Why effort matters—and why it’s never the whole story

• Hard work is necessary—but not sufficient.
• Privilege determines how efficiently effort converts into outcomes.
• Luck determines timing and variance, especially at extreme success.
• Meritocratic explanations fail when they ignore starting conditions and randomness.
• The moral obligation of privilege is not guilt—but effort, humility, and empathy.

This series documents the ideas, mental models, and practical lessons that helped me learn skills and build habits over the years. These insights come from my parents, teachers, colleagues, friends, and from books and blogs on self-improvement. The path was anything but linear. It involved trial and error, false starts, and long stretches of inconsistency. I don’t aim for perfection. I drift off track at times—but once something becomes a habit, returning to it is easier.

Before we begin, a brief disclaimer: This essay is not prescriptive. The goal is not imitation, but reflection—the truth must be discovered personally. As J. Krishnamurti warned, the danger of following any framework blindly is mistaking it for truth itself.

If you’d like a deeper context, I’ve explored these ideas earlier.

1. Self-improvement: Goals, Mindset, Habits, Focus, Practice, and Self-help books
2. Habits: Discipline and Habits – How to Build Habits
3. Practice: Practice Vs Deliberate Practice
4. Passion: Passion and Skill Set

There are different vectors to measure success—how much one is successful. Success in career, success in parenting, success in marriage, success in family, success in earning money and wealth, and more. How someone perceives success and how a society views success are also different—how we measure ourselves, how we measure others, how others measure us. There is little disagreement that to achieve success we all have to work for it. In general, the harder we work, the better our chances of success. Hard work and success often correlate, but they are not perfectly proportional. If they are directly proportional, is it correct to assume if 100 students put in the same effort all of them will have the same outcome in the board exam? We observe two graduates who join at the same time end up having different career paths within the same company. We see millions of people work physically and mentally grueling hours without achieving wealth or fame.

To ground this discussion away from abstractions, let’s look at a few thought experiments. Each scenario isolates one variable while holding others constant.

Scenario 1 – Hard Work

 Tom, Jerry, and Spike are studying in the same Tier-1 city. Their parents work for multinational corporations. All three attend an elite private school, go for private tuitions and IIT coaching classes, and have access to technical books beyond the school curriculum. With no other responsibilities, Jerry and Spike focus completely on their studies and basketball and study hard. Tom spends less time studying. Spike and Jerry get into IIT for their engineering. Tom misses it. Tom decides to take a year off and give another attempt at IIT entrance exams. But he still hasn’t realized the value of hard work and attributes Spike’s and Jerry’s success to luck.

• Takeaway: When environment and access are equal, differences in outcome are largely explained by effort.

 What happens when effort remains constant, but access does not?

Scenario 2 – Access

This story is a variation of Scenario 1. Tom and Jerry are studying in the same Tier-1 city. Tom’s environment is the same as in Scenario 1. Jerry’s parents come from what we would call a low-income group falling in 30-40 percentile of the population—his dad works as a painter in a manufacturing unit, and his mom works in an electronics assembly unit. Jerry studies in a Tamil Medium public school. Jerry’s parents can’t afford for coaching centers or private tuitions.  He relies on teachers and schoolbooks. He is the topper in his class. Both Tom and Jerry study hard. Tom gets into IIT for his engineering. Jerry gets into a government arts college.

Both worked hard—but they grew up in different environments. While both gave their best and worked hard, parents’ wealth played a role in what they could access and the opportunities it provided. This became a major factor in the outcome. English is the language of the global market. Those who grew up in English-speaking households have a massive advantage in the globalized job market, higher education, and digital literacy. In addition to hard work, privilege of inherited wealth and medium of instruction plays a role in the outcome.

Even when wealth exists, geography and exposure introduce another layer of advantage.

Scenario 3 – Privileges

This story is similar to Scenario 1 with a key difference—Tom lives in Tier-1 city and Jerry lives in a rural area. Jerry’s parents are also well-to-do because of inherited wealth but are not graduates. They don’t have the network in corporate world similar to Tom’s parents. With no good libraries and bookstores in the rural area Jerry lived, his access to books beyond school curriculum is limited. Coaching centers and faculties are not as good as in Tier-1 city.

Tom finishes engineering from top-tier college and Jerry from a Tier-2 engineering college. Tom ended up with multiple job offers from placement opportunities and from outside due to his parent’s network. Tom has also an admission to pursue his masters in the US. On the other hand, with no placement interviews in his college, Jerry is searching for a good job. Meanwhile he has taken up a temporary work as a tutor in a coaching center.

