Can Fortune Find You?
Increasing your Luck Surface Area
Success involves many things. And anyone will attribute some factor of luck. How, one might wonder, do we get “more” luck? Much like your first “one that got away”, it’s a one-sided seeking relationship. Due to its elusive nature, you can’t explicitly trade for luck. The serendipity one experiences from luck necessitates a level of authentic, organic surprise within you. Pressing your luck pushes you away.
You CAN however, perform object level actions over time that allow luck to find its way to you. You never know when or how fortune strikes—make sure you have some way to capture its impact!
Albeit the law of attraction (manifestation), faith, or chalking it up to sheer coincidence in all of life’s randomness, can luck find you? Furthermore, does it have room to land when (or if) it does?
Luck Surface Area
The “Surface Area of Luck” is a concept that suggests that one's chance of being lucky is related to the actions taken towards one's passion and the number of people with whom that passion and those actions are effectively communicated. This idea suggests that taking action towards a passion can develop expertise in that area, and that sharing that passion with others can lead to unexpected opportunities. It also emphasizes the importance of consistent experimentation and taking small risks in order to better "catch luck." Finally, effective communication and networking are key to maximizing the Surface Area of Luck.
Defining Luck
Luck takes many forms. Interchange any of these terms with what the muse beckons you towards.
Luck could mean being discovered and having your entire life change because of it. Case and point: Justin Bieber’s story of discovery.
More examples of how luck could appear in your life:
Meeting someone who leads you to a new job or opportunity
Finding a valuable item that you can sell or use
Being in the right place at the right time to witness or participate in something special
Discovering a hidden talent or ability that you never knew you had
Receiving an unexpected inheritance or gift.
These are just a few examples, but there are many other ways that luck can manifest in your life. Ultimately, luck is a combination of chance and opportunity, so it can take many different forms and be experienced in a wide variety of situations.
Defining Surface Area
Surface Area is the amount of exposure or opportunity that a person has to be lucky times the avenues and manners in which you can be reached. In other words, the larger the "surface area" of luck, the more opportunities a person has to experience good fortune. This metaphor is based on the mathematical concept of surface area, which is the total area that the surface of an object occupies. In the case of the Surface Area of Luck, the object is a person and their chances of being lucky. The "surface area" of that person's luck is determined by their actions towards their passion and the effectiveness with which they communicate those actions to others.
To be reachable means you must be 1) present and grounded enough, which leads you to 2) perceptive enough to recognize luck in its various forms. 3) you are open to integrate, capitalize, or embed it - via tactical things like availability in your schedule and internally being open-minded.
Surface Area = Exposure x reachability
What you need to do to get more Surface Area?
As stated here: merge your “doing with telling.”
The Surface Area of Luck is a concept that suggests that taking action fueled by their passion and effectively communicating that passion. The combination of these can increase a person's chances of experiencing good fortune via increasing their surface area. In order to increase the "surface area" of their luck, a person could focus on the following steps:
Identify your passion and take action towards it: This could involve offering free services, volunteering, or working on side projects in your area of passion. The key is to consistently take steps towards developing your expertise and experience in that area.
Take small risks regularly: Part of pursuing your passion will involve taking consistent small risks and experimenting in order to learn and grow. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and use deliberate practice and double loop learning to improve your skills and mental models.
Expect setbacks and failures: Experiments will fail and some of your risks will not pay off. It's important to understand that this is part of the process and to learn from these experiences in order to continue moving forward.
Communicate effectively and network: In order to maximize the "surface area" of your luck, it's important to engage with others from a place of care and generosity. Connect with the right platforms and communities who might be interested in what you're doing and are passionate about. Use techniques such as storytelling and persuasion to effectively communicate your passion and actions to others.
Have your social profiles host (or link/point towards) content or material about your ongoings, hobbies, or work.
Remain open to unexpected opportunities: Your plans might not always work out, and opportunities for luck might come from unexpected directions. Use frameworks such as Ikigai or the Golden Circle to align your actions with your passion and remain open to these unexpected opportunities.
“But what? Posting? like I’m increasing the chance of being made of fun of for being facetious or ignorant?”
Yeah. I think this every time as well.
Then I think about the probable outcomes:
1) Nothing happens.
2) Something congruent to you is on someone’s radar now and enables you a better life experience via engaging with you on some plane or level.
3) Someone could think ill of you, but you’re probably not going to keep them in your life (like you would luck) anyway.
Do the thing. Tell people.
However, an unsolicited tidbit of advice from your well-meaning internet lurker trying to increase his surface area of luck: it’s much easier to tell if you are posting from a place of humility, sharing, or adding value (info or entertainment) than other maladaptive behaviors (boasting / negativity).
Sharing publicly is scary. It requires some strong baseline of self awareness and belief. This is a conversation and relationship you must have with yourself to take anything actionable from.
The way to keep / sustainably do a thing, means you must actually enjoy doing the thing.
You are able to associate your identity around your actions. thus, you telling/sharing/announcing your ongoings aren’t putting you out of inner alignment. People know you do that thing and will bring it up or think of in association with that thing or things you do.
Re-iterating a couple of take home points valuable to me when engineering greater surface area of luck for myself:
Uniquely enjoyable things to you. if no promise of reward was given, would you consistently think about + do it?
incorporating inner congruence and doing actions uniquely enjoyable to you
building or writing about stuff on your radar in public is an example!
joining communities around a shared interest is the simplest one that is also tried and true.
Opennness - have the wherewithal and flexibility (mentally and schedule-wise) to welcome luck in its various forms.
recognition and perception
Maximize surface areas for things to land on when they are intersecting with you at a point in time.
