Four Phases of Luck & Things That Really Own Us

1. Four Phases of Luck

Think of luck in four phases if you want to increase your amount of good outcomes.

It’s somewhat necessary to move through these phases. Specifically Phase Two > Four

PHASE ONE - Plain ol’ luck. Winning the lotto. Finding $20 on the road. Being born in Australia. Things you have absolutely zero control over.

PHASE TWO - luck that comes from motion. Doing things. Activity.

Think about the initial days of starting a business. You’re making cold calls, meeting potential partners and pitching your business to anyone that will listen. From these activities, things start to happen.

Without planning or forecasting, you meet the right person at the right time who can introduce you to the right customer that brings you x10 increase of monthly revenue.

Sometimes these small efforts produce asymmetric results.

Most of the time you don’t even know what you’re looking for or where you’re going. But the right thing happens at the right time and, voilà - good luck happens.

These results are impossible to predict and never guaranteed.

Naval Ravikant, calls it kick up the dust. Good luck is hidden in the resting dust on the ground and through activity, moving around, you’re going to stir up that dust, and if you keep moving, eventually, you’ll run into it.

PHASE THREE - You must be ready, experienced, and open to see the opportunity that is in front of you.

This looks like luck to most people, but it’s more like when “opportunity meets preparation.”

An unprepared person wouldn’t have been able to identify the opportunity, because they don’t have the gift that trial and error provides.

These opportunities are almost-always from errors, failures, and setbacks.

From experience; trying things, stumbling and failing, stumbling and winning; you notice patterns and opportunities that you would not have noticed before.

Sometimes you see these things intuitively, you think you have a gift.

It’s not a gift, you’ve earned it.

Reflection, logically analysing results, and thinking clearly will help you prepare for this phase.

You begin to produce good outcomes for yourself because of what you know, the skills you’ve developed, the insights you’ve leaned.

You can now predict and plan on more good outcomes and less bad outcomes.

PHASE FOUR - This is the phase you should aspire to reach. 

Where opportunity (AKA luck), comes to you. Because of the person you are, the results you’ve achieved, the skills you have, the experience you bring, the funding you can provide, the network you can leverage.

Good and shit opportunities will be presented to you - from this position you can choose the crème de la crème.. And because you can choose the best opportunities there is a higher probability of a good outcome.

People bring business opportunities to you because you have built and sold multiple companies. Publishers call you for advice because of the unique insights you have in your field. Big brands want to work with you because you have a network that has their customers.

The best venture capital firms get to invest in the very best software companies with world class, proven founders.

The very best influencers/sporting stars/celebrities get to work with the biggest brands in the world.

Mathew 13:12 “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” The bible was saying that the rich get richer 2000+ years ago.

You can see why the sequence of the phases are important.

Phase 2: get started and be active > Phase 3: learn from your specific experiences to look for opportunities that will deliver good outcomes > Phase 4: attract better opportunities because of the good outcomes you have produced.

2. Philosophical Thought Exercise: The things we own end up owning us

Two of the quotes above come from a man named Seneca, who was one of the richest men of his time. He lived in Rome around 2000 years ago, was a senate and an advisor to the Roman Emperor, Nero.

It seems a little contradictory to say those things; considering he was the equivalent of Jeff Bezos of their time - rich beyond comprehension.

He practiced a philosophy that was growing in popularity at the time called Stoicism. Stoicism has been widely misinterpreted and miscommunicated in the 2000 years since it was founded.

The best explanation of stoicism I have ever read was by one of my favourite writers and thinkers, Nassim Taleb.

He said, “Stoicism is the domestication of emotions, not the elimination.”

Here’s how it has been misunderstood: if you are stoic, you are emotionless and things do not affect you. It couldn’t be further from the truth. If you are practicing stoicism, you feel your emotions, but you don’t allow them to control you.

We’ll always have desires and impulses. We want what we want when we want it. Even if we can’t afford it, we now have ways to get our hands on it.

With the rise of AfterPay, ZipPay and everything like it; it’s become easier and easier to accumulate things we want but can’t afford.

The more we own, the more we have to look after. The more we have to look after, the more costs are involved. The more costs that are involved, the more we have to work. The more we have to work, the less free we are.

Now you can begin to understand what Seneca meant when he said “So it is inevitable that life will not just be very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil.” 

We work hard to get the things we want. Once we acquire said things, our focus turns on the next thing, then the next - this cycle repeats itself indefinitely until broken.

Once we own these things, we must continue to work to keep them.

With each new acquisition comes new costs - the cost is either time or money.

We think we own things; our things really own us.

Slavery often resided beneath marble and stone.

3. An Article I Loved

Technically not an article, but a LinkedIn post.

Brett Adcock is a fellow entrepreneur who sold his first company for $100m, then founded and grew an electric helicopter company (think Tesla for Helicopters) to $2.7B. And has now founded a AI humanoid company (think iRobot with Will Smith).

Brett is and needs to be wildly productive. And here he provides insights as to how he’s so productive.

I have adopted this into my life and have seen dramatic improvement in planning, productivity, clarity of thought and direction.

Check it out here: Brett Adcock’s 5 powerful questions to guide your weekly planning

Ryan

PS. If you found something useful in this email, please forward to a friend.