Getting Lucky
While out to lunch at a Brazilian steakhouse with my dad and brothers last week we got on the topic of Dogecoin millionaires.
I continued shoveling slices of grilled pineapple and delicious grilled meats into my mouth as my brother shared a story about some guy (these stories always start with some guy) who liquidated his entire life savings (presumably only a couple thousand dollars) and dumped it all into Dogecoin a couple months back.
Your forgiven if you’re unfamiliar with Dogecoin. It was, as its creators will attest, an ironic jab at cryptocurrency that took the world by storm after a couple billionaires (Mark Cuban and Elon Musk) shared tweets supportive of the meme-inspired crypto.
Next thing you know, Dogecoin’s valuation goes through the roof. This brings us back to the topic of conversation at that lunch: the newly minted Dogecoin millionaire.
Whenever you hear stories of some guy striking it rich in the lottery or any other speculative investment strategy, the question of fairness often arises.
The world is a strange place where results are often divorced entirely from effort or merit. On a long enough time span, this becomes quite frustrating if you find yourself on the receiving end of what you perceive as “unfair” results.
Let’s put the topic of fairness aside for a moment and talk about the invisible force responsible for the disconnect between effort and result: Luck.
Most of us fall into one of a few camps when it comes to luck.
- There is no such thing as luck.
- I am unlucky.
- I am lucky.
Of course, number one is technically true in the sense that the human personification of luck, Lady Fortune, does not (I think) exist. Also, it’s true in the sense that much of how we define luck is determined by social or cultural circumstance.
Regardless of whether luck is real or not, we most certainly have to deal with the consequences of low-probability events on a daily basis. With this in mind, we can rule out the “There is no such thing as luck” argument. But that doesn’t change the fact that we still don’t have an objective measure of luck. Here’s where it gets a bit tricky, it falls on us (the individual) to define luck for ourselves.
Which leads to the second and third camps people adopt when it comes to luck: I am unlucky or I am lucky.
In either case, it’s all a matter of perspective, right?
If you’re reading this after your high flying legal practice just went underwater due to events entirely outside of your control, you might say, “Boy, I’m unlucky.”
Then again, if you have the mental, physical, financial, and technological capacities to be reading this article on the internet, you might adopt the equally true stance of, “Boy, I am incredibly lucky.”
How you define the result is entirely up to you.
So much of how we relate to luck is based on mindset and perspective, but that which can’t be measured, can’t be improved. And the real question I asked myself while sitting at that Brazilian Steakhouse with my family was:
Presumably, if we could improve our luck, that would certainly be a worthwhile endeavor, yes?
But before we can worry about how to improve something, we must first define it. So before we discuss tactics for improving our luck, let’s first lay out the four different types of luck.
Blind Luck
Our newly minted Dogecoin millionaire was the fortunate recipient of Blind Luck. When most people think about luck, this is what they’re thinking about. But this is actually the least interesting form of luck because there’s, by definition, nothing one can do to increase their chances of getting lucky.
Lady Fortune either smiles favorably on you or she doesn’t. The universe has no appeals process. You get what you get. It is what it is.
Now, before we move off the topic of Blind Luck, let’s not lose sight of the fact that first, every single person on this planet exists because of Blind Luck. Every single person reading this article is doing so as the recipient of so much Blind Luck that it staggers the mind.
Why does that matter?
Well, it doesn’t really, except to point out that you’re already infinitely lucky, so congratulations. If that’s not worth celebrating, what is?
Hustle Luck
Fortune favors the bold, here.
I’m going to keep repeating it until it becomes cliche, but 80% of success in life is just showing up. Hustle Luck is what makes that statement true.
Hustle Luck occurs when we just keep stirring the pot with more and more ingredients until something eventually just pops out.
This type of luck revolves around taking as many swings as bat as possible, because eventually you’ll hit a home run. Thankfully, in today’s modern era, the risks and consequences associated with striking out are rather small by comparison to what they were for our forefathers and mothers.
Take a swing at bat 300 years ago and miss and you might die. Nowadays, the actual likelihood of incurring catastrophic ruin as a result of putting yourself out there are so low as to be negligible. Sure, maybe you get fired or lose a relationship, but those are easily managed downsides that don’t end with you in the grave or in jail.
Hustle Luck puts you on the right side of that magical force in life called momentum.
Remember Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion? An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
There’s power in simply moving forward in life. Most people never succeed in gaining momentum because they fail to summon sufficient initiative to get over the hardest part: The Start. Once the sedentary state is broken, however, future progress becomes increasingly easy and swift.
Initiative leads to Momentum which in turn leads to Hustle Luck.
Preparation Luck
You’ve probably heard that Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity. Welcome to Preparation Luck.
Largely, this type of luck stems from your ability to recognize the opportunity that most other people would simply overlook. This stems from your unique domain experience and skill-set which allows you to tune into changes occurring in your field that others might miss.
