#30 - Get Lucky
There are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck.
When we think about our best and worst life, business, or career decisions, we often recall the best and worst outcomes. We tend to ignore luck that intervenes between decisions and results. This newsletter is about luck: how to recognize luck, how to maximize good luck, prepare for bad luck and make better decisions.
We are really bad at separating skill and luck. When good things happen, we credit it to our skills, and for bad results, we say we got unlucky. When others succeed, we fail to give credit, and when bad things happen to others, we criticize them for their poor skills. This book shows how to accept that there are things beyond our knowledge and control and think probabilistically. Recognizing the role of chance not only improves our decision-making but also creates space for compassion - to ourselves and others.
... but setting yourself up to be lucky might be.
"I’m going to establish a pattern of resilience and apply information and testing to discover what works. And one of the tactics to support that strategy could be showing up in places where luck can help me out. If I can persist long enough, I’ll get lucky."
How to Create Your Own Career Luck
This article offers two strategies to cultivate "smart luck" in your encounters with new people: setting serendipity hooks and planting serendipity bombs.
Life is Luck - Here's How to Plan a Career Around It
The difference between moderate and great success is mostly luck. This key focus of this article is on the ways to mitigate uncertainties in your career.
How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
If all the articles above offered some isolated ideas on increasing your good luck or mitigating bad luck, Scott Adams has written a book that you can almost see as an "instruction manual" on putting in place a SYSTEM that improves your odds. A short version would look like this:
Systems Beat Goals. Energy is Good. Passion is Bullshit. Be Selfish - in the Right Way. Manage Your Odds for Success. See a Failure as a Tool, not as an Outcome. Stay in the Game Long Enough. Be Happy.
If “Thinking in Bets” that opened this newsletter was a WHY book, “How to Decide” is a WORKBOOK that enables learning good decision-making BY DOING: for every concept and framework, there are exercises, charts and checklists that bring a good decision making process to life. With a pencil at hand, you can examine your past decisions and develop a better process for the decisions you are facing right now. A gem.
Stay healthy, safe and get lucky
Arina