Luck, Serendipity and Work
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If you’ve seen people with something you want - a big audience, great essays, a good physique or something else -there is a very high chance they worked hard to get to where they are.
Don’t get this wrong; there are cases of luck, but they are few and far between. And even with what appears to be luck, they probably deserved the luck in the first place. How?
They had the work done for them, or they did it themselves (doesn’t have to be evident to you1)that brought luck to them in the first place. And if it is the case of dumb luck, i.e. the same chance of lighting strikes a person twice, then they’d most likely fade away, and you wouldn’t want that either.
How do you get lucky?
If luck is the chance of a random good thing happening, the wider your luck surface area, the higher your chance of getting lucky.
Luck is a numbers game (a game of probability). In a basketball game, the more free throws you get, the higher your chances of scoring points. In the same way, the more (better) you do what you do (create videos, write essays, network with people), the better your chances get.
Ultimately, you want to get lucky by doing things that increase your chances of getting lucky, and one way of doing such is by doing things and telling people.
Doing things and Telling People.
Telling people or promoting your work is an important aspect of creating; however, we find it difficult to do so.
Marketing, PR or promotion is not bad, and you know it. There are cases of bad marketing. You know one when you see it. It’s loud and turns you off.
It is usually not the most skilled or knowledgeable that gets the job, it is the guy that is top of mind. When you promote your work, you increase the chance of serendipity.
Serendipity: a phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.
If sound is something we hear, then if a tree falls and none is there to hear it, does it really make a sound?
Promoting your work and being good at your work are not mutually exclusive. In fact, promoting your work is part of being good at what you do. You don’t want to be Van Gogh.
In the spirit of telling people, please share this with one person
The more you promote your work, the more people know of your work and associate you with it.
Blow your horn, and no one will do it for you if you don't.
Readings
the art of sprezzatura
Promoting oneself is the hardest. I'm stuck there and it sucks. Perhaps you can do a piece on that?
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