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Only Lucky People Become Successful - How to Get Lucky? FutureIQ

14,897 views Wait, is this logic right? • Aug 30, 2024
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Slog Reference: Luck and Success

Description

Success is always associated with luck and there's a way anyone can get lucky. Let us explain the four types of luck and how to increase each of them in this video. Find out the dependence of success on luck to understand why this is it the case. We will see quotes from successful and popular people, some concepts around luck and success, and a lot of interesting facts and information on how to get lucky.

Books Referenced:
Chase, chance, creativity: https://tapthe.link/ChaseCCBook

Episodes Referenced:
Survivorship bias: https://youtu.be/QjDXyuBJ0UY
Is PhD worth it: https://youtu.be/Ql__tHh-L80

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

RSS: Listen to FutureIQ on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:25 Why success in luck?
01:40 Luck vs success
02:58 Types of luck
03:30 #1 Dumb luck
05:06 #2 Active luck
08:28 #3 Observational luck
12:10 #4 Luck as your destiny
13:40 Luck #2 vs Luck #4
15:50 How to increase luck?
18:47 Brew your own luck

#futureiq #luck #success

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Transcript

most of success is luck that's the bad news the good news is you can get luckier by the end of this episode we will have taught you how to increase your chances of getting lucky hold on back up most of success is luck yes we've already done an episode on this called survivorship bias uh so check out that episode but I'm going to repeat one example from there to make you understand why success is luck okay okay imagine that there are 32 people all have been tasked with picking winning stocks right okay except that they know nothing about the stock market and they are picking randomly okay okay just out of complete random chance half of those
stocks will do better than the sensex and half will do worse correct so at the end of one year 16 of them have picked winning stocks and 16 are losers true this continues yep so for one more year same thing happens and again half of them have picked winners half of them have picked losers which means that out of the 16 eight have picked winners two years in a row correct right repeat this five years in a row and out of 32 there will be one person left who has picked the winning stock five years in a row he hailed as a stock picking genius okay we have many many more such examples showing that
success comes from luck but we just call those people Geniuses because they have succeeded okay but yeah I get I get why you are saying that success is luck but this is one specific example where success is luck where you're literally pigging Stocks by throwing no no so it applies everywhere else right even if you're building a company you're doing research you're uh you know doing education okay everything has elements of luck but after you succeed you pretend that it was because of your hard work right let me give you some quotes from some of the most successful people in the world okay Mark Zuckerberg founder of Facebook and meta and Instagram he says that success like mine
only happens with luck okay Mark andreon the creator of Netscape the first web browser in the world one of the most successful investors in the world he says that most successful entrepreneurs know that luck plays a huge role in the difference between success and failure but they will only admit this under durus because admitting this in public harms their image as a business genius most people who are successful know that luck played a big role but they have to pretend that it's because of their skills okay but at the beginning of the episode you said we can become luckier yes so before I explain that first let me explain what is luck in fact there are four different kinds
of luck okay James Austin a neurologist okay he was a researcher he discovered that a lot of his best research was a result of luck okay and as a result he started researching luck and how luck happens and based on that he wrote an entire book called Chase chance and creativity the lucky art of novelty okay and in that book he has categorized luck into four types of luck okay let's take them one by one okay luck number one suppose you win a lottery okay there was no skill involved there is nothing you did special right this is just dumb luck okay this is typically what I assume luck is this is what most people think
of as luck okay let me give you a more amazing example of dumb luck okay shashikant FES was a researcher in King's College London okay and they were researching some chemicals and his boss told him to test the latest chemical that they have created in the lab okay now shashikant FES is a marati person and if you have met any marati person you know that they can't tell the difference in pronunciation between test and taste feet and fit okay that's that's not I know where you're going with that but that's stereotyping naen don't do that okay but it really happened okay what happened was shashikant went and tasted the chemical instead of testing the chemical is he
alive turns out that chemical was extremely sweet he went and talked to his boss and they followed it up and it resulted in Splenda o the sugar substitute which is today a $4 billion business just out of dumb luck okay yeah that's that's seriously dumb luck I mean so many things could have gone wrong with that taste test yeah but uh they didn't and now we have a $4 billion industry lucky guy right let's talk about the other three kinds of luck they are far more interesting okay luck number two example okay I have a friend who has a Blog and he tries to write one blog every day it is in his area of
expertise okay as a result of writing that blog he ends up meeting so many people interacting with so many people so many people in the industry read what he has written that as a result he has started getting consultation offers he has started getting interesting projects given to him that he quit his full-time job just to do all of these interesting projects okay why did all of this happen you could say he got lucky with all these different offers right but he created his luck by writing this blog every day right yeah this is called active luck yeah and in a sense when you think about it all of the content creators on YouTube us included are
