Good Luck Vs Good Preparation Essay
Uploaded by matty on Nov 11, 2007
Is good luck more important than good planning or preparation?
One of Rome's leading intellectual figures in the mid-1st century, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. In this quote, Lucius Annaeus Seneca states that luck is just a by-product of good preparation and opportunity. Therefore, good planning and preparation are much more important than just good luck. For example, if a professional sports team arrived at an important match, with no game plan, instead relying solely on good luck, they would surely lose. If a student went into a major exam having done no revision or study, and relied upon good luck to pass, then they would have little chance of ever succeeding. If a cast in a play tried to perform a play without having any rehearsals, and relied upon good luck to remember their lines, then the play would have very little chance of being a hit. This essay will now go on to illustrate how these examples prove that good planning and preparation are much more important than just good luck.
If a professional sports team arrived at a key match, with no game plan, instead relying exclusively on good luck, they would certainly be defeated. For example, in a complicated sport like cricket, many different tactics can be used, in both bowling and batting. Bowlers will study batters before the game and decide what there greatest weaknesses are. They would then practice at bowling to exploit this weakness most effectively. Some of the better bowlers would be able to do this for most of the top batters in a side, allowing them to have a major advantage over the opposition. Likewise, batters will also study how different bowlers react to different situations, and then judge how they should try to gain the upper hand over the bowler. For instance, if a certain bowler became unnerved when a batter started to play aggressively, then the batter would use this to his advantage, and try to bat like this during the match. It is also very important that the captain study all of the batters so that they know where they like to score most of their runs. This is so that he can set the most efficient field as possible, to reduce the amount of runs that a batsmen can score. Another sport where planning and preparation are extremely important...