How much of your success has come from luck?

[downtown]

Taken from Mars' post in the sociological thread.

For the purposes of this thread, lets primarly focus on professional success, although if you think others are more relevant you can go there too I suppose.

Lets define luck as deriving benefit from events that you did not have control over...such as "right place, right time" situations, your birth, looks, personal contacts, etc. Let's define skill as grades or raw professional competency.

Did you get a lucky break, and then let your mad skills take it from there? Did you get a few lucky breaks? Have you gotten to where you are in spite of bad luck? Do you think that luck plays a role in success?

Poll coming.

 

[Archbob]

I would say 70 is work and maybe 30 is luck. The luck part is from me being born into the digital age. there are a lot of things I do for my sites that directly attract traffic and make me money.

I was born into a poor(well everyone was poor) family in China in 1984 a few years after Mao died and no one had any money except the government cronies. Fortunately China opened its way up to capitalism because its old system totally and utterly failed.

 

[GenMarshall]

I have not gotten anywhere due because Luck is always against me.

 

[ArneHD]

I've had luck on both sides, on one hand, I'm born Norwegian to a upper-middle class family who are nice and supportive and have a slightly above average IQ. On the other hand, I was born with Asperger's Syndrome and I'm suffering from depression. How much of this is luck and how much is someones fault I cannot say. Then again Roald Amundsen said:

I may say that this is the greatest factor – the way in which the expedition is equipped – the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order – luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.
— from The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen.

 

[Archbob]

What most people (especially those in first world countries) don't want to admit is that your current luck stems a lot from your past decisions.

 

[aelf]

For the last 6 years or so, I haven't had as much academic success as I thought I would judging from past performance. Nevertheless, I managed to get places in top universities anyway. Not my first choices, but better than my results perhaps merited. Maybe my personal statements were always awesome, but that's pretty subjective, so I have to call it luck.

Now I just need some more of that luck to find a decent job that I won't die of

Taken from Mars' post in the sociological thread.

Where is that?

 

[Flying Pig]

You could say that I've gained all my success through hard work, but I'm only here to enjoy it because of 'luck', I suppose

 

[RedRalph]

Mostly luck. I left school at a time when our economy was booming and got a job easily, I coukld have had dozens of others should I have chosen. Joined the civil service when they were recruiting like mad then. But my promotion was down to my sheer brilliance as a human being, I finished 3rd out of 2,000 applicants on the exam and 5th out of the final 50 that got interviewd.

 

[Zelig]

I'll post a longer answer later, but I'm not sure how I differentiate skill from luck. I have a bunch of things I'm naturally skilled at, that happened to work well with certain opportunities to improve myself, many times with no particular effort on my part.

Do you classify good looks as luck? What about the ability to play professional basketball, or solve theoretical physics problems?

edit: Heh, you answered this in the OP, probably should have read that first.

 

[timtofly]

Like civ general, it was not my luck.

 

[amadeus]

The two are inseparable... I was fortunate enough to be born in America, so I had greater opportunities to develop skills for which I would be able to claim accomplishments. Had I been born in India or Afghanistan, there is a very good chance that I wouldn't be able to read or write. Were I born in those places, I also could be crippled from disease or killed in political and religious violence. In that sense, I was lucky from the minute I was born.

If isolated simply to the American Midwest and compare myself to my peers growing up and my peers today, I think it's safe to say that chance was not the determining factor.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

God did it. It's come together for me most of the times. I wouldn't attribute it luck but I've achieved more than I should if others were the judge.

 

[bathsheba666]

I was born in England in the 50s and benefited from a free education and health care.
That was lucky.

Taking advantage of the luck of my birth was, I suppose, better than the alternative; but hard to argue individual initiative trumps everything else.

 

[peter grimes]

My skills have been important, but lucky breaks account for most of my success

Yeah, I'd say it breaks down to something like 90% luck to 10% personal skill.

LUCK:
I was born white
I was born in USA
I was born to a middle class family in New England
My family payed for me to attend a small private school through most of my education
I was able to live with a very wealthy family in Portugal as an exchange student
My parents let me indulge my enjoyment of technical theatre through summer jobs
I worked under a highly skilled prop builder after college.
I'm a fairly nice person to have around the shop
I was around when the shop organized into the union, but through a quirk of departmental jurisdiction, I was the only guy who didn't lose his job in the ensuing restructuring.

SKILL:
I did relatively well in school without having to work very hard
I absorbed as much as I could from my mentor, and worked hard at not just refining my skills but expanding my skillset
I work hard at getting outside work beyond my one field. Same skills, better pay, less risk.

 

[CaptainF]

The two are inseparable... I was fortunate enough to be born in America, so I had greater opportunities to develop skills for which I would be able to claim accomplishments. Had I been born in India or Afghanistan, there is a very good chance that I wouldn't be able to read or write. Were I born in those places, I also could be crippled from disease or killed in political and religious violence. In that sense, I was lucky from the minute I was born.

If isolated simply to the American Midwest and compare myself to my peers growing up and my peers today, I think it's safe to say that chance was not the determining factor.

Yeah, I'd say it breaks down to something like 90% luck to 10% personal skill.

LUCK:
I was born white
I was born in USA
I was born to a middle class family in New England
My family payed for me to attend a small private school through most of my education
I was able to live with a very wealthy family in Portugal as an exchange student
My parents let me indulge my enjoyment of technical theatre through summer jobs
I worked under a highly skilled prop builder after college.
I'm a fairly nice person to have around the shop
I was around when the shop organized into the union, but through a quirk of departmental jurisdiction, I was the only guy who didn't lose his job in the ensuing restructuring.

SKILL:
I did relatively well in school without having to work very hard
I absorbed as much as I could from my mentor, and worked hard at not just refining my skills but expanding my skillset
I work hard at getting outside work beyond my one field. Same skills, better pay, less risk.

Both of these.

I'd say almost everyone on this board is incredibly lucky to have been born into relative wealth within the industrialized world.

 

[luiz]

Luck is of course a very big part of the story for everyone who was born to some wealth, like most of us.

I always think that luck is responsible for me making several times more money than the national average (6 times IIRC), as I had the opportunity to go to the best schools. But personal talent explains why I make more than the great majority of my high school friends (not 6 times more of course, but perhaps 30% or 40% more than average). Very few people, even among my high school, got approved in engineering at the Federal University. And very few people graduate from the University with honors like I did. So I was offered an internship at a multinational company during my 3rd year of college and they hired me full time as soon as I graduated.

If I was born an average Brazilian with my same skills I reckon I would be doing OK, perhaps in the future I would end up doing pretty good, but it would be definitely much tougher.

 

[mangxema]

I'm tempted to say not much. My life is fairly comfortable at the moment but I had to fight through a lot of random misfortune to get here. That said, my brother has a pretty crippling disability, so in the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse. I guess it that sense I have been very fortunate.

 

[Zelig]

Where is that?

I am Mars.

 

[mrt144]

With the paltry amount of skills i have I'd say that I was lucky to get my job in Sept 2007.

 

[Supr49er]

Mostly Luck I think - I have been lucky to fall into several great jobs.