Luck and Success
I recently read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Overall it's a great book which I'd definitely recommend. In particular, there's two points that stuck with me after reading which help explain the role of luck in great success stories.
- Somebody randomly noticed a trend for NBA players where most of them were born in the first months of the year (January through March). Upon further investigation, they also noticed these happened to be the older (and bigger) kids in their primary and high school classes, which ended up creating a massive bias towards them while developing their skills. The difference in size and strength between an almost 7 and a recently 6 year old is huge. This incentivices coaches to pay more attention to the bigger kids of their generation. In turn, these kids become better and get even more and more attention. It's an infinite cycle that plays very much in favor of the older kids and very much against the younger ones. What would have happened if Michael Jordan was born in December?
- Geniuses like Bill Gates are indeed really smart, but it's not just that they had going for them in order to build billion dollar empires. See, Bill Gates was also in the right place at the right time. His high school was among the first to have a computer, and this enabled Gates to become very proficient in programming and Computer Science by the time the revolution was about to begin. He was able to put 10 thousand hours into becoming great at programming, so when there was a world need for it, he was among the best. It's not a coincidence that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born a few months apart and not too far away from each other. There are optimal times (and places) for when to be born in order to have the best chance of success. Industry pioneers of different industries tend to be born in clusters.