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So a lot of people don't know this, but I co-authored Will Smith's memoir with him.

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And I spent roughly two or three years with Will, got to know him really well, got to know his family, learned all about his career, everything.

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And there was one story from his entire life that is my favorite story that I love.

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In fact, I loved it so much, it was actually the first thing I wrote for the book.

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It took place back when Independence Day came out.

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So you probably remember Independence Day.

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It was a huge part of our childhood.

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Oh, yeah.

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So people who don't know, Independence Day came out, I believe, in 1996.

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At the time, it broke all sorts of box office records.

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It was by far the biggest action movie that had ever come out.

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And it was Will's second starring feature that he had ever done.

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So he was relatively new.

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So back then, movies used to come out on a Friday.

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They would make a bunch of money over the weekend, and then you would get the box office numbers in the newspaper on Monday morning.

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So there was like a three-day delay.

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And so the weekend after Independence Day came out, it was Sunday night and Will got a phone call at about three o'clock in the morning and he picked it up and it was his dad.

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And the first thing his dad said was, you look at them numbers.

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And Will's like, what?

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and it turned out that you know the box office numbers had come out on the east coast his dad

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was up at 6 a.m he had just seen the newspaper and so he was calling will waking him up in the

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90s says you see them damn numbers you remember what i told you about luck you remember when i

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told you there's no such thing as luck that luck is when opportunity meets preparation you remember

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that will's like yeah dad yeah i remember can i go back to bed he's like well that was some

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fucking bullshit.

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You're the luckiest

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motherfucker I ever met in my life.

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And he hung up on him.

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Napoleon famously asked his generals

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whether they believed they were lucky or not.

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And he would promote them

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based on how they answered.

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So here is an honest question for you.

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How much of where you are in your

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life right now, your career, your relationships,

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everything that you've built, did you

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actually earn?

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Or how much of it

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was due to luck.

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Because whatever you answer, I'm willing to bet that you're wrong.

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And in this

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episode, you're going to understand why.

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Because people waste an absurd amount of energy arguing

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over whether someone's success came down to luck or skill.

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It's the wrong argument.

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Because luck

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comes in three different flavors, and they each work differently.

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And two of them, you can actually

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learn how to create more of it.

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And that's what this episode is all about.

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Accepting the luck

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that you can't control and then maximizing the luck that you can control, tilting the odds in

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your favor.

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In this episode of Solved, we're going to talk about how to tell which parts of your life

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you actually earned and which parts you just got lucky and why getting this wrong can keep you

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stuck.

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We're going to talk about the two types of luck that you can deliberately create more of

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and the specific habits that produce them.

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And one of these you can actually start doing today.

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We're going to talk about why luck both matters and also doesn't matter and why it's better to

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just assume that you're lucky no matter the situation.

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We'll talk about why your brain

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quietly deletes the luck out of your own life story and what that costs you every time you

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make a decision.

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We'll talk about the decades of research of what actually separates lucky people

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from unlucky people.

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We'll talk about how to stop wasting guilt and self-loathing on the stuff that

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was never in your control in the first place and how to put that energy into where it actually

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moves the needle.

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We'll talk about why some people's success explodes while equally talented

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and hardworking people plateau and how to position yourself in the right side of that gap.

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And we'll get into the ancient framework that splits luck into three forces so you can finally

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know which lever to pull instead of guessing all the time.

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This and much, much more.

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So the question

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isn't whether you got lucky or not, because let's be honest, we've all gotten lucky and unlucky in

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all sorts of different ways.

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The question is what type of luck we have and what type we don't have

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and how we should respond in each situation.

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Because once you can actually see the forces that are shaping your life,

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it stops feeling like a guilt trip,

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and it starts feeling like something you can actually work with and improve.

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Because it turns out you can control your own luck,

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and you can make yourself luckier,

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even if you've been dealt a bad hand or gone through a stretch of incredibly bad luck.

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Luck, in many ways, is the most under-discussed topic in personal growth,

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and I believe people don't understand what it really is

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and how it actually benefits them.

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So if you were assuming today's episode

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does not have any useful information for you,

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well, today's your lucky day

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because you're gonna discover how incredibly wrong you are.

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I'm New York Times bestselling author Mark Nansen,

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and this is Drew Birney,

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my intrepid co-host, producer, lead researcher,

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and a man who claims that he lost

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37 straight rock, paper, scissors matches.

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That's pretty unlucky, Drew.

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And this is Solved,

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the most comprehensive podcast in the world

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where every episode we aim to solve

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one problem in your life once and for all.

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Today, we're tackling luck, and who knows, maybe this is your lucky podcast episode.

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Drew, how lucky are you?

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Hmm.

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I'm currently recruiting generals for my conquest of Europe, and I'm wondering if you're qualified.

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I mean, I generally do think of myself as an incredibly lucky person, yes.

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Really?

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If I'm applying for the job, yeah.

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Interesting.

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Why is that?

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I mean, I'm sitting here, aren't I?

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How much of that was due to my skill versus luck?

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If that's the question you're asking me, I don't really know, but I feel.

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Are you sure sitting here is a good thing?

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That's another question too.

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That's true.

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That's true.

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That old parable.

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It's an interesting question.

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I do think about this a lot.

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I do a lot.

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Because there's just so many ways my life could have turned out different.

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You know, run it a thousand times over.

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I don't think I'd take another chance on it, honestly.

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Interesting.

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So, yeah, I think I'm lucky.

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Do you think you're lucky?

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I do think I'm lucky.

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Yeah.

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But I don't think about it very often.

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Interesting.

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Okay.

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Napoleon believed that it was very indicative of certain character traits, personality traits

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about a person that if they believe they're lucky or not.

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And it turns out that some modern research does support that, that it turns out that

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people who believe that they are lucky tend to spot more opportunities.

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they tend to have more agency take more initiative try new things take more chances

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and generally all those things lead to better outcomes which is which is kind of fascinating

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so you're saying it's a way you see it if you think about it luck really is largely perception

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right like so there's there's always good and bad things happening in our lives around the world

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but a lot of it is how we choose to see it there are ways to to adopt perspectives to see the same

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thing in both a lucky or unlucky light.

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And what's interesting is that the ability to see things in a

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way that gives you the perception that you're lucky tends to enhance your outcomes.

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Okay.

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So

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for example, there was a couple of really interesting studies that happened over in the UK.

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Researcher Richard Wiseman gave a bunch of people newspapers and told them to count how many photos

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were in the newspapers.

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And beforehand, he asked people to rate how lucky they believed that they

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were.

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And in the newspaper, as people are flipping through the pages, counting the photos, there was

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text that said, stop counting, there are 43 photos.

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And then there was another piece of text

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like buried in an article somewhere that said, if you are reading this, tell the researchers,

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they will give you 100 pounds.

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And what's fascinating is that people who rated themselves

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as luckier found those pieces of text far more often than the people who rated themselves as

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unlucky.

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There was another study that he did where he told people to go to a coffee shop,

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he put money on the ground, and then he put a really successful business person basically at

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the bar next to the place where you order your coffee.

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And sure enough, people who were rated

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themselves as luckier found the money more often and struck up conversations with the successful

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businessman more often and came away seeing the whole experience as like a very positive thing,

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whereas the unlucky people just kind of walked in, missed the money, sat by themselves,

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ignored everybody and everything and then nothing happened yeah what's really interesting too is

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that these researchers who study all this stuff found that you actually could improve people's

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perception of their own luck that you could actually train people to see themselves as being

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luckier and to behave in ways that generate more quote-unquote lucky outcomes which is really

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interesting like it's kind of a almost obscure piece of psychology that like luck could be a

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skill that you could learn.

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And then that by developing that skill, you could actually

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generate better outcomes in your life.

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I love this topic for a few reasons.

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One is I'm just

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a degenerate and I play a lot of poker, but part of it is because I do think it gets at the

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intersection of two very, very important things that I think people struggle to think about or

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struggle to talk about.

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One is how are they making decisions?

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How are they taking risk and assessing

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risk in their life?

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And then the second component is how are they choosing to see the outcomes in

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their life?

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You know, you can easily describe yourself as sitting at this table is very

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fortunate or very unfortunate based on which perspective you decide to take.

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It's a very

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underrated topic and something that people don't think enough about.

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And to Napoleon's point,

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maybe it does matter if you, if you see yourself lucky or not, because if you do see yourself

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lucky, you're likely to create more luckier outcomes.

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You're likely to spot more opportunities

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and you're likely to act on them when you do spot them.

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Well, that's not to say, though,

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that there aren't random chance events

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that we can't control, too,

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and that are outside of our perception, right?

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And that are terrible, yes.

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And that are terrible or awesome or whatever.

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The point is that they are outside of our control

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and perception, our ability to change our perception around, too.

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Yeah.

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So, yeah.

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It's complicated.

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It's a little bit complicated.

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It is complicated.

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But I think it is worth diving into.

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By the end of this episode,

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I think people will see that they have been underrating

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this topic and maybe some of the perspectives that they've adopted in their lives have not

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been helpful and have been holding themselves back in many ways.

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First, a quick word from our sponsors.

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This episode is brought to you by Simple.

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Luck is a funny thing.

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We love handing it credit for the stuff that actually took years of quiet work.

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Think of the person who stays in shape without seeming to try.

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We file them under lucky, good genes, fast metabolism, some willpower the rest of us

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just weren't born with.

