Luck and skill 1

Without any particular target in mind (or too many to list 😵‍💫 ), I like to remind myself on occasion that outsized success is not usually a consequence of outsized skill and talent but of outsized risk taking and luck.

As a regular reader of Luke Timmerman's always insightful Timmerman Report, I was delighted to find an article about just that (link) by David Shaywitz, MD, PhD. In particular, that article points to a PNAS paper by Denrell and Liu well worth reading (link), which points "out what savvy investors like Michael Mauboussin and Howard Marks have long recognized: in domains where luck plays a significant role in determining outcomes, the very highest performers are likely to have adopted an excessively risky strategy and happened to get lucky; in contrast, the most skilled performers are less likely to be at the very top most years, but will consistently do reasonably well."

Ok, I feel better.