this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
314 points (91.8% liked)

You Should Know

36904 readers
107 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Put simply, being in the right place at the right time, and having connections, can be as important as having the skills and experience.

top 27 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 122 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I always tell my kids, you can try your best and still fail. Sometimes you will succeed without any effort at all. Luck will affect the outcome of anything you do.

But you have to be ready for the luck. You have to work hard to be in a position to take advantage. Hard work can mitigate your failures, and any effort you put into doing your best is never wasted because you're trying to be the best version of yourself.

That's why you try. Not because you might win and get wealth and fame and glory. You try because you want to be the person who tries.

See also, honesty, kindness, generosity, forgiveness. These are not things we do to be rewarded. The universe (not to mention other people) is going to let you down more often than not. You should still be honest and kind and generous and forgiving and hardworking because that's the person you want to be.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

you can try your best and still fail

One of my favourite Star Trek quotes

I've always said personally that to be the very best at something you need 1. Talent, 2. Dedication and 3. Luck. You can still be very close to the best with only two of those things, but if luck is all you have you're just going to be something like a lottery winner who blows it all in a month. Alternately, if you cultivate a habit of working hard towards your goals, then even in bad situations you'll be prepared to make the best of it that you possibly can, to get back to a good place faster.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Talent, dedication, and luck. Spot on.

I am very successful in my career and earn more than my school-age self ever expected (tbf, I expected to be a teacher). I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for all three, though.

Lucky points include:

  • Being the kid of small business owners who gave me/made me get a job with them at 16.
  • Knowing someone at a company who recommended me for an internship.
  • Working adjacent to a badass development team that made the best proof of concept to build a new app, so they brought me to their team to support it.
  • My Lead retiring so I was able to move to her level after only a couple years.

I wouldn’t have gotten those opportunities if I didn’t also have the dedication and talent, but luck was a huge factor.

I have tried the metaphor that luck opened doors for me, but I had to get to and walk through them. I will never take where I am today for granted.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Those three pillars are my best assessment of how I managed to find myself as the singular best in the world at what I was doing (nothing career worthy, though it did point me in that direction). I was lucky that my parents got me started on it at a very young age, my other hobbies were strongly synergistic meaning I was spending much of my time developing related skills, when I first got into it I just randomly happened to meet up with the group that I reached the top with, so being surrounded by such excellent company had a massive impact. I met so many people who had very strong talent and dedicated themselves, but just never got the breaks I did. But like you said, it was largely because I already had the talent from early childhood learning and had remained dedicated my whole life that I was capable of fitting in when I did meet the right people.

I strongly recommend everyone read Chris Hadfield's "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth," as he argues very strongly, with some great anecdotes from his life, for the importance of preparing to receive good luck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

What a great line from TNG!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (2 children)

"Luck favors the prepared!"

- Edna Mode

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

“NO CAPES!”

– Edna Mode

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

This is my beef with religion. Many seem to push the core idea that you should be honest, kind, generous, and forgiving for the promise of future rewards (heaven, or whatever comparable idea, depending on the belief system) or the prevention of future punishment and suffering (hell, etc), not for the simple pursuit of being a better person or improving the world around you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

That’s a point of view I had never considered before and makes negatice outcome less despairing (? can’t quite find the right word). Thanks a lot!

[–] [email protected] 50 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

“Hello, I’m Eddie Murphy and I’m here to tell you the importance of a good education. I’m 20 years old and a high school graduate. I studied at Nassau community college for about two weeks. I have no formal theatrical training whatsoever yet I’m one of the stars of the new Saturday Night Live. I also make more in a week than most white people make in a year. Which leads me to the conclusion that in 1981 a good education is just as important as a warm bucket of hamster vomit. That’s right, all you white kids in school are wasting your sweet precious time because life is luck. You’re either lucky or you’re a bum from the beginning. So stop kidding yourself, drop out. Go have some fun, drink some beer. Get each other pregnant and play Space Invaders. You know, you white kids take life so seriously. Quit school and be successful like me.”

Sammy: Excuse me Mr. Murphy, your limousine's waiting.

Eddie Murphy: Thanks Sammy. Sammy went to Harvard.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

Working hard increases the chances of success is a better way to phrase it but networking is basically a necessity and luck is paramount

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Having lived in quite a few countries now, it's all about who you know. It's extremely hard to get a job when you don't have a network.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

I was going to say that I’ve learned that networking is like 90% of getting ahead. Treat everyone you work with and know well, keep in contact with them every once in a while, and it can, not that it will, pay off.

Worked for me. I’m lucky.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

And in Cuban's case, you just have to exploit the fuck out of a shitload of people. Only way to create a billionaire.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

No plan has ever come to fruition without a substantial amount of luck -Reality.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"Success is the intersection of luck and having rich parents."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

I mean having rich parents itself is already luck.

I kinda want to say success equals hard work times luck. Some people's luck is 0. No matter how hard they work, they'll never be successful. Other people are born to rich parents and have luck in many other ways too. These people will easily achieve success through hard work.

Only problem is, it's possible to achieve success with luck alone and no hard work - just be born to billionaire parents and you'll NEVER have to work a day in your life.

So maybe it's even worse than that: success = hard_work * luck + luck

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

IMO success is based entirely on the choices you make with the opportunities you get.

LUCK is the opportunities you get.

But the better choices you make with your choices the better the opportunities LUCK provides.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

And those born into better opportunities can snowball them into a life where as those unlucky enough to start at 0 stay there by design

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

My high-school economics professor was such a smart dude.

The most important part of his entire class was driving home the truth that no matter how hard you work, your success will always be determined mostly by luck.

And how economies aren't something to "win" but a tool for society to give people what they need/want in exchange for contributing to society.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The flowchart is more that you may get lucky once or twice in your life, and work and preparation are meant to take advantage of those instances instead of screwing them up.

Some poeple have their parents buy them hundreds of lucky chances, other people never get a shot.

And then there's a hell of a lot of Dunning–Kruger being interpreted as not having a chance. Meritocracy is a lie, but idiots thinking they have cosmic bad luck and society is against them when they're actually idiots, assholes or both is also definitely a thing. The problem is it's hard to separate the two, particularly if you're the idiot/asshole.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Also some people have cosmic bad luck AND are assholes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

This is also possible. And great luck and success while being assholes as well.

The human temptation to read cosmic morality patterns into reality is both entirely irrational... and kind of a good motivator to create moral patterns to impose on reality, if you put some effort and collective action into it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Every day, I think about how lucky I am. Because my father stressed education and taught me to read and forced me to do summer writing projects. Because I enjoy reading and learning as a result (even though I hated those projects). That I was born to a family that didn’t suffer financial hardship. That I’m male in a world that rewards that. That I’m a white guy in a country that punishes everyone else. It’s fucked up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Well, yeah. But there's also plenty of times where you can't capitalize on good luck without a fair but of hard work. Generally, to succeed, a combination of luck, work, and help will all play into that success.