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> Work hard, meet the right people, and use your gut. I've done that all, and been successful out of it. But at least in my case there was one even larger elem
by mpyne 14y ago
> Work hard, meet the right people, and use your gut.
I've done that all, and been successful out of it. But at least in my case there was one even larger element in play: Luck. And I can't even begin to list all the different ways that I've been lucky (and unlucky), but I always keep that in the back of my mind.
I could have born in Somalia, or a Brooklyn ghetto, I could have tried to make my last career move a year earlier or later (when it would have been shot down for sure), or any of 80,000 other reasons I could have failed despite hard work, talking to the right people, and using my gut.
It's easy to say you won't get screwed if you're careful, but be very sure that it isn't just that you've been lucky to interact with good people.
- daeken 14y ago"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Unknown (tons of attributions) While some things are just random chance -- who your parents are, where you're born, etc -- but most things in life don't come from luck, much as we like to ascribe things to it. Most of the time it comes from hard work and -- probably more importantly -- tenacity. I've been "lucky" in a lot of ways, namely who has seen my work and decided to write about it, who's decided to hire me because of it, etc, but at the end of the day there were a dozen failures for every success. If I hadn't stuck at it, I never would've "gotten lucky".
- mpyne 14y agoI do believe that it's possible to "help luck along" (kind of the same theme as how "planning is indispensable, but plans are useless"). So I'm not saying this to say "Don't try", but rather to try to counter a bit the idea that "working hard" implies success. It's usually necessary, but not always sufficient.