Five years of steady work looks like luck to people who only saw the last six months.

Visible success arrives all at once and the work behind it does not, so observers get the ending without the four and a half years underneath. From outside it genuinely looks like fortune or favour. That is worth remembering in both directions: when people dismiss your result, and when you look at somebody else and assume it came easily.

Keep a record of your own long work, so you are not tempted to believe the short version later. When somebody’s success appears out of nowhere, ask what they were doing five years ago. The answer usually rearranges how you think about your own timeline.