This post is inspired by many long conversations with a good friend over the past couple of years. I do hope he reads this post and chuckles, before continuing our discussion at my favorite restaurant. I was about to write this post in June of 2025, but by the struck of luck, I had to focus on more important things.
I have spent a couple of years co-working with a high number of overachievers, and I have found a common belief between a number of them – the concept of the non-existence of luck.
A lot of high performers and overachieves commit the common fallacy – judging the result instead of the effort, ignoring the good/bad luck that influenced the outcome.
As brilliantly described by Annie Duke in Thinking in Bets, life is more a huge collection of poker games instead of one big game of chess – we can’t control what cards we and our opponents get, instead of starting equally in chess. With this in mind – we strive with our best, but it does not mean that we are able to win every _single_ game, sometimes it is simply not up to us. If you think that the previous statement is not true, then try winning against a Royal Flush hand in poker against an opponent who does not fold.
The funny part of the discussion on existence/non-existence of luck, is that in order to be a high performance/overachiever – you have got to have a huge amount of luck. So many extremely competent people could have had better results than me in every single area, if they had had a bit more luck. Some people deserve what we have but they were unable to get it, and we were simply lucky (and yeah we strived for it).
The other side of the coin is bad luck. In my experience many times, those who blame only bad luck for their situation are largely the ultimate responsible. Bad luck is important feedback mechanism – it helps keeping feet on the ground. Bad luck reinforces the will to fight, to find a way, to find an alternative. Bad luck is a great teacher. Bad luck does not depend on one’s performance and achievements. Bad luck does not necessarily mean the end of the road.
Think about Malcolm Gladwell’s marvelous “The Tipping Point” where he described how the birthyear of the first generation successful IT mega-entrepreneurs had to be between 1954-1956, otherwise one would be totally out of luck (born before 1954 and you would be already working for other companies or, born after 1956 meant arriving on the scene with major companies already created). Good luck / bad luck comes in the children’s sports, where joining kids born in the same year (for example born on the 1st of Jan & on the 31st of Dec) results in kids presenting huge development differences, which results in the kids born early in the year being considered being better. This won’t prevent an outstanding overachiever kid born in the late December to fight and win against all odds, but it does not change the fact of the tough luck.
Being born in a specific place (rich & peaceful versus poor & insecure) and in a specific family (wealthy versus poor) has nothing to do with an individual and blaming ones parents does not solve it (and they might have had no chance or choice).
This post is not about laying down on the floor and waiting for luck, but about being mindful of its existence and its impact. Any reference for _just_ praying for luck without any action will result in me pointing towards the Parable of the drowning man . On the other hand, of course, complaining about the lack of luck is utterly useless – it brings no positive changes and creates bad environment.
I am more a kind of a person who loves the classical anecdote about Niels Bohr “I Understand It Brings You Luck, Whether You Believe in It or Not” :)
My way of thinking regarding the luck is that we can’t control what happens to us, all we can do is do our best on controlling how we react on those events as in “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional”. This applies to both the good as well as the bad luck.
Oh, and there is one last thing – only extremely lucky people are unaware about the existence of luck.