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Luck vs. Work vs. Skill vs. Privilege

2025-10-07 · letter vlog · John · 6:06 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: Philosophy & meaning) · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion

John weighs what drove his success as a writer: structural advantages, real but limited talent, failures nobody sees, the luck of Nerdfighteria and of The Fault in Our Stars' timing, and hard work; he argues these cannot be separated and that deserving is the wrong framework, since what people do deserve is to love, be loved and be treated as full human beings.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Told he is a top-10 best-selling writer of the century; Pizzamas plug; is it good fortune?

  • ★★ Over the weekend someone told John he is one of the 10 best-selling writers of the 21st century, which surprised him, not least as he is wearing two shirts featuring his own face. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says there is great new stuff at pizzamas.com, including a DM screen at 20% off today only. — 00:00:00 · Pizzamas

00:00:29 — Structural advantage: writing in English, weighted dice

  • ★★★ John names structural advantage as a factor apart from luck or hard work: his novels would have been far less likely to become global bestsellers in Estonian, since fewer people translate from Estonian. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ John says structural advantages (race, class, gender identity, health) are not random luck but weighted dice, mostly weighted his way, a major reason for his success and easy to be blind to. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Skill and talent: soccer, science fiction and fantasy

  • ★★★ John thinks talent is to some extent real: many skills can be learned, but our gifts incline us in certain directions. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ In middle school John was passionate about soccer and practiced all the time but was not good, lacking the physical coordination. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John loves reading science fiction and fantasy but cannot write it; it does not play to his skill set. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — Unseen failures: discarded novels and rejections

  • ★★★ John says nobody knows about his failures: two novels he has written and discarded in the eight years since he last published a novel, and his rejections. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says people see only the work that survives into success, a tiny fraction of his overall writing. — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Luck: YA timing, Booklist and Ilene Cooper, Nerdfighteria, The Fault in Our Stars

  • ★ John makes himself write by telling himself it doesn't matter if nothing he writes today is good; over 90% of the words he types don't end up in a book. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ When young, John looked at author photos and felt he could never be like those successful authors, but he just wasn't seeing their failures. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Asked how much of his success is luck, John answers: all of it. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John was lucky to start writing YA novels when there was lots of support for new authors and paths forged by independent booksellers, librarians and other authors. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John was lucky to get a job at Booklist magazine, where he met his mentor Ilene Cooper. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John's first two books won prizes but were not particularly successful, each selling fewer than 10,000 copies in its first year. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ John says Looking for Alaska has lasted over 20 years not because it was the best YA book of its year but because Nerdfighteria happened, the great luck of his professional life. — 00:03:16 · Looking for Alaska (novel), Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ John was especially lucky with The Fault in Our Stars: Nerdfighteria and his publisher backed it, adults were reading YA, Time called it the best book of the year, and the movie did well. — 00:03:16 · The Fault in Our Stars, Nerdfighteria

00:03:45 — Hard work, and the same effort on failures as on successes; writing as his way of thinking

  • ★★★ John does not think The Fault in Our Stars was the best book of 2012, citing Mary Oliver's A Thousand Mornings and Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers; it won a lottery of timing and chance. — 00:03:45 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★ John did work hard: he spent most nights and weekends in his 20s reading and writing, trying to get better at what he loved. — 00:03:45
  • ★★★ In creative work you work as hard on failures as on successes, so success can't all be hard work: his drawer novels took as much effort as those that sold tens of millions. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ John finds joy and meaning in the work of writing itself, because it lets him visit rooms in his mind that nothing else does. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ John intends to keep writing for the rest of his life, because writing is his way of thinking and of responding to the world. — 00:04:14

00:04:45 — A false dichotomy; deserving is the wrong framework

  • ★★★ John calls luck versus skill versus hard work versus privilege a false dichotomy: success is all luck, all work and all privilege, and they cannot be separated. — 00:04:45
  • ★★★ John says successful people tell a story that makes sense, crediting their hard work or insight, because they want to feel they deserved their success and its spoils. — 00:04:45
  • ★★★ John argues deserving is the wrong framework for life: he doesn't deserve his merch sales or his OCD; Hank didn't deserve cancer or the number one app. — 00:05:16 · cancer, Hank Green
  • ★ John jokes that he doesn't deserve to have people buy a Pizzamas keychain featuring his mustachioed face as a cat, available only for the next few days. (playful) — 00:05:16 · Pizzamas

00:05:45 — What people do deserve; reply to Hank's video; sign-off

  • ★★★ John proposes a better framework: what we do deserve, our fundamental rights to love and be loved and be treated as full human beings, and building a world where people get it. (hedged) — 00:05:45
  • ★ John praises Hank's video from yesterday: he knows this placeless place isn't forever but is glad it exists for now. — 00:05:45 · Hank Green

In the description and comments

  • ★ In a channel comment John offers 11% off anything at pizzamas.com with code pizza, and 12% off with code pizzzza for clicking read more. — creator comment · Pizzamas

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: false dilemma · Luck · meritocracy · social privilege · The Fault in Our Stars

Also: People: Ilene Cooper · Katherine Boo · Mary Oliver

Projects: Pizzamas

Works: A Thousand Mornings · Behind the Beautiful Forevers · Looking for Alaska (novel)

Organizations: Booklist · Time

Concepts: association football · cancer · English language · fantasy · gender identity · Human rights · narrative fallacy · obsessive-compulsive disorder · race (human categorization) · science fiction · social class · Social comparison theory · young adult literature

Also centred on Luck: How to Win

Also centred on meritocracy: Deserving

Also centred on social privilege: Neck Beards and Fitness Challenges · Time for AWESOME · Started from the Bottom: Benjamin Franklin and Drake Compared · Deserving · Should I Feel Guilty? · How I (barely) Passed 11th Grade English

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