Things always become obvious after the fact. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Of course chance favors the prepared! Hard work, showing up on time, wearing a clean (preferably white) shirt, using deodorant, and some such conventional things contribute to success — they are certainly necessary but may be insufficient as they do not cause success.

Authors, artists, and even philosophers are much better off having a very small number of fanatics behind them than a large number of people who appreciate their work. The number of persons who dislike the work don’t count — there is no such thing as the opposite of buying your book, or the equivalent of losing points in a soccer game, and this absence of negative domain for book sales provides the author with a measure of optionality.

The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; ... the wise does neither.