👣 Step 38: Get In Luck's Way

Yesterday was my two year anniversary at Goodwill Acadiana, and I was reflecting on my journey so far.

I've gotten lucky. To have a Director position at 24 straight out of grad school is wild. To know so many well-respected community leaders, have developed so many skills, and had amazing opportunities both personally and professionally. I'm very grateful.

Yeah, I worked hard, but I was also lucky. And those two actually go hand in hand. How so? Let's talk about it.

In his book Chase, Chance, and Creativity, Dr. James Austin proposed 4 kinds of luck:

1. Blind luck: things just happen.
2. Luck from motion: arises from hard work and putting yourself in positions for things to happen to you.
3. Luck from preparation: your knowledge in a specific area primes you to notice luck.
4. Luck from uniqueness: occurs from your personal characteristics or circumstances.

​(Naval Ravikant has a fantastic blog on these four as well)​

For this newsletter, we're going to focus on #2: Luck from motion.

This quote from a recent YouTube video stuck with me: "Luck has a surface area."

And you can increase or decrease your contact with that surface area by what you do.

Now pair that with the study mentioned in James Clear's Atomic Habits on photography students. One "Quantity" group was told to take 100 photos, and the other "Quality" group was told to only take 1 perfect photo.

The result? The "Quantity" group ended up with better photos than the "Quality" group.

The takeaway? The "Quantity" group's frequency put them in the position to return higher quality photos than the "Quantity" group who only aimed for perfect.

They got in luck's way. They increased their surface area for luck.

Alex Hormozi gives the example of knocking on a door that opens at random moments (that door represents opportunity). If you try to time your knock with the door opening, you'll be lucky if they align.

But if you keep knocking, you're guaranteed to knock whenever it opens. Because you just don't stop knocking.

Or as he puts it: Repetition negates luck.

Or as Dr. Austin puts it: Luck from motion.

Or as I put it: Get in luck's way.

See you next Thursday, Steppers.

We will succeed,

Grayson

​graysonstepanek.com​

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Song of the Week:

Chicago Michael Jackson PREVIEW   ​

Tell me why I never heard this song before 2 weeks ago???? I'm addicted. Discovering a new Michael Jackson song (at least new to me) is like experiencing his music as if he were still alive and creating. Plus this song just made him the only artist to ever have a Hot 100 song in 6 different decades. RIP Michael. You will truly never be replicated.