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But here's the thing.

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It isn't luck.

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It's consistency.

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And consistency doesn't come from just willpower.

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It comes from building habits you can actually stick to.

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Take Cheryl and Mark.

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lost over 117 pounds.

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One thing Cheryl said really stuck with me.

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She said, if I blow it, it's no big deal.

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This is a lifestyle change.

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Try simple.

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I think that's the mindset most people are missing.

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The goal isn't perfection.

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It's finding something you can actually stick with.

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It's an approach that's already helped simple users lose over 20 million pounds

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Join the 21 million people

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slash solved.

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And use the code solved at checkout for 85% off your plan.

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And we're back.

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Welcome

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back to Solved.

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So first, before we dive into it, I do want to talk a little bit about

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the resistance that people have to thinking about luck.

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Like, you know, I asked you,

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do you consider yourself lucky you pretty much immediately said yes what's funny to me about that

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is that it's easy for you to look at your own life and say i got lucky but imagine if some random

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person or somebody you know looked you in the face and said yeah you just got lucky all this

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no i don't like that like all this yeah you don't like hearing that yeah but when i reflected back

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to myself i'm like well they're right but yeah yeah so there's a component of this that is that

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bleeds into like our feelings of justice, fairness, status.

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I think the first piece of resistance is

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around that.

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Like we have a, there's, it's very instinctual that we like to think that our effort

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should be proportional to our output.

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If we see an unequal outcome, we assume that whoever has

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more should have put in more effort than the person who has less.

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And if that's not true,

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or if that, if we don't perceive that to be true, we get really fucking upset.

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Yeah.

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The whole system

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crumbles really.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And so you end up in a situation where people are like, well, that guy

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just got lucky and that's not fair and so he should uh he or she should like give back to the

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others who are not as lucky as this person is you get into a lot of kind of social justice topics

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around this as well because you can very easily look at people who were born in different

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circumstances born in different parts of the world different ethnicities genders and statistically

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say this person is unluckier for being born in this country at this time, you know, as a woman

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or a non-heterosexual person.

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And yeah, factually that is less lucky than say being born as a white

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straight male in a first world country.

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And I think that bothers a lot of people and they don't.

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So there's, there's a little bit of a resistance of like, well, I'm already privileged.

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So like,

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why should I try to maximize my luck even further?

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I've already gotten so lucky.

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So who am I to like

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try to maximize my luck even further?

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Is guilt the right response there even?

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That's, that's a

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good question.

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We'll get into.

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It is.

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It is a good question.

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I do think there's also a self-worth

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piece here.

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Let's say you and I are both working towards some goal and I believe I'm putting in

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twice the amount of effort that you're putting in yet you're achieving better outcomes.

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There's

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kind of two explanations for that.

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One is you're, you're getting lucky and I'm getting unlucky.

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or shit what's wrong with me because clearly something's like why you bad things keep

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happening to me why am why do i seem uniquely unlucky in all these situations that can start

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to bleed into how you actually like your actual relationship with yourself and so again luck is

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ultimately a perspective we all have lots of opportunities throughout our lives we also have

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lots of challenges that are handed to us throughout our lives what shifts and changes and what we

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define as luck is often just the frame and the perspective which we choose to adopt around those

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opportunities and challenges.

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And there are better perspectives and frames to adopt than others,

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the research shows us.

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I think another problem too is what they call the just world hypothesis

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out of all is related to what you've just said.

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But we just have this really, really deep need

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to believe that the world is just or that there's some order or some sort of sense that can be made

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out of it rather than just random chance.

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We just have this deep need to think that the world

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is a somewhat at least tilts in favor of fairness or at least makes sense.

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And when it's just random

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and chance, then that doesn't make any sense to us.

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And so if somebody is suffering disproportionately,

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either they deserve it because they fucked up or somebody else is screwing them over.

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And you could almost map those two assumptions onto the political right and the political left, right?

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Like the political right will look at an unlucky situation and be like, well, that person probably deserves it for some reason or another that we're not seeing.

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Whereas the political left will look at it and say, well, that person's probably getting screwed over by the person who's not suffering as much.

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When in fact, it could just be random.

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Completely random.

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Yeah, that's unsettling.

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Yes.

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You know, we like to start all of our solved episodes by going back in history and kind of looking at what the ancients thought about certain topics and kind of what's the history of thought around a certain idea.

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And I think luck is interesting because it's probably the first topic that we're covering that the West has really struggled with.

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I can't help but think that maybe, maybe, and I don't know, this is just my harebrained theory, but like so much of Western culture really is like there is a strong sense of fairness and desire towards equality is very much inherent in Western culture.

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And so I think that would maybe explain why the ancient Greeks and Romans didn't really have a good answer for this.

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Whereas I think other cultures have been a little bit more realistic of like, yeah, sometimes life's unfair.

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Sometimes some people get screwed over.

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Sometimes some people are just better than you or take advantage of an opportunity you didn't.

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There's a little bit more realism, I think, in some of the Eastern cultures, which we'll get to in a second.

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But I just want to touch on like the West's inadequate assessment of fortune and luck.

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So the Greeks personified luck as a goddess named Tyche.

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And she was fickle, impulsive.

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There was no rhyme or reason.

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She would just kind of screw people over randomly.

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And the Greeks use this as an explanation of why bad things happen to good people.

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The Romans carried this on with their version of the same goddess, which is where the word fortune comes from.

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Perhaps like this kind of ancient view of how chance operated in life was best exemplified by Bothius, who he was a bureaucrat and a philosopher towards the end of the Roman Empire.

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And he was actually sentenced to death by his political opponents.

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And he wrote while he was imprisoned, essentially life is just, it's a wheel of fortune that you spin and whatever the wheel lands on, that's what you're stuck with.

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There's nothing you can do about it.

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So you might as well not complain.

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You might as well just accept it, move on.

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And it was very fatalist and didn't really have much sense of agency or an ability to kind of change your fortune in life.

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Now, this kind of fatalistic approach continued throughout the Middle Ages, you know, medieval Christendom and the Catholic Church.

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They saw every instead of Lady Fortune, they saw everything as just God's will.

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And so anything bad happened, they said, well, that's part of God's plan.

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Anything good happened and said, well, God is blessing you.

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And it was actually looked on as a bad thing.

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If you had any sorts of sort of agency or tried to kind of steer the outcome of your life in any meaningful way, it was seen as you revolting against God's will.

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And so it really isn't until you get to the Renaissance where Machiavelli compared fortune to a raging river.

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And he said that when the tide is high and the water is raging, there's nothing you can do.

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You just got to hope that you can ride it to someplace good.

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whereas when the tide comes down and it calms then you can build levees and canals and irrigation

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systems and kind of leverage the water and steer it where you want it to go but then when the tide

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rises again it's going to wash everything away and there's nothing you can really do about it

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this is probably the closest thing that we get to like an accurate portrayal of how luck operates

365
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in our day-to-day lives and how we can leverage it still not very satisfying though and then you

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get into the Enlightenment and everybody kind of turns into a math nerd and figures out probability

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theory and starts analyzing and calculating all the percentage outcomes of different choices and

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assumptions.

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And there's a lot of value in this.

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It's still not totally satisfying.

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Like it is

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useful and important to understand the different probabilities of different outcomes in your life.

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It's important for risk assessment.

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And we're going to talk about making good decisions around

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Bayesian thinking in chapter four, we're going to have Annie Duke on as a guest to kind of

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talk us through how to think in bets and think in probabilities.

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00:19:58.373 --> 00:20:00.440
But in terms of like assessing the

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fortune and luck in our own lives, like it's still not very satisfying.

379
00:20:03.814 --> 00:20:05.200
It doesn't solve the fairness

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issue.

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It doesn't solve the justice issue or the guilt issue.

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It doesn't help us assess what we can

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do broadly in our lives to increase our luck, to find more opportunities and to act on those

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00:20:18.080 --> 00:20:19.346
opportunities when we do find them.

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00:20:19.688 --> 00:20:22.280
So in Western thinking, you kind of have this ever present

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tension between two forces.

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One is that luck is just something that happens to you.

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00:20:27.799 --> 00:20:28.120
It's something

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that is inherently outside of your control.

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There's nothing you can do about it.

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It's pure

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fortune.

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You might as well just accept it and get used to it.

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00:20:36.514 --> 00:20:37.880
But there's also this feeling of like,

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00:20:38.680 --> 00:20:39.886
you can improve your life.

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You can put yourself in better situations.

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You can give yourself more

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00:20:43.180 --> 00:20:43.843
opportunities.

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00:20:44.064 --> 00:20:48.400
Luck is something that you can work on and improve and adopt into your life.

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00:20:49.261 --> 00:20:52.472
But both of these things are simultaneously true.

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00:20:52.573 --> 00:20:54.560
I think it's common sense that they both exist,

402
00:20:54.801 --> 00:20:58.494
and I think we have trouble resolving the tension between the two.

403
00:20:58.836 --> 00:21:00.020
So out of all the frameworks

404
00:21:00.642 --> 00:21:04.495
that I came across, I think the best one actually comes from ancient China.

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00:21:05.178 --> 00:21:05.840
And it's this framework

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00:21:06.141 --> 00:21:07.525
called Sansai.

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00:21:07.886 --> 00:21:12.400
What's interesting is that in Chinese, there's more than one word for luck.

