Question

What do you see as the main difference between a successful and an unsuccessful decision? How much does luck versus skill have to do with it? Give a detail note on it.

Answer 1

prefer to separate the two words ‘Successful Decision’. First is Decision and second is successful.

Decision is never good or bad, outcome might be.

Decision - Chetan Bhagat left his high paying job to author a novelSuccessful - The novel became hit is outcome of decision, and hence we term it a successful decisionDecision - Arvind Kejriwal decided to resign as CM of Delhi in Feb 2014. And later agreed to party members request to to contest against the BJP prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, from Varanasi. That was best Arvind can do at that time. Had he won against NM, the decision would be extremely successful and historic.Unsuccessful - Outcome of above decision was that he lost the contest by a margin of around 370,000 votes.Decision - Sanket Parekh left his high paying job for Diksha. Mumbai IITian gives up cushy job, family for 'diksha' - Times of IndiaWhere rest of the world rate is good (successful) or bad (unsuccessful) depends on how they think, but Sanket must be thinking it is best decision.

With this, I try to answer your question.

PART 1: What do people see as the main difference between a successful and an unsuccessful decision?

Decision - No one ever takes bad decision. Person chooses one of the available option that he/she deemed to be best at that point of time (considering all circumstances). All known parameter considered.

Outcome - It has many things beyond control of decision maker. People liking Chetan Bhagat’s book, Varanasi people liked Modi more…

People see the outcomes, based on their capability to evaluate it and then rate it as successful or unsuccessful. It is important to note that people’s rating about your decision has nothing to do with your own evaluation of success.

Part 2: How much does luck versus skill have to do with it?

A known person while in transit at Dubai airport, bought raffle ticket and made some million dollars win. Do we call decision to buy ticket a successful?

A friend left IAS job during initial year to pursue more cleaner profession and joined IT company (in 1998). After few year of great success, he took huge loan to build a palatial house (age 42). In 3 years time, he was laid off, pushing him to sell-off some other property and now struggling to come to terms. His IAS batch mates are multi-millionaire. You will find both types of people - one terming bad decision to leave IAS and others terming it a good decision.

As I said, outcome has several parameter that are beyond control of the decision maker. When uncertainty plays its role, the outcome do not have logical explanation and that’s what we call as LUCK.

Luck definitely plays it role but only after you have played yours.

Final words… while luck is important to turn your decisions into successful, it is important that you play your role first with full commitment and let luck play its role… wait for the result.

Did I just paraphrased verse from Gita :)

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

i.e You have the right to work only but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.

Answer 2

everybody dreams of success ,success to people may mean different thing ,to somebody success may mean having money or just obtaining some grade in school .so success is simply achieving what you desire or something you have admired for a long time

success comes from making the right decision ,that is the first thing .successful decision therefore to me means that decision that you made that made you succeed in what you wanted to do with your life

then unsuccessful decision is therefore the decision that you made that never worked or the decision that did not help you achieve what you wanted to achieve