Luck is not a Strategy

Hey friends,

I would like to bring an article about luck by Seth Godin.

To quote him...

Advice from people who have gotten lucky is a tricky thing.
Perhaps they did x, y and z, and then got lucky. As story telling creatures, it’s natural to assume that x, y or z had something to do with it. Which can lead to bad advice.
Consider the guy who smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and lived to be 100. It’s not clear that his habits helped him get lucky.
Luck might not be a strategy, but setting yourself up to be lucky might be.
Luck is a tactic. An unpredictable one, sure, but if it works, it works. A useful strategy 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.
But that’s very different than the false correlation of past behaviour with lucky outcomes.

It really got me thinking about how luck is not pure chance but potentially partly self made.

Have a great week!

Conor


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Quote of The Week

Don’t try to change things you cannot control