Several observations on this: 1) You make your own luck - for the most part - and that what we call 'being lucky' is a skill you can learn. See here for the re

Several observations on this: 1) You make your own luck - for the most part - and that what we call 'being lucky' is a skill you can learn. See here for the research on this: http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/wiseman/research/luckmain.html http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/wiseman/research/luckmain.html 2) The Andy Grove/ Einstein thing, of trying, striving, working really hard and trying to strategically place yourself in the 'right place' will eventually pay off, one way or another. This is essentially what the article adresses. This is a different kind of luck though. 3) Apart from personal 'luckiness' and hard work paying off, there are also occasional black and white swans - large random external events which affect peoples lives in good or bad ways. These are unpredictable and outside your control. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a (quite hideous) website about this kind of thing: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/ http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/ He may also have written a popular book.