“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” — Sun Tzu | @visualizevalue
Headline is arguable for some. Let me rephrase it: For anyone who succeeds, their outcomes don’t need to be completely aligned with their inputs. The reason: We are notoriously bad at differentiating between skill and luck. Stories of success tend to downplay the role of luck; stories of failure tend to overplay the role of luck. Similarly we tend to think of ourselves in that regard; good outcome? I’m a genius, bad outcome? I’m unlucky.
It takes a big deal of thought to measure the attribution between luck and hard work. Is it true the saying that “the harder you work the luckier you get”? And do all people who put in hard work end up being lucky?
I don’t believe I suffer from imposter syndrome yet sometimes I consider myself lucky, all things considered. But that made me curious to understand how luck works and why does it feel like being lucky is much more than what it seems. No one can claim they got favorable outcomes because they are lucky nor can they claim they did so because they just got the skill.
So it turns out the answer is: preparation + opportunity. The most successful people develop an attitude of constant preparing. They’re always preparing in the background, without necessarily having an end goal from the process. They do the trivial work, with great magnitudes, so that when an opportunity is presented, they’re ready for it. Having money, network, reputation & trust credit are things that you can work on everyday without an end goal, they upgrade your social status without having to announce a specific output to the world.
“Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come.” - Serena Williams
In fact, much of what we call “luck” is actually the macro result of 1,000s of micro actions. Your daily habits put you in a position where “luck” is more likely to strike. Our choices compound, both positively and negatively. This compounding makes the most significant difference in our lives.
https://twitter.com/zemahran/status/1369608791591911427
This effect is prevalent in business, sports, investing, and relationships – People can achieve success through an opportunity only because of the prep they did prior to it. The repetitions they put in. That’s why I started with saying it’s true that inputs & outputs of success can be weakly-tied. In fact we see it everyday. I call this preparation process “Stacking Luck”.
Luck is good fortune. Let me explain why: Stacking luck is doing things that are generally not attributed to a specific output, but often work as great utilities in multiple situations & settings. These are things that increase your luck surface area! And bigger luck surface area is what can turn anything you touch into gold. Down the line, and with enough stack, it makes you don’t need to worry at every place you step your foot in, because with enough luck, it almost ALWAYS works out. Non-intuitive, I know. But not really, because the concept is really brought over from calculus lol. At the infinity of luck, NOTHING doesn’t work out. Ever wondered why those who achieve top-tier success are always privileged? It’s normal, the math works out.
BUT if you find people that can get lucky all the time, it’s certainly not about luck. They are doing something that you’re not aware of or not seeing.
So before you think success is built on privilege it’s critical to note that luck is zero-sum. Privileged people can’t just get luck out of nowhere. It can be that they built close relationships with the right people, or their family worked their asses off, or they positioned themselves in the right place or at the right time, but it’s always something, it can’t be nothing!
Although there is certainly luck that is uncontrollable—pure and raw: Where you are born, who you are born to, and the base circumstances of your life all fall into this category of luck.