Luck Factor Quotes

Concentration attracts luck factor.

Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.

I may say that this is the greatest factor: the way in which the expedition is equipped, the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order, luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time, this is called bad luck.

The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.

In my experience there is no such thing as luck, my young friend—only highly favorable adjustments of multiple factors to incline events in one’s favor.

Transformations are a part of life. We are constantly being changed by things changing around us. Nobody can control that. Nobody can control the environment, the economy, luck, or the moods of others. Compositions change. Positions change. Dispositions change. Experiences change. Opportunities and attitudes change. You will change.

People "at the top" are eager to attribute their position to their own intellect, savvy, and hard work. The reality is much more complicated. Personal connections, family environment, and what appears to be plain luck determine how successful a person is. We are the product of three things- genetics, environment, and our personal choices- but two of these three factors we have no power over. We are not nearly as responsible for our success as our popular views of God and reality lead us to think.

As regards the extraordinary prizes, the element of luck is the determining factor.

Achievement is the product of many factors and not of hard work alone. One requires the right opportunity, the right people to work with and the right timing. Maybe there is an element of luck too.

The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad ideas, and bad luck—which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being stands as author to his own genes or his upbringing, and yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character throughout life.

The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: 1. To have been born a human being, capable of concious inquiry. 2. To have been born - or to have developed - a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. 3. To have found a living spiritual master.

Researcher Richard Wiseman, in his article “The Luck Factor,” says that if you are an apple picker and you keep coming back to the same trees every day, eventually you’re going to run out of fruit.

Now take a look at the cemetery. It is quite difficult to do so because people who fail do not seem to write memoirs, and, if they did, those business publishers I know would not even consider giving them the courtesy of a returned phone call (as to returned e-mail, fuhgedit). Readers would not pay $26.95 for a story of failure, even if you convinced them that it had more useful tricks than a story of success.* The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

The highest paid Americans read an average of two to three hours per day. The lowest paid Americans don't read at all... ...58% of adults never read another book after they leave high school—including 42% of university graduates... ...43.6% of American adults read below the 7th grade level... they are functionally illiterate... fully 50% of high school graduates cannot read their graduation diplomas, nor fill out an application form for a job at McDonald’s...

In order for you to acquire luck you must be at the right place, in the right time and show the work of your hands, your labor, and your talent. Luck, according to the creator, is not a happenstance or the result of probabilities or numerical factors. I is a function of you creating your own land and being the ruler of your earthly possessions according to a greater purpose.

Being mixed is like that tingling feeling you have in your nose just before you sneeze—you’re waiting for it to happen but it never does. Given my black face and upbringing it was easy for me to flee into the anonymity of blackness, yet I felt frustrated to live in a world that considers the color of your face an immediate political statement whether you like it or not. It took years before I began to accept the fact that the nebulous “white man’s world” wasn’t as free as it looked; that class, luck, religion all factored in as well; that many white individuals’ problems surpassed my own, often by a lot;

Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered. In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck. Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students. This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not. The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance – and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ – the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits.

If you choose to ignore these factors, good luck to you. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they are found in oak forests.

I believe good luck comes to people who are ready for it and will use it unselfishly, to help others. I don't believe it often comes to the greedy. As a general rule, the greediest people I know are also the unluckiest.

Every day at precisely noon a fellow turns up on a busy street corner with a green flag and a bugle. He waves the flag, blows a few notes on the bugle, utters a mysterious incantation, and goes away. A cop, observing this exercise over a period of weeks, finally gets overwhelmed by curiosity. "What the hell are you doing?" asks the cop. "Keeping giraffes away," says the fellow. The cop says, "But there are no giraffes around here." The fellow says, "Doing a good job, ain't I?

When you succeed in your life give accountability to LUCK this restricts the ego to grow in mind.If you unsucceed still give accountability to your LUCK this reduces sorrow. Because Success and UnSuccess both are the results of LUCK which is uncertain.

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

Luck is not some esoteric, godlike phenomenon. Luck is countable but undefinable. Luck easily can be explained by a number of factors acting in favour of a person. These factors' behaviour could be statistically proved, and the probability of such a result is possible. So, it is not an unexplainable event. Actually, the miracle would be if these events (luck) are not in presence in our life. So, make your luck!"

