Heres a really insightful piece on “Luck” and how you can create your own day to day. Particular when it comes to your investing.
Really worth 120 seconds of your time today and ESPECIALLY as many people ascribe the success of others down to pure chance.
While chance is a factor we can maximize our odds to achieve success as much as possible via employing success generating habits.
Here are the four different kinds of luck… and also how you can capture them:
(Please note these are mainly paraphrased from the words of author Naval Ravikant – therefore I wish to acknowledge him as the original author)
# 1. Blind Luck
“Chance I is completely impersonal; you can’t influence it.” – Dr. James H. Austin
This is the kind of luck you’re most familiar with.
Picture a miracle, an “Act of God,” or winning the lottery. All of these events arrive entirely out of the blue, and with little to no action on your part. They’re something to celebrate, but definitely not a moment to count on.
Blind luck will slip in and out of the other types of luck, so it’s essential to keep an eye out for it.
HOW TO GET BLIND LUCK ON YOUR SIDE
You can’t. Just make sure you don’t squander it if it strikes you. If you win the lottery, invest the money in functional businesses instead of spending it on sports cars and yachts.
# 2. Luck From Motion
“Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore.” – Dr. James H. Austin
The second type of luck comes from constant action.
The more stuff you create, the more articles you write, the more people you engage with – the better the chance that the right person notices what you’re doing at the right time and gives you a boost.
“[This is] luck that comes through persistence, hard work, hustle, motion. Which is when you’re running around creating lots of opportunities, you’re generating a lot of energy, you’re doing a lot of things, lots of things will get stirred up in the dust.”
Of the four kinds of luck, this is probably the most accessible to you right now. For example, I’ve gotten lucky recently with a few viral tweets that have added ***hundreds of people ***to my newsletter list.
Like this one:
Is the fact that this went viral just blind luck? No, because I tweet every day, multiple times a day. And I add a newsletter subscription link to viral tweets to make sure I get newsletter subs from those tweets.
This is luck from motion. The more I tweet, the better chance I have of getting lucky.
Of course, Austin also argues we must avoid “waste motion.” This is the act of working for work’s sake when it’s depleting your resources and not changing your outcome. This is rarely a factor when you’re first starting, as more often, the more work you put in, the more you learn.
HOW TO GET LUCK FROM MOTION ON YOUR SIDE
Hustle!
If you create content, businesses, or media around things you’re interested in, you can generate luck from motion. So, make more things, meet more people, and throw more stuff against the wall to see what sticks.
And remember, inaction is a sure way to get “unlucky.”
— HARRY S. TRUMAN “Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.”
# 3. Luck In Preparation
“Chance 3 favors those who have a sufficient background of sound knowledge plus special abilities in observing, remembering, recalling, and quickly forming significant new associations.” – Dr. James H. Austin
If you have Specific knowledge in your field through years of experience, you know what works and what doesn’t far better than someone relatively new to your domain.
That recognition is key to the third type of luck: luck in preparation.
“You become very good at spotting luck. If you are very skilled in a field, you will notice when a lucky break happens in that field. When other people who aren’t attuned to it won’t notice. So you become sensitive to luck and that’s through skill and knowledge and work.”
For example, say you are a filmmaker and come across a book that would make an excellent film. You know it would make a great movie because you’ve made ones like this before. And further, you know exactly who you could sell it to who would be very interested in it.
Anyone else who reads the book won’t have the experience or specific knowledge to turn it into a great movie, but you do. That’s luck in preparation.
As another example, if you understood cryptography in the early 2010s, perhaps you could have spotted the opportunity in the currency Bitcoin.
You could have witnessed this technological breakthrough in real-time. And then, because you understood the consequences of such a currency, loaded up on it for a few cents. Indeed, you’d be rich right now (and many who did, are!).
HOW TO GET LUCK FROM PREPARATION ON YOUR SIDE
Build specific knowledge and experience in your field.
Then, keep an eye out for Black Swans (rare events) happening in your area of expertise. Keep up with industry happenings, network with others at your level, and if you spot an opportunity that looks promising, follow up relentlessly.
— TONY ROBBINS “The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.”
# 4. Luck Unique To You
“Chance 4 favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.” – Dr. James H. Austin
As you edge closer and closer to expert status, you’ll make a name for yourself because of how you operate.
Maybe your personality is friendly and great to work with. Or, perhaps you’re super intense but always get the job done, no matter the hour. These “distinctive” traits with help your reputation and brand grow over time.
Your reputation is like a magnet that is getting stronger. As you build a satisfied customer base, you’ll pull in more and more business from further away. You’ll also get closer and closer to becoming the “best” in the world at what you do.
Eventually, a career-changing client – who likes who you are and your view of the world – will hire you for a job only you can do. Voilà: there’s** your good luck.**
“Then the last kind of luck is the weirdest, hardest kind. But that’s what we want to talk about. Which is where you build a unique character, a unique brand, a unique mindset, where then luck finds you.”
Capturing this kind of luck can seem impossible to envision at the start because you have to become the best at something. Becoming the best at something is hard to do, but possible**
“Keep redefining what you do until this is true.” – Naval Ravikant
And so we see that there are 4 types of luck. Only one of them is truly random.
The others are something we can actively encourage the likelihood of occuring via creating the correct conditions in our life.
*NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE
