🍀 The Four Types of Luck
Catch more lucky breaks in your creative business by increasing your “surface area of luck.”
Do you believe in luck? More to the point, do you believe that you can do anything to make you luckier in your creative career? To catch more lucky breaks?
You probably have someone in your life who always seems to somehow get lucky. Things just seem to work out for them.
They go to a coffee shop and end up meeting the CEO of a company and getting a job offer.
They go out on the town and somehow end up in the VIP room partying with a celebrity.
They go to a concert and end up backstage hanging with the band.
As it turns out, this blessed friend is likely doing something to influence their lucky outcomes.
They are increasing their luck surface area.
As it turns out, there are at least four kinds of luck, described by neurologist and philosopher Dr. James Austin in his book ​Chance, Chase, and Creativity​, and summarized variously by entrepreneurs ​Marc Andreesen and Naval Ravikant​.
Here are the four kinds of luck:
Blind luck. This is what we typically think of when we think of luck. Some positive opportunity or outcome hits us without any influence from us.
Luck from motion/hustling. This kind of luck comes from being active, from putting yourself in various situations and locations. More raindrops hit a moving car than a stationary one. More opportunities will hit a musician living in L.A. than in a small farm town.
Luck from awareness/spotting. With this kind of luck, your preparation or expertise or experience allows you to “spot” a great opportunity that others can’t see. Think of two shoppers looking at a penny in an antique store. The first shopper says, ”No way would I spend $10 on this. It’s just a penny!” The second shopper recognizes a coin worth 10 times the price, and snaps it up saying, “It’s my lucky day!”
Luck from identity. With this kind of luck, your personal combination of unique hobbies and expertise allows you to solve problems that very few people can solve. The best example I’ve heard is this: if you are the best deep sea diver in the world, and a treasure is found at the bottom of the sea, then guess who will be asked to retrieve it? You. Another example is Joshua Waitzkin, who trained his way to the top of two very different sports: chess and martial arts. When someone wants to learn what it takes to be the best (traders, finance, entrepreneurship), they go to Josh.
So what does this mean for you as a creator?
First, know that you can influence your luck. Your actions can in fact make you luckier.
Second, get started today on increasing your surface area of luck. The easiest way to start today is to work on Type 2, luck from motion.
Here are four things you can do today to increase your surface area of luck:
Check in with someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Ask how they are doing, and what they are working on.
Share something valuable with someone who could use it. Take your best idea that you will never act on and give it to someone who would.
Introduce two A-plus people in your field who should know each other.
Hand write a card to congratulate, thank, or console someone meaningful to you. Bonus: send a note to thank someone you've never met but has been influential on your life or career.
The key here is to understand that these actions cannot and should not be approached with a transactional mindset.
Just send some good intentions with no expectation of return. Turn it into a giving contest, where you want to be the winner but no one else knows that a game is being played.
The next time something lucky happens to you, ask yourself, what did I do that put me in a position to be so fortunate?