following the same kind of pattern putting out content consistently putting out episodes consistently or putting out articles consistently if you are on Twitter putting out tweets consistently if you're on LinkedIn putting out posts consistently uh you are hoping to gather a network of like-minded people and through that Network find Opportunities yeah it's broader than just creating content right it's not just about content creators basically it is do something okay maybe you are organizing meetups right maybe you just going around meeting people you are the kind who likes to network right some activity you are doing okay just do a whole bunch of things and the key is that you have to do them even before you know that
they're useful okay so this is like stirring up the pot samudra Manan okay okay that's a very interesting way to put it but yeah I see where you're coming from but think about it in samudra Manan they had no idea what is going to come out right if you already know what you are expecting out of an activity that is not luck right you are just doing something it's investment and there's a return on investment right yeah you have to do things where anything is possible there is a tradeoff between being focused and efficient okay versus you know going for Serendipity you're not focused you're doing things which might or might not be useful okay
and some small percent of them turn out to be like amazing things right that is active luck okay we've recently had uh some bit of this active luck come ourway on this channel but more about that some other time yeah so Charles sking one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century right he has 186 inventions in refrigeration paints cars and much more okay those are three very different indust one of the great inventors prolific yeah he said the following keep on going and chances are you will stumble on something perhaps when you are least expecting it okay okay I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down good point so if you want to stumble upon luck don't be
sitting down keep running right that's what you are supposed to be doing that is active luck okay yeah we are sitting for a different reason yeah we are stumbling upon many things while sitting yeah okay then let's move on to luck number three example is Alexander Fleming the guy who discovered penicillin yeah and thus antibiotics and saved the lives of the entire world he did he did what happened was that he was sitting in his lab and in a dish he was growing bacteria to study them yeah and he noticed that some mold bread mold fungus had fallen in okay and he noticed that around the region where the mold was the bacteria growth was much lower
yeah okay and this reminded him of something else that had happened earlier and he said that it's likely that the bacteria are not growing there because something in the mold is killing them so I should try to find out what it is I should isolate it and I will use that to kill bacteria that's how antibiotics were born okay okay but why did Fleming see this 9 years earlier he was doing something similar and he was looking over his dish of bacteria and he had a cold so from his nose droppings fell into the dish ew but also wow and he realized that wherever his mucus had fallen bacteria around that got killed okay and then he followed it up to
figure out what was it that killed the bacteria he discovered lysine but he couldn't use it as an antibiotic because lysos is already there in our body okay it k some bacteria but not all the point is that Alexander Fleming had a very specialized knowledge of a lot of things okay and he was able to connect these different things from 9 years across that this is happening because of this and the bacteria are dying and I can use it right so this luck is observational luck okay okay this is usually a disguised opportunity that shows up in front of you but you have to be uniquely positioned to recognize this opportunity this is because of the knowledge you
have gathered over your career because you read up on a lot of things from many different areas and you remember them and you are the kind of person who can connect ideas from this field and that field and that field but ultimately it is luck because the mold falling in there is not something he engineered it's an that was luck but most other people would have ignored it true he didn't because of his observational background and the sharpness in recognizing that this is important so this reminds me of a graphic that I have seen going around on the internet for a very long time it's basically a collection of dots and then uh there are
people who find groupings in the dots yes which is basically data or information then there is uh uh knowledge and then there is intelligence and then there is of course a fourth one which is wisdom so it seems like observational luck is basically succession of this connecting the dot that's a great example right the dots are there for everyone to see the dots were probably luckily seen by a lot of people but you need to have that special observational skill and that specialized knowledge to be able to see the pattern regarding this right Louie pasture the great inventor of the concept of vaccination he has said that Chance favors the prepared mind right interesting do your reading in such a
way that you are prepared to recognize luck when she comes and starts knocking on your door Yeah the more dots you gather the more connections you can make between the dots absolutely right yeah and luck number four okay an example of that is Charles Darwin okay Charles Darwin did not go to the Galapagos Islands to discover the theory of evolution okay yeah he had no idea why he was going the only thing is that he was just obsessed with collecting information about all kinds of species right natural phenomena he would just love to make observations in his notebooks like details details details right he wasn't expecting any great discovery out of it right he just did it
because he was a weird nerd okay weird nerds out there you night yes so this luck number four is luck as your destiny that you are a weird nerd and you just get deep into some area yeah and usually it has to be area which is not like extra hot these days because you know that one everybody is in there and whatever discoveries are to be made have already been made yeah right you are going deep into some area which is not of interest to anybody else and then the luck part of it is that in there there is a discovery just waiting to be made and you are the only one who can Discover it because you are this weird