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00:21:12.980 --> 00:21:16.880
The Chinese actually have different conceptions of luck and fortune in their lives.

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00:21:17.681 --> 00:21:24.780
And I think as a result, they end up with a much more accurate assessment of what luck is, what is chance, what is opportunity.

410
00:21:25.221 --> 00:21:28.100
And we're going to use it as a framework for this episode.

411
00:21:28.522 --> 00:21:32.660
But I also think it's just something that is useful for people to think about in their day-to-day lives.

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00:21:32.860 --> 00:21:40.220
So the three different types of luck are literally translated as heaven luck, earth luck, and human luck.

413
00:21:40.680 --> 00:21:45.625
Now, heaven luck is basically the birth lottery.

414
00:21:46.365 --> 00:21:47.306
Where were you born?

415
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What are the traits that you were born with?

416
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Were you born into a good family?

417
00:21:51.350 --> 00:21:52.971
Were you born into a family with money?

418
00:21:53.471 --> 00:21:57.715
Were you born into a country that's functional and has good infrastructure?

419
00:21:57.735 --> 00:21:59.457
Or were you born into somewhere that has war?

420
00:21:59.517 --> 00:22:03.460
It's basically all this stuff that's outside of your control that just happens.

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There's zero agency going on.

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00:22:05.683 --> 00:22:13.713
And as we'll discover, the best way to approach heaven luck is through shifting and adopting your perspective to the different things that happen in your life.

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The second luck is earth luck.

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And earth luck is kind of the environment that you move through.

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I think it's probably the hardest one to understand of the three lucks, but it's also arguably the most important one.

426
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Once you do kind of figure it out, it can have the largest benefits and effects on your life.

427
00:22:32.672 --> 00:22:37.135
But basically, earth luck is like the systems that you exist within.

428
00:22:37.656 --> 00:22:40.278
It is the environment that you live in.

429
00:22:40.438 --> 00:22:42.340
It's the people that you surround yourself with.

430
00:22:42.580 --> 00:22:50.668
A simple example is like living in New York City versus living in a tiny town in like South Dakota, right?

431
00:22:50.828 --> 00:22:55.713
If you live in New York City, you're going to be surrounded by so many people doing so many interesting things.

432
00:22:55.753 --> 00:23:02.320
There's going to be tons of jobs, tons of different careers and professions, tons of opportunities, tons of people you can meet and date.

433
00:23:02.842 --> 00:23:07.500
whereas if you live in this tiny town in south dakota there's probably not a whole lot going on

434
00:23:08.222 --> 00:23:13.000
it's probably very homogenous there's probably very few opportunities or all those opportunities

435
00:23:13.121 --> 00:23:17.740
are probably in like the same line of work the same career everybody you meet is probably going

436
00:23:17.740 --> 00:23:23.420
to be very similar and so in this sense putting yourself in a much more dynamic environment full

437
00:23:23.480 --> 00:23:29.699
of more opportunities you could say quote unquote makes you luckier right like it gives you more

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00:23:30.081 --> 00:23:36.158
surface area to stumble into opportunities and chance situations that benefit you.

439
00:23:36.639 --> 00:23:36.960
And so this

440
00:23:37.040 --> 00:23:37.722
is earth luck.

441
00:23:37.943 --> 00:23:44.240
It's like major macro decisions that alter and affect hundreds and hundreds of

442
00:23:44.360 --> 00:23:45.222
micro decisions.

443
00:23:45.603 --> 00:23:50.697
And then there's human luck, which is simply what are your decisions?

444
00:23:51.038 --> 00:23:51.580
How are you

445
00:23:51.981 --> 00:23:55.211
choosing to act based on the probabilities in front of you?

446
00:23:56.375 --> 00:23:58.000
Based on the situations that you

447
00:23:58.261 --> 00:24:03.195
find yourself in, how well are you able to adapt to the circumstances?

448
00:24:04.137 --> 00:24:05.120
Now, the way I like to think

449
00:24:05.180 --> 00:24:10.016
about this is that if life is a poker game, heaven luck is the cards you're dealt.

450
00:24:10.337 --> 00:24:11.380
You can't control

451
00:24:11.480 --> 00:24:13.469
whether you're dealt good hands or bad hands.

452
00:24:13.710 --> 00:24:15.780
If the cards are dead in that poker game for you,

453
00:24:18.024 --> 00:24:20.192
that just happens and it sucks, right?

454
00:24:20.452 --> 00:24:22.680
Earth luck is the table you choose to sit down at.

455
00:24:22.900 --> 00:24:27.468
Human luck is your ability to play those cards as well as you possibly can.

456
00:24:27.508 --> 00:24:35.060
So even if you get shitty cards, you can still play those cards well and you can still win a lot of hands and make a lot of money if you're a very good poker player.

457
00:24:35.501 --> 00:24:48.280
Now, one of the things that's really interesting about poker is that if you ever talk to a poker professional, they will tell you that the single biggest decision you make is which table do you sit down at and where do you sit down at that table?

458
00:24:48.801 --> 00:24:54.880
Because there are certain players that you have to know you have an advantage or disadvantage against.

459
00:24:55.441 --> 00:25:00.840
And there's also certain placement at the table that can put you at an advantage or disadvantage relative to those players.

460
00:25:00.940 --> 00:25:07.046
And so if you sit at a table where you're at a disadvantage, then you're creating bad luck for yourself.

461
00:25:07.607 --> 00:25:13.733
Whereas if you wait and find a table where you have a lot of advantage, then you're creating a lot of luck for yourself.

462
00:25:14.133 --> 00:25:16.235
So you said earlier that you were lucky.

463
00:25:16.295 --> 00:25:20.920
I'm curious, which of these three lucks do you believe you have benefited from?

464
00:25:21.140 --> 00:25:23.303
I think the biggest one for me has probably been earth luck.

465
00:25:24.124 --> 00:25:26.027
I've had a lot of really good earth luck.

466
00:25:26.548 --> 00:25:28.791
Heaven luck was, I don't know, I can see it either way.

467
00:25:29.532 --> 00:25:32.155
My human luck, I've made some good decisions.

468
00:25:32.175 --> 00:25:33.477
I've made some pretty bad decisions.

469
00:25:33.677 --> 00:25:35.600
And I think it's all been mitigated by my earth luck.

470
00:25:35.906 --> 00:25:36.038
Okay.

471
00:25:36.726 --> 00:25:36.898
Yeah.

472
00:25:37.244 --> 00:25:37.540
How so?

473
00:25:37.820 --> 00:25:39.902
I grew up in one of those tiny towns you were talking about, right?

474
00:25:39.922 --> 00:25:42.385
In the Midwest where there wasn't a lot going on.

475
00:25:42.505 --> 00:25:45.989
And it seems like that's not a real good draw of the heaven look.

476
00:25:46.209 --> 00:25:56.600
But when I look back on it, I actually see that that environment was, if I was going to be a pretty poor kid growing up in America in the 90s and 2000s, that was the place to be.

477
00:25:56.940 --> 00:25:59.643
The school system I was in, it was a public school system.

478
00:25:59.883 --> 00:26:03.045
So you're thinking small town public school system, no big deal, but it was actually really good.

479
00:26:03.125 --> 00:26:06.709
Like the arts community there was insane for what we had.

480
00:26:06.729 --> 00:26:12.293
Like half the kids were in choir and band and the whole school, you know, that's not, and that's not how it is today.

481
00:26:12.473 --> 00:26:13.915
Some of the teachers I had were just amazing.

482
00:26:13.975 --> 00:26:20.260
I had a lot of like, even from an early age, I had a lot of like male teachers who were role models for me that I just don't think happens anymore too.

483
00:26:20.540 --> 00:26:23.403
In high school, I had a teacher who was the, he was an English teacher.

484
00:26:23.483 --> 00:26:25.925
He was, he'd be teaching us about T.S.

485
00:26:25.965 --> 00:26:28.327
Eliot and Sylvia Plath during the day.

486
00:26:28.347 --> 00:26:29.589
And then he was a football coach too.

487
00:26:29.649 --> 00:26:30.569
So he'd be screaming at you.

488
00:26:30.589 --> 00:26:34.153
So I just, I had this weird experience, I think is what I'm saying.

489
00:26:34.173 --> 00:26:41.700
I had a lot of people around me who, even though I wasn't born into like real fortunate circumstances, it seemed like there really was a village behind me.

490
00:26:42.640 --> 00:26:49.605
The weird thing though is too, is I talked to people, other people around me, they didn't have the same experience, right?

491
00:26:49.665 --> 00:26:53.628
Like I feel like I was lucky and I talked to them about that and they're like, I did not have that experience.

492
00:26:53.848 --> 00:27:00.893
For whatever reason, like my, my set of heaven luck and human luck matched that environment very, very well.

493
00:27:01.734 --> 00:27:03.435
And I benefited greatly from it.

494
00:27:03.735 --> 00:27:04.475
Not everybody did.

495
00:27:04.756 --> 00:27:10.980
So I just think I had, yeah, I think the terrain that I've traversed through has been very, very fortunate for me.

496
00:27:11.622 --> 00:27:16.240
interesting yeah yeah which which kind of luck do you think you've benefited from most so far

497
00:27:16.822 --> 00:27:22.420
this is going to be a very obnoxious answer okay i think i've been so lucky in all three

498
00:27:22.801 --> 00:27:30.460
my family's relatively wealthy born in the u.s born in literally the fastest growing city

499
00:27:30.841 --> 00:27:35.359
in america just had i mean every opportunity was kind of laid out in front of me i've had

500
00:27:35.640 --> 00:27:36.322
great health.

