This article isn’t wrong, but it lacks a sense of cost effectiveness or trade-offs. Lottery tickets also increase your “surface area“ but they are transparently more expensive than they’re worth. Reasonable people can debate whether “build a reputation” or the other vague things this article advocates have positive or negative expected value, but this doesn’t really add to the conversation.
The Seneca quote summarizes luck in my opinion.<p>> Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.<p>Not every opportunity is an open door nor window. Those who can seize the opportunity create their own luck.<p>Newton said that whatever service he had rendered to humanity was not owing to any extraordinary sagacity he possessed, but solely to industry and patient thought. He wrote "Principia" with great care, and his great love of accuracy appears in all of his works.<p>In other words, Newton was prepared and took great care everyday to be accurate in the opportunity presented. It seems people call this "luck" like the article, but I think that's the opposite of the definition.<p>> success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.
This article isn't wrong, but:<p>> <i>there are four levels to it:</i><p>> <i>1. Blind luck: This is what most people mean when they talk about luck. Where you were born, who your parents are, winning a lottery… Totally random.</i><p>> <i>2. whatever</i><p>> <i>3. whatever</i><p>> <i>4. nonsense</i><p>Level 1 has an outsized influence insofar as: (a) it has significantly more impact than all of the others combined, and (b) it's compounding since it also influences one's ability to execute on #2 and #3 (#4 doesn't exist/make sense).<p>Don't get me wrong, #2 and #3 are worth pursuing if you can. But the tone of the article strongly downplays the impact of #1 which I think is net harmful.<p>---<p>Speaking of the impact of #1, the article is also broadly about individualistic pursuit of "luck", rather than any consideration of how the impact of #1 could be mitigated in the broader context. This is a bit off-topic I guess, but seems worth mentioning when thinking about the net benefit/harm of an article from an ethical perspective.<p>Basically, bullet point #1 - ignored in the subsequent post content - is the elephant in the room here.
I really don't like how many people talk about "luck". They are not really talking about the concept, they are using the "luck" word as la language figure of something else, and that's misleading to the reader's intelligence (writers that do that are like making the reader's imagination go drunk instead of leaving it more richly nurtured).<p>The categories the author is talking about are more about the creation of positive selected opportunities.<p>If you invest your efforts in maximizing the possibilities that good things stop being impossible to happen, then (due to Murphy's Law) they just might, and if you're there and catch them, most people will call that "luck".
I am not sure if Jason Roberts was the first to use this phrase but here was his take on Luck Surface Area back in 2010. That was the first I personally heard of the term Luck Surface Area. I don't know that Jason's take is any more insightful than the linked article, but I feel like he deserved a call out as well on this topic.<p><a href="https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area" rel="nofollow">https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-sur...</a>
not much content here, a lot of its suggestions will not work<p><i>Hard work brings luck: You work on something so much that you attract luck. You tweet 5,000 times and nothing happens. But the next tweet gets a like from a big account and goes viral; you get thousands of new followers. This type of luck finds you only because you’ve hustled your way to it.</i><p>lol nope. This is the Edison myth: try something many times and eventually you succeed. this only works if there was ever potential for success in the first place. often there isn't.
Interesting article. I feel it's a bit superficial in two ways though.<p>Others here have commented on the opportunity cost of the actions involved in increasing your "surface area". I agree.<p>The other thing that struck me as not taken into consideration, is that expanding your surface area (at least inasfar as those 5 points are concerned) potentially also attracts "bad luck" as much as it does "good luck". E.g. expanding your network indiscriminately also makes it more likely to attract predators; Each new person that hears about your work increases the chances of an unlucky event (think activist twittermob). Curiosity without experience may lead you down bankruptable rabbit holes. etc
For a more detailed take on this topic refer to swyx's article on creating luck: <a href="https://www.swyx.io/create-luck" rel="nofollow">https://www.swyx.io/create-luck</a>
I would agree with this thinking of luck surface area. An anecdote:<p>I was passively job searching a few years ago. Saw some colleague invite me to Indeed. Figured I'd sign up for an account, just in case. Doesn't hurt.<p>Ended up interviewing with Microsoft. Got the job.<p>Then got some congrats message from Indeed on receiving my offer through Indeed. Weird. The recruiter in question was someone I had never had any contact with. Probably cooking their numbers by claiming credit on Indeed for hires which were done via other means (in my case, linkedin/hiring social).<p>Well. Turns out Indeed was doing a promotion where if you get hired through Indeed, you get a free gift. Pretty decent one too, I forget the other options, but I picked the Playstation 4.<p>Getting a free PS4 for getting hired by MSFT is super dumb luck. Surface area - I signed up for Indeed, "Just in case, who knows?".
Articles like these always seem to come from people that already have good luck.<p>As there is a high level of survivorship bias from these people, I'd prefer an article from someone who has actually changed their luck. Perhaps an article detailing how someone got ahead despite a run of ill timed bad luck.
Should mention that this idea has been around the internets for a while. Is mentioned in article, but not linked to.<p><a href="https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html" rel="nofollow">https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html</a>
<a href="https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area" rel="nofollow">https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-sur...</a>
The best way to increase your luck is to learn sales imo. And I'm not just talking about money.<p>What I've learnt is that you need to learn sales to be successful or lucky in just about any life's endeavour be it business, dating, kids, academics, etc. Hell you're even selling open source software if you think about it.<p>You're always selling something to someone - like selling yourself if you're on a date, goods when it's your business, etc.<p>You can be as hardworking as you want but unless you learn how to sell and close you're not getting lucky. Most successful people I've met or seen are just great salesman tbh and it's a wonder that most people look at selling with such derision (but selling doesn't have to be unethical).
> Imagine lucky events as random arrows flying around. They are like Eros’ arrows; you want to get hit.<p>> The best way to get hit by a random arrow is to increase the surface area of the target — in this case, your luck surface area.<p>The best practical advice I'd seen in this area is to 'be out there'. Because on a typical day the odds of a good thing happening to you from it outweighs the odds of bad things. Staying at home, or in some other comfort zone doesn't increase this surface area. You can call this schmoozing or whatever, but I think it goes further into arbitrary encounters and not being particularly directed but merely recognizing opportunities whenever/wherever they should happen to come up.
This is a better article: <a href="https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area" rel="nofollow">https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-sur...</a>
"Blind luck: This is what most people mean when they talk about luck. Where you were born, who your parents are..."<p>But you <i>can</i> affect where your children grow up and who your children are.<p>Intergenerational perspective is one of the most underrated ideas in modern life.
If you're interested in this, this article reads like a play off of Nassim Taleb's book *The Black Swan" so you may want to check that out
The article rings true but it also glosses over the downside risks of brand building and making yourself a known figure generally. This was mostly upside in the past, but these days there’s a lot of downside. You have to always be disciplined, because you never know what thing you’ve said will be weaponized against you by the mob.