The arrival of opportunity is, by definition, a luck-based event. Unfortunately, most people completely overlook the opportunities they’re presented with in life. And that’s not a knock on anybody. Life is an infinitely complex environment of cause and effect. Spotting opportunity, much less putting yourself in a position to benefit from it, is incredibly difficult.
This is why our fourth, and final, type of luck is the best kind.
Unique Character Luck
Across the vastness of time and space, there’s only one human with your unique collection of knowledge, experiences, skills, hobbies, fears, and desires. It’s you.
You are an entirely unique entity in this universe. Pretty cool, huh?
As a result of your uniqueness, you have a confluence of skills and knowledge which make you uniquely suited to capitalize on certain opportunities better than anybody else on the planet. The broader, more diverse, or more niche your database of potential, then the more potential opportunities you’ll be presented with in life.
And this is important because when properly leveraged, Unique Character Luck means you’re suddenly in the fortuitous position of benefiting from other people’s luck.
Let’s use an example from Naval Ravikant:
If you’re the world’s greatest deep-sea diver, known for your ability to take on dives nobody else in the world will even attempt, then when somebody finds a sunken treasure in a difficult to reach location, their luck becomes your luck as you’ll be the best person to help them retrieve that treasure.
This is the most powerful form of luck, but it’s the one that we most commonly overlook as being luck at all. Instead, we use other words for this type of luck such as destiny or fate.
It’s not. It’s luck.
This is good, because luck, again, is just a game of probability. One where we can increase our odds of… ya know, gettin’ lucky.
Here’s how.
How to increase Luck:
Simply put, to increase your chances of getting lucky, we’re primarily going to focus on the 3rd and 4th type of luck as the variables underlying success in those areas are dependent on us the individual.
Improving our skills, sharpening our perspectives, and increasing the uniqueness of our place in the world are vital parts of increasing our luck.
With that in mind, here are the four areas we need to direct our hyperfocused attention in order to boost our luck:
Energy
Curiosity
Creativity
Uniqueness
That’s it. Surprisingly simple, right?
Let’s take it from the top and breakdown how exactly each of these variables contributes to our overall luck, AND, most importantly, how we actually go about increasing our aptitude in these areas.
Energy
This attribute is most closely linked to Hustle Luck, but it makes an important appearance in Preparation Luck and Unique Character Luck.
Remember, we want to optimize for as many at-bats as possible. The reasoning being that on a long enough time horizon, with enough tries, we’ll eventually hit a home-run.
So the guiding question we must ask ourselves is this:
How energetic am I?
How many legitimate swings on ball are you making each day?
Listen, the most important variable of success is hardwork. Short of being on the receiving end of Blind Luck (which isn’t a viable life strategy), you can’t get anywhere worth going in life without first putting in the requisite work. It’s no different when it comes to luck.
Here are some important ways to judge whether or not you’re working hard in the ways that’ll potentially pay off big:
How many meaningful conversations are you having with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers every day? In the world we call home, it’s often less about what you know than it is about who you know.
Actually, scratch that.
It matters who knows you.
Optimizing for relational serendipity is massive.
How much product are you putting out into the world? Depending on what you do or where you’re trying to go, there’s a particular type of product or service that you’re delivering to the world in the form of value. The more value you put out into the world, both in terms of quality and quantity, the better chance you have of something landing.
Very few authors strike it rich on their debut novel. Behind every overnight success, there are ten years of hard work. Put out more into the universe of whatever makes you unique.
Now, there’s no way around it. Energy is critical in optimizing for Hustle Luck, Preparation Luck, and Unique Character Luck. So get out there and put a little elbow grease into whatever you’re doing.
Curiosity
You might be scratching your head wondering how curiosity could possibly increase your chances of getting lucky. Granted, it’s not entirely intuitive, but there’s a strong argument to be made that curiosity is a better indicator of success in life than intelligence.
Surprising?
It shouldn’t be.
Intelligence comes in many different flavors, so it’s unfair to distill it to a singular definition here. However, often when we talk about intelligence, we’re talking about memorization, fact hoarding, and recitation. This is important to a degree, but with Google and smartphones in everybody’s pocket, this is widely a replaceable skill-set.
With the vastness of human knowledge (plus a healthy dose of cat memes) available in everybody’s pocket, the meaningful variable then becomes who can ask the best questions.
The quality of our answers is tied directly to the quality of our questions.
Curious minds ask the best questions which in turn puts them in line to receive the best answers.
Now, there’s another aspect to consider here.
Ideas and potential solutions require raw material in the form of worldly experiences and knowledge. As Charlie Munger puts it, “To the man with only a hammer, every problem resembles a nail.”
The more multivariate and diverse our experiences, the more widely we’re able to apply those learnings in interesting, creative ways.