When our personal world is dark, we seek to fix the blame on any one of a number of factors—heredity, parents, destiny, what is known as bad luck or the bad break, and occasionally even on God. It takes a long while to learn that sometimes we, ourselves, put out or, at least cloud over, our own sun, and that all things balance in the end. In nights of darkness we forget the shining days, though everyone experiences both.

I have often wondered why I’ve survived. Yet I know the answer. It’s luck. Luck is a greater factor than anyone who succeeds ever wants to believe. The idea that one is destined to be the person who remains standing, the person smart enough to make all the money, to retain the beauty, is far more seductive. If there is good luck, there is bad luck. That is a reality no one wants to contemplate. But it is reality. I am merely lucky to be alive.

December 8, 1986 Hello John: Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place. You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.” And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?” They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds. Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: “I put in 35 years…” “It ain’t right…” “I don’t know what to do…” They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait? I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!” One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life. So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die. To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself. Your boy, Hank

Our Western emphasis on the individual makes us believe we are singularly responsible for and have control over the shape of our lives, she explained, whereas in the East there’s a greater awareness that many factors—norms, obligations, expectations, other people, the situation, luck, circumstance—determine how our lives turn out, and if they turn out the way we want. “In those Eastern worlds, the idea of having a positive self is less important, because the individual isn’t afforded as much efficacy,” she said.

in the case of the Coxey industrials, they appeared to want something they had not earned. Their demands implied that poverty and unemployment did not stem from laziness or even bad luck, but rather from larger, systemic problems in the economy, in society—factors that were beyond any one person’s control.59 Such a claim raised vexing questions. Self-reliance, resourcefulness, individual initiative—these traits were intrinsic to the ideal of what it meant to be American. Americans always made do. If government took greater responsibility for people’s well-being, would that not alter the very essence of the United States, seduce and possibly corrupt its character? Was that not the aim of those foreign theories spread in workers’ enclaves in the big cities—anarchism, Communism, Socialism?

The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself. To see how fully our moral intuitions must shift, consider what would happen if we discovered a cure for human evil. Imagine that every relevant change in the human brain could now be made cheaply, painlessly, and safely. In fact, the cure could be put directly into the food supply, like vitamin D. Evil would become nothing more than a nutritional deficiency.

Web Design - Give Your Brand Global Recognition Running a small business seems easy but actually, it is not. Surprised? Well, there’s a lot to look after and accomplish without violating the budget and resources. If you own a small business and planning to take it to new heights, you must begin with a professional web design company. Why? Because to let your audience know about your products and services, you got to make your online presence. To make a visible impact online, you need to give your organization a face, which is possible only with a well-designed website that’s professional yet user-friendly. When a website has to be designed, a number of factors are meant to be considered. Font, images, content, alignment, graphics, loading time and interface are the major factors to be careful about. What else? You need to ensure that your brand’s message is displayed the right way and at the right place. Call-to-action has to be there and the design must be in a way that attracts the audience. Want to know more? Length and number of pages also matter, as they play a great role in the presentation and are responsible to hold the audience. All this must be sounding like a lot of stuff and complicated but it is all easy with the right small business web design company by your side. It will understand your business, its needs, and goals for long-term and come with a website which is liked by the audience the moment they click it. All you need to be careful is finding the company that’s worth time and money you invest. The market is flooded with a number of web designers who boast a lot but are not worth what they say. Hiring the wrong designers may cause serious consequences for your website and eventually business. To stay away from coming across such ugly experiences, take enough time and settle for the best professionals. Check their previous work, feedback, price plan and expertise before finalizing anything. Keep this brief piece of information in mind and gift your small business the website it deserves. Good Luck!

The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

Feeling unlucky? Find opportunities, work your butts off and nail them!

If I had to sum up my life, my journey in one word, it would be today. I did it all for this moment. The irony is, I never knew through my plotting and scheming a day like this could exist for me. Fate threw me the cards while Karma had its wicked way with me. Luck was never factored in, but it came through for this opportunist enough to know that at times, it was present, and others it had abandoned me completely. Noted, luck. And fuck you for it. But if I have to measure my life against the uncontrollable powers of what could be, at any time, for or against me, I’ll have to bat them all away. I’ll have to choose something else to measure my life by, a different entity all together, a cosmic force to trump all others, her. Without her, my purpose would feel meaningless, as would this day.