The urban—rural divide, parents’ education level played a role in the outcome. Parents’ networks opened gateways of opportunities for Tom—increasing his surface area of luck while Jerry didn’t have the privilege.

We can keep playing variations of this scenario:

• Tom and Jerry are from different castes—Tom from top of caste hierarchy and Jerry from the bottom of caste hierarchy. When applying for a job in a tech hub like Bangalore, statistically a candidate from a dominant caste might find that the hiring manager shares a similar background—this creates an immediate “cultural fit”. Jerry may have to work twice as hard to prove himself.
• We can replace the caste with color, race or gender and how they play out in the real-world job market, access to coaches and mentors in the world of classical music or art circle, sports selection committee, promotions, and the list can go on.

Social beliefs, biases, and practices get carried over to the professional environment. We realize hard work isn’t enough. On average, individuals from historically dominant castes, races, or genders face fewer structural obstacles—not because of individual intent, but because systems were designed around their norms—while a non-privileged person faces multiple and has to work twice as hard as a privileged person.

Scenario 4 – Visas & Job Market

After finishing their studies in Bangalore, Tom and Jerry pursued a master’s degree in the US. Both took loans for their higher studies. The H1-B visa program introduced high fees, reducing job openings. At the same time, AI hype led companies to slow down hiring—taking a cautious wait and watch approach. They couldn’t get a job in time. They have to come back to India and now burdened with a hefty loan burden even before they could start their career. Those who graduated a year earlier, most to all of them got into well paid jobs.

We can play around variations of the above scenario. Tom’s parents are rich enough to sponsor his master’s while Jerry took a loan. While both couldn’t find a job, loan burden is different for them which means Tom can wait a little longer to get a job he likes while Jerry has to pick the first job that comes his way even if it doesn’t pay well due to his loan burden.

While they have control over their effort, political climate and job market is not in their control. They happened to graduate at the wrong time—job market downturn, anti-immigration feeling leading to policy changes—this is just how timing intervened. In Tom’s case, parent’s wealth gives him a privilege of safety net—no loan burden, and he can take his time to find the right job. Jerry doesn’t get that advantage.

Scenario 5 – Government and Wars

Democracy thrived for 80 years in the country of Eldoria. For multiple internal and external factors, religious fundamentalist group took over the country. They changed the constitution, brought in religious laws. They closed all ties with external world. Schools and colleges got closed and students are forced into religious schools with no choice. Assuming this regime continues for a decade, the whole population will get impacted changing their course of life. It will take years for them to recover. Their life arc will be starkly different from other worlds. Other worlds may not even able to comprehend what they are going through. Current school and college going population and any children born in this country during this period will suffer for no mistake of theirs. They happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hard work in their area of interest itself is not an option for them—for them it is a privilege they don’t have like children from other regions.

This is the story of children and adolescents in war-torn regions and governed by fundamentalists. The result is an unseen loss of potential—musicians, scientists, writers, doctors—whose trajectories were never allowed to begin. In these environments, even doing something creative is a privilege. Hard work becomes irrelevant when structure collapses.

We can infer from above scenarios that only hard work isn’t sufficient for a success outcome, privilege and luck play key roles too. The intersection of hard work, success, privilege, and luck is one of the most debated topics in modern sociology and psychology.  We don’t have to view them as opposing forces but as four distinct variables in a complex equation.

Hard Work: The Controllable Variable

 As we have seen in Passion and Skill Set and Practice Vs Deliberate Practice blog discussions, whether someone is naturally gifted or not, effort is essential to improve the skill. Deliberate practice requires thousands and thousands of hours of effort to build the skill. Based on the effort, success can be defined as two-step process:

1. The Development Phase
   1. Skill = Talent x Effort
   2. Talent here is your initial interest in learning an activity, say learning piano or violin. Even if one is “naturally gifted” at the piano but never practice, the skill remains at zero. Effort we put in builds the skill.
2. The Application Phase
   1. Success = Skill x Effort
   2. Once we have a skill, it only becomes a success—performing in a great concert, composer, respected surgeon, cinematographer, grandmaster—when you apply effort—deliberate practice—to that skill.
3. Success = Talent x Effort**2
   1. To achieve success, effort counts twice.

Hard work is what transforms potential into skill. It is the only variable you have 100% agency over—the thing under your complete control.

But is only hard work enough? In reality, we see millions of people work physically and mentally grueling hours without achieving wealth or fame. Hard work is necessary—but often insufficient. This gap leads us to privilege.