501
00:27:36.984 --> 00:27:43.580
I've never had like any sort of catastrophic, you know, accident or a thing

502
00:27:43.660 --> 00:27:44.062
happen.

503
00:27:44.664 --> 00:27:48.155
I think I've made excellent earth luck decisions.

504
00:27:48.556 --> 00:27:49.660
I think that's something that I've

505
00:27:49.700 --> 00:27:54.900
just kind of intuitively, yeah, I've just intuitively been very good at, you know,

506
00:27:54.960 --> 00:27:58.915
like that macro decision that negates thousands of micro decisions.

507
00:27:59.236 --> 00:28:00.120
I seem to have a sense of

508
00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:05.100
like knowing where to put myself at the right time, different places to live, different groups

509
00:28:05.140 --> 00:28:05.803
with people to meet.

510
00:28:06.085 --> 00:28:09.380
Like you could look at my career and say, I got, I've become very lucky.

511
00:28:09.440 --> 00:28:15.300
I think some of the best earth luck decisions often look lucky on the outside, even though

512
00:28:15.521 --> 00:28:22.260
inside they, they just, they're very smart because generally speaking, the largest opportunities,

513
00:28:22.421 --> 00:28:26.420
the reason they're opportunities is because most people underestimate them.

514
00:28:26.922 --> 00:28:27.143
Right.

515
00:28:27.184 --> 00:28:29.336
So it's like when I started blogging and like 2008, 2009,

516
00:28:30.781 --> 00:28:33.460
very quickly, I was convinced I'm like, this is the future of media.

517
00:28:35.005 --> 00:28:39.500
if i throw myself into this and get really good at it before anybody else i'm just gonna have like

518
00:28:39.741 --> 00:28:46.120
such a ridiculous amount of upside and advantage and i was right about that right and it's funny

519
00:28:46.140 --> 00:28:53.760
because for probably six seven years my bunch of friends and family back home were like dude when

520
00:28:53.760 --> 00:28:59.280
are you gonna get a job like what's this internet thing you're doing like you're wasting your your

521
00:28:59.521 --> 00:29:03.380
life you'd like you need to start a real career all this stuff and then you fast forward 10 or

522
00:29:03.561 --> 00:29:08.580
15 years and they're like wow like mark mark was very fortunate and then i think on the human luck

523
00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:15.040
side it's just that's just good micro decision making right like understanding in the moment

524
00:29:15.281 --> 00:29:22.080
what is a high roi bet to take whether it's with a person you're dating a place that you're living

525
00:29:22.662 --> 00:29:29.440
a product a work project that you're taking on if you look at like the range of outcomes

526
00:29:30.743 --> 00:29:37.320
my decisions could have produced i think i'm definitely towards the high the like very much

527
00:29:37.380 --> 00:29:41.360
towards the higher band of like what what potential outcomes could happen i think i've

528
00:29:41.400 --> 00:29:45.960
experienced luck across the board and all three yeah sure there was some heaven luck and a lot of

529
00:29:45.960 --> 00:29:51.480
that like you just and i know you've acknowledged that but like uh you know the the blogging and

530
00:29:51.480 --> 00:29:55.840
the internet thing like we're the right age for that right we're born at the right time and right

531
00:29:55.880 --> 00:29:59.997
place for that in the right country now you see those levels though working working all working

532
00:30:00.700 --> 00:30:05.360
together yeah and so on one level it's like yeah i did get lucky on the other on the other level

533
00:30:05.420 --> 00:30:09.820
it's like i also made really good decisions but on another level it's like those decisions also

534
00:30:10.001 --> 00:30:13.820
worked out almost as well as they could have because there is a world where a lot of those

535
00:30:13.860 --> 00:30:18.480
same decisions didn't work out nearly as well coming back to the fairness piece the justice

536
00:30:18.520 --> 00:30:24.920
this piece like this is what we struggle with so much is that it is always both of these forces

537
00:30:25.161 --> 00:30:31.280
intention like it is both a large amount of variables outside of our control and a large

538
00:30:31.320 --> 00:30:36.780
amount of variables inside of our control happening at all times and so anytime you want to

539
00:30:37.362 --> 00:30:42.760
convince yourself that all of the outcome is due to stuff outside of your control

540
00:30:43.964 --> 00:30:49.420
it's not hard to find a narrative or explanation that that will justify that and similarly if you

541
00:30:49.600 --> 00:30:55.800
want to find a narrative that justifies your outcomes as only your decisions it's not very

542
00:30:55.880 --> 00:31:01.060
hard to find that narrative or justification as well so like i think people need to be very careful

543
00:31:01.662 --> 00:31:06.320
and how they explain their outcomes in life and explain the outcomes of other people in life as

544
00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:14.220
well because it is always some mixture of fortune and skill operating at all times yeah so mcafele

545
00:31:14.661 --> 00:31:21.140
was kind of right in that way right luck is a raging river yes and you can divert parts of it

546
00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:25.159
and make little dams and stuff like that a lot of it you can control a lot of it you can't

547
00:31:26.584 --> 00:31:31.780
and the rest of this episode is how to do that i think yeah yes and so the goal here is i think

548
00:31:33.570 --> 00:31:35.300
all the things that are outside of our control,

549
00:31:35.541 --> 00:31:37.140
there are better and worse perspectives

550
00:31:37.323 --> 00:31:38.260
to take on those things.

551
00:31:38.440 --> 00:31:38.780
Right, right.

552
00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:40.560
And we'll get into that in the next chapter.

553
00:31:41.303 --> 00:31:43.100
And then everything that's inside of our control,

554
00:31:43.985 --> 00:31:45.880
there's a lot of skills and mindsets

555
00:31:46.001 --> 00:31:48.980
that help us make those decisions as well as possible.

556
00:31:49.220 --> 00:31:50.200
So in this episode of Solve,

557
00:31:50.200 --> 00:31:52.580
we're going to dive into all of these forms of luck

558
00:31:53.103 --> 00:31:55.720
and how we can best leverage each one to our advantage.

559
00:31:55.981 --> 00:31:57.599
In the next chapter, we're going to talk about heaven luck

560
00:31:58.324 --> 00:32:01.200
and talk about how in many ways life is like a lottery.

561
00:32:01.981 --> 00:32:06.420
And whether you win or lose, most of it comes down to how you see that lottery.

562
00:32:07.321 --> 00:32:17.040
We're going to talk about earth luck and how your environment and psychology are either expanding your luck surface area or shrinking your luck surface area every day of your life.

563
00:32:18.221 --> 00:32:25.960
We're going to talk about human luck, which is the probability game that we are always playing and affects all the decisions that we're making.

564
00:32:26.280 --> 00:32:28.703
And then in chapter five, we're going to turn everything on its head.

565
00:32:28.763 --> 00:32:35.190
Because even if you master all three forms of luck, the distribution of outcomes still is not fair.

566
00:32:35.670 --> 00:32:42.417
There is almost like a certain amount of luck in how much luck benefits you and how much it doesn't.

567
00:32:42.938 --> 00:32:44.780
There's like a meta luck that goes on.

568
00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:56.020
And finally, we will close with all the takeaways, all the appropriate mindsets, all the exercises you can do to make sure that you are as lucky as possible in this life, even if you don't believe it yet.

569
00:32:56.601 --> 00:33:04.713
So what I'm really driving at with all this is that this question that we hear in different forms all the time of like, is this just luck or is it skill?

570
00:33:05.114 --> 00:33:09.200
Is it luck that Elon Musk is a trillionaire or is it skill?

571
00:33:10.444 --> 00:33:14.940
it's always both it's always both and it's always operating on different levels there is

572
00:33:15.241 --> 00:33:20.220
heaven luck there are things outside of our control and then there is earth and human luck

573
00:33:20.943 --> 00:33:25.220
the decisions we make the environments we put ourselves in the circumstances that we subject

574
00:33:25.300 --> 00:33:29.860
ourselves to just to close the loop on the napoleon piece the reason napoleon asked his

575
00:33:29.940 --> 00:33:37.660
generals this it was more of a proxy for creative and opportune thinking because napoleon understood

576
00:33:37.680 --> 00:33:41.620
it extremely well that there are always going to be unexpected things that are happening and there's

577
00:33:41.660 --> 00:33:47.240
always going to be forces and variables that are outside of your control and so he needed generals

578
00:33:47.461 --> 00:33:53.820
who understood an opportunity when they saw it right when the plan goes to shit and a bunch of

579
00:33:53.960 --> 00:33:59.300
unexpected stuff starts happening and a situation presents itself where you could really take

580
00:33:59.360 --> 00:34:04.780
advantage of a situation he wanted generals who he was confident were going to take advantage of

581
00:34:04.780 --> 00:34:08.575
that situation and change the plan and change their mind and move on it.

582
00:34:08.736 --> 00:34:09.740
People who saw themselves as

583
00:34:09.940 --> 00:34:15.020
unlucky would just see that circumstance and be like, oh, that's not part of the plan.

584
00:34:15.860 --> 00:34:16.684
I'm so screwed.

585
00:34:17.206 --> 00:34:18.111
This isn't going to work.

586
00:34:18.593 --> 00:34:20.200
So in the next chapter, we're actually going to start

587
00:34:20.300 --> 00:34:25.380
with probably the hardest form of luck to address, which is heaven luck, the things that happen

588
00:34:25.500 --> 00:34:26.444
outside of our control.

589
00:34:26.705 --> 00:34:30.560
The approach to this is almost entirely about our perspective and how we

590
00:34:30.640 --> 00:34:33.269
choose to frame the situations in our lives.

591
00:34:33.791 --> 00:34:36.340
And what's most interesting is that probably the

592
00:34:36.380 --> 00:34:42.220
healthiest and most beneficial way to look at this comes from two people who kind of had the same

593
00:34:42.300 --> 00:34:43.324
idea at the same time.

594
00:34:43.966 --> 00:34:47.298
One happens to be a billionaire who eats a lot of Big Macs.

595
00:34:47.719 --> 00:34:47.900
And then

596
00:34:47.940 --> 00:34:54.040
the other one is a famous philosopher who probably invented the most important theory about justice

597
00:34:54.822 --> 00:34:55.623
in modern history.

598
00:34:59.271 --> 00:35:01.055
But first, a word from our sponsor.

599
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620
00:36:13.474 --> 00:36:14.317
All right, welcome back.

621
00:36:14.658 --> 00:36:15.360
This is Solved.

622
00:36:18.481 --> 00:36:24.460
There's a temptation to believe that the circumstances we're born with are our destiny.

623
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:27.131
And it just turns out that that's not true at all.

624
00:36:27.573 --> 00:36:29.020
And I think the perfect example of this

625
00:36:29.802 --> 00:36:32.891
is an interview I saw of Warren Buffett, maybe like 10 years ago.

626
00:36:33.674 --> 00:36:35.840
And Buffett was asked,

627
00:36:36.160 --> 00:36:42.248
What is the number one factor to your success that has made you so successful over such a long period of time?

628
00:36:42.808 --> 00:36:44.430
And Buffett immediately answered luck.

629
00:36:45.231 --> 00:36:47.054
And the journalist was kind of like shocked.

630
00:36:47.074 --> 00:36:48.135
He was like, what are you talking about?

631
00:36:48.155 --> 00:36:49.577
You're the greatest investor of all time.

632
00:36:49.597 --> 00:36:50.958
You're worth like $100 billion.

633
00:36:50.978 --> 00:36:52.380
What do you mean luck?

634
00:36:52.700 --> 00:37:10.280
And Buffett had a really fascinating answer to this, which is he said that he won the ovarian lottery and that he was born in the richest country in the world at literally the best possible time to begin a career in financial investments.

635
00:37:10.720 --> 00:37:14.965
He came of age and started investing at the very bottom of the Great Depression.

636
00:37:15.045 --> 00:37:19.629
So immediately starting out, he had the largest financial tailwind in human history behind him.

637
00:37:19.950 --> 00:37:23.953
He points out that, you know, he was born in the 1920s in the United States.

638
00:37:24.114 --> 00:37:25.635
He was born a white male.

639
00:37:25.795 --> 00:37:30.580
If he was born a female or some other ethnicity, he wouldn't have had the same opportunities.

640
00:37:30.860 --> 00:37:39.329
He has two sisters who he argued were smarter than he was and just as ambitious, but they were not afforded the same opportunities that he had.

641
00:37:40.531 --> 00:37:49.520
And I would even argue as well that he's had another kind of luck factor on his side, which doesn't get talked about a whole bunch, which is simply longevity.

642
00:37:49.880 --> 00:37:53.723
I believe he made his first investment when he was 11 years old and he just retired.

643
00:37:54.163 --> 00:38:02.389
In a profession where everything compounds very slowly over a long period of time, longevity may actually be the greatest factor to his success.

644
00:38:02.509 --> 00:38:12.015
There was an interesting statistic in Morgan Halsall's book where he pointed out that 99% of Warren Buffett's wealth he made after he turned 65 years old, which is...

645
00:38:19.821 --> 00:38:25.320
the heaven luck in the sansai chinese system this is the luck that you're born with this is the

646
00:38:25.460 --> 00:38:32.000
circumstances that you arrive with and in many ways it is like a lottery there are objectively

647
00:38:32.341 --> 00:38:37.860
better and worse situations that you can be born into objectively better and worse families that

648
00:38:37.880 --> 00:38:42.540
you can be born into better and worse time periods that you can be born into it's like the old saying

649
00:38:42.540 --> 00:38:43.899
And some people are born on third base.

650
00:38:44.440 --> 00:38:46.540
And it's not fair.

651
00:38:47.563 --> 00:38:49.420
It's not just.

652
00:38:49.961 --> 00:38:51.979
But it is just life.

653
00:38:52.560 --> 00:38:56.100
Heaven luck encompasses pretty much everything that is outside of our control.

654
00:38:56.420 --> 00:39:01.140
Everything that we had no say in and simply happened to us.

655
00:39:01.720 --> 00:39:07.080
I think Warren Buffett points out that there's different kinds of heaven luck that can intersect and compound with each other as well.

656
00:39:07.281 --> 00:39:07.583
too, right?

657
00:39:07.623 --> 00:39:10.580
Like he talks about the different lotteries he won, not just those lotteries that

658
00:39:10.620 --> 00:39:13.720
you said, you know, the, he was born in the United States at the right time and all that,

659
00:39:14.020 --> 00:39:15.727
what he calls the talent match lottery.

660
00:39:16.189 --> 00:39:19.020
Like he's a very analytical person, very numerical minded,

661
00:39:19.902 --> 00:39:22.111
probably pretty emotionally steady.

662
00:39:22.251 --> 00:39:22.492
Yeah.

663
00:39:22.653 --> 00:39:24.380
So he doesn't, he doesn't make investments with

664
00:39:24.420 --> 00:39:26.871
emotions at the time and place where he was born.

665
00:39:26.991 --> 00:39:29.080
That was a very advantageous set of skills to have.

666
00:39:29.522 --> 00:39:32.060
He makes the joke though, that Bill Gates has always told him, you know, if you were born a

667
00:39:32.100 --> 00:39:34.373
hundred thousand years ago, you would have been some animal's lunch.

668
00:39:34.534 --> 00:39:35.520
Like those skills don't

669
00:39:35.600 --> 00:39:39.980
matter at all in that environment right so there's all these different kinds of layers that can go

670
00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:43.900
into this and all these different kinds of heaven luck that can come together or not and produce

671
00:39:43.980 --> 00:39:49.820
these wild outcomes or or terrible outcomes too right we don't have any control over any of those

672
00:39:50.081 --> 00:39:54.900
you're right there's kind of a tension of like it's important to understand the factors of heaven

673
00:39:54.980 --> 00:40:00.800
luck and i think there is a temptation because heaven luck is the most measurable form of luck

674
00:40:01.382 --> 00:40:06.680
out of the three, there's a temptation, I think, to over index on it and kind of assume that it

675
00:40:06.720 --> 00:40:10.311
accounts for most, if not all of our outcomes.

676
00:40:11.133 --> 00:40:13.360
But as we'll find as we go through this episode,

677
00:40:13.500 --> 00:40:15.045
like that's not the case.

678
00:40:15.265 --> 00:40:20.160
And actually, we would argue that heaven luck is not as simple as it

679
00:40:20.360 --> 00:40:21.183
initially appears.

680
00:40:21.384 --> 00:40:26.520
Like it seems simple to simply say like, okay, well, I was born in a better place

681
00:40:26.600 --> 00:40:27.724
than this person was.

682
00:40:27.824 --> 00:40:31.697
Therefore, I'm luckier and my life's going to turn out better.

683
00:40:32.038 --> 00:40:32.540
It's not,

684
00:40:32.740 --> 00:40:33.665
it's not that clear.

685
00:40:33.865 --> 00:40:34.247
You're right.

686
00:40:34.267 --> 00:40:35.111
It is very measurable.

687
00:40:35.674 --> 00:40:37.120
Let me, let me paint a modern picture

688
00:40:37.241 --> 00:40:38.607
of how that might look.

689
00:40:39.149 --> 00:40:40.757
And then we can talk a little bit more about that.

690
00:40:40.777 --> 00:40:40.978
Okay.

691
00:40:40.998 --> 00:40:41.420
So let's take

692
00:40:41.641 --> 00:40:44.554
two different children, two different babies born on the same day today.

693
00:40:44.574 --> 00:40:45.458
Okay.

694
00:40:45.518 --> 00:40:46.000
And two different

695
00:40:46.060 --> 00:40:49.694
places though, one born in Norway, one born in Sierra Leone.

696
00:40:50.076 --> 00:40:50.317
Okay.

697
00:40:50.538 --> 00:40:51.120
Let me just give you some

698
00:40:51.160 --> 00:40:51.562
hard facts.

699
00:40:51.582 --> 00:40:52.527
Like you said, it's measurable.

700
00:40:52.548 --> 00:40:54.880
Let me give you some hard facts of like what that looks

701
00:40:54.920 --> 00:40:56.066
like at their starting points.

702
00:40:56.287 --> 00:40:58.238
The first one, let's say they're born in Oslo in Norway.

703
00:40:58.258 --> 00:40:58.640
Okay.

704
00:40:59.440 --> 00:41:04.178
She will statistically, she has a very high chance of living to about 83 years old.

