We tend to think of luck as something rare and unexpected, but what if it plays a predictable and recurring role in what we call success?

We believe that personal characteristics like talent, hard work, resilience and so on are responsible for people’s success – and to some degree, they are.

But there is always an extra element that seemingly isn’t explained by personal attributes.

Maybe, the most “successful” people in the world really are just the luckiest.

Or, they’re the people who’ve learned the rules of that hidden dimension.

“It is very well known that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities) exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth — often considered as a proxy of success — follows typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale-invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes. In this paper, we suggest that such an ingredient is just randomness. In particular, our simple agent-based model shows that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by averagely talented but sensibly luckier individuals.”

If the secret ingredient is randomness, is there a way to invite more of it into our lives?

If improving your raw talent and merit is not what results in success, then what does?

For now, it’s enough to note that luck is not merely something nice to have on top of a sound strategy for success – it is basically the only strategy!

#AlessandroPluchino #AndreaRaspirarda #AlessioBiondo #BentleyCoffey #PatrickMcLaughlin #BrankoMilanovic #Coffey #Einav #EmotionalAbundance #Leeat #LeeatYariv #Liran #LiranEinav #LuckyBreaks #LuckyEvent #LuckyPeople #MaxGunthers #Milanovic #NassimTaleb #NickTrenton #Pluchino #Raspirarda #RobertFrank #Trenton #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #TheScienceofBeingLucky

Keep the words flowing by buying me a coffee.

Categories: Voice over Work