In history, we have learnt that hard work and luck are what contribute majorly to human success. However, over time, our opinions over which one contributes the most have split. Now, I will critically examine both factors and present evidence to either tilt the scales or balance them.
As much as you may want to rate luck as the top factor, there is no doubt that hard work helps to utilise presented opportunities better. By simply channelling your talent and exerting enough hard work, the chances of being successful increase.
Hard work may seem like the right choice when asked what factors correlate more with success. However, reality and research say otherwise. From what I can gather, hard work and effort facilitate majorly only about 9% of successes. At most, hard work is only 45% of the walk that leads to success.
I am sure you are familiar with the stories around the success of Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams, and Elon Musk. Well, you can say these are classic hardwork tales, despite these individuals amassing quite a lot of talent.
However, what we do overlook is how hard work depends on some other external factors. It could be a struggle from childhood, an inspiring individual, desperation to reach the top by all means necessary, or a mere case of reward and punishment.
On the other hand, luck can be a stand-alone contributor to success. In gambling, for example, top Indian online casinos comprise games that utilise Random Number Generators. With RNG, you can only win by luck. No amount of hard work can facilitate your success in this regard.
Robert Frank – a known Economist, concluded that luck contributes to success more than we think. Another research from the University of Catania mentioned that many companies went downhill because they did not get the necessary luck to succeed.
Another study from the University of Chicago shows that luck is more necessary in Entrepreneurship than any other factor. They established that entrepreneurs who got lucky very early in their careers eventually become more successful in the long run.
Nevertheless, we often forget other success factors, however biassed they may seem. Race, nationality, age, and economic factors may play a big part in success in varied circumstances in which they may be applicable. All of these factors, together with hard work, passion, and luck, drives us all towards achieving our set goals and desires.
We all have different stories, and it may be unwise for you to assume perspectives to someone else’s. So, there might not and should not be a single direct answer to satisfy the question of the importance of luck and hard work in success.
However random you may assume luck to be or how much you would want to balance the scale, the truth speaks differently in research. Luck always comes first before any other factor. In fact, talent sometimes may be ahead of hard work, which comes in last stead.