How much of your personal success can you claim?

[wally]

Earlier this year I read Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. He references now popular birthdate statistics of Canadian professional hockey players (statistically the vast majority of them born in months immediately after the little league age cutoff) as well as some stories of other people famous for their success in vocations or other pursuits to make a case that there are no truly “self-made” success stories.

Personal success is a combination of effort and circumstance. His argument is that certainly effort counts for a lot of success, but that we, as Americans, put an inordinate amount of emphasis on the effort and forget the critical role that circumstance plays.

What are your thoughts?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Can you give me an equation, wally? I am struggling to find the right number.

[Indy Coug]

I'll be honest, I don't give Gutenberg and Diophantus nearly enough credit for me being where I am today.

[wally]

Can you give me an equation, wally? I am struggling to find the right number.

I know, I know, attaching percentages to this kind of fluffy-ass question is unbecoming of an engineer.

[CardiacCoug]

There is the question of effort versus external circumstances (like Gladwell's example: if Bill Gates is born 5 years earlier or 5 years later, he isn't Bill Gates).

But another factor is just being born with certain personality traits that lead to success. A person really can't take credit for those inborn talents and abilities either.

Here's a sports example: You could say that the difference between Jimmer and Mark Bigelow is that Jimmer has worked harder than Bigelow did to get an NBA-like body and develop NBA-level skills. Jimmer has improved every season and while Bigelow scored twice as many points as Jimmer as Freshmen, Bigelow's point production went down every year during his career.

So one way to look at it is that Jimmer skipped the mission and worked harder than Bigelow and so individually earned his basketball success based on his hard work. But another way to look at it is that Jimmer was born with the personality traits that made him more driven to succeed at basketball, that he was genetically determined to achieve more success than Bigelow.

[wally]

I'll be honest, I don't give Gutenberg and Diophantus nearly enough credit for me being where I am today.

Did you pay for college yourself? Did you grow up in an orphanage?

[Surfah]

I have to thank first and foremost my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

[Babs]

I'm responsible for all my success. It's my failures I attribute to my parents.

[DrumNFeather]

I have to thank first and foremost my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

and Muhamed Ala Shabaz

[DrumNFeather]

I think an interesting follow up thread would be "how much of your lack of success do you blame others for?" or, "how much of your lack of success can you claim."

This isn't to be funny or flippant.

[RobinFinderson]

I'm responsible for all of my success... there just isn't much of it.

[Drunk Tank]

I think that circumstance plays a role in most everyone's sucess, but you have to have the personality, skills, drive etc... to be able to make the most out of every opportunity that presents itself.

[byu71]

An interesting question. I have been listening to Larry Miller's book "Driven". Also in the last few weeks had talks with a couple of very wealthy friends.

I found something common in all three so far. They are very much about goals, competitiveness, having things. Money becomes a scorecard as each have more than they need. All three once they had a lot of money, started giving a lot away.

I found it odd that all three recognize what they did to get where they were at, but ascribed a part of it to an element of luck or timing. Personally, I think they would have had that "luck or timing" even if the event or events that seemed lucky didn't happen. They would have had another lucky "event" or "timing".

People are successful in other ways than accumulating money. I wonder if they also ascribe their success to luck or timing. For instance, a great religious leader. Have you ever heard one say they got where they did due to luck or timing, I really don't know.

[mUUser]

Generally speaking, there could be many reasons for short bursts of success, but success over the long run can mainly be attributed to you and your most significant others IMO.

[Donuthole]

FTR, i found Outliers underwhelming, to say the least. The way he built it up to his final chapter (about himself), it was almost as if Gladwell thought he was the first person to realize that circumstance has a huge role in someone's success. He thought it was really more groundbreaking than it was, it seemed.