How Hard Work Manufactures Its Own Luck
Created at: August 25, 2025
I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. — Thomas Jefferson
Recasting Luck as Preparedness
At first hearing, the line often credited to Thomas Jefferson sounds like a wink at fortune; yet on closer inspection it reframes luck as readiness meeting opportunity. Work, in this view, is not a talisman but a preparation engine, sharpening skills and building a reservoir of options. Louis Pasteur’s dictum, “Chance favors the prepared mind” (1854), captures the same logic from a scientific angle: preparation turns randomness into usable advantage. By accumulating competence and momentum, effort converts near-misses into hits and long shots into plausible outcomes. Thus, the aphorism invites us to treat luck less as a lottery and more as a probability we can influence.
The Quote’s Twisting Attribution
Before proceeding, it helps to note the provenance. Although routinely ascribed to Jefferson, researchers have found no evidence he wrote it. Quote Investigator traces the earliest close phrasing to humorist and business writer Coleman Cox (1922): “I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I have.” Variants later surfaced across domains—Gary Player popularized a sports version (“The more I practice, the luckier I get”), while Samuel Goldwyn was credited with a studio-era quip. This lineage suggests the idea resonated widely, migrating from shop floor to fairway, even as the Jefferson tag lent it presidential gravitas.
Effort as a Probability Engine
From here, the mechanics become clearer: effort increases the number and quality of trials. Ten thoughtful attempts rarely match the payoff potential of a hundred, especially when each try feeds learning into the next. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work on optionality in Fooled by Randomness (2001) and Antifragile (2012) explains why: persistent action exposes you to more upside tails while capping downside through small, reversible bets. In practice, working harder often means running more experiments, shipping more drafts, and asking for more feedback—each a ticket in the raffle of outcomes. Consequently, what looks like luck is frequently the compounding of many small, testable moves.
Networks Turn Effort into Serendipity
Moreover, hard work rarely occurs in isolation; it radiates into social networks where chance encounters live. Mark Granovetter’s “The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973) showed that job opportunities frequently arrive via acquaintances rather than close friends, because weak ties bridge new information. Diligent output—publishing, presenting, contributing—creates surface area for those ties to notice you. A developer shipping open-source fixes, for instance, is likelier to be seen by a hiring maintainer, not because fortune smiled, but because visibility multiplied. Thus, effort amplifies serendipity by increasing the number of people and contexts in which one’s readiness can matter.
Practice, Skill, and the Near-Miss Effect
In tandem, skill growth makes opportunities stick. Research on deliberate practice by K. Anders Ericsson (1993; Peak, 2016) shows that targeted effort refines mental representations, shrinking the gap between attempt and excellence. Angela Duckworth’s work on grit (2016) likewise links sustained effort to achievement through perseverance with purpose. As skills sharpen, near-misses become near-hits—and then wins—because you can detect patterns, correct errors faster, and deploy quality under pressure. So when a “lucky break” arrives, the prepared practitioner converts it; what appears as fortune is often the visible tip of invisible rehearsal.
Structure, Privilege, and the Boundaries of Luck
Yet we should acknowledge the playing field. Economic mobility research by Raj Chetty and colleagues (2014; 2020) demonstrates that geography, networks, and resources strongly shape opportunity. Hard work alone does not erase structural constraints; it interacts with them. Still, within any given context, effort tends to improve the odds by expanding competencies and connections. The ethical implication is twofold: individually, cultivate preparedness; collectively, reduce barriers so that preparedness can translate into outcomes. In that balance, luck becomes less a gatekeeper and more a partner to merit.
A Playbook for Making Luck Likelier
Finally, the practical takeaway is to engineer conditions where preparedness meets exposure. Jason Roberts’s “luck surface area” idea (2010) suggests multiplying doing by telling: produce valuable work, then share it where relevant people can find it. Concretely, run small, frequent experiments; publish your learnings; ask for specific feedback; and maintain a visible cadence. Track attempts per week the way athletes track reps, because volume plus reflection compounds. In time, you will appear “luckier,” not by magic, but by systematically placing yourself where opportunity and readiness intersect.