The Lottery: How Luck and Effort Shape the Path From College to Career

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery has been analyzed for decades as a story about conformity and blind tradition. But when you zoom out, the part that lingers for Fletcher Circle is something simpler and more unsettling: the randomness.

One moment you’re part of the crowd. The next moment your slip of paper has a mark on it.

No reason. No warning. No sense of fairness.

Jackson understood something we don’t like to admit: just beneath our stories of merit, hustle, and control sits a quiet truth — life is, in many ways, a lottery.

Where you’re born. Who your parents are. Your health. Your timing. Your opportunities.

Some slips are blank. Some slips aren’t. We can pretend otherwise, but we all know it’s true.

And yet — that’s not the whole story.

Because while life begins with a lottery, what you do with your slip is something else entirely.

Luck vs. Agency — The Real Partnership

We love clean narratives: Hard work beats talent. You make your own luck. Winners want it more.

They sound good. They look good on posters. But psychologists like Kahneman, behavioral economists like Thaler, and thinkers like Charlie Munger remind us of something humbling: outcomes are always a partnership between randomness and effort.

Munger said it plainly:

“Chance plays a huge part in life. But hard work gives chance something to work with.”

Gladwell wrote about it in Outliers. Kahneman described it as “noise.” Statisticians call it variance.

But the idea is the same: you can do everything right and still lose. You can do everything wrong and still win.

Yet over time — across hundreds of repetitions — effort starts to bend the arc. Not perfectly. Not immediately. But reliably.

Luck might open the door. Effort decides what you do once you walk through.

Brady: Nine Coin Flips That Became a Dynasty

Think about Tom Brady.

In six of his Super Bowls with the Patriots, the margin between winning and losing was razor-thin — a strip-sack here, a missed kick there, a last-second touchdown or a fingertip deflection.

Brady could have lost all nine. He also could have won all nine (at FC we don't talk about the Tampa Bay Super Bowl).

One bounce changes everything.

So was Brady the luckiest quarterback alive? Or the hardest working?

The truth no one likes to hold in the same hand: It was both. He prepared relentlessly for moments he couldn’t control.

That’s the bridge: You can’t plan luck — but you can make yourself the kind of person who’s ready when luck appears.

Curry: Made, Not Born

If Brady is the example of preparation meeting randomness, Steph Curry is the example of preparation overpowering every reasonable expectation.

Curry wasn’t supposed to be Curry. Too small. Too light. Too weak. Too unconventional.

He didn’t win the genetic lottery the way some stars do — no 6'8" frame, no freakish wingspan, no explosive build.

He built his game. Hour by hour. Drill by drill. Reps layered on reps until his biomechanics were re-written — faster release, deeper range, absurd consistency.

His teammates say Steph’s shooting isn’t magic. It’s maintenance. It’s devotion. It’s craft.

He didn’t erase randomness. He outran it.

Brady shows us that luck matters. Curry shows us that effort compounds.

Together they illustrate the modern truth about success: In the short term, luck dominates. In the long term, habits do.

The Danger of Comparison — and the Misreading of Luck

The real trap is the comparison game — the thing Jackson hinted at in The Lottery, and the thing social media pours gasoline on today.

“Why did they get the job?” “Why did they get the break?” “Why didn’t I draw that slip?”

Envy is the quiet poison. Comparison is the quiet addiction.

You never see the other person’s full story: Their head starts. Their hidden advantages. Their years of practice. Their lucky breaks. Their moments of doubt. Their nights they almost quit.

“The Lottery” haunts because it removes the illusion of control. Social media haunts because it removes the illusion of fairness.

The truth sits somewhere in the middle: Life is unfair, but it’s not un-winnable. Life is random, but it’s not aimless.

The antidote to comparison is process. The antidote to envy is agency.

The Process — The Only Part That’s Yours

There’s a word athletes use for the antidote to luck: flow.

Flow happens when the noise falls away. When you stop looking sideways. When the world shrinks to the task in front of you.

This is the state Brady lived in. This is the state Curry trains for. This is the state every great performer touches.

Flow doesn’t eliminate life’s lottery. It just makes the drawing irrelevant for a moment.

You don’t control the draw. You don’t control the bounces. You don’t control the timing. You don’t control who sees you or when.

You control:

• Your habits

• Your effort

• Your preparation

• Your focus

• Your willingness to stay in the game

That is the real “ticket” you carry.

What We Teach at Fletcher Circle

At Fletcher Circle, we don’t pretend luck doesn’t matter. We don’t sell the myth that hustle guarantees outcomes. We don’t say “work harder” as if effort alone erases randomness.

What we teach is something more honest — and more empowering:

You may not control the lottery, but you can control your readiness for it.

You can:

• Build habits that compound

• Strengthen confidence that survives setbacks

• Develop clarity so you recognize opportunity

• Build relationships that open doors

• Stay rooted when randomness shakes you

• Keep moving forward when luck runs cold

Life will always involve a little luck — the good kind and the bad. Your job isn’t to win every lottery.

It’s to become the kind of person who’s ready when your number is called — and resilient when it isn’t.

That’s the work. That’s the process. That’s the part that’s yours.