[kamaal]

>>Samuel Goldwyn obviously never worked in a sweatshop.

And you obviously don't have to be in a sweatshop to work hard. You can work hard as a Janitor, driver, programmer, stock trader, president or whatever.

To be 'lucky' through hard work you've got to be clever enough to pick up the area where you want to work hard.If by any means you can't start where you would have liked, you need to keep moving gradually to the place you would like to go.

My advice: If your hard work doesn't look rewarding in both the long and short term. Iterate quickly, take a quick feedback and play a different game. But whatever game you play work hard while playing it.

EDIT: To all those people who are downvoting. Hard work in the wrong direction doesn't give the results you expect. Is this such a difficult and surprising thing to understand?

[pfarrell]

The best band that came from my college was probably one of the best regional acts as well. For 10 years, they were effectively on a non-stop, nation-wide tour. They were a ska act at a time when ska hit. So, they were right place, right time, and put forth incredible effort.

In the end, they did not get the big record deal, the band fell apart, and they all went on to different things. I've had a hindsight talk with the leader of the band and he's basically said, we thought all our hard work touring would pay off, but we probably should have been working on other things (like marketing and woo-ing labels, I presume).

Kind of OT, but the big change in my career came when I realized that promotions are not rewards for "hard work", moving up comes from demonstrating you'll be more effective at the new job. As a worker, you think that you get promoted as a reward for what you've done, but as a manager, you promote because of what the worker can do in the future.

[sambeau]

Samuel Goldwyn should have gone with:

  "The luckier I got, the luckier I get"