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 n

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.