What matters the most: hard work, a sharp mind, or luck?

Without opportunity (luck) good enough to make hard work worth it, you will not work hard, and even if you do, it will be for nothing. Then again, without the sharp mind to recognize when an opportunity is good enough, you won’t be able to recognize it as an opportunity, and you’ll miss it. Then again, just having a sharp mind is a product of luck, since your genetics, and your random life circumstances, where the ones that shaped your mental processes, and bestowed upon you a sharp mind.

If you ask me, luck is the most important thing in life: the parents you just happened to be born to, the country you arrived into, the socioeconomic class you found yourself in as a child, the closest friends available to you as a child, the education you happened to expose yourself to, the books you happened to study, the Quora answers you just happened to read.

Here’s the thing…

👉 Most people lie blatantly about how they succeeded. I used to write branding and thought leadership pieces on C-level executives who lied through their teeth about how they supposedly “succeeded”. As an insider, I knew they came from rich politically connected families. I knew they had first-access insider information about legislation that would be rolled out in the near future, giving them an unfair heads-up on what kind of business to start, and how. No one could compete with them when they knew exactly what government-mandated service to provide, and when to start. This kind of luck, is not only unfair, but it is also illegal in civilized societies. Others had their political connections arrange for them special government funding, which is in really theft from actual businesses through taxes. And others appoint their fame to “hard work”, neglecting the fact that they had somehow graduated from Harvard, a university only for the networked “elite”. And these people pretend to have “worked hard” or “started from nothing”, lying to your face, and comparing you to fake unrealistic unachievable standards. Is there anything more demotivating than their fake success stories?

People who say that hard work is more important than luck want to distract you from the fact that they were luckier than you. Even if they did work hard, hard work is easy when you’re in luck and have everything going for you. There are no lazy people. There are just people who don’t want to work hard for negligible probability of success. Those who say “no excuses” are burdening you with toxic positivity as they blame you for your misfortune, while they deny their own fortune.

Not all of us are lucky enough to get opportunities, and not all of us are lucky enough to have a sharp mind to recognize opportunities, so we let them pass us by.

If you are lucky enough to read this (opportunity), I suggest you sharpen your mind to be able to recognize opportunities. Be a bit cynical, and understand that most of what you hear are lies designed to protect people’s unfair advantages (luck). This is how you’ll be able to see how they REALLY succeeded, instead of falling for the lie of “just hard work”. For example, modern art is simply money laundering. Most of foreign investment is that too. A business owner succeeds because he has bribed police or municipality employees to give him unfair advantage over competitors. A big corporation ends up monopolizing because it has lobbied (bribed) politicians to pass favorable regulations that crush his competition while giving him tax exemptions legal windows, state funding, and barriers of entry for new competitors. A war erupts supposedly for historical hatred, but this is only the pretext used by banks and military industrialists to rile up the useful idiots, and get them to kill each other for money.

A podcaster becomes successful, not because he’s got an amazing message or presence, but because he was lucky enough to start producing when a social media platform was young enough to establish him as an early influencer.

Notice how many content creators have undeservingly small or big followings. Notice how the most amazing musicians are just street performers. Notice how the most successful people on earth just happen to succeed in specific geographical areas. These signify luck (opportunity) as the determining factor of success.

Learn how the world really works and how people truly become successful, Most successful people don’t even understand how they succeeded. They like to bash on unsuccessful people for the latter's supposed “negative mindset”, but who wouldn’t be negative if they had no actionable opportunities in life? But this bashing on the unsuccessful (on top of everything they go through) is a strategy designed to imply that the “successful” had no luck in the game, and it was just a “positive mindset”. The motivation grift industry makes sure to make us believe that success is all about deluded positivity and blind “hard work”.

All these supposedly “successful” people deny their own luck when they only praise their alleged “hard work”, and they deny you your lack of opportunity when they call you “lazy”. It’s abusive toxic positivity, and you should call them out for this.

Having said that, you shouldn’t bask in negativity either. It’s an understandable option to give up and wallow in self-defeat, because it saves you from more pain; just like a beaten up animal curls up and gives up fighting. But, if you have just a little bit of fight left in you, you can take these words as your “luck” of being exposed to this message: gain awareness about how people ACTUALLY succeeded. Don’t believe their lies designed to keep you unsuccessful and defeated against their unrealistic fake standards. Recognize the true dynamics of success. Identity things around you as early access information, or indicators of success that have nothing to do with “hard work”. Focusing on “hard work” only distracts you from recognizing and appreciating opportunity (luck). And working hard without opportunity is a losing strategy (which toxic motivators want you to take).

With such an awareness, you may recognize an opportunity if it ever comes your way. Once you seize an opportunity, hard work comes easy, because you know it will likely be rewarded. It’s easy to work hard when you can see the prize at the finish line.