Hard Work or Luck? A Shipping Lesson from Tu Youyou’s Discovery

 ⚓ Hard Work or Luck? A Shipping Lesson from Tu Youyou’s Discovery

 

🌅 Introduction

In shipping, we often ask ourselves — Was that a safe voyage because of my skill and planning, or was it just good luck with the weather and charterers?

This question of “luck vs hard work” is as old as time. And to answer it, let’s step out of shipping for a moment and into the world of medical science, where one woman’s relentless hard work saved millions of lives — Nobel Laureate Tu Youyou. Her story holds timeless lessons for us in shipping and in life.

 

🚢 Story of Tu Youyou: Patience in Stormy Seas

In 1969, during the Vietnam War, Tu Youyou, a Chinese scientist, was tasked with finding a cure for malaria. Soldiers weren’t just dying from bullets — they were dying from the disease in the jungles.

With no modern tools, Tu and her team collected over 600 plants and tested 2,000 remedies. Failure after failure. Imagine this like testing 2,000 ballast water treatment systems and watching them fail one by one. Many would give up. She didn’t.

Finally, from an ancient Chinese text, she discovered a clue: the way they extracted the plant’s medicine mattered. After years of trials, she found artemisinin — a compound that cured malaria. She even tested it on herself first.

Today, this drug has saved over 1 billion lives. Yet, Tu had no advanced degrees, no foreign exposure, and no big “connections.” What she had was relentless discipline and hard work.

👉 Shipping takeaway: Sometimes, voyages succeed not because weather or market luck favors us, but because of relentless preparation, persistence, and the courage to test again after failure.
#ShipOpsInsights #PersistenceAtSea #Leadership

 

🎯 Hard Work vs Luck: Two Kinds of Success

James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) explains this beautifully with absolute success vs relative success.

• Absolute success: Becoming the world’s best. E.g., being the “Bill Gates of tech” or the “Sachin Tendulkar of cricket.” This usually requires luck, timing, and unique circumstances.
• Relative success: Becoming the best among your peers. E.g., being the best Chief Officer in your fleet, the most reliable operator in your office. This depends mostly on hard work, habits, and consistency.

💡 Shipping example: Two cadets join the same vessel. One studies procedures, practices communication, and keeps learning. The other does just the bare minimum. Over time, the first one becomes an officer faster. That’s relative success — 100% driven by hard work.

👉 Lesson: You may not control when the freight market spikes or when charterers call, but you control your habits, discipline, and preparation. And when “luck” finally shows up, you’ll be ready.
#HardWorkWins #MaritimeGrowth #ShippingLeadership

 

⚡ When Luck Arrives, Be Ready

In shipping, luck often comes as:

• A sudden high-paying fixture 📈
• A kind owner or charterer who trusts you with big responsibilities
• A smooth PSC or vetting inspection

But here’s the truth: Luck only rewards those who are prepared.
A poorly prepared Master cannot “luck” his way through a vetting inspection. A weak operations manager cannot “luck” into a flawless fixture recap.

Tu Youyou had her moment of luck when she spotted that single line in a 1,500-year-old book. But without years of prior hard work, she would have never understood its importance.

👉 Shipping takeaway: Hard work makes luck meaningful. When opportunity comes, only preparation ensures you can seize it.
#PreparedSeafarer #OpportunitiesAtSea #ShipOpsInsights

 

🌊 Final Word: Your Voice in the Story of Success

Seafarers and shipping professionals — you may not control the markets, weather, or geopolitical events. That’s the luck part. But you can always control your effort, discipline, and attitude.

Relative success (becoming better than yesterday, better than your peers) is fully in your hands. Absolute success (becoming the very best in the world) may or may not come — but it only arrives to those who first master relative success.

⚓ So keep preparing, keep learning, keep pushing. Luck will knock. Be ready to open the door.

 

✅ Call to Action

I’d love to hear from my shipping fraternity:
👉 Do you believe more in luck or in hard work at sea?
👉 What’s one example from your career where preparation beat luck?

💬 Share your thoughts in comments, tag a colleague who inspires you, and follow ShipOpsInsights with Dattaram for more stories that connect shipping with life lessons.

#MaritimeLeadership #ShipOpsInsights #SeafarerGrowth #HardWorkPays