Privilege: Invisible set of unearned assets

There is an agreement that world-class performance is impossible without massive amounts of work. But what if a child due to environment doesn’t have access to a coach and the time to practice. Either child’s parents are not wealthy enough to pay for coaches, coaching centers, books and instruments. The child may have to help in part time job to support the family which takes away the time from skill improvement. As we saw in Scenario 4, someone starting out in a low job market with heavy education loan burden may end up in a slow career growth compared to another whose parents can afford to provide the career capital to build new skill sets preparing for the new job market needs. In Scenario 5 environment, even attending school or will to work are privileges.

Privilege is often misunderstood as “having an easy life”. In a social context, it is more accurately described as the absence of certain obstacles. Privilege can be viewed as an invisible set of unearned assets that a person can count on cashing in each day, but about which they were meant to remain oblivious. To learn and build a world-class skill a person needs the “safety net” of environment—parents, teachers, professional networks, infrastructure—to sustain long-term interest and effort.

Privilege acts as a multiplier on hard work by reducing friction and increasing the number of attempts one can afford. If two people put in equal units of effort, but one has a privilege multiplier—stable housing, professional networks, additional coaching— that person’s output will be higher. Privilege does not guarantee success; it reduces the cost of repeated attempts.

Success = (Talent x Effort**2) x Privilege

Effort compounds twice—once in building skill, and again in applying it. Privilege determines how efficiently that effort converts into outcomes.

It is hard to list all kinds of privileges we see in our society. Listing a few to kindle the thought process. Interested readers can examine into each one how it plays a role in outcome.

• Able-Bodied Privilege: Navigating the world without thinking about the physical architecture—wheelchair access, elevator, ramp etc.
• Socio-Economic Privilege: Having a “safety net” that allows for risk—generational wealth, access to professional networks.
• Linguistic Privilege: Speaking the “prestige” language of the region as mother tongue—reduces the cognitive load of navigating legal, educational, and professional systems.
• Caste Privilege: Caste privilege is described as “invisible” because the holder rarely has to think about their caste identity in daily life. Person belonging to a dominant caste don’t face the social stigma faced by those from lower rungs of the caste hierarchy.
• Race and Ethnic Privilege: Belonging to a race or ethnic group that is the majority and/or in power in the region.
• Gender Privilege: Work environment, tools, medical research—designed for men by men.
• Urban Privilege: Tier-1 city provides access to world-class infrastructure that is unavailable in rural areas.
• Citizen Privilege: Being a natural born citizen gives the legal right to work, vote, and travel freely than being an immigrant in a country.

Are there any other factors, other than hard work and privilege, that play a role in the outcome? In Scenario 4, job opportunities for Tom and Jerry got impacted by market slowdown and H1 visa program policy change. Hard work and privilege being the same, what impacted the outcome? That question leads us to next factor: Luck.

Luck: The Random Variable

Tom and Jerry in Scenario 4 happen to be at the right place at the wrong time. Students who completed their Masters prior years got placed in jobs due to a strong job market and relaxed policies. In the case of Tom and Jerry structural forces played a negative role. Luck is not in their control. There are thousands of other influences that nobody is wise enough to predict.

Luck is someone rolling the dice for you. Outcome is random—either good or bad.

Phenomenal success or failure are attributed to luck—hitting a lottery, making it huge in bull market run, startups hitting it big, market collapse, wars, natural calamities, medical condition, ageing parents. Even if we make a good initial choice, we can’t understand all of the factors that cause world-class outcomes. As Nassim Taleb wrote in Fooled by Randomness, “mild success can be explainable by skills and hard work. Wild success is attributable to variance.”

We cannot control our luck—good or bad—but we can control our effort and preparation. Luck smiles on us from time to time. And when it does, the way to honor our good fortune is to work hard and make the most of it. Even good luck requires hard work if success is to be sustained. The person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits. We can increase our surface area for good luck by acting.

The mathematician and computer engineer Richard Hamming put it eloquently, “There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn’t. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So, yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not”.

Privilege: How Privilege Manufactures Luck

If luck is the roll of the dice, Privilege is how much the dice is “loaded” in our favor before we even throw them. While luck is usually seen as random, Privilege is “luck that persists”. It is a constant, favorable wind at your back. Privilege increases the surface area for luck to hit. Privilege gives access to network where “lucky” things happen—living in wealthy neighborhood populated with CEOs and venture capitalists. If a privileged person’s startup fails, they have a safety net. They get to “spin the wheel of luck” again.