705
00:41:04.359 --> 00:41:04.499
Okay.

706
00:41:04.519 --> 00:41:04.720
That's her

707
00:41:04.740 --> 00:41:06.066
life expectancy at birth.

708
00:41:06.407 --> 00:41:09.540
She'll have access to free healthcare, free university education,

709
00:41:10.181 --> 00:41:13.556
one of the strongest social safety nets that's ever been built by humanity.

710
00:41:13.697 --> 00:41:14.400
She has access to

711
00:41:14.420 --> 00:41:15.704
that from day one, right?

712
00:41:16.807 --> 00:41:19.495
Her country's GDP per capita is about $82,000 per person.

713
00:41:19.515 --> 00:41:19.816
Childhood

714
00:41:21.460 --> 00:41:25.340
mortality risk, which is like the likelihood that she'll die before the age of five, is only two

715
00:41:25.721 --> 00:41:26.584
and 1,000.

716
00:41:26.805 --> 00:41:30.780
The infrastructure she has access to, to like the roads there and, you know, hospitals

717
00:41:31.021 --> 00:41:34.312
and education, all of that is like top rate.

718
00:41:35.075 --> 00:41:36.460
Some of the best you can find in the world, right?

719
00:41:36.780 --> 00:41:37.924
Obviously she didn't choose any of that.

720
00:41:37.944 --> 00:41:38.627
Yeah.

721
00:41:38.948 --> 00:41:39.791
Right.

722
00:41:40.494 --> 00:41:42.260
Compare that to a child born the same day

723
00:41:42.440 --> 00:41:43.925
in a free town, Sierra Leone.

724
00:41:44.527 --> 00:41:44.808
Okay.

725
00:41:45.069 --> 00:41:46.673
Life expectancy there at birth is 62.

726
00:41:46.693 --> 00:41:47.576
So full 21 years shorter

727
00:41:49.582 --> 00:41:50.425
than Norway.

728
00:41:50.565 --> 00:41:53.856
Country's GDP is about $800 per person per year.

729
00:41:54.136 --> 00:41:55.300
So about a hundred times,

730
00:41:55.440 --> 00:41:57.387
more than a hundred times less than in Norway.

731
00:41:58.289 --> 00:42:00.376
Childhood mortality risk is 94 in 1000 compared

732
00:42:01.760 --> 00:42:02.703
to two in 1000.

733
00:42:02.723 --> 00:42:03.606
Okay.

734
00:42:03.646 --> 00:42:08.079
So the 47 times worse, the infrastructure there's really education is,

735
00:42:08.661 --> 00:42:13.860
is lacking access to healthcare roads, uh, recent civil war, lots of violence,

736
00:42:14.302 --> 00:42:19.280
no guarantees of safety all of that is very very present okay when we say oh this heaven luck like

737
00:42:19.742 --> 00:42:24.840
obviously if if you're going to choose you'd want to be born in norway right over sierra leone yes

738
00:42:24.860 --> 00:42:30.079
those are stark differences but what do we do with that information mark like what like how do we how

739
00:42:30.560 --> 00:42:34.000
are we supposed to think about that you can look at that and you say well we're shit out of luck

740
00:42:34.120 --> 00:42:38.938
right there's a fatalism to it that that's very easy to go to but is that the right reaction yeah

741
00:42:39.520 --> 00:42:39.781
Yeah.

742
00:42:39.841 --> 00:42:54.860
And like we talked about in chapter one, our natural inclination is the just world hypothesis, which is that whenever we see a large disparity between people, we assume that something unfair is happening or that it is inherently unfair.

743
00:42:54.900 --> 00:42:55.661
And maybe it is.

744
00:42:55.742 --> 00:42:58.346
But to your question of like, what do we do with that?

745
00:42:59.087 --> 00:43:06.580
I think it's ultimately, as with anything outside of our control, the best we can do is find a way to accept it and leverage it.

746
00:43:06.760 --> 00:43:12.144
I want to come back to this comparison because this idea of luck and who is lucky.

747
00:43:12.424 --> 00:43:18.388
So there's a philosopher named John Rawls, and he has this amazing concept that he called the veil of ignorance.

748
00:43:18.488 --> 00:43:25.833
And basically what Rawls argued was that the only way to tell how just the society was, was by doing a thought experiment.

749
00:43:25.853 --> 00:43:28.015
And that thought experiment was assume that you're not born yet.

750
00:43:28.415 --> 00:43:35.240
And you get to choose which society you're going to be born into not knowing what individual you're going to be born as.

751
00:43:35.260 --> 00:43:42.820
So you don't know your gender, race, ethnicity, what your family situation is going to be like, what your talent is going to be like, what your IQ is going to be.

752
00:43:43.060 --> 00:43:49.240
The simple question is, is when presented with a society, would you choose to be born into that society or not?

753
00:43:49.821 --> 00:43:59.760
Now, from a veil of ignorance perspective, obviously, if offered the chance to be born into Norway or be born into Sierra Leone, I think pretty much everybody would choose to be born into Norway.

754
00:44:00.561 --> 00:44:08.310
But that doesn't mean that every single person in Norway is luckier than every single person in Sierra Leone, right?

755
00:44:08.350 --> 00:44:17.340
So you could be born into Norway and, I don't know, be born with some chronic disease or get cancer at the age of five or something and die when you're seven.

756
00:44:17.780 --> 00:44:25.968
Whereas in Sierra Leone, you know, there's plenty of stories of people who have overcome incredible hardship and actually become very fortunate.

757
00:44:25.988 --> 00:44:40.020
There was a story that I found about a local pastor who was digging through a local riverbed looking for essentially gold dust and happened to stumble across the second largest diamond ever found.

758
00:44:40.801 --> 00:44:44.324
It was worth close to $10 million.

759
00:44:44.404 --> 00:44:48.247
And then this pastor ended up netting about $2.5 million for his trouble.

760
00:44:48.587 --> 00:44:55.213
Keep in mind, this isn't a country that they make less than $1,000 a year, and he just landed $2.5 million, right?

761
00:44:55.273 --> 00:44:56.834
And he did all sorts of amazing things.

762
00:44:56.874 --> 00:45:04.140
He built schools, community centers, built roads, infrastructure for the community, gave a bunch of money away to friends and family and local children.

763
00:45:04.481 --> 00:45:05.704
would you say he's lucky?

764
00:45:05.724 --> 00:45:07.368
Right?

765
00:45:08.891 --> 00:45:12.500
He's actually luckier than most other people on the planet,

766
00:45:12.681 --> 00:45:16.293
even though he was born into an extremely unlucky circumstance.

767
00:45:16.955 --> 00:45:18.240
And the reason I bring this up is

768
00:45:18.400 --> 00:45:25.920
that luck is ultimately simply a comparison between reality and potential alternatives.

769
00:45:26.541 --> 00:45:30.152
And so by definition, luck is always relative.

770
00:45:30.733 --> 00:45:33.000
Like if you're saying that he's unlucky or he's

771
00:45:33.120 --> 00:45:33.501
lucky.

772
00:45:33.662 --> 00:45:35.246
It's lucky compared to what?

773
00:45:36.029 --> 00:45:37.272
Unlucky compared to what?

774
00:45:38.516 --> 00:45:40.000
Yes, it's unlucky to be born

775
00:45:40.040 --> 00:45:43.092
in Sierra Leone today versus being born into Norway today.

776
00:45:43.935 --> 00:45:45.320
But it's also lucky to be born

777
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:50.438
in Sierra Leone today versus born there when there was a civil war raging, or 100 years ago,

778
00:45:51.220 --> 00:45:57.440
when there was zero infrastructure, and rampant colonialism, or 1000 years ago, where like you had

779
00:45:58.283 --> 00:46:02.938
absolutely no basic services and the life expectancy was probably like 25 years old,

780
00:46:03.981 --> 00:46:04.202
right?

781
00:46:04.242 --> 00:46:07.389
So it's like lucky compared to what?

782
00:46:07.590 --> 00:46:11.740
The most important takeaway of heaven luck is that

783
00:46:12.121 --> 00:46:14.529
luck is ultimately a perspective.

784
00:46:14.850 --> 00:46:17.559
It's a frame of reference that you choose to adopt.

785
00:46:17.699 --> 00:46:17.880
It's a

786
00:46:17.940 --> 00:46:23.676
yardstick that you use to measure your life versus whatever else.

787
00:46:23.696 --> 00:46:24.900
You know, there's this old

788
00:46:25.683 --> 00:46:29.460
Chinese fable about the farmer and the horse, which I think illustrates this perfectly.

789
00:46:29.781 --> 00:46:35.596
So basically there was a poor farmer in ancient China and all he had was a single horse.

790
00:46:36.399 --> 00:46:36.639
And one

791
00:46:36.980 --> 00:46:42.698
day that horse runs away and his son comes running in, says, dad, dad, our horse is gone.

792
00:46:43.219 --> 00:46:43.460
This is

793
00:46:43.520 --> 00:46:43.962
terrible.

794
00:46:44.503 --> 00:46:45.447
We're so unlucky.

795
00:46:45.808 --> 00:46:49.360
And the farmer looks at his son and he says, good luck, bad luck,

796
00:46:50.261 --> 00:46:50.603
who knows?