Which leads to the next point.
Creativity
Let’s first define creativity.
To me, creativity is the ability to take two or more disparate pieces of information and combine them in novel ways that provide utility.
The first part of creativity, then, is dictated by the sheer quantity of raw information we have access to. The more curious we are, the larger our library of data-points from which to pull.
The second critical part of creativity is harder to develop than simply accumulating information, and it’s where the rubber meets the road. Here, we must utilize an open mindset that’s adept at searching for alternative means of applying information to discover novel solutions.
This is no small task, largely because we humans are pattern recognition machines. We catalog experiences and data-points according to patterns and then match those patterns to solve new problems. The problem with this approach is that we quite often get stuck in mental ruts where the way we do things is simply the way we’ve always done things because… well… that’s just the way we’ve always done things.
After all, if it works, why bother fixing it?
Our brains are developed to conserve energy. Applying preexisting solutions and worldly frameworks is a pretty darn efficient way of conserving energy, all things told. Unfortunately, when you do what you’ve always done, you tend to get what you’ve always gotten. That’s not so helpful if your goal is to improve your luck which is, by definition, represents a somewhat drastic departure from your current state of existence in some way, shape, or form.
So the question becomes: How creative are we at synthesizing data to create new and novel solutions?
Some people are incredibly adept at this thinking outside of the box approach. Part of it might be a predisposition to this way of thinking, but there is certainly a large component of learnability here.
Actively applying creativity is difficult, time consuming, and cognitively draining…just like any other skill you’re trying to learn. Which is the most useful way to think about this component of luck: as a skill to be developed.
Uniqueness
You are a unique vessel of luck manifested as a result of your unique life experiences. Everything about you is singularly unique. Your strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, perspectives, likes and dislikes, lifestyles, and… well… everything.
Everything that has gone into creating YOU is unreplicatable. You are wholly unique.
Now, with that said, some people are simply more unique than others. The vastness and strangeness of their experiences makes them particularly unique.
This uniqueness is what we want to intentionally cultivate to increase our exposure to Unique Character Luck.
Take a moment to catalog all the things that make you unique. What are you particularly knowledgeable about? Where did you grow up? What was your family situation? What are you passionate about? What are your hobbies? What do you hate? What are you good at? What skills do you posses? Which of these skills are above average?
The potential list of unique traits is endless, so you’ll have to call it quits at some point. The goal is to find the interesting throughlines of your life and then search for creative ways of linking those traits.
By building your uniqueness with intentionality you become the sculptor of your destiny in a way, putting yourself in the way of luck should it ever pass through the crossroads of your unique gifts and perspectives.
Furthermore, you must set out to develop a unique personal point of view. If you think in the same way as everybody else, then there’s no reason for luck to find you instead of the countless others holding the same worldviews and insights.
That doesn’t mean you should go out with the intention of being contrarian or weird, but it does mean you need to spend a good amount of time digging deep into what exactly it is you think and believe (especially when it comes to your domain of expertise).
Very few of us have ever sat down to really dissect what we actually think on a topic, and why. The best recommendation I can offer to help you in the pursuit of uncovering exactly what you think on a topic is to employ the most powerful thinking tool the human species has: Writing.
Writing is conscious thought made physical and it’s an incredible resource for helping to unpack the multitude of thoughts raging through our mind at any moment.
If you’ve ever attempted to meditate, you’ve likely experienced all the noise rattling through our minds at any given moment. It’s this same noise which makes it so difficult to really get to the core of what we believe on a topic.
Writing enables us to wrestle those invisible thoughts into something physical which we can then move and edit and tweak and see for what it truly is. Often, through the practice of writing you discover you no longer agree with many of the things you thought you knew.
Understanding yourself is critical to developing Unique Character Luck.
Step Right Up and Test Your Luck
If you’re one of those people who believes luck is simply a gift from the cosmos and beyond your ability to influence, then I’ve done a pretty poor job here.
The take-away is this: Most types of luck are within your control to some degree.
You can’t always decide where the ball will go, or if there will be a guy standing under it in the perfect spot to catch it, but you can control the number of swings you take. In the modern landscape, the consequences of striking out are so small in relation to the potential rewards that the best strategy for success is to simply step up to the plate as often as possible.
Hustle is a key component of luck.
But don’t fixate on that to the exclusion of all else. Remember, there are two other (and in many ways, more powerful) forms of luck that you need to be optimizing for. Actively curating ceaseless curiosity coupled with creativity is both a solid alliteration and a surefire way to put yourself in the path of luck when it strikes.
And finally, one of the most important lessons I hope you walk away from this article is this: You are a special snowflake capable of increasing your uniqueness through intentionality and effort.
First, how cool is that?
Second, what are you going to do with that gift?
If the answer is nothing, well, good luck with that.
