If you are able to watch this video you're probably luckier than most people, to an extent
how i built this is an NPR podcast presented by Guy Raz he interviews entrepreneurs idealists
and so on on how they built their business for success and at the end of the interview
he always ends with this question how much of your success do you attribute to your own talents and
hard work and how much is luck there's a lot of business people that go on that show and they said
their success was peel it down to their hard work and no luck there's no doubt that these people
certainly worked hard but i want to challenge that a bit today because to a certain extent
they were lucky people don't like it when you say they built their success with a bit of luck
although luck does play a big role in people's success so to start off let's try and understand
why most people believe is really down to their hard work the reason we all tend to believe in our
efforts for success rather than luck is because of what's called the egocentric bias we like
to think we're actually better than we actually are ask any couple for example to calculate the
percentage of house work that they do out of the percentages it will come to more than 100
we overestimate our contributions and we overestimate how good we actually are
so we actually believe that we're fairer than we think we are so we have a tendency
to be biased towards our perspective and not that of others and external factors
when we are looking at our successes we're quick to pin that to ourselves our efforts
and not so much of the external factors another example when given public talks people assume
that their nervousness is more noticeable to others than it actually is that assumption is
also an example of egocentric bias they are looking at this from their own perspective
some people have inherited privileges that give them a good head start inheritances
like money donald trump for example we know that he inherited some of his world from his father
this advantage he had called it what you may lock it had to be incorporated with hard work to
get trump to where he is right now and there's not denying that because at some point donald
trump did declare himself bankrupt and he had to rebuild his wealth but hard work alone too
is not enough construction workers and waiters slash waitresses work harder than
most billionaires but they aren't necessarily rich let's take a look at bill gates success bill gates
was born to a wealthy father who was a lawyer and his mother was the daughter of a successful
banker he went to a private school where they started a computer club in the 1960s when most
educational institutions including universities didn't even have computers so he began programming
at an early age in his early teens before most people could actually program at that time
in addition to that he became obsessed with it he has several other opportunities to learn
programming that weren't available to everyone else in the book outliers by malcolm gladwell
when posing the question of how many teenagers in the world had the kind of experience gates
had bill gates's response was if there were 50 in the world i'd be stunned also just as you
don't get to choose the country you're born in you also don't get to choose your parents go figure
and parents can of course be a huge influence on who you become so yes life is unfair full stop
and i'm not saying that to bring a sad tone to this but my aim is to raise some awareness about
certain privileges that you may have that you've been down playing or for some people opportunities
that may not even exist at all on the other hand we've all got things we can control which are
hard work and great it will probably be not be the best use of energy to try and recreate bill gates
success or what he has done for this generation but with the right opportunities that come your
way as cliche as it may sound you can be a better version of yourself yes bill gates and steve jobs
had opportunities that may not match up with yours and were born at a different time we too can also
create our own luck how well by being active go out and meet people and actually create something
and show it to people get feedback write your plan and share it just get things done
on the flip side being unaware of the role luck plays and success encourages
us to work hard because when we dwell on how some people are like you than others
we may become complacent believing our fate is fixed whereas realizing the implications of luck
but also knowing how to create our own luck encourages us to be persistent
you probably need both luck and hard work to get far i think and sometimes a sprinkle of
talent it's unfortunate that a lot of successful people and leaders not all do not realize the
lack they've had to get them where they are even though they genuinely work hard to get there but
dig deeper you find some elements of luck in most cases so to those people everyone else who doesn't
get far in life appears not as resilient or hard working these people may tend to be less kind so
accepting how lucky you are will make you grateful and perhaps kinder your gay technologies the lucky
opportunities has had in his own words he had a better exposure to software development at
a young age than he thinks anyone did in that period of time and all because of
an incredibly lucky series of events right now bill gates is not able to give away his wealth
quick enough through his foundation the bill and melinda case foundation in efforts to eradicate
diseases in poor countries improve sanitation for african communities and many other things
and i think it's down to his appreciation of the opportunities has had him giving away his wealth
it's obviously down to several other reasons we can speculate on us all but i think that's
mainly the reason i think we should all strive to give back what we can so we also give others
an opportunity that they may not have otherwise had i hope i've done a good job in making you
aware of the common bias that we all have and perhaps will help you consider your own luck
i'll be posting a video of my own story regarding my own lucky breaks soon so look out for that
and um please share your lucky stories below i want to hear them well that's it for now peace out
you