797
00:46:50.944 --> 00:46:54.100
And so the son goes looking for the horse and he like wanders out into the wilderness

798
00:46:54.422 --> 00:46:56.680
and he comes back the next day with five horses.

799
00:46:57.061 --> 00:46:58.660
Turns out that the horse that ran away

800
00:46:58.741 --> 00:47:00.020
went and found a bunch of horsey friends

801
00:47:00.161 --> 00:47:02.560
and they hung out and had a little party

802
00:47:02.601 --> 00:47:03.720
and then they came back together.

803
00:47:04.381 --> 00:47:05.760
So his son comes back and he's got five.

804
00:47:05.820 --> 00:47:07.760
He's like, dad, oh my God, I can't believe it.

805
00:47:07.800 --> 00:47:09.060
We have five horses now.

806
00:47:09.140 --> 00:47:09.640
We're rich.

807
00:47:09.841 --> 00:47:10.640
We're so lucky.

808
00:47:11.601 --> 00:47:12.740
And the farmer looks at him and says,

809
00:47:13.424 --> 00:47:15.340
good luck, bad luck, who knows?

810
00:47:16.521 --> 00:47:18.480
So then the son starts spending the next couple of weeks

811
00:47:18.702 --> 00:47:20.020
trying to train these wild horses,

812
00:47:20.140 --> 00:47:22.080
trying to tame them and get them to do farm work.

813
00:47:22.261 --> 00:47:26.260
And one day, one of the horses rears up and kicks him off the back.

814
00:47:27.123 --> 00:47:28.680
And the son falls and breaks his leg.

815
00:47:29.201 --> 00:47:32.040
And the farmer's poor, so he has no other workers.

816
00:47:32.160 --> 00:47:33.020
It's just him and his son.

817
00:47:33.100 --> 00:47:35.240
And so the son is like, oh my God, Dad, this is terrible.

818
00:47:35.845 --> 00:47:36.660
We're so unlucky.

819
00:47:36.901 --> 00:47:37.960
I can't believe this happened to us.

820
00:47:38.880 --> 00:47:41.460
The farmer says, good luck, bad luck, who knows?

821
00:47:42.902 --> 00:47:46.560
And then a week later, the local militia comes through.

822
00:47:46.700 --> 00:47:47.920
There's a war has started.

823
00:47:48.060 --> 00:47:55.840
and the local lord or king of the local fiefdom is like recruiting drafting young men into his army

824
00:47:56.141 --> 00:48:00.000
they see the farmer's son sitting there with a broken leg and they're like oh well we can't

825
00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:04.420
draft him into the war so you know we'll we'll leave him here and the son looks up at his dad

826
00:48:04.520 --> 00:48:09.720
he's like oh my god we're so lucky dad this is thank god this happened and his dad says good

827
00:48:09.760 --> 00:48:15.620
luck bad luck who knows and the story goes on and on and on and it just keeps shifting back and

828
00:48:15.680 --> 00:48:16.162
forth, right?

829
00:48:16.202 --> 00:48:22.000
And it's like the same exact occurrence is both lucky and unlucky, depending

830
00:48:22.160 --> 00:48:27.660
on the frame of reference, depending on the potential alternative reality that you can imagine

831
00:48:28.542 --> 00:48:29.444
that has not happened.

832
00:48:29.705 --> 00:48:35.920
And so in this sense, both feeling lucky and feeling unlucky is available to

833
00:48:36.020 --> 00:48:43.200
us in every moment, depending on simply what alternative realities we choose to imagine for

834
00:48:43.260 --> 00:48:43.642
ourselves.

835
00:48:44.003 --> 00:48:47.317
And as we'll see, this has very significant consequences.

836
00:48:47.558 --> 00:48:48.100
This is definitely

837
00:48:48.180 --> 00:48:50.189
something I've seen in my own life.

838
00:48:50.570 --> 00:48:52.840
Like when I was younger, I thought I was so unlucky to be

839
00:48:53.161 --> 00:48:57.540
born in the middle of nowhere, you know, the small town, their parents didn't have a lot of money.

840
00:48:57.680 --> 00:49:01.120
They were young and they, you know, not a lot of access to resources, no outside connections,

841
00:49:01.340 --> 00:49:02.023
anything like that.

842
00:49:02.485 --> 00:49:05.700
And the older I got, the more I realized like, oh, if I was, if you were going

843
00:49:05.720 --> 00:49:10.100
to grow up like that, the time and place where I grew up actually turned out to be a very good

844
00:49:10.180 --> 00:49:11.505
time and place to grow up like that.

845
00:49:11.525 --> 00:49:15.760
The 90s and early 2000s in the Midwest and in the middle of

846
00:49:15.780 --> 00:49:16.302
America.

847
00:49:16.543 --> 00:49:18.249
And I was a free range kid.

848
00:49:18.631 --> 00:49:21.060
We had that advantage, you know, it was a small enough place

849
00:49:21.080 --> 00:49:24.997
where you could just let your kids go, had dial up internet, you know, as a teenager.

850
00:49:25.218 --> 00:49:25.780
Also to this,

851
00:49:25.900 --> 00:49:29.660
like there was this community aspect that I realized later on that all those big city kids

852
00:49:29.841 --> 00:49:32.390
didn't have that I had growing up.

853
00:49:32.470 --> 00:49:35.160
The community actually looked after children, like it was really

854
00:49:35.240 --> 00:49:37.089
a village raising the kids around there.

855
00:49:37.250 --> 00:49:39.420
And that frame of reference of mine kind of changed over

856
00:49:39.541 --> 00:49:39.822
time.

857
00:49:39.922 --> 00:49:43.839
And now I talk to people who I grew up with who don't see it that way still too.

858
00:49:43.879 --> 00:49:44.160
So you're

859
00:49:44.180 --> 00:49:44.421
right.

860
00:49:44.542 --> 00:49:46.933
It absolutely is like compared to what, right.

861
00:49:46.953 --> 00:49:48.440
And they keep comparing it to all these

862
00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:48.802
other things.

863
00:49:48.842 --> 00:49:53.040
But when I see it, I see like the, the good fortune that I had to have the people

864
00:49:53.120 --> 00:49:59.460
around me where I was, who, who helped me really grow as, as, you know, as a young person, but it

865
00:49:59.520 --> 00:50:00.604
was a general shift.

866
00:50:00.624 --> 00:50:04.317
I mean, good luck, bad luck, who knows, you know, totally.

867
00:50:04.377 --> 00:50:04.859
I had that.

868
00:50:04.919 --> 00:50:05.120
Yeah.

869
00:50:05.520 --> 00:50:09.003
The frame of reference piece here is so important, right?

870
00:50:09.043 --> 00:50:15.649
Because it used to be, you know, if you grew up in a small town, you had no frame of reference.

871
00:50:15.729 --> 00:50:17.271
You didn't know what you were missing out on.

872
00:50:17.331 --> 00:50:19.392
You didn't know how other people were potentially growing up.

873
00:50:19.553 --> 00:50:27.960
Same thing if you were born in Sierra Leone 100 years ago, like you had no conception that like anywhere else in the world was any different than where you were, right?

874
00:50:28.040 --> 00:50:44.800
And so a hidden side effect of quote unquote connecting the world through the internet is that we all become suddenly aware of hundreds or thousands of reference points that make our current situation seem less fortunate.

875
00:50:45.040 --> 00:50:53.886
We are hyper aware of all of the things that we lack and that we don't have access to and that we advantages we didn't get situations we haven't experienced.

876
00:50:54.807 --> 00:50:59.770
And I think that puts a downward pressure on our perception of our own fortune.

877
00:50:59.930 --> 00:51:14.280
The effect of that is that you actually get people who have grown up in extremely fortunate circumstances or had very fortunate lives feeling unbelievably oppressed and disadvantaged for like the tiniest things.

878
00:51:14.460 --> 00:51:15.721
My grandmother talks about this a lot.

879
00:51:15.741 --> 00:51:17.303
She was a child of the depression.

880
00:51:17.403 --> 00:51:19.345
You know, she was young when the depression was going on.

881
00:51:19.365 --> 00:51:23.609
And she said, we were poor, but we didn't know it because everybody was poor around us.

882
00:51:23.790 --> 00:51:25.371
They made dresses out of flower sacks.

883
00:51:25.411 --> 00:51:31.798
And they, you know, they had, they would just organize dances amongst the kids on the weekends because they didn't have any money to do anything else.

884
00:51:31.818 --> 00:51:33.940
And she's like, we had a great time and we didn't know we were poor.

885
00:51:34.160 --> 00:51:42.869
The takeaway from all that for me anyway is that, yeah, you can't control heaven luck, but you also really can't interpret it correctly either.

886
00:51:43.410 --> 00:51:50.337
Like, you know, you can say that, oh, this is a terrible way, like we just said with the Sierra Leone versus Norway or my situation or whatever.

887
00:51:50.457 --> 00:51:52.058
It's really hard to interpret it correctly.

888
00:51:52.579 --> 00:51:53.660
Good luck, bad luck, who knows?

889
00:51:54.180 --> 00:52:00.187
One of the reasons for that, though, is some of the biases that are constantly working in the background for us.

890
00:52:00.387 --> 00:52:01.808
Just a couple of those I want to point out.

891
00:52:02.409 --> 00:52:04.331
One of the big ones is the actor-observer bias.

892
00:52:04.811 --> 00:52:09.055
In that, when we observe other people's behavior, we usually attribute that to their character.

