Luck did not play a big part in Bill Gates' success
One of the theories in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers is that luck plays a big part in success, for example, having the luck of being born in the right place, or at the right time, or into the right family. However, my research shows that luck has very little to do with success. In my book Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky, and RICH there many examples of people who had incredibly bad luck, but they followed the Eight Success Principles and achieved extraordinary success.
During his speech on stage at the TED conference, Bill Gates attributed his achievements more to the sixth Success Principle – IMPROVE – than to luck. He said, “When I was young, I got to use computers. That was very lucky.” But then he highlighted a more important reason for his success: “I got to work at a computer company where, because I was pretty good, these senior people looked at my code and told me, ‘No, that’s not as good as it can be,’ and so I got better. And then I had another experience where a great developer looked at my code and told me how to do it better.”
Yes, making the effort to IMPROVE and get better at something was more important to Bill’s success than luck. After all, many other kids also had the luck of using computers in those early years, but they did not achieve Bill’s level of success. Therefore, luck was not the differentiator. The difference was that Bill got good at it, kept improving, and took it further than the others, regardless of the luck he had. So the good news is, our success is NOT determined by this thing we have no control over called luck. Our success is the result of doing things that we do have control over – the Eight Success Principles.
Click here to see Bill Gates interviewed by Chris Anderson at TED
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Richard;
I’ve always believed luck plays a small part. More important than that, however, is putting one foot in front of the other and moving along, improving on the way. “Our success is the result of doing things that we do have control over” says it all.
Mike
I think you’re misattributing the emphasis on luck of Outliers, in fact he says luck is a little part of it, it’s what you do with circumstances – i.e. take a lemon and make lemonade. He gives plenty of examples where people were lucked out (Jewish lawyers excluded from practising certain types of law for example), and just carried on and found their niche.
There’s room for both of you on the ’success’ band wagon!
I watched this other great video (2 min long) on how luck doesn’t really give talent nor success. It is also very good edited.
Talent = 10000 Hours + Luck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUuJo_DeyI
So yeah, no mysterious god poke Bill and gave him talent and luck to succeed.
First, I want to say that I’m not good at English. I’m from Morocco, I’m not a native English speaker, so I hope you can understand what I’m going to write.
I really appreciate the way you make everything clear and always succeed in “materializing” complex and abstract subjects like the 8 principles of success and even the concept of SUCCESS itself. Your original method of analyzing eliminates a lot of the doubt that can waste our energy.
We also waste energy thinking about LUCK because it’s unpredictable, and we can’t control it or apply it like we can the 8 principles. And it’s impossible to make a scientific, logical, structure or process that relies on luck, like the wonderful one you established for success.
I don’t say that luck doesn’t exist, but it’s simply irrelevant when it comes to success and it has also no evidence in reality. It’s totally the opposite of what you discovered with the 8 principles, and what you proved in your extraordinary research.
luck isn’t the differentiator when the context is a bunch of kids who by definition were already lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. but luck is the differentiator when you put bill in the context of all the other clever people who have improved as much as he has in other eras, where their talent didn’t align as sweetly with the environment. whichever way you look at it, both play a part.
i believe that following your principles relegates luck to a bit-part player, instead giving you majority control. whereas relying on luck alone is like playing the lottery.
Richard Wiseman in his research on luck found that it too can be learned. Read “Luck Factor”
THANK YOU. That was one thing in Outliers that really annoyed me. Too much credit was given to luck, and I’ve gotten in so many arguments over this. I am with you when you say that luck isn’t a huge factor. Everyone has some type of experience or occurrence that is special and unique. It’s whether you recognize it and do something with it that makes all the difference.
But I wouldn’t mind reading Wiseman and how luck can be learned. Although I’m skeptical, it sounds interesting.