Marc Andreesen wrote much the same in his career planning guide, 8 years ago:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmarchive.com&#x2F;guide_to_career_planning_part1.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmarchive.com&#x2F;guide_to_career_planning_part1.html</a><p>Anyway, if you would like any more than baseline success (where baseline success = working really hard to get into a profession with barriers to entry, like lawyer or doctor), you will have to deal with risk and uncertainty.  You can&#x27;t account for life without accounting for luck.<p>But life is long, and over the long-term, luck has a way of averaging out.  And then the big question is how well did you capitalize on the luck you were given?  A lot of people put themselves in positions where they have no chance of getting lucky, because they don&#x27;t like the vulnerability and uncertainty that comes with realizing just how much of their life comes down to luck.  That pretty much guarantees that they&#x27;ll only be exposed to the <i>unlucky</i> events.