In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the fifty of them where you got lucky, so we want to factor luck out of it … I want to live in a way that if my life played out 1,000 times, Naval is successful 999 times.

So where does this leave us? Are we a rational animal, or as Robert Heinlein said, merely a rationalising one? Sure, there’s no shortage of evidence that our intuitions, emotions, prejudices and motivations can push reason around. Good luck to you if you want to use only argument to persuade - unless you’ve got people who already like you or trust you (ideally both) you’re going to have a hard time, but amidst the storm and shouting of psychological factors, reason has a quiet power. People do change each other’s minds, and if you can demonstrate the truth of your point of view, or help someone come to realise the short-comings of theirs, maybe you can shift them along. But beware Singer’s warning - logic has its own dynamic. If you open yourself to sincerely engage in argument then it is as likely that your interlocutor will persuade you as the other way around, after all, none of us has the sole claim on what it means to be rational.

Is grit the only psychological factor that determines success? Not at all. A lot of factors determine success. Emotional intelligence. Physical talent. Intelligence. Conscientiousness. Self-control. Imagination. The list goes on. For everyday functioning, my research suggests that grit isn’t as important as self-control in the face of distractions and temptations. For making friends, emotional intelligence is probably more useful. And as I mentioned in chapter 13, there is a long list of character strengths more consequential than grit in a moral sense. Greatness is wonderful but goodness ever so much more so. And, of course, there is luck. And opportunity. Grit isn’t everything. So, why a whole book—and a whole research career—centered on grit? Because grit holds special significance for the achievement of excellence. This is true whether the endeavor in question is physical, mental, entrepreneurial, civic, or artistic. When you look at the best of the best across domains, the combination of passion and perseverance sustained over the long term is a common denominator. It’s often said that the last mile is the longest. Grit keeps you on the path.

HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY. LUCK IS NOT A FACTOR. FEAR IS NOT AN OPTION. I

A lot of things that happen in life are random. Let’s explore this through an analogy: Grains of Sand in a bucket If you pour sand into a bucket, statistically, there will be some grains on the top, most in the middle and some on the bottom. All grains can’t be at the top. So, does it mean the grains of sands at the top special/better than the ones at the bottom? or is it just blind randomness at play? You might say the human mind is not a grain of sand, it has talent and the capacity to think. Well, what determined your talents and thoughts? Did you choose them or were they too influenced by factors beyond your control? I would argue that your talents and your thoughts themselves are not conjured up by you alone, but are also the result of luck and circumstances.

Luck is undoubtedly a massive multiplying factor to your efforts. If you have a good luck, obviously the product will be higher as compared to having bad luck. But in school we were taught something, really important. Multiply anything by zero and it results in zero. So what do you think the result of great luck and zero effort shall be?

This is where the Rule of 150 comes from. Since the extra ownership costs are approximately equal to the interest of a typical mortgage over nine years, and the interest is approximately 50 percent of your mortgage payment during that time, you have to multiply your monthly mortgage payment by 150 percent. This is how much your house will actually cost per month, once all expenses are factored in. If that Rule of 150 monthly cost is higher than your rent, then it makes sense to rent. If it’s lower, then it makes sense to buy.

... there is one BIG factor to take into account before listening to any NAPS recording, and that is clearing yourself of self-limiting beliefs and fears of overcoming!

I have a quiet, obstinate belief that if you have a dream, you’re the only person who can make it happen. But I also know that, no matter how dedicated you are, at any second life can throw you a curveball and that there are other factors at play, such as timing, luck and opportunity, too. So, if you’ve ever wondered about that long-shot idea you have, that you’ve always pushed to the back of your mind, what do you have to lose? It’s worth taking a leap of faith for the simple reason that, unless you try, you’ll never know…

Consider an event from the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the world’s greatest military strategists: During a meeting, his subordinates informed Napoleon Bonaparte of a new general who was turning out to be extremely capable. The new man’s bravery, skill, determination and organizational capabilities were outlined for Napoleon in great detail. Napoleon waved his hand impatiently. ‘That’s all very well,’ said Napoleon. ‘But tell me: Is he lucky?’ Napoleon’s question may sound rather strange in our times, but he saw luck as a personal trait rather than an extraneous factor. A

