What role does luck play in achieving success? Can you strategically increase your chances of catching a lucky break?
In his book Don’t Trust Your Gut, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz uses data analysis to explore the role of luck in success. He reveals that, while luck creates opportunities for everyone, those who succeed are the ones who consistently take advantage of these moments.
Keep reading to discover how you can tip the odds in your favor by making choices that maximize your chances of success.
The Role of Luck in Success
While statistics highlight the relative importance of various life decisions, Stephens-Davidowitz says big data also illustrates the role of luck in success. For instance, consider the world of popular music. An artist might spend years writing songs, performing them in clubs, and sending tracks to record labels without being noticed by the world at large. Then, at random, someone creates a TikTok video using one of the artist’s songs. Out of millions of clips, that video goes viral and the struggling musician is launched into stardom.
(Shortform note: Even if Stephens-Davidowitz is right that luck is a necessary component of success, that doesn’t negate the value of hard work. In The Unfair Advantage, Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba argue that you have to leverage both to achieve what you want. While acknowledging that everyone has different amounts of privilege, luck, and opportunity that influence what they can realistically achieve, Ali and Kubba insist that you should still aggressively pursue your goals—even knowing that some factors are out of your control.)
But does this mean that people who achieve success are just luckier than everyone else? Not so, says Stephens-Davidowitz. While individual luck is hard to measure, he points to data studies of the corporate world that reveal that the most successful businesses experience the same amount of good and bad luck as companies that don’t perform as well. What this means is that luck is useful only if you take advantage of it. According to Stephens-Davidowitz, luck is fairly evenly distributed. All it does is create opportunities; it’s up to you to grab them.
(Shortform note: The specific study Stephens-Davidowitz refers to was the basis of the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hanson. In it, they define a “luck event” as something unpredictable outside of a company’s control that causes a serious impact, either positive or negative. While it almost goes without saying that businesses did well when capitalizing on good luck events, Collins and Hansen write that some companies succeed despite bad luck by practicing resilience and using misfortune as a catalyst for growth.)
As we examine Stephens-Davidowitz’s advice, keep in mind that none of the choices he highlights—whether in your love life, your career, or elsewhere—provide a guarantee of success. What he suggests is that making certain choices tips the odds in your favor. Therefore, like the struggling musician above, you can’t take one chance in the hopes that you’ll succeed. Whether you’re going on dates, starting a business, or writing a hit single, you’ll have to try again and again until your lucky break comes along. Statistically, the more times you roll the dice, the greater the odds that you’ll eventually win.
(Shortform note: Studies by psychologist Richard Wiseman show that there’s more you can do to increase your luck than Stephens-Davidowitz suggests. In The Luck Factor, Wiseman explains that people who self-identify as “lucky” adopt specific mindsets and behaviors. Taking more chances and seizing lucky breaks are among them, but other important factors are believing in luck, listening to intuition—which goes against Stephens-Davidowitz’s advice—and finding ways to turn bad luck around so that it results in a positive outcome.)