893
00:52:09.296 --> 00:52:13.580
And then when we observe our own behavior, we usually attribute a lot of it to circumstances.

894
00:52:13.680 --> 00:52:18.247
So like classic examples, getting cut off in traffic versus being cut off in traffic.

895
00:52:18.267 --> 00:52:20.571
Like if you cut someone else off, I was like, well, I'm in a hurry.

896
00:52:20.611 --> 00:52:24.557
And, you know, my grandma's sick or, you know, this is like I've had a bad day, whatever.

897
00:52:24.877 --> 00:52:26.500
When they cut you off, though, they're just an asshole.

898
00:52:26.560 --> 00:52:27.401
They're a horrible person.

899
00:52:27.421 --> 00:52:27.601
Yeah.

900
00:52:27.981 --> 00:52:40.534
And so and so instead of just like seeing that, like a lot of things are just random and there's chance and there's luck involved to it, we just have this real like deep desire to attribute actions to some sort of meaning.

901
00:52:40.594 --> 00:52:40.754
Right.

902
00:52:40.774 --> 00:52:44.358
And usually that meaning is someone's character or the their who they are.

903
00:52:44.878 --> 00:52:45.058
Right.

904
00:52:45.078 --> 00:52:46.720
Rather than just this just happened.

905
00:52:47.040 --> 00:52:47.301
Right.

906
00:52:47.421 --> 00:52:51.746
So it's like if I'm struggling, it's because all these horrible things have happened to me.

907
00:52:51.906 --> 00:52:57.233
But if you're struggling, it's because you are there's some failure of character.

908
00:52:57.774 --> 00:52:58.835
You're irresponsible.

909
00:52:58.875 --> 00:53:00.157
You make terrible decisions.

910
00:53:00.777 --> 00:53:02.960
You don't know what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera.

911
00:53:02.980 --> 00:53:08.720
If someone's rude to you and they're an asshole or something like that, maybe they've been up since 4 a.m. and they've been taking care of a sick parent or child.

912
00:53:09.223 --> 00:53:10.940
You don't see all of those things, right?

913
00:53:11.120 --> 00:53:15.440
It's almost impossible for us to interpret any kind of luck, but especially heaven luck, too.

914
00:53:16.262 --> 00:53:18.280
There's so many complicated factors that go into it.

915
00:53:18.621 --> 00:53:19.820
The other one is hindsight bias.

916
00:53:20.982 --> 00:53:24.420
The farmer in the horse story, there's hindsight bias all the time.

917
00:53:24.580 --> 00:53:28.000
The son keeps coming up, oh, this was good luck, this was bad luck, after the fact.

918
00:53:28.762 --> 00:53:31.940
We can look back and say this was good luck because of how it turned out.

919
00:53:32.322 --> 00:53:35.120
But you really don't know whether that is good luck or bad luck.

920
00:53:35.520 --> 00:53:42.140
So the point is, is that we're just very, very biased not to see luck and fortune in a very accurate way.

921
00:53:42.420 --> 00:53:43.240
Like all of our perspectives.

922
00:53:43.380 --> 00:53:43.640
Yes.

923
00:53:43.740 --> 00:53:45.740
Ultimately, they are self-serving to our own interests.

924
00:53:46.061 --> 00:53:47.580
All biases pretty much end up there.

925
00:53:47.660 --> 00:53:47.978
That's true.

926
00:53:48.480 --> 00:53:52.460
Here's the thing about these biases is that you're not necessarily stuck with them too.

927
00:53:52.640 --> 00:53:58.240
You can kind of train yourself to see luck, maybe not in an accurate way, but a more beneficial way, at least.

928
00:53:58.823 --> 00:54:00.840
One of those ways is through gratitude.

929
00:54:01.493 --> 00:54:01.619
Okay.

930
00:54:01.982 --> 00:54:05.540
What gratitude is, is like an expansion of your frame of reference.

931
00:54:05.940 --> 00:54:09.960
For example, you could sit here and say, well, the sun rising in the morning, that's not lucky.

932
00:54:10.160 --> 00:54:11.360
That's just what happens.

933
00:54:11.480 --> 00:54:13.260
It's what happens on Earth.

934
00:54:13.541 --> 00:54:14.999
There's nothing lucky about that.

935
00:54:15.420 --> 00:54:24.280
But if you broaden your frame of reference a little bit and you think about, well, you're floating on a rock in infinite nothingness, hurtling through space.

936
00:54:24.803 --> 00:54:25.860
Why we're here, we don't know.

937
00:54:25.860 --> 00:54:26.013
Yeah.

938
00:54:26.361 --> 00:54:27.900
I mean, there's millions of other planets.

939
00:54:28.660 --> 00:54:29.760
Billions, trillions, maybe.

940
00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:30.843
Trillions.

941
00:54:31.003 --> 00:54:38.200
And as far as we know, none of them have a sun that can support life that has a regular rotation and all these things.

942
00:54:38.661 --> 00:54:41.065
That seems incredibly lucky, right?

943
00:54:41.425 --> 00:54:50.160
You and I and everybody else listening to this, you are the product of literally billions of years of literally perfect evolution.

944
00:54:51.062 --> 00:54:58.380
not a single thing went wrong in that cosmically impossible chain of events not one single thing

945
00:54:58.802 --> 00:55:03.120
went wrong that's like the widest frame that i usually get to i mean that is incredible

946
00:55:03.200 --> 00:55:08.840
right and we like go all the way back to the beginning of time not a single thing went wrong

947
00:55:08.920 --> 00:55:15.060
to produce this moment right now that's insane it's it's an expansion of your reference point

948
00:55:15.100 --> 00:55:15.742
though too.

949
00:55:16.164 --> 00:55:20.540
And this is what happens I think with people when they, you don't see the luck around

950
00:55:20.620 --> 00:55:24.640
you is that you get so narrowly focused on something like, oh, this bad thing happened

951
00:55:24.720 --> 00:55:26.146
and it's bad for me right now.

952
00:55:26.608 --> 00:55:29.340
But if you step back and widen that frame of reference a little

953
00:55:29.420 --> 00:55:33.560
bit, and if you can do that through gratitude, you know, I've kind of poo-pooed on gratitude

954
00:55:33.701 --> 00:55:38.900
before, like, ah, it's kind of a hokey practice or whatever, but I am a pretty just grateful person

955
00:55:39.141 --> 00:55:39.644
in general.

956
00:55:39.905 --> 00:55:42.620
And so I don't, I don't feel like I have to practice it, but if you aren't a grateful

957
00:55:42.761 --> 00:55:46.116
person, you can practice it and you can widen your references away.

958
00:55:46.316 --> 00:55:47.120
I've always been kind of

959
00:55:47.120 --> 00:55:50.900
lukewarm on the gratitude thing, but I think prepping this episode and stumbling, thinking

960
00:55:51.060 --> 00:55:54.050
of it in this way, like really explained it to me.

961
00:55:54.391 --> 00:55:57.440
Gratitude really is the mental exercise of just

962
00:55:57.761 --> 00:56:02.454
imagining all of the potential worse realities that you could exist in.

963
00:56:02.995 --> 00:56:04.660
And by doing that mental

964
00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:12.380
exercise, it generates a sense of a positive feeling and optimism and hope for the future.

965
00:56:13.790 --> 00:56:14.940
that really came from nothing.

966
00:56:15.200 --> 00:56:17.380
Like you really, it allows you to kind of conjure

967
00:56:17.481 --> 00:56:21.020
those feelings out of nothing to help you move forward.

968
00:56:21.160 --> 00:56:24.040
And I think that's an incredibly powerful thing

969
00:56:24.080 --> 00:56:26.019
and it's an incredible mental tool

970
00:56:26.181 --> 00:56:29.400
that you can use to propel yourself forward.

971
00:56:29.660 --> 00:56:31.180
Yeah, I think that's why I feel like

972
00:56:31.505 --> 00:56:32.600
I haven't had a lot of bad luck

973
00:56:32.701 --> 00:56:34.800
or I think I've seen all the alternatives

974
00:56:34.982 --> 00:56:36.920
because of the way I grew up and where I grew up.

975
00:56:37.262 --> 00:56:38.560
There were a lot of examples around me

976
00:56:38.601 --> 00:56:40.000
that didn't turn out as well.

977
00:56:40.060 --> 00:56:41.759
And I was like, I easily could have been one of them

978
00:56:41.820 --> 00:56:42.805
and I'm not.

979
00:56:42.825 --> 00:56:45.519
And that's an expansion of your frame of reference too, right?

980
00:56:45.619 --> 00:56:45.740
Like,

981
00:56:45.901 --> 00:56:48.760
just like you're saying all the things that could have gone wrong and that didn't go wrong.

982
00:56:48.920 --> 00:56:51.652
There's kind of a geographic lottery, a demographic lottery.

983
00:56:52.034 --> 00:56:53.420
There's a talent matching lottery.

984
00:56:53.981 --> 00:56:56.130
There's a time horizon lottery.

985
00:56:56.331 --> 00:56:58.380
You can expand your frame of reference in all those different

986
00:56:58.440 --> 00:57:00.711
ways to generate a sense of gratitude as well, right?

987
00:57:00.731 --> 00:57:02.560
Like, so if you feel bad about where you

988
00:57:02.660 --> 00:57:05.271
live, well, you can easily imagine a worse place to live.