The Importance of Hard Work and Luck in Success

The Importance of Hard Work and Luck in Success

Feature vs Product. When you understand the difference… | by Alan Klement | Jobs to be Done". That is what a Product does — it provides solutions for a range of situations that fall within situational segment(s). The key to creating successful products is to understand how you can make existing behaviors more efficient OR by building upon an existing behavior to empower & enable new ones..

"Absolute Success is Luck. Relative Success is Hard Work.". That’s when Tu volunteered to be the first human subject to try the medication. In one of the boldest moves in the history of medical science, she and two other members of Project 523 infected themselves with malaria and received the first doses of their new drug. (note: I was really impressed by their really bold moves...) Today, the artemisinin treatment has been administered over 1 billion times to malaria patients. It is believed to have saved millions of lives.

Tu Youyou is the first female Chinese citizen to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award for major contributions to medical science. she has no postgraduate degree, no research experience abroad, and no membership in any of the Chinese national academies—a feat that has earned her the nickname “The Professor of the Three No's”. damn was she a hard worker. Persistent. Diligent. Driven. For decades she didn't give up and she helped save millions of lives as a result.

Her story is a brilliant example of how important hard work can be in achieving success. Luck matters more in an absolute sense and hard work matters more in a relative sense. As a general rule, the wilder the success, the more extreme and unlikely the circumstances that caused it. The more local the comparison becomes, the more success is determined by hard work.

When you compare yourself to those who have experienced similar levels of luck, the difference is in your habits and choices. As outcomes become more extreme, the role of luck increases. As Nassim Taleb wrote in Fooled by Randomness, “Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.”

You can only control the slope of your success, not your initial position. In Atomic Habits, I wrote, “It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”

“The more time passes from the start of a race, the less the head-start others got matters.” In fact, one study found that, if success is measured by wealth, then the most successful people are almost certainly those with moderate talent and remarkable luck. At some point, good luck requires hard work if success is to be sustained.

The mathematician and computer engineer Richard Hamming summarized what it takes to do great work by saying, “There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.”

The person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits. (note: 💯 agree.) “The harder I practice, the luckier I get.”

Combining the ideas from both the articles, we can see that success is a combination of hard work and luck. While luck may play a role in achieving wild success, it is hard work that sustains success in the long run. Tu Youyou's story exemplifies this, as she tirelessly worked towards finding a treatment for malaria and eventually saved millions of lives.

When comparing ourselves to others, it is important to consider the level of luck they have experienced. However, it is our habits and choices that truly make a difference in our own success. We have control over our actions and the trajectory we set ourselves on.

To increase the likelihood of stumbling upon a lucky break, it is essential to work hard, pursue opportunities, and be proactive in trying new things. As the saying goes, "The harder I practice, the luckier I get." Luck may present itself in unexpected ways, but it is up to us to seize those opportunities through hard work and preparedness.

In conclusion, success is a combination of hard work and luck. While luck may play a role in achieving extraordinary success, it is hard work that sustains success in the long run. To increase the chances of stumbling upon a lucky break, it is essential to work hard, pursue opportunities, and be proactive in trying new things. By focusing on our habits and choices, we can control the trajectory of our success.