Is Success Luck or Hard Work?

A video that changed how I look at life

This is probably in my top five YouTube videos of all time. Not just because it’s a great video, but because it’s one of those rare things that genuinely changed the way I look at life.

We hear the same idea all the time: work hard enough and you can achieve anything. Or that the most successful people are simply the ones who worked the hardest, tried the most, and never gave up.

It’s a nice idea. It makes success sound fair and straightforward.

But this video challenges that in a way that really stuck with me.

It doesn’t mean hard work is pointless. Of course effort matters. But it made me question how much of someone’s success can really be explained by effort alone. Small advantages, timing, opportunities, and things outside our control can make an enormous difference.

And there’s another way I’ve started thinking about it: maybe any big success is actually a collection of thousands of little bits of luck across someone’s life. Not one dramatic lucky break, but lots of tiny things that could so easily have gone differently.

That thought has stayed with me. It makes it harder to look at someone successful and automatically assume they must have worked harder than everyone else. And it makes me think twice before judging someone who worked just as hard but didn’t make it.

A connection to another favourite

For some reason, this also connects in my mind to another video I love: Optimistic Nihilism by Kurzgesagt.

They’re not making the same argument. One is about luck and success, while the other is about meaning and how we choose to see life. But both made me question ideas I had more or less accepted without thinking too much about them.

I think that’s why I value videos like these so much. They’re not just interesting for the few minutes you’re watching. They stay with you.

Worth keeping?

Without a doubt. It’s one of the best things I’ve watched on YouTube, and one of the few videos that actually changed my perspective rather than just teaching me something new.

Watch “Is Success Luck or Hard Work?” on YouTube

Also worth watching: Optimistic Nihilism — Kurzgesagt.