Luck, Cubed

Let’s say your luck is dependent on your circumstances. That’s all right, because you exercise trust, trusting that things will go in your favour.

Let’s say your luck benefits from your efforts in a specific new area of development. That might be all right, because surely you’ll get side benefits from applying effort. You never know what you’ll get.

Let’s say your luck could benefit from an extra layer of randomness. Random activities that you inject into your week, random places you go, new people you talk to. An investment mindset, but on people, places, and activities. A bit of unpredictability. Just a little bit, a minimum at the very least, and more when you need to get moving.

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Although life adds randomness on its own, you can bet that we all have to contend with this natural force: things generally return to their normal state. Reversal to the mean. Entropy. What is built slowly degrades.

To some of us, however, we believe in the law of the inevitable progress. Kevin Kelly shared his belief that, because the universe contains organized matter, surely there’s a surplus over the power of entropy. His estimate: two percent is constructed over what is destructed. A tiny surplus that compounds, and we have intelligent life. In our little corner at least, the universe conspires to help us.

So what should we do? What, if anything, is the use of applying effort?

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The pursuit of luck might be vain, but nobody will hold it against you to apply effort to help others make progress.

In the service of others, you can add luck by applying effort in a specific direction, by adding a bit of randomness on top, and by trusting in your circumstances. All that to add luck to the circumstances of those you serve. Real, three-dimensional people.

If you’re on board with this, you are in luck.