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> for ordinary people, you are going to be exposed to some opportunities to succeed from time to time, but in a random fashion There's a saying I really love

> for ordinary people, you are going to be exposed to some opportunities to succeed from time to time, but in a random fashion There's a saying I really love The harder I work, the luckier I get The way I interpret this is that by working harder you make yourself able to take advantage of more opportunities that come along. It "increases your surface area of luck", effectively. The opportunities still come at random, but work helps you capitalize on that luck. As a dumb trivial example, let's say you're a recent college graduate just having a drink at a bar. You just happen to talk to the person next to you and they tell you they're working in the space you studied and are hiring. If you didn't go to school, you wouldn't have been able to take advantage of that lucky situation. I definitely agree that it is important to look at failures and learn from them. There's a large bias for ignoring luck's role in our (or others') success. Sometimes to the point of becoming superstitious, like replicating patterns of successful people that have nothing to do with their success (e.g. their daily routine). But when looking at failure, it is also important to remember Picard[0] It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is a weakness, that is life. Sometimes people fail because they got unlucky. They did all the right things, but at the wrong time. This isn't the answer to all failures, but it is to some. It can be difficult to determine the difference, but just because it didn't work for someone before doesn't mean it won't work this time. If luck plays a role for success, lack of luck plays a role in failure. With success, we tend to underestimate the role of luck. With failure we tend to overestimate it. In neither case can it be ignored. [0] https://youtu.be/mr2Jdp4fdD0?t=38 https://youtu.be/mr2Jdp4fdD0?t=38

borroka 1y ago
Unfortunately, most proverbs, sayings, etc. have no quantifiable value, which makes all the difference when evaluating opportunities. I like to say that I probably worked harder than many of the best soccer players in the world today when I was young, but I'm nowhere near their level. However, perhaps if I had talked to the right person, if I had made the right choice when choosing one team over another, I would have had a decent professional career instead of the mediocre one I had. Maybe I should have worked 10% less and spent 70% more on “networking,” and my chances of making it would have increased by 30% or 20%. But no one knows. And even if you had a way to estimate these probabilities at the population level, the individual realization of random draws from the probability distribution would still be random. Most of the time, it doesn't take more than 1 or 2 favorable random draws to get where others would die to be. According to heritability estimates, I had a 5% chance of becoming much taller than my parents, which, we can all agree, is a pretty low probability, but it happened.

borroka 1y ago

Unfortunately, most proverbs, sayings, etc. have no quantifiable value, which makes all the difference when evaluating opportunities. I like to say that I probably worked harder than many of the best soccer players in the world today when I was young, but I'm nowhere near their level. However, perhaps if I had talked to the right person, if I had made the right choice when choosing one team over another, I would have had a decent professional career instead of the mediocre one I had. Maybe I should have worked 10% less and spent 70% more on “networking,” and my chances of making it would have increased by 30% or 20%. But no one knows. And even if you had a way to estimate these probabilities at the population level, the individual realization of random draws from the probability distribution would still be random. Most of the time, it doesn't take more than 1 or 2 favorable random draws to get where others would die to be. According to heritability estimates, I had a 5% chance of becoming much taller than my parents, which, we can all agree, is a pretty low probability, but it happened.