The Skill Vs. Luck Debate
It’s a very common trait observed with most of the successful people we have met or interacted with – they are very proud of their achievements and they attribute their success to some sort of special skill they possess and undermine the role that lady luck plays in their success. On the contrary, most failures are attributed to lady luck or the unfavorable external environment.
A tale of two brilliant techies who joined Blackberry and Apple Inc respectively in 2008 summarizes it very succinctly. Blackberry was the dream job at the campus, paid slightly higher in 2008. Five years later, one of them heads an application development team and the other is struggling with interviews to find the right job. Not that the skill levels of the two graduates were any different at the time of graduation! The guy working for Apple Inc attributes his success to his tech & people skills while the Blackberry guy attributes his failure to an external event called ‘the collapse of blackberry’.
GreenEdge Wealth Services’ View
Jobs, marriages and investments – each of them have an element of luck and skill embedded into it. Being successful in them (or bouncing back from a failure in them!) requires a sound understanding of the role of luck and skill and reducing the role of luck and increasing the role of skill. You may have been plain lucky or a visionary to have bought a house in recession of 2009 or not to have bought stocks in 2008. Realizing what part of your success / failure comes from luck / skill will motivate you to work hard and reduce the roles of lady luck in your life.
As for your financial dreams, leaving money in your savings account or bank fixed deposits is tantamount to leaving a lot to luck – you should pray that house prices or living expenses go up only at the FD rate! Or that you salary hike continues to be super normal! Remember that when there are one billion people competing with one another for resources, leaving things to luck isn’t the best idea. You will need to look at investing in real estate, stocks or a business! Sooner rather than later! And you may need to acquire the ‘skill’ to ‘Do-It-Yourself’ or to find someone who has that skill so that you reduce your dependence on luck.