2 minutes
Lucky Bastards
There’s a long standing myth that very successful people got that way because they are either very clever or very ruthless. The truth is that intelligence and drive are necessary but not sufficient, and we vastly underestimate the effect of luck.
Once somebody has achieved some pinnacle of success it tends to be a self perpetuating phenomenon. We, and they, believe they are ’naturally’ successful people and so we invest, follow, and generally believe in their successfulness , even when the evidence is that they have never replicated their initial victories.
This is bad for the reset of us, as we have a natural tendency to give credence to successful people’s rationalizations and mythmaking about their triumphs.
The real truth is that in almost all situations, they just got lucky. There were probably hundreds of others who were as clever, single-minded and original, it’s just that they won the lottery.
What actually tends to happen is that our heros become exceptionally good storytellers about their glory days, and we collude in the mythmaking. The result is cargo culting, we work from these legends, and mimic what we believe what were the secrets to their successes. This very rarely works.
Certainly, there are lessons to be learned from other peoples careers, but in the end, staying true to your own vision is a more likely path to success.