There has been one further element to Man vs. Wild’s success, and that is its underlying message. I believe it is actually the biggest factor. If you think about it, at heart, there is such a strong link between survival and life. I mean, we are all in a battle of some sort, aren’t we? Surviving. It feels like day by day sometimes. But talent, skill, and luck are only a part of what carries people through. A small part. There is a bigger element that separates the real survivors. It is heart, hope, and doggedness. Those are the qualities that really matter. Ditto in life. A young kid came up to me in the street a few days ago. He looked me square in the eye and asked me: “If you could tell me one survival message, what would it be?” I thought about it for a moment. I wanted to give him a decent answer. Then I saw it very clearly. “Smile when it’s raining, and when you’re going through hell--keep going.” The boy thought for a moment. Then he looked up at me and said: “It rains a lot where I live.” We all know the feeling. Maybe he’ll remember the message one day--when he really needs it.

As we try to learn from the past, we form patterns of thinking based on our experiences, not realizing that the things that happened have an unfair advantage over the things that didn’t. In other words, we can’t see the alternatives that might well have happened if not for some small chance event. When a bad thing happens, people will draw conclusions that might include conspiracy or forces acting against them or, conversely, if a good thing happens, that they are brilliant and deserving. But these kinds of misperceptions ultimately deceive us. And this has consequences in business—and for the way we manage. When companies are successful, it is natural to assume that this is a result of leaders making shrewd decisions. Those leaders go forward believing that they have figured out the key to building a thriving company. In fact, randomness and luck played a key role in that success. If you run a business that is covered with any frequency by the media, you may face another challenge. Journalists tend to look for patterns that can be explained in a relatively small number of words. If you haven’t done the work of teasing apart what is random and what you have intentionally set in motion, you will be overly influenced by the analysis of outside observers, which is often oversimplified. When managing a company that is often in the news, as Pixar is, we must be careful not to believe our own hype. I say this knowing that it is difficult to resist, especially when we are flying high and tempted to think we have done everything right. But the truth is, I have no way of accounting for all of the factors involved in any given success, and whenever I learn more, I have to revise what I think. That’s not a weakness or a flaw. That’s reality.

people readily accept credit when told they have succeeded, attributing it to their ability and effort. Yet they attribute failure to such external factors as bad luck or the problem’s “impossibility.” When we win at Scrabble, it’s because of our verbal dexterity. When we lose, it’s because “I was stuck with a Q but no U.

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly. The

There are always three factors involved in survival, no matter how toxic the environment. One is the physical reality; the second is dumb luck; and the third is the response of the organism, which can often modify the influence of the first two. The relationship of these three factors can be imagined as dials on an amplifier, with survival depending on the overall mix.

BOTSWANA, CHINA, and the U.S. South, just like the Glorious Revolution in England, the French Revolution, and the Meiji Restoration in Japan, are vivid illustrations that history is not destiny. Despite the vicious circle, extractive institutions can be replaced by inclusive ones. But it is neither automatic nor easy. A confluence of factors, in particular a critical juncture coupled with a broad coalition of those pushing for reform or other propitious existing institutions, is often necessary for a nation to make strides toward more inclusive institutions. In addition some luck is key, because history always unfolds in a contingent way.

Entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant put it this way: “In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the fifty of them where you got lucky, so we want to factor luck out of it. . . . I want to live in a way that if my life played out 1,000 times, Naval is successful 999 times.

Time is the dominant factor in gambling. Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin, for if there were no tomorrow there would be no risk. Time transforms risk, and the nature of risk is shaped by the time horizon: the future is the playing field. Time matters most when decisions are irreversible. And yet many irreversible decisions must be made on the basis of incomplete information. Irreversibility dominates decisions ranging all the way from taking the subway instead of a taxi, to building an automobile factory in Brazil, to changing jobs, to declaring war. If we buy a stock today, we can always sell it tomorrow. But what do we do after the croupier at the roulette table cries, “No more bets!” or after a poker bet is doubled? There is no going back. Should we refrain from acting in the hope that the passage of time will make luck or the probabilities turn in our favor? Hamlet complained that too much hesitation in the face of uncertain outcomes is bad because “the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought . . . and enterprises of great pith and moment . . . lose the name of action.” Yet once we act, we forfeit the option of waiting until new information comes along. As a result, not-acting has value.