nerd who's going deep into this area that nobody else cares about right the deeper you go the more likely you are to stumble upon something that is specifically in that Niche we've done an entire episode on why you should do a PhD or why you shouldn't do a PhD go check that out but here's my question this sounds very similar to luck number two which was active luck where you're constantly doing something and then you end up getting a slice of luck yeah so see luck number two is you are doing activity but they're fairly random activities and there are activities that most normal people would say these are normal activities okay okay luck number
four is something people will say this guy is an eccentric right and when that eccentricity results in you stumbling on something great then you convert from eccentric to Eccentric genius right that's okay yeah another example of this kind of luck is that there was a Spanish nobleman who was just obsessed with archaeology and ancient history and he just got deep into all of that for no good reason okay he wasn't even an archaeologist okay then one day he was playing with his son in his vast grounds okay and they discovered a little cave and in that cave they saw some paintings on the wall and because he was this nerd with archaeology background he immediately recognized those paintings
as being of Special Value okay anybody else would have just ignored it and moved on and probably those pain paintings would have gotten destroyed right but because of his eccentricity he recognized it and those today are the alamira cave paintings which are 36,000 year old cave paintings examples of the earliest Human Art right wow this actually uh sends me into a into two different spirals one is I can't even begin to imagine how many discoveries people have made accidentally and then just ignored because they didn't know the significance of it yes and uh the positive side of it is if you prepare yourself for this moment this dumb luck or Serendipity or whatever moment or
destiny luck moment then you can actually find yourself being the person who discovered something as Monumental as this yeah well I mean see this is the thing about luck is that you can't make luck happen Okay what you can do is that you can increase your chances right how do you increase your luck luck number one dumb luck there's nothing you can do about it right it's dumb okay luck number two active luck right that is what we are doing on this channel yeah okay energetic experimentation coupled with curiosity about many different things right there has to be consistency and there has to be quantity okay we do an entire episode on quantity later but
the basic idea is to increase your surface are area for Luck cast a wide net meet as many people as possible also the more relevant a meeting the lower the chances that you will get lucky right so wait what see if you already know why you are meeting a person ah then how are you going to get lucky in that sense yes in that sense right luck number three observational luck that has two components to it okay knowing a lot of things and then looking for those patterns in the world around you right so this involves a lot of reading a lot of watching YouTube like this Channel or audio books if you prefer that yeah a
lot of connecting the dots right to try to apply the concepts that you have learned from all these things try to apply them in whatever area that you run into right this is difficult to do this is called concept transfer but you practice it the more that will happen the way to increase your chances of doing concept transfer is to use lots of analogies lots of metaphors when you think and when you talk right and more generally talk to people in other domains try to explain your domain to them and try to have them explain their domain to you right basically have lots and lots of conversations even if they are not your area of expertise
absolutely right and you know when Opportunity Knocks don't complain about the noise I love that example sorry but it reminded me of pul desand sh radio when you hear a loud music when you hear loud music coming from your neighbor's apartment imagine that it is being played for your benefit and enjoy it the fourth one yeah right you have to be an eccentric nerd right which means you should have obsessions you should have passions you should have Hut hobbies that consume you right it can't be a hobby that everyone else has right it has to be something different okay yeah between the two of us we are eccentric nerds I'm eccentric he's a nerd go deep into one or two areas right
become an eccentric the genius part will follow right not happened yet with me but hopefully soon all right so that that's the four kinds of luck but uh hearing you explain all of this I am sensing that some of these can be converted into ingredients that you can use to brew your own luck yeah yeah absolutely right there is a famous quote which goes the harder I practice the luckier I get okay it's attributed to the top golfers but nobody knows who said it but the fact is that it is true okay yeah you can't control luck you can't make luck happen but you can increase your chances by doing these things right for active luck do a lot of
activity for observational luck do a lot of observation and have a lot of knowledge right so it depends on how energetic you are how much experimentation you do this is for luck two and luck four true how curious you are how knowledgeable you are this affects luck three and luck four which is uh observational luck and Destiny yeah and how unique you are which affects all three of them right true but specifically I would say it affects luck four because the more unique the more Ecentric you might be perceived to be and most important thing to increase your luck is to watch all the episodes of this channel yeah he's not kidding by the way this sounds like we plugging the
channel but honestly if you watch all of the episodes on this channel you'll find a lot of Concepts that you can either apply in your day-to-day life or that you can probably keep an eye out for when they happen to you in day-to-day life and trust me they happen to you because all of the episodes on this channel are about topics that happen to you in day-to-day life but that you probably don't know why they happen how they happen and uh what you can do to be more in control when they happen correct and I would suggest check out our episode on survivorship bias yeah that will make you understand the importance of luck in success take a look yeah
because luck is a very important part of survivorship as you might uh guess this is naen surviving shrikant this is future IQ surviving all of us