Is IM success more from Skill, or Luck?

hmmm... right oh! i like this... "skill is more likely to pay off"

skill comes first... just when does the luck come?

you and i can play chess, we'd be even.

Luck as the main factor?

I'm sorry but i have to disagree with that.

I have always been a STRONG believer that nothing in life happens "for luck",but on the contrary, i like to believe that am i to build my future,fate doesn't exist.

YOU with your courage,passion,perseverance,determination and STRONG beliefs can achieve everything in life,you just need to TAKE ACTION to realize your dreams.

Knowledge is POWER.

Of course,luck is important and i don't deny it,but personally i don't put it as "the main factor".

All the best,
Devid

I would say it is Option C.

Work.

Hi Nameless,

I was thinking about the "skills" after I posted this, and was surmising to myself what those skills really might be...

I would be putting "drive and motivation and persistence" in the mix of skills. what do you think? can we do that?

maybe it'd reframe the question

Experience plays a big part.

I like the concept of the 10,000 hour rule by Malcolm Gladwell in the "Outliers" book.

Some people take longer than others to master things, but ultimately one has to be prepared to put the hours in regardless of how long it takes.

woh, Marx... you are good ... you mean, as waht I've gathered:

"be smart enough (a skill) to know how to recognize and take advantage of an opportune moment (luck)..." then repeat it...

or "luck follows the skill and then helps it along" like in evenly matched football superbowls

the percentage on each side?

I had to add my 2 cents when I saw you were in Alaska. Although I now live in lower 48 in St. Louis, Mo, I was born in Homer, Alaska. I LOVE Alaska and miss it.

Now back to the subject at hand. I do not feel that luck has much to do with it, IM is not a casino or lottery.

I have found that by being thorough in the preliminary research stage of a is key. Once I decide a market has good potential then taking persistent action to meet my goals is key. I will not stop untill I have exhausted all possible avenues to get the results I am looking for. Then after time (usually at least a month) I just kick back and track my results. If I do not feel there enough money in the niche I move on to the next niche. Sometimes when I come back a few months later and do more tracking research I find a fresh state of mind allows me to see angles I did not see before and I will pick up the niche and try again. Skill and speed in IM comes with experience. No course you can buy will give you the skill that good old experience can. For me, I have purchased many great courses and they are great for pointing me in the right direction but you have to decide on a course of action and then be PERSISTANT and hit it hard from all angles. Just don't give up!

It's a good question.

Personally, I think it is all down to perseverance. Basically we all have to fail our way to success. If you look back through history you can see that the way any of us actually succeed is by simply failing over and over and over again and then finally after trying dozens, hundreds or even thousands of ways that do not work... we find one way that does indeed work.

Now... I think skill definitely plays a part in how quickly we reach success. Skill can help someone to possibly make less mistakes, to experience less failures on their road to success.

Skill can also cause people to make more mistakes and experience more failures on their road to success. An example of this is people who are technical by nature and into programming, databases etc (like myself) and seem to possibly have a more difficult time in IM than someone who is not technically minded. I think it is because IT people spend more time on the tech side of things, over-complicating things and basically doing more work than we really need to. We also tend to be perfectionists. Which means we slow down the rate at which we can fail which slows down the rate at which we can ultimately succeed.

Luck... I think this certainly plays a part too. Each time we try something there is a chance that everything will line up right and this attempt will work. Perhaps a person will come along and be a tremendous help offering the final missing piece of the puzzle. For one person, they may meet this solution carrying person on attempt #3 and another person may meet this solution carrying person on attempt #300.

So, ultimately it all comes down to perseverance. Failing enough times (while continually adjusting and improving what you are doing) until you finally succeed.

And your skills will either help or hinder you. And your luck (in this case meaning changes in a market or a person coming into your sphere who has just the right view or just the right information you need to finally complete the puzzle) will either help or hinder you (you may find yourself continually getting bad information that keeps you struggling and failing many times more than you would have otherwise).

So, it is a delicate balance really. But ultimately, if a person tries this IM thing 1,000 times I'd say the odds are extremely high they will succeed.