Someone like Bella ought to have a protector, a guardian angel. She deserved that. And yet, clearly, she’d been left defenseless. I would love to believe an angel or anything else was watching over her, anything that would give her a measure of protection, but when I tried to imagine that champion, it was obvious such a thing was impossible. What guardian angel would have allowed Bella to come here? To cross my path, formed, as she was, in such a fashion that there was no way I could possibly overlook her? A ridiculously potent scent to demand my attention, a silent mind to enflame my curiosity, a quiet beauty to hold my eyes, a selfless soul to earn my awe. Factor in the total lack of self-preservation so she was not repelled by me, and then of course add the wide streak of appallingly bad luck that put her always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The truth is, we have no idea when our big break will come. However, maximizing your systems—distribution, PR, sales, a killer X factor, and positioning for Geoffrey Moore’s tornado—will allow you to maximize the impact when that big break does eventually hit. Not to mention that you can further maximize your luck through knowing how to hack your growth.

Evaluation must be done in hindsight, after the work has been done, not for proposals for work to be done. That said, secondary factors must carry some weigh, because research results depend too much on historical contingency and luck. As articulated by Ralph Bown, vice president of research at Bell Labs from 1951 to 1955: 'A conviction on the part of employees that meritorious performance will be honestly appraised and adequately rewarded is a necessary ingredient of their loyalty. This appraisal, to be fair and convincing, must be based on the individual's performance and capabilities rather than wholly on the direct value of his results. A system which rewards only those lucky enough to strike an idea which pays off handsomely will not have the cooperative teamwork needed for vitality of the enterprise as a whole.

ADJUSTING OUR STANDARDS for accepting evidence to favor our preferred conclusions is but one instrument in the subliminal mind’s motivated reasoning tool kit. Other ways we find support for our worldviews (including our view of ourselves) include adjusting the importance we assign to various pieces of evidence and, sometimes, ignoring unfavorable evidence altogether. For example, ever notice how, after a win, sports fans crow about their team’s great play, but after a loss they often ignore the quality of play and focus on Lady Luck or the referees?35 Similarly, executives in public companies pat themselves on the back for good outcomes but suddenly recognize the importance of random environmental factors when performance is poor.3

There is something so mocking about this situation, something so wrong, that one feels that it is not explained by all the errors and mischances that had occurred: by the commander-in-chief pacing about his headquarters at Imbros when he might just as well have been asleep, by Stopford lying in bed at sea when he should have been wide awake on shore, by the landing of raw troops at night instead of experienced men at dawn, by the appointment of elderly, inefficient commanders, by the excessive secrecy that had kept so much in the dark, by the thirst and the heat and the uncharted reefs beneath the sea. In the face of so much mismanagement things were bound to go wrong, yet not so wrong as all this. Somewhere, one feels, there must be some missing factor which has not been brought to light--some element of luck neglected, some supernatural accident, some evil chain of coincidence that nobody could have anticipated.

The Japanese were never ones to allow calculations of material forces (or a roll of the dice) to take precedence over their deeply held belief in the primacy of fighting spirit and the unquantifiable superiority of Japanese crews and equipment. These games were “mere mathematical exercises.” They ignored the factors of luck and divine guidance, factors that the proponents were sure favored the Japanese.

Luck also played a part. Any successful actor or writer or artist will tell you that luck is a crucial factor. But the only way to get lucky is to be prepared for luck to find you. Writers write. Actors act. If you’re not constantly applying your talents to your craft, no one is going to stop you on the street and say, “Hey, come write this TV show!” Or, “I want you to star in my movie.

Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great coach or teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that matters, it’s incomplete. Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.

you have to multiply your monthly mortgage payment by 150 percent. This is how much your house will actually cost per month, once all expenses are factored in. If that Rule of 150 monthly cost is higher than your rent, then it makes sense to rent. If it’s lower, then it makes sense to buy.

Hookworms,” I said. “Hookworms?” He took the seat next to me. “Never heard of that. ” I sipped from my third Bahamalama-Dingdong. “Well, they burrow in through your feet, using this enzyme that breaks down skin tissue, then travel along the bloodstream till they get into your lungs. They mess up your breathing, so you cough them up. But you know how you always swallow a little bit of phlegm?” One of his eyebrows raised, but he admitted he did. “Well, a few hookworm eggs get swallowed along with the phlegm and travel down into your intestines, where they grow to be about half an inch long.” I held up my fingers a hookworm’s length apart. “And they develop this circle of teeth in their mouths, like a coil of barbed wire. They start chomping into your intestinal wall and sucking your blood.” I realized I was going into drunken detail here and paused to check if he was still interested. “Really?” His voice sounded a bit dry. I nodded. “Wouldn’t lie to you, Dave. But here’s the cool thing. They produce this special anticlotting factor, kind of like blood antifreeze, so the wound doesn’t scab over. You become a sort of temporary hemophiliac, just in that one spot. Your intestines won’t stop bleeding until the hookworm gets its fill!” “Hookworms, huh?” he asked. “That’s what they’re called.” Dave nodded gravely, standing back up. He grasped my shoulder firmly, a serious expression on his face. His thoughtful features seemed to reflect for a moment the hard road I had in front of me. “Good luck with that,” he said.

But where is this war? This is probably the most peaceful period in history." Chang gave him an inscrutable smile. "You will know more soon. Everyone will know. Professor Wang, have you ever had anything happen to you that changed your life completely? Some event where afterward the world became a totally different place for you?" "No." "Then your life has been fortunate. The world is full of unpredictable factors, yet you have never faced a crisis." Wang turned over the words in his mind, still not understanding. "I think that's true of most lives." Then most people have lived fortunately." "But... many generations have lived in this plain manner." "All fortunate." Wang laughed, shaking his head. "I have to confess that I'm not feeling very sharp today. Are you suggesting that --" "Yes, the entire history of humankind has been fortunate. From the Stone Age till now, no real crisis has occurred. We've been very lucky. But if it's all luck, then it has to end one day. Let me tell you: It's ended. Prepare for the worst.

But where is this war? This is probably the most peaceful period in history." Chang gave him an inscrutable smile. "You will know more soon. Everyone will know. Professor Wang, have you ever had anything happen to you that changed your life completely? Some event where afterward the world became a totally different place for you?" "No." "Then your life has been fortunate. The world is full of unpredictable factors, yet you have never faced a crisis." Wang turned over the words in his mind, still not understanding. "I think that's true of most lives." Then most people have lived fortunately." "But... many generations have lived in this plain manner." "All fortunate." Wang laughed, shaking his head. "I have to confess that I'm not feeling very sharp today. Are you suggesting that --" "Yes, the entire history of humankind has been fortunate. From the Stone Age till now, no real crisis has occurred. We've been very lucky. But if it's all luck, then it has to end one day. Let me tell you: It's ended. Prepare for the worst.

On the other hand, when a company’s value curve lacks focus, its cost structure will tend to be high and its business model complex in implementation and execution. When it lacks divergence, a company’s strategy is a me-too, with no reason to stand apart in the marketplace. When it lacks a compelling tagline that speaks to buyers, it is likely to be internally driven or a classic example of innovation for innovation’s sake with no great commercial potential and no natural take-off capability. A Company Caught in the Red Ocean When a company’s value curve converges with its competitors, it signals that a company is likely caught within the red ocean of bloody competition. A company’s explicit or implicit strategy tends to be trying to outdo its competition on the basis of cost or quality. This signals slow growth unless, by the grace of luck, the company benefits from being in an industry that is growing on its own accord. This growth is not due to a company’s strategy, however, but to luck. Overdelivery without Payback When a company’s value curve on the strategy canvas is shown to deliver high levels across all factors, the question is, Does the company’s market share and profitability reflect these investments? If not, the strategy canvas signals that the company may be oversupplying its customers, offering too much of those elements that add incremental value to buyers. To value-innovate, the company must decide which factors to eliminate and reduce—and not only those to raise and create—to construct a divergent value curve. Strategic Contradictions Are there strategic contradictions? These are areas where a company is offering a high level on one competing factor while ignoring others that support that factor. An example is investing heavily in making a company’s website easy to use but failing to correct the site’s slow speed of operation. Strategic inconsistencies can also be found between the level of your offering and your price. For example, a petroleum station company found that it offered “less for more”: fewer services than the best competitor at a higher price. No wonder it was losing market share fast.

Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great coach or teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that matters, it’s incomplete. Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive. Let me give you a few examples.

It’s maths, Poe, not luck,’ she said without a trace of irony. ‘Toast usually falls from the table and is almost always butter side up when it does. Unless there are outside factors involved, the spin rate is rarely fast enough for it to go through a full revolution before it reaches the ground. If tables were ten feet high, we would say that toast always seems to land butter side up.

There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

What’s the difference between the best athletes and everyone else?” I asked. “What do the really successful people do that most don’t?” He mentioned the factors you might expect: genetics, luck, talent. But then he said something I wasn’t expecting: “At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.

A confluence of factors, in particular a critical juncture coupled with a broad coalition of those pushing for reform or other propitious existing institutions, is often necessary for a nation to make strides toward more inclusive institutions. In addition some luck is key, because history always unfolds in a contingent way.

as urban theorist Mike Davis shows in his book Planet of Slums, more than half the world’s population today lives in shantytowns and favelas, amid filth and squalor, crime, violence, and corruption. Is this because of unfair sharing of wealth, exodus from the countryside, economic exploitation, geographical or political factors, even plain bad luck

KISMET was the force that bridged the gap between what our heart intended and what our words intended. A person could wish for one thing and speak of another, and their fate, their kismet, was the thing that could bring the two together. Even the seagull over there who wanted to land on that pile of trash had started off with only the intention to do so, which it had then put into words of a sort through a series of squawks, but whether the wishes harbored in its heart and expressed in its calls could ever be realized depended on a set of factors that were governed by KISMET—things like wind speed, luck, and timing.

Did you notice in our discussion of the Blue Zones earlier that not only do people in all of those cultures eat meat very rarely, but they also consume goat or sheep milk products rather than cow? Call this luck or intuitive wisdom (or flavor preference). Whatever it is, it is clearly one factor that has helped those people live such long and healthy lives.

Anna asked, “Does that matter? What counts is the result, not the route by which one reaches the result. It’s often all a matter of luck.” Ulf pondered this. The role of luck in human affairs had always intrigued him. So much of what we did was influenced by factors that were beyond our control—the vagaries of others, sequences of events that we initiated in ignorance of where they would lead, chance meetings that led to the making of a decision that would change our life.

The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. To have been born with—or to have developed—a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. To have found a living spiritual master.

After all, there are many external factors and sometimes it’s just luck of the draw in terms of market “cooperation.

It’s amazing what some women are willing to do to tip luck in their favor. To everyone’s surprise, when the MC announces the bride will bestow the honor of future nuptials on one of the singletons, Aunt Carmelita nearly stampedes all over the women at the wedding. From the very back corner of the room, a slash of purple comes running—for my wedding, Carmelita decided that Barney purple would gather the most attention, and it did. Trust me, between the in-your-face shade of her dress, earrings, clutch and matching shoes, her frou-frou British-style hat, and the lime-green belt cinched at her waist contrasting with the whole outfit, it’s impossible to miss her.

Fourth, lucky people have a special ability to turn bad luck into good fortune. Of all four defining factors involved in luck, Wiseman believes this one plays the most important role in survival.

That is why expressing gratitude is so important at this point. It makes you realize that you are where you are because of not only your efforts but because of so many other factors, namely the efforts of others, the right circumstances, and perhaps even a little luck.

It took years before I began to accept the fact that the nebulous “white man’s world” wasn’t as free as it looked; that class, luck, religion all factored in as well; that many white individuals’ problems surpassed my own, often by a lot; that all Jews are not like my grandfather and that part of me is Jewish too. Yet the color boundary in my mind was and still is the greatest hurdle. In order to clear it, my solution was to stay away from it and fly solo.

resilience emerges from a combination of social support (good friends and family), hardship (bad luck), and certain personality traits (especially hyperthymia). Let’s consider each of these factors. Social

The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. To have been born with—or to have developed—a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. To have found a living spiritual master. There