On Luck

There are some people who think that luck is a toss of the die, pure random happenstance.

This is not really helpful since it suggests just waiting around, not doing anything in particular, waiting for luck to strike.

A more useful definition of luck I heard a few years ago defined luck as "when preparedness meets opportunity." It's lucky to win the lottery, but you have have to prepared by buying a ticket first. Or, to be more proactive- it's lucky to land a job, but it what happens when you are prepared to seize an opportunity that presents itself.

You can't control opportunity, but you can control preparedness. When a pilot makes a 'lucky' landing on the Hudson without tearing the plane to shreds and killing everyone, it's not random chance as much as it was a cool head and years of training and experience coming into play. There was an opportunity to save everyone, and the pilot had the preparedness to capitalize on the opportunity.

In fact, the more prepared you are, the more opportunities you can seize. There are limits of course- you can could carry a crowbar with you at all times in which case it would be lucky to have when the earthquake strikes and you find yourself trapped in a collapsed building. And having to carry a crowbar everywhere is hardly considered lucky.

But this is all really a pragmatic prelude. I would like to take a step deeper into the mystical/metaphysical and suggest that luck is actually a lot like capital. Luck, like capital, when invested, can create more luck. Luck squandered quickly depletes itself. I am more interested in the investment and dividends that luck reinvested pays out.

From a personal example- I was lucky (there was an opportunity and I was prepared to seize it) in getting a professional mentor in my undergraduate. My friend told me about it and dragged me there, and I got an mentor. I built up the relationship, I took advantage of what was offered, in short, I invested in my luck. I could have squandered it by not really doing anything with my mentor- I could have seen him once or twice and blown him off. I could have really not cared. My investment paid off- I was lucky (opportunity + preparedness) to have been offered a summer internship by my mentor, in which case the opportunity to work for that company was a direct result of my investment of my initial luck. I capitalized on my luck of the offered internship by working hard, making a good impression on the firm and my dividend on that luck was the offer for full time employment on a salary which was the high end of my peers (and would be seriously baller money today).

If you want to cultivate luck, you have to be willing to invest in it. Luck begats luck when you use it. Luck wants to be used, and if your luck "runs out" it can mean that serious misfortune has befallen you (catastrophic drought of opportunities), and you simply need to start back again at making yourself prepared for whatever opportunity would present itself.

I have been so lucky my entire life in part because of my willingness to invest in my luck, to use it, to do stuff with it. But I worry that I've been so lucky that the magnitude of capitalization has grown to a point where I must do really great things with it, and it's pretty intimidating. It's kind of like receiving several million dollars. There's huge opportunities, huge risk, huge responsibility with that kind of luck. Getting into Wash U grad school is like that for me. I was very lucky to get in, insanely lucky to be working with my fellow students who will become the leaders of the field, and so I can't place a dollar chip at a hundred dollar minimum table. The potential reward is phenomenal. The work level is phenomenal. And there is always the ability to walk away, to cash my chips as I have them, to slide and glide by, to settle, and chip by chip, give away my luck.