Your business and your life might depend on it
When successful people talk about their lives and careers, you’ll often hear them say one — or both — of the following:
- I worked my ass off.
- I was very lucky along the way.
You probably already work your ass off — especially if you’re working on something you truly believe in. The motivation of achieving a mission that’s bigger than you can keep you energised for many years.
But what about luck? That’s not quite as obvious.
From the outside, luck and skill are hard to differentiate. You’ve probably heard someone say something like, ‘Wow, they just raised £20M on an idea — now that’s skill.’ Except it may not be obvious that the founder went to school with the investor. Or maybe, ‘Wow, that app is taking off — now that’s luck.’ Of course, they can’t see all the research, design and effort put into making the app a reality.
Luck is mysterious but it’s not magic. Here are six principles to help shed a light on it. And who knows, maybe they can make you a little luckier too.
1. For lucky outcomes, increase output
Professor Dean Simonton has spent his life studying the great creative minds of history, from classical musicians like Mozart and Beethoven to great scientists like Einstein and Newton.
Simonton’s findings are conclusive, and apply to any creative endeavour:
‘On average, creative geniuses aren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers, they simply produce a greater volume of work which gives them more variation and a higher chance of originality.’ Prof. Dean Simonton
Simonton noted that the ratio of failed to successful creative works remains constant over time — so more failures eventually lead to more wins too. This is particularly useful when a win’s payoff is asymmetrically large, as it is in tech startups.
How can you tell which of your projects will succeed?
Visit Dave-Bailey.com for more resources.
How to Create Your Own Luck 🌟 was originally published in The Founder Coach on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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