Thought experiment: If you had to double your luck in 6 months, what would you do?
8 ideas:
- 1.Luck razor — If stuck between two options, pick the one that has the highest surface area for future luck. Spend the night in watching Netflix again, or go to the cocktail party? I once ran the luck razor when I was 22. It was a wet rainy Tuesday night in London with a 50 minute commute to the cocktail party. Two tubes and a bus. I don't know where my life would be now if I never went.
- 2.Avoid boring people — Avoid people that bore you. And avoid being the boring person in the room. The more interesting you are, the more interesting opportunities people share with you.
- 3.Go over to the roulette table and assume it's a game of poker - Assume everything in life, if you look closely enough, has a hidden game of skill involved.
In 1961, Claude Shannon and Ed Thorp built a device they could fit in their shoe. The same size as a ciggarette box. There was a toe operating switch to input data on the ball's speed and roulette wheel rotation. They improved their roulette results by 44%.
- 4.Delete the scoreboard — Relentlessly give to good people with no scoreboard in your head keeping track. You’ll end up lucky, and have a packed funeral.
- 5.An introduction is the highest leverage sixty seconds of your life — If friend A and friend B can get value from each other, introduce them. It's a 60-second email for you and may change their lives forever. Networks are unique because they don't divide when you share them, they multiply.
- 6.There's no such thing as being overworked. There's just being underrested.
Relaxation = Time it takes x State change.
Rank them. Do the highest ranked ones regularly.
- 7.Don’t wait for the news — Historians now recognize the Roman Empire fell in 476, but it wasn't acknowledged by Roman society until many generations later.
If you wait for the media to inform you to do something, you'll either be wrong or too late. - 8.Reverse prison advice — When you enter a prison, you're advised to punch the scariest person in their face. This is likely terrible advice.
But in the outside world, flip this around and you've got some great advice.
Find the best people you know and help them as much as you can. Don't wait for them to ask. Share their projects. Give feedback. Make introductions.
- The beautiful part of this thought experiment:
It moves your focus from the visible 99% of luck you can't control — to the hidden 1% of luck you can control.
And that 1% can keep you busy enough for 99 lifetimes.
