless us the way that we wish for it to, we can take account of our blessings. Maybe living in a state of gratitude, instead of a poverty mindset will help us to feel happier and more fulfilled. It makes sense to me that once we understand luck and what a difference it can have on our life, we can more readily accept the hand that we have been provided. With that acceptance, perhaps we can do more with what we have by creating our meaning.
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” - Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
I invite you to revisit the post on “Responsibility” to be reminded of what it means to take personal responsibility in a world that promotes sacrificing ourselves for the betterment of the group.
An essential part of accepting luck into our lives is the notion of releasing expectations. Revisit the post on "Expectations" to understand better what they are and how they might negatively affect our lives.