The Intersection of Hard Work & Luck

“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

The quote above has been (spuriously) attributed to Thomas Jefferson for decades. Origins aside, it’s a quote that encapsulates a viewpoint that you can often find being touted here on Medium, whether it’s in the form of a business guru exalting the virtue of “hustle,” or in the form of a successful entrepreneur arguing that anyone can achieve a similar level of success through individual hard work and sacrifice. (DHH refers to this literary style as “I-did-it-all-by-myself heroic myth mongering.”)

To clarify, this isn’t a condemnation of business gurus, entrepreneurs, or hard work. Nor is this a condemnation of the working harder = more luck philosophy. In fact, for the sake of this post, let’s assume that the working harder = more luck philosophy is absolutely true. And let’s say that for every ounce of hard work you put in, there’s a corresponding increase in the amount of luck you get out.

The problem with this representation is that it fails to acknowledge that people begin life with varying degrees of starting luck. Some folks — through no actions of their own — are born into well-to-do families, while others are born into poverty. Just as some folks are born perfectly healthy, while…