Success: The Final Equation

Success = (Talent x Effort**2) x (Privilege + Luck)

• Talent: Potential and interest.
• Effort: Only variable we have 100% control over. Without hard work, other variables don’t matter.
• Privilege: The loaded dice. Invisible set of unearned assets—these assets are often invisible to those who possess them, precisely because they remove friction before it is felt.
• Luck: The random variable. Being at the right place at the right time.

Not accounting for privilege and luck in the outcome can incorrectly lead to “meritocratic hubris”—the belief that success is only because of hard work, and if others failed, they just didn’t work hard enough. By adding luck and privilege to the mental model of success equation, we don’t diminish the value of hard work; we simply acknowledge the role of our circumstances. Just the fact that we have the loaded dice to have the luxury of time to practice and learn the skills that many others don’t have.

Success is not a single virtue story. It is an interaction between effort, circumstance, and randomness.

Hard Work Vs Luck: A Way to Understand the Relationship

Let’s do a thought experiment: There are thousands of people who received similar levels of education, grew up in similar neighborhoods, or were born with similar levels of genetic talent. But these people didn’t achieve the same results. The more local the comparison becomes—keeping privilege and luck constant—the more success is determined by hard work. When we compare ourselves to those who have experienced similar levels of luck, the difference comes down to habits and choices. This is a relative view. What makes someone best in the world in a particular domain? When viewed at this level, success is always attributable to luck. Even if we make a good initial choice, we can’t understand all the factors that cause world-class outcomes. As outcomes become more extreme, the role of luck increases.

Operating Principles

 Hard Work gets us onto the field. Privilege determines starting position. Luck decides how the game unfolds. Success is a function of persistence—hard work and grit—and the number of opportunities we are exposed to.

• The Necessity of Effort: World-class performance is impossible without massive amounts of work. Success isn’t just “pure luck”, luck provides the chance to work hard.
• Privilege: Acknowledging our privileges doesn’t mean we haven’t worked hard or diminish our hard work. It simply means our hard work was more efficiently converted into success because the “friction” of the system was lower for us and we faced less obstacles.
• Luck: The wider the success, the larger the role of luck. To go from “unsuccessful” to “moderately successful”, hard work is often the dominant factor. To go from “moderately successful” to “world-class”, hard work is a prerequisite, but Luck becomes the deciding factor.
• The Merit Shield: The most dangerous part of privilege is believing our success is 100% earned. In India, many believe they are “meritorious” while ignoring that their ancestors were the only ones allowed to go to school, effectively giving them a 2000-year head start.
• Redirected Energy: If we don’t have to spend our energy fighting a stereotype, social discrimination, or struggling for basic access, we can spend 100% of that energy on bettering our skill.
• Selection Bias: We hear stories of billionaires who worked 100-hour weeks and conclude that hard work equals billions. We ignore the thousands of others who worked 100-hour weeks, had some privilege, but were hit by bad luck—a market crash, a health crisis, or poor timing. We need to realize the fact that every “outlier” stands on a platform built by their ancestors, their culture, and their timing.
• Suspending Judgment: When we see someone struggling, rather than defaulting to “they aren’t working hard enough” judgment, instead ask, “what friction are they facing that I am not”.

Final Thought

 If someone with no privilege works at 100% capacity just to survive, and someone with high privilege coefficient works at 30% capacity, the disparity isn’t just in output—it’s in the squandering of potential that others would exchange their entire lives for.

• For Self: Act as if Hard Work is the only thing that matters
• For Others: Act with awareness that Privilege and Luck play massive roles. This thinking fosters empathy and reduces “fundamental attribution error”—blaming people for their struggles
• For Society: Focus on “Levelling the Playing Field.” We can’t eliminate luck, but we can at least try to ensure that “Privilege” doesn’t determine who gets to try in the first place

By staying humble, we ensure that our success doesn’t turn into the “arrogance of merit” that Michael J Sandel warns about. Instead, it becomes a disciplined, grateful pursuit of excellence.

Some conceptual foundations are influenced by Angela Duckworth’s Grit, Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness, and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit. Some of the books and ideas that influenced my thinking:

1. Peak by Anders Ericsson
2. Mindset by Carol Dweck
3. Grit by Angela Duckworth
4. Deep Work by Cal Newport
5. Tyranny of Merit by Michael J Sandel
6. Atomic Habits by James Clear
7. Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey
8. How Minds Change by David McRaney
9. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
10. Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb