8 ms·

Create optimal conditions for lucky things to happen to you (2020)

218 points by alexzeitler 4y ago

revskill 4y ago
What is luck actually ? If you think you got some "virtual success", or eventually "weath success", it considered harmful in long run more often.
kris_wayton 4y ago
This really seems to boil down to "right place, right time", which I suppose you have some control over. However, I assume there's also a potential downside. I've seen, for example, people who are overtly hustling...and the deliberate nature does turn some potential contacts away.
- afhammad 4y ago
  A lot of people are in the right place at the right time, but very few are equipped to realise it and take advantage of it. At the beach, waves will hit everyone in their path (right place, right time) but only those that notice it and already have momentum in the direction it's heading are able to ride it. If they have experience, and the tools (a board), they can ride it for longer without crashing.
gesman 4y ago
This touches on the whole universe of knowledge of how to manifest desires. Luck is a final jump into desired physical manifestation of desire. What author is touching upon heavily - is physical part - doing (something). Another integral part of manifesting is removing conscious and subconscious blocks (beliefs) and practices of being in the state of already manifested desire.
- passion__desire 4y ago
  Law of attraction is bs.
  - _yb2s 4y ago
    It seems like BS on the surface because it’s explained as a supernatural thing that gets results without effort. That’s not at all what it really is, really it’s a mental hack to align your unconscious with your conscious goals so you can stop self sabotaging, and actually take the real world actions that bring about the outcome you want. It’s simple, real, and works. The magic part is a way of getting modern people that aren’t even aware they have an unconscious to directly work with it, by feeling they are working with some external magic.
    - passion__desire 4y ago
      If you think you have so much control over the unconscious as you are claiming, try asking your unconscious to internally swap the conscious perception of red and green colours. If you can't even do this basic task, forget about aligning external world.
      - _yb2s 4y ago
        Your reply doesn't make sense to me. I'm not sure what you mean by "aligning external world." I am talking about aligning the goals of your consciousness with the goals of your unconsciousness, e.g. internal alignment so you aren't self sabotaging without even realizing it. Importantly, the ability to do this is not something one can automatically do, but requires lots of training and practice, and is also a key goal of most systems of psychological therapy and religious practice. My assertion is that "The Secret" is one such system, and can be viewed as a type of meditation technique. There are a huge number of psychological methods that aim to work on this goal, whereas the 'swapping colors' thing you mention is not something I have ever seen as a claimed possibility of any method. I'm not sure why you would expect to be able to do that, or why not being able to do that would mean you wouldn't be able to do anything else.
        passion__desire 4y ago
        I gave you a simple task for the unconscious which as far as we know you can't physically do. i.e. align your subconscious to switch red and green perception.
- swyx 4y ago
  (author here) one of my favorite classes at Wharton was Richard Shell's the Literature of Success (https://apps.wharton.upenn.edu/syllabi/2016A/LGST227001/ https://apps.wharton.upenn.edu/syllabi/2016A/LGST227001/) where we, no joke, studied The Secret as a way to understand the "Think and Grow Rich"/manifestation philosophy of success my favorite joke of his about the topic is "when two sports teams compete against one another, if both manifest their desire really hard, only one can win"
  - gesman 4y ago
    Or both win :) Welcome to the world of parallel realities which is beyond the scope of this thread.
    - passion__desire 4y ago
      Depends on the amplitudes of the possible parallel realities. Yes many worlds predict each possible world to exist but amplitudes matter as well.
O__________O 4y ago
To me the advise given by Richard Wiseman in his book titled “The Luck Factor” from 2003 feels like the most generalized. TLDR is lucky people: (0) are social and intentionally seek out new connections; (1) maximize chance opportunities, they’re not fixated on a grand plan; (2) nurture and listen to their intuition; (3) expect good fortune; (4) find the good in bad situations. Here are links to: - https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Richard-Wiseman/dp/0786869143 https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Richard-Wiseman/dp/078686... - http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf - https://youtube.com/watch?v=WizT_VdtOYM https://youtube.com/watch?v=WizT_VdtOYM
mormegil 4y ago
In the game of backgammon, there is an aspect of luck (the game is played with dice), but there is definitely an aspect of player quality. When a more experienced player plays against a worse player, from the point of view of the worse player, the game often looks like the opponent is just lucky: What the inexperienced player does not notice is that the better player creates opportunities for the “luck” to occur: by positioning the checkers on the board in a way when the majority of the possible dice rolls would be good and minimizing the number of possible bad rolls. This is especially visible when playing against a good computer opponent: the players often accuse the program of cheating the dice, choosing good rolls for the computer and bad rolls for the human. There is even an “Official Backgammon Software Complaint Form” for that. <https://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+546 https://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+546>
qprofyeh 4y ago
Then there’s the definition of luck. Seems like this article is very career-focused. Sometimes it’s good to remember relationships and free time are also forms of luck.
kissgyorgy 4y ago
I suggest learning poker basics. After playing poker for 8 years and having it as a primary income, it changed my view on a lot of things. For example, the things described in the article I call it statistics, not luck and after playing for a long time, I don't really believe too much in luck anymore.
- swyx 4y ago
  i have actually played underground poker for a couple years :) and then was a hedge fund guy so i guess pro poker for a little more. Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets is the eigenbook for this sort of thinking. But even Annie is playing the metagame around monetizing her poker career outside of poker rather than inside it, maximizing her luck by doing all the speaking and writing she does.
- actualwitch 4y ago
  No need to go this deep, even. Knowing about expected value and applying it irl will get you decently far.
  - kissgyorgy 4y ago
    YES! That's probably the single biggest thing poker can teach you which will plenty use in life.
ericalexander0 4y ago
Do successful people manifest luck, or do they have a higher return on luck? https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/return-on-luck.html https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/return-on-luck.html
- dabraham1248 4y ago
  > Was Gates the only person who went to a college with computer resources in the mid-1970s? Was Gates the only person who read the Popular Electronics article? Was Gates the only person who knew how to program in BASIC? No, no, no, no, and no. Umm, was Bill Gates the only person whose mom had a personal chat with _the CEO of IBM_ about doing business with his company? Probably, yes. Did the IBM people forget to ask for an exclusive license as they had discussed internally? Definitely, yes. I mean, Gates is smart, worked hard, and _did_ make the most of the luck he got. But pretending he just made better use of the _same sort of luck as everyone else_ is simply untrue.
jonifico 4y ago
Luck is also determined before you are born: around half of the population live with less than 2usd a day, so half of the population is starting in very unlucky conditions, and would be harder for them to try to create luck when they are struggling for survive.
- amelius 4y ago
  And until science figures out how consciousness and time work, it's better to assume that physics is completely fair (symmetrical) and the other half of the population might end up with 2usd in their next incarnation, living in the same time.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - swyx 4y ago
    Today you, tomorrow me. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
swyx 4y ago
author here, wow thanks for posting this up! i wrote this 3 years ago but have been doing updates and discussions on podcasts since (i add to my writing over time as i learn more, highly recommend it): - nice visualization of lick surface area https://twitter.com/elzr/status/1381105950602461189 https://twitter.com/elzr/status/1381105950602461189 - https://museapp.com/podcast/53-career/ https://museapp.com/podcast/53-career/ - scooped by sahil bloom https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1495079113115451392 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1495079113115451392 (and dalton did another video more focused on YC founders https://youtu.be/NmEyx9TEkRw https://youtu.be/NmEyx9TEkRw) - another good perspective on luck https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1550659843882717186 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1550659843882717186 and i cover more career-related aspects of luck/strategy in my book: https://learninpublic.org https://learninpublic.org If you care what I think - most people stop reading at the "4 types of luck" level (because that's where pmarca, naval et al stop), but what I'm trying to contribute to the conversation is the role of strategy in creating luck. People who are more intentional about their strategic decisions and awareness end up more lucky. But I'll have to prove it thru my own life success since simply arguing it doesnt convince anyone hehe.
- jamager 4y ago
  Good post, thanks! I have a gut feeling that hustling is a more effective strategy than being the best. In a winner-takes-all economy, (as many real economies are) you can do an excellent work and go unnoticed because someone else is already capturing all the attention. You can argue that if that happens is because the other thing is best, but I'm not very convinced about that. Look at HN itself: if a submission manages to get early traction, it is more likely that it will raise to the front page as upvotes attract upvotes, etc. Ofc, you can try to do both.
- velcrovan 4y ago
  FYI: Several of the links to your other posts in that article are dead now.
  - swyx 4y ago
    ah thanks.. which?
trabant00 4y ago
> You’re more likely to roll a 6 if you roll more dice Yes, but you're also a lot more likely to roll a 1 and run out of bankroll. One could go on and discuss all the points in there but that's a lot of theory crafting that misses the point that created opportunities are not be luck by definition.
michael_j_ward 4y ago
I highly recommend famed computer scientist Richard Hamming's "You and Your Research" [0] which covers "creating luck" from a researchers perspective. [0]: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
acjohnson55 4y ago
This is a great elaboration of something I realized in my early adult life, after feeling perpetually unlucky throughout my adolescence. In my youth, I found myself frequently disappointed that things didn't happen for me, lamenting my bad luck. The beginning of college coincided with my recovery from an episode of depression, and I guess fueled rebound energy, I started prospecting. I just said yes to as many things as I could. It didn't take long for this to start paying dividends, and I started getting lucky. By the end of college, I could see how luck compounds. I think the world is very random, practically speaking, but that probably distributions are highly mutable. I found that decisions I previously made set me up for higher likelihood of being chosen for subsequent opportunities. I parlayed this into getting a grad school fellowship that took me to an Ivy League university, needless to say, that opens further doors. Suddenly, I was quite lucky, and I've remained lucky for my adult life to this day. This, incidentally, is the problem with meritocracy. Meritocracy showers opportunities on the lucky, rather than the needy or the deserving or even the highest leverage. For the privileged (as I am, in many ways), this starts before birth. Merit is manufactured and compound. Success justifies the perception of merit, but ignores the extent to which successful people are often the beneficiaries of massive overinvestment. Nonetheless, this is the system we live in, and I think it's good for people to know how to navigate it.
- DontchaKnowit 4y ago
  "For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but frim him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away." Matthew 25:29
- musicale 4y ago
  > Meritocracy showers opportunities on the lucky, rather than the needy or the deserving or even the highest leverage. Advocates of meritocracy seem to forget that it wasn't coined as a positive term.
- aardvarkr 4y ago
  I really like the idea that saying yes to everything leads to more luck. When you open yourself up to new opportunities the outcomes will surprise you. It sounds dumb but it really works, and it’s a lesson that I learned from Jim Carrey of all people. The movie yes man may not be a classic but the message stuck with me and has had a profound impact on my “luck”
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
Suggestion for the author: Jason's friend Gabriel Weinberg (also the founder of DDG) wrote about Luck Surface Area as one of the portable mental models in his best-seller, Super Thinking (https://amzn.to/3weREdA https://amzn.to/3weREdA). I like patio11 and all but I don't think his guest podcast many years later was key in popularizing the idea. It had also already been mentioned on many podcasts over the entire previous decade and on the front page of HN multiple times.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  > I like patio11 and all but I don't think his guest podcast many years later was key in popularizing the idea. I felt those names were placed as an "argument from authority" [0] (those are good arguments regardless!); and given the author's background (tech), it isn't completely unexpected that those authoritative figures happen to be VCs / investors. That said, blogs aren't really accurate sources of information, anyway. Besides, tech twitter is an echo chamber ;) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
  - swyx 4y ago
    [author here] argument from authority does have its place actually but also there is a more benign reason to mention them - they are how I learned of the concept so I am simply acknowledging my own ideological lineage
    - ignoramous 4y ago
      Agree. Just a nit, though... > I am simply acknowledging my own ideological lineage >> TFA goes: "A parallel, older school of thought dates back to James Austin in 1978 and was repopularized by Marc Andreesen in 2007, then Naval and Nivi a decade later." ...doesn't only come off as an "acknowledgement", which is the point GP is making.
thenerdhead 4y ago
Luck implies both good and bad. These articles only talk about the good luck. Wouldn’t luck instead be fortune/fortunate given it implies only good luck? Similar to the cliche quote that fortune favors the bold / Lady Luck favors the one who tries? Additionally luck implies your actions don’t matter. Whereas fortune/fortunate implies your actions do matter.
neatze 4y ago
In many cases it is really hard to understand degree of luck versus deliberate actions. But there is a good quote (not sure who's it is) to live by; chance favors prepared mind.
- afhammad 4y ago
  By Louis Pasteur. It's quoted in the article
lordfrito 4y ago
I once read that luck is merely opportunity + preparedness. Opportunities frequently come and go in your life. Most people aren't prepared to take advantage of them. We don't have control over most of the opportunities that appear in our lives. However we have agency over our level of preparedness. Work on being better prepared to recognize and take advantage of the future opportunities that will arise in your life.
- swyx 4y ago
  yes. that is #3 of the 4 types of luck. i encourage you to read the others; people who stop at the Seneca quote aren't fully understanding the literature of luck.
markus_zhang 4y ago
As a fellow commentor said this is more about statistics. There is another layer of luck that one does not create: genetic/childhood experience. I guess the take from the article is that one should try again and again and eventually statistics will take over. But it might be lucky to have the ability to try again and again.
kulor 4y ago
I think the article would be even better if it elaborated with anecdotes of successfully increasing your luck surface area – for tactical inspiration.
- swyx 4y ago
  that would take another essay… which i have done! https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas
  - kulor 4y ago
    How well your response embodies Step 1 & 2 :) I listened to your narrated version, thanks for sharing your stories. Minutiae: I noticed your anchor for Step 1 needs correcting in the table of contents.
- Tepix 4y ago
  One such situation that most people on HN are probably familiar with is being prepared for a good (business) idea so that when you have the idea you can build a business around it faster and easier than someone who is unprepared. Speed and friction often matter.
kypro 4y ago
The concept of "luck surface area" is one of those fundamental ideas that I believe has the power to change an individual's life if fully embraced. While I've never hit the luck jackpot I can still list many ways that this concept has dramatically improved my life since first hearing Jason Roberts talk about it over a decade ago on TechZing. In my experience one of the easiest ways someone can increase their luck surface area is through networking and cold emails. Knowing lots of people doing cool stuff and occasionally reaching out to people who have been successful is imo one of the best ways to increase your own chances of success in life. I also think it helps to imagine the "luck surface" as a fairly non-uniform thing. People often underestimate how unconventional paths to success can be. For example, I had a weirdo friend who a decade ago kept telling me about this thing called Ethereum and how I needed to get in on something called an "ICO" because it was going to be "the next big thing". At the time I was so dismissive of the idea, but I've seen unconventional interests like this work out for people enough times now that I always try to keep an open mind these days. To expand on the luck surface area concept a little, in search optimisation there's a trade off between exploration and local optimisation (eg, hill climbing). If a search algorithm focuses too much on exploring the global search landscape it tends to spend a lot of time in non-optimal areas, but if it spends too much time climbing the nearest hill then it tends to get trapped in local optimums. I think this is true of life too. The traditional path to success probably focuses too much on hill climbing and doesn't spend enough time considering unconventional alternatives where there exists potential for much larger rewards. In addition to thinking about the surface area of luck I think there is also some value in thinking about how you're exploring that surface area.
didntreadarticl 4y ago
But what is the cost of enlarging your 'luck surface area' as opposed to putting your energy into other things that are more likely to bear fruit
pontifier 4y ago
"See a penny, pick it up. All the day you'll have good luck!" That phrase has become a bit of a motto for me. In my mind, luck has multiple components. The first is awareness of an opportunity... Noticing the penny. The second, and possibly the more critical part comes from action. Many people may have seen that opportunity before, but did they act on it? In the simple case of a penny, the answer is no... otherwise it wouldn't be there. Both parts are required.
csmeyer 4y ago
I would say 2/3 of my luck in the past year has been a result of sharing work and writing on HN, following up with commenters and being slightly more aggressive with networking. Probably not a coincidence that it's been a very lucky year. Being lucky at all is predicated on being in a good state physically and mentally, which I'm very fortunate to be in at the moment. I think one thing we should all think about is how we can not just maximize our own luck, but use that luck to get other people in a good state as well.
myth_drannon 4y ago
To me it looks like justifying ADHD like behavior of working on too many things at once.
timbucktoo 4y ago
Luck is the residue of design. -John Milton
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
Just don't assume that, if you create the optimal conditions, luck will happen.
nathanvanfleet 4y ago
I guess there have been multiple times in my life where I see the suggestion that I am just missing "personal branding" and decided not go with that. I think it probably appears to particular people, and it doesn't appeal to me.
lawrenceyan 4y ago
I like to think of luck and skill as flow and force respectively. Flow is being able to recognize when and where opportunities arise and maneuvering yourself there in time-space. Force is the actual mechanistic application of effort to actualize some experience. Generally speaking, if you have less of one you’ll need more of the other. But I think it’s valuable to consider force as roughly linear and flow as nonlinear. Because force is limited to how much you as a single individual can produce, and flow is the entirety of the world potentially on your side.
legerdemain 4y ago
I suspect that swyx (the author) graduating from an Ivy League university's business school created a lot of "optimal conditions" in his future. No offense to swyx, but this advice can be concretized pretty effectively as "go make friends at an Ivy League school."

218 points by alexzeitler 4y ago

What is luck actually ? If you think you got some "virtual success", or eventually "weath success", it considered harmful in long run more often.

kris_wayton 4y ago

This really seems to boil down to "right place, right time", which I suppose you have some control over. However, I assume there's also a potential downside. I've seen, for example, people who are overtly hustling...and the deliberate nature does turn some potential contacts away.

afhammad 4y ago
A lot of people are in the right place at the right time, but very few are equipped to realise it and take advantage of it. At the beach, waves will hit everyone in their path (right place, right time) but only those that notice it and already have momentum in the direction it's heading are able to ride it. If they have experience, and the tools (a board), they can ride it for longer without crashing.

gesman 4y ago

This touches on the whole universe of knowledge of how to manifest desires. Luck is a final jump into desired physical manifestation of desire. What author is touching upon heavily - is physical part - doing (something). Another integral part of manifesting is removing conscious and subconscious blocks (beliefs) and practices of being in the state of already manifested desire.

passion__desire 4y ago
Law of attraction is bs.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  It seems like BS on the surface because it’s explained as a supernatural thing that gets results without effort. That’s not at all what it really is, really it’s a mental hack to align your unconscious with your conscious goals so you can stop self sabotaging, and actually take the real world actions that bring about the outcome you want. It’s simple, real, and works. The magic part is a way of getting modern people that aren’t even aware they have an unconscious to directly work with it, by feeling they are working with some external magic.
  - passion__desire 4y ago
    If you think you have so much control over the unconscious as you are claiming, try asking your unconscious to internally swap the conscious perception of red and green colours. If you can't even do this basic task, forget about aligning external world.
    - _yb2s 4y ago
      Your reply doesn't make sense to me. I'm not sure what you mean by "aligning external world." I am talking about aligning the goals of your consciousness with the goals of your unconsciousness, e.g. internal alignment so you aren't self sabotaging without even realizing it. Importantly, the ability to do this is not something one can automatically do, but requires lots of training and practice, and is also a key goal of most systems of psychological therapy and religious practice. My assertion is that "The Secret" is one such system, and can be viewed as a type of meditation technique. There are a huge number of psychological methods that aim to work on this goal, whereas the 'swapping colors' thing you mention is not something I have ever seen as a claimed possibility of any method. I'm not sure why you would expect to be able to do that, or why not being able to do that would mean you wouldn't be able to do anything else.
      - passion__desire 4y ago
        I gave you a simple task for the unconscious which as far as we know you can't physically do. i.e. align your subconscious to switch red and green perception.
swyx 4y ago
(author here) one of my favorite classes at Wharton was Richard Shell's the Literature of Success (https://apps.wharton.upenn.edu/syllabi/2016A/LGST227001/ https://apps.wharton.upenn.edu/syllabi/2016A/LGST227001/) where we, no joke, studied The Secret as a way to understand the "Think and Grow Rich"/manifestation philosophy of success my favorite joke of his about the topic is "when two sports teams compete against one another, if both manifest their desire really hard, only one can win"
- gesman 4y ago
  Or both win :) Welcome to the world of parallel realities which is beyond the scope of this thread.
  - passion__desire 4y ago
    Depends on the amplitudes of the possible parallel realities. Yes many worlds predict each possible world to exist but amplitudes matter as well.

O__________O 4y ago

To me the advise given by Richard Wiseman in his book titled “The Luck Factor” from 2003 feels like the most generalized. TLDR is lucky people: (0) are social and intentionally seek out new connections; (1) maximize chance opportunities, they’re not fixated on a grand plan; (2) nurture and listen to their intuition; (3) expect good fortune; (4) find the good in bad situations. Here are links to: - https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Richard-Wiseman/dp/0786869143 https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Richard-Wiseman/dp/078686... - http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf - https://youtube.com/watch?v=WizT_VdtOYM https://youtube.com/watch?v=WizT_VdtOYM

mormegil 4y ago

In the game of backgammon, there is an aspect of luck (the game is played with dice), but there is definitely an aspect of player quality. When a more experienced player plays against a worse player, from the point of view of the worse player, the game often looks like the opponent is just lucky: What the inexperienced player does not notice is that the better player creates opportunities for the “luck” to occur: by positioning the checkers on the board in a way when the majority of the possible dice rolls would be good and minimizing the number of possible bad rolls. This is especially visible when playing against a good computer opponent: the players often accuse the program of cheating the dice, choosing good rolls for the computer and bad rolls for the human. There is even an “Official Backgammon Software Complaint Form” for that. <https://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+546 https://www.bkgm.com/rgb/rgb.cgi?view+546>

qprofyeh 4y ago

Then there’s the definition of luck. Seems like this article is very career-focused. Sometimes it’s good to remember relationships and free time are also forms of luck.

kissgyorgy 4y ago

I suggest learning poker basics. After playing poker for 8 years and having it as a primary income, it changed my view on a lot of things. For example, the things described in the article I call it statistics, not luck and after playing for a long time, I don't really believe too much in luck anymore.

swyx 4y ago
i have actually played underground poker for a couple years :) and then was a hedge fund guy so i guess pro poker for a little more. Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets is the eigenbook for this sort of thinking. But even Annie is playing the metagame around monetizing her poker career outside of poker rather than inside it, maximizing her luck by doing all the speaking and writing she does.
actualwitch 4y ago
No need to go this deep, even. Knowing about expected value and applying it irl will get you decently far.
- kissgyorgy 4y ago
  YES! That's probably the single biggest thing poker can teach you which will plenty use in life.

ericalexander0 4y ago

Do successful people manifest luck, or do they have a higher return on luck? https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/return-on-luck.html https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/return-on-luck.html

dabraham1248 4y ago
> Was Gates the only person who went to a college with computer resources in the mid-1970s? Was Gates the only person who read the Popular Electronics article? Was Gates the only person who knew how to program in BASIC? No, no, no, no, and no. Umm, was Bill Gates the only person whose mom had a personal chat with _the CEO of IBM_ about doing business with his company? Probably, yes. Did the IBM people forget to ask for an exclusive license as they had discussed internally? Definitely, yes. I mean, Gates is smart, worked hard, and _did_ make the most of the luck he got. But pretending he just made better use of the _same sort of luck as everyone else_ is simply untrue.

jonifico 4y ago

Luck is also determined before you are born: around half of the population live with less than 2usd a day, so half of the population is starting in very unlucky conditions, and would be harder for them to try to create luck when they are struggling for survive.

amelius 4y ago
And until science figures out how consciousness and time work, it's better to assume that physics is completely fair (symmetrical) and the other half of the population might end up with 2usd in their next incarnation, living in the same time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- swyx 4y ago
  Today you, tomorrow me. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

swyx 4y ago

author here, wow thanks for posting this up! i wrote this 3 years ago but have been doing updates and discussions on podcasts since (i add to my writing over time as i learn more, highly recommend it): - nice visualization of lick surface area https://twitter.com/elzr/status/1381105950602461189 https://twitter.com/elzr/status/1381105950602461189 - https://museapp.com/podcast/53-career/ https://museapp.com/podcast/53-career/ - scooped by sahil bloom https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1495079113115451392 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1495079113115451392 (and dalton did another video more focused on YC founders https://youtu.be/NmEyx9TEkRw https://youtu.be/NmEyx9TEkRw) - another good perspective on luck https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1550659843882717186 https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1550659843882717186 and i cover more career-related aspects of luck/strategy in my book: https://learninpublic.org https://learninpublic.org If you care what I think - most people stop reading at the "4 types of luck" level (because that's where pmarca, naval et al stop), but what I'm trying to contribute to the conversation is the role of strategy in creating luck. People who are more intentional about their strategic decisions and awareness end up more lucky. But I'll have to prove it thru my own life success since simply arguing it doesnt convince anyone hehe.

jamager 4y ago
Good post, thanks! I have a gut feeling that hustling is a more effective strategy than being the best. In a winner-takes-all economy, (as many real economies are) you can do an excellent work and go unnoticed because someone else is already capturing all the attention. You can argue that if that happens is because the other thing is best, but I'm not very convinced about that. Look at HN itself: if a submission manages to get early traction, it is more likely that it will raise to the front page as upvotes attract upvotes, etc. Ofc, you can try to do both.
velcrovan 4y ago
FYI: Several of the links to your other posts in that article are dead now.
- swyx 4y ago
  ah thanks.. which?

trabant00 4y ago

> You’re more likely to roll a 6 if you roll more dice Yes, but you're also a lot more likely to roll a 1 and run out of bankroll. One could go on and discuss all the points in there but that's a lot of theory crafting that misses the point that created opportunities are not be luck by definition.

michael_j_ward 4y ago

I highly recommend famed computer scientist Richard Hamming's "You and Your Research" [0] which covers "creating luck" from a researchers perspective. [0]: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

acjohnson55 4y ago

This is a great elaboration of something I realized in my early adult life, after feeling perpetually unlucky throughout my adolescence. In my youth, I found myself frequently disappointed that things didn't happen for me, lamenting my bad luck. The beginning of college coincided with my recovery from an episode of depression, and I guess fueled rebound energy, I started prospecting. I just said yes to as many things as I could. It didn't take long for this to start paying dividends, and I started getting lucky. By the end of college, I could see how luck compounds. I think the world is very random, practically speaking, but that probably distributions are highly mutable. I found that decisions I previously made set me up for higher likelihood of being chosen for subsequent opportunities. I parlayed this into getting a grad school fellowship that took me to an Ivy League university, needless to say, that opens further doors. Suddenly, I was quite lucky, and I've remained lucky for my adult life to this day. This, incidentally, is the problem with meritocracy. Meritocracy showers opportunities on the lucky, rather than the needy or the deserving or even the highest leverage. For the privileged (as I am, in many ways), this starts before birth. Merit is manufactured and compound. Success justifies the perception of merit, but ignores the extent to which successful people are often the beneficiaries of massive overinvestment. Nonetheless, this is the system we live in, and I think it's good for people to know how to navigate it.

DontchaKnowit 4y ago
"For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but frim him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away." Matthew 25:29
musicale 4y ago
> Meritocracy showers opportunities on the lucky, rather than the needy or the deserving or even the highest leverage. Advocates of meritocracy seem to forget that it wasn't coined as a positive term.
aardvarkr 4y ago
I really like the idea that saying yes to everything leads to more luck. When you open yourself up to new opportunities the outcomes will surprise you. It sounds dumb but it really works, and it’s a lesson that I learned from Jim Carrey of all people. The movie yes man may not be a classic but the message stuck with me and has had a profound impact on my “luck”

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

Suggestion for the author: Jason's friend Gabriel Weinberg (also the founder of DDG) wrote about Luck Surface Area as one of the portable mental models in his best-seller, Super Thinking (https://amzn.to/3weREdA https://amzn.to/3weREdA). I like patio11 and all but I don't think his guest podcast many years later was key in popularizing the idea. It had also already been mentioned on many podcasts over the entire previous decade and on the front page of HN multiple times.

ignoramous 4y ago
> I like patio11 and all but I don't think his guest podcast many years later was key in popularizing the idea. I felt those names were placed as an "argument from authority" [0] (those are good arguments regardless!); and given the author's background (tech), it isn't completely unexpected that those authoritative figures happen to be VCs / investors. That said, blogs aren't really accurate sources of information, anyway. Besides, tech twitter is an echo chamber ;) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
- swyx 4y ago
  [author here] argument from authority does have its place actually but also there is a more benign reason to mention them - they are how I learned of the concept so I am simply acknowledging my own ideological lineage
  - ignoramous 4y ago
    Agree. Just a nit, though... > I am simply acknowledging my own ideological lineage >> TFA goes: "A parallel, older school of thought dates back to James Austin in 1978 and was repopularized by Marc Andreesen in 2007, then Naval and Nivi a decade later." ...doesn't only come off as an "acknowledgement", which is the point GP is making.

thenerdhead 4y ago

Luck implies both good and bad. These articles only talk about the good luck. Wouldn’t luck instead be fortune/fortunate given it implies only good luck? Similar to the cliche quote that fortune favors the bold / Lady Luck favors the one who tries? Additionally luck implies your actions don’t matter. Whereas fortune/fortunate implies your actions do matter.

neatze 4y ago

In many cases it is really hard to understand degree of luck versus deliberate actions. But there is a good quote (not sure who's it is) to live by; chance favors prepared mind.

afhammad 4y ago
By Louis Pasteur. It's quoted in the article

lordfrito 4y ago

I once read that luck is merely opportunity + preparedness. Opportunities frequently come and go in your life. Most people aren't prepared to take advantage of them. We don't have control over most of the opportunities that appear in our lives. However we have agency over our level of preparedness. Work on being better prepared to recognize and take advantage of the future opportunities that will arise in your life.

swyx 4y ago
yes. that is #3 of the 4 types of luck. i encourage you to read the others; people who stop at the Seneca quote aren't fully understanding the literature of luck.

markus_zhang 4y ago

As a fellow commentor said this is more about statistics. There is another layer of luck that one does not create: genetic/childhood experience. I guess the take from the article is that one should try again and again and eventually statistics will take over. But it might be lucky to have the ability to try again and again.

kulor 4y ago

I think the article would be even better if it elaborated with anecdotes of successfully increasing your luck surface area – for tactical inspiration.

swyx 4y ago
that would take another essay… which i have done! https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas https://www.swyx.io/bottom-up-ideas
- kulor 4y ago
  How well your response embodies Step 1 & 2 :) I listened to your narrated version, thanks for sharing your stories. Minutiae: I noticed your anchor for Step 1 needs correcting in the table of contents.
Tepix 4y ago
One such situation that most people on HN are probably familiar with is being prepared for a good (business) idea so that when you have the idea you can build a business around it faster and easier than someone who is unprepared. Speed and friction often matter.

kypro 4y ago

The concept of "luck surface area" is one of those fundamental ideas that I believe has the power to change an individual's life if fully embraced. While I've never hit the luck jackpot I can still list many ways that this concept has dramatically improved my life since first hearing Jason Roberts talk about it over a decade ago on TechZing. In my experience one of the easiest ways someone can increase their luck surface area is through networking and cold emails. Knowing lots of people doing cool stuff and occasionally reaching out to people who have been successful is imo one of the best ways to increase your own chances of success in life. I also think it helps to imagine the "luck surface" as a fairly non-uniform thing. People often underestimate how unconventional paths to success can be. For example, I had a weirdo friend who a decade ago kept telling me about this thing called Ethereum and how I needed to get in on something called an "ICO" because it was going to be "the next big thing". At the time I was so dismissive of the idea, but I've seen unconventional interests like this work out for people enough times now that I always try to keep an open mind these days. To expand on the luck surface area concept a little, in search optimisation there's a trade off between exploration and local optimisation (eg, hill climbing). If a search algorithm focuses too much on exploring the global search landscape it tends to spend a lot of time in non-optimal areas, but if it spends too much time climbing the nearest hill then it tends to get trapped in local optimums. I think this is true of life too. The traditional path to success probably focuses too much on hill climbing and doesn't spend enough time considering unconventional alternatives where there exists potential for much larger rewards. In addition to thinking about the surface area of luck I think there is also some value in thinking about how you're exploring that surface area.

didntreadarticl 4y ago

But what is the cost of enlarging your 'luck surface area' as opposed to putting your energy into other things that are more likely to bear fruit

pontifier 4y ago

"See a penny, pick it up. All the day you'll have good luck!" That phrase has become a bit of a motto for me. In my mind, luck has multiple components. The first is awareness of an opportunity... Noticing the penny. The second, and possibly the more critical part comes from action. Many people may have seen that opportunity before, but did they act on it? In the simple case of a penny, the answer is no... otherwise it wouldn't be there. Both parts are required.

csmeyer 4y ago

I would say 2/3 of my luck in the past year has been a result of sharing work and writing on HN, following up with commenters and being slightly more aggressive with networking. Probably not a coincidence that it's been a very lucky year. Being lucky at all is predicated on being in a good state physically and mentally, which I'm very fortunate to be in at the moment. I think one thing we should all think about is how we can not just maximize our own luck, but use that luck to get other people in a good state as well.

myth_drannon 4y ago

To me it looks like justifying ADHD like behavior of working on too many things at once.

timbucktoo 4y ago

Luck is the residue of design. -John Milton

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

Just don't assume that, if you create the optimal conditions, luck will happen.

nathanvanfleet 4y ago

I guess there have been multiple times in my life where I see the suggestion that I am just missing "personal branding" and decided not go with that. I think it probably appears to particular people, and it doesn't appeal to me.

lawrenceyan 4y ago

I like to think of luck and skill as flow and force respectively. Flow is being able to recognize when and where opportunities arise and maneuvering yourself there in time-space. Force is the actual mechanistic application of effort to actualize some experience. Generally speaking, if you have less of one you’ll need more of the other. But I think it’s valuable to consider force as roughly linear and flow as nonlinear. Because force is limited to how much you as a single individual can produce, and flow is the entirety of the world potentially on your side.

legerdemain 4y ago

I suspect that swyx (the author) graduating from an Ivy League university's business school created a lot of "optimal conditions" in his future. No offense to swyx, but this advice can be concretized pretty effectively as "go make friends at an Ivy League school."