商業往事

每月分享幾則有趣的商業小故事（中英雙語），邀請大家和我們一起透過歷史故事，看存儲商業。

?

區分幸運還是努力

本文總計1248字

預計閱讀6分鐘

（英文文章在中文文章之后）

安妮·杜克獲得了 NSF的獎學金，在賓夕法尼亞大學讀研究所學「認知心理學」。拿到碩士學位后，她原來打算在學校找一個職位，但由于胃病沒有辦法去應征。她在醫院住了將近一年。

當她在生病待在醫院的時候，她決定試試手氣，通過玩撲克牌來賺錢。這讓他可以消磨時間，呆到下一個學術招聘季(學校招聘新人都有固時間)。然而，這一試卻讓她發現自己懂得玩撲克牌真正的訣竅。于是，她決定成為一名撲克牌職業選手。2 0 0 4年, 她贏得了自己的第一個世界撲克手鐲大賽冠軍，同年，她贏得了 2 0 0萬美元的贏者者通吃的 WSOP 冠軍大賽。而在 2 0 1 0年，她獲得了 NBC 全國撲克牌錦標賽的冠軍，在最后一個項目上更擊敗了他的導師埃里克?塞德爾。

安妮?杜克出版了一本書「在賭注中思考；當你沒有事實依據的時候做出更明智的決定」，這本書描述她如何在(賭局)不確定的情況下做出決定。

她認為；我們的生活更像是玩撲克牌而不是在玩象棋。我們通常需要在有限的信息下做出決定：

「工作和搬家的決定是賭局。銷售談判和合約都是賭局。買房是一種賭局。點雞肉而不是牛排是一種賭局。一切都是賭局。」

當然, 我們都想努力做出好的決定，但有時，即使我們做了一個糟糕的決定，我們也可能會得到一個好的結果。當然，情況也發生了相反的情況。考慮到我們能掌握的事實，我們做出了正確的決定，但一些沒有想到的事情卻發生了，讓我們的決定變得糟糕。

有很多人把他們的成功歸因于努力工作而不是運氣。盡管許多有錢的商人公開聲稱他們的成功是運氣造成的， 但這是為了顯得謙虛，而不是真的謙虛。在他們的心中，其實，他們相信自己的成功是由于他們的努力。也許他們確實很努力，但他們往往忽視了運氣往往是至關重要的因素。然而，安妮?杜克在她的書中說；運氣永遠是一個因素，不管我們是否承認：

「在賭局中思考首先要認識到，決定我們生活結果的因素正好有兩點：我們決策的質量和運氣。學會認識到兩者的區別, 才能理解賭局思維中全部意義所在。」

當我們得到一個好的結果時，我們應該區分這個好的結果，是由于我們做出了好的決定還是因為運氣。如果我們不正確地區分運氣和好的決策，我們很可能會誤解為什么我們的成功是因為我們的努力。因此，我們不會從這個成功經驗中學到任何有用的經驗，這很可能會誤導我們今后的決定。不能分別運氣和決策質量是一個很大的危險，因為我們無法從中學會任何事，所以我們要強迫自己去審視我們的成功是否因為運氣，還是我們的努力。

當然，就像成功可能是由于好運一樣，失敗也可能是運氣不好造成的。但我們自然會尋找失敗的理由來自我辯護，所以這通常不是問題。因此，這就是為什么我說；我們應該強迫自己審視我們的成功，看看這些成功的哪一部分是由于我們的努力造成的，還是由于運氣造成的。就我個人而言；我認為假設我們成功的有運氣的成分，這是很好的。在做這樣的分析時，這是一個很好的工作假設或起點。也就是說；問題不在于是這個結果否涉及運氣，而在于涉及多少運氣。

出處: 安妮?杜克，「在賭注中思考；當你沒有事實依據的時候做出更明智的決定」。Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts.

Distinguishing Between Effort and Luck

Annie Duke received an NSF Fellowship to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania to study cognitive psychology. After getting her master’s, she was going to try to find a teaching position but was unable to do so due to a stomach ailment. Her illness required her to stay in the hospital for nearly a year.

While a patient, she decided to try to make some money by playing poker. That could pass the time until the next academic hiring season. However, she discovered that she had a real knack for poker. So, she decided to become a professional poker player. In 2004, she won her first World Series of Poker bracelet, and that same year she won the US$2 million winner-take-all WSOP Tournament of Champions. And in 2010, she won the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, beating her mentor Erik Seidel in the final event.

Annie Duke published a book, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, to describe how she makes decisions under uncertain situations.

She believes that our lives are more like poker than chess. We usually need to make decisions under limited information:

“Job and relocation decisions are bets. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet.”

Of course, we should always strive to make good decisions, but sometimes, even when we make poor decisions, we get good results. And, of course, the opposite happens, too. We make the right decisions given the facts at hand, but something unforeseen happens and causes our decisions to go bad.

There are many people who attribute their success to working hard instead of luck. Although many wealthy business people publicly claim that their success is due to luck in an attempt to appear humble, in their hearts, they really believe that their success is due to their hard work. And maybe they did work hard, but they often overlook the often crucial element of luck. However, Annie Duke says in her book that luck is always a factor, whether we acknowledge it or not:

“Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about.”

When we get a good result, we should try to determine whether the good result was due to making good decisions or due to luck. If we don’t correctly distinguish between luck and making good decisions, we will likely misunderstand why we succeeded. So, we won’t make the proper conclusion from this successful experience, which will likely mislead us in our future decisions. And that’s a big danger. But doing so is not so natural. We basically have to force ourselves to examine whether our success was due to luck rather than our effort.

Of course, just as success may be due to good luck, failure may be due to bad luck. But we usually naturally look for reasons to explain our failures, so that’s usually not a problem. That is why I say that we should force ourselves to examine our successes to see what part of those successes was due to our efforts and what part was due to luck. Personally, I think it’s good to assume that at least a portion of our success is due to luck. That’s a good working assumption or starting point when doing such analysis. That is, the question is not whether luck was involved (it was) but how much luck was involved.