Success and riches come from hard work. Chance has nothing to do. Do you agree?

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There is a continuum of things in which success requires more or less luck. Ironically, the thing you would think would require the most luck actually heavily rely on hard work. The example I’m thinking of is gambling. To be a successful gambler requires far more hard work learning your game than most other domains. This is because the individual events in which luck plays a part are done so frequently that success revolves around increasing the odds, which by definition requires hard work, and increasing the frequency of playing them, again, categorically hard work.

It’s the things that you just can’t take that many swings at, that require the most luck in order to succeed at. For example, writing novels. To get lucky like JK Rowling requires an absurd amount of luck, no amount of hard work gets you Harry Potter.

I’m told with things like acting and sports superstardom, luck is the pretty much the only distinguishing factor. For every Michael Jordan that works unbelievably hard, there’s just as many who work just as hard that don’t get Jordan’s outcomes. It just comes down to the fact that there’s only so much space under the spotlight.

If you as an individual want to become Michael Jordon or JK Rowling, there’s no getting around the need to get lucky. If you merely want success and riches, then you need to work smart and hard. Working smart means reducing both the role of luck and the overall amount of work you need to do, and working hard means working hard anyway, even though you’re also working smart. Worldly success accomplished without the need for luck requires both.