"Acts of God" in your perfect plan

“…luck plays a large role in every story of success”.

“We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events”.

I borrowed these two beautiful quotes from the famous Daniel Kahneman’s book (“Thinking fast and slow”), took them out of context, and would like to examine under a career angle.

Depending on what type of a careerist reads these lines, takeaways could be pretty varied – from “it’s not worth to plan anything” to “how do I increase the percentage of chances for myself”.

For high achievers and those who love things in order and under control – consider the “acts of God” scenario. You might have predicted everything right, you might have delivered 150% a number of times – and still there’s always a chance that your plan will walk its own way. As nearly perfect as you are, you are still part of a bigger system – where anything could fail. As highly responsible as you are, it might not be solely on you.

For those who go with the flow and have no plan – luck alone is not a promise of success. It is a potential for success, where at some point you will have to be present and earn credit. If discipline and diligence are not your strengths, think of your efforts as a generator of future occasions for luck.

For all those in between – congratulations for striking the balance.

My appeal today is the following. Compare yourself with your past self on a journey to your future self. This is the only story you know, as all other stories do not belong to us, - and we never know the luck-effort ratio. Nor shall we attempt to judge, whoever. Including ourselves.