1061 Lucky Careers

Life isn’t fate, and it isn’t merit, it’s primarily luck: the odds against you even being here far outweigh the number of atoms in the universe. Your life is similarly long odds if you consider how many events had to occur for you to be the person you are today. The myth that you can plan what you’re going to do in the future is a delusion, akin to thinking you’ll be able to pay your rent every month with lottery ticket winnings. The most familiar example of how luck dictates your life is your career: either 10,000 people could do the same job but only 1 gets it, a situation many of us are familiar with; or only 1 person could do the job but it took 10,000 lucky breaks for that to happen; examples are Teddy Roosevelt, Steve Jobs & Elon Musk. The most bizarre aspect of jobs is that many are actually counter-productive: it would be better if no one did them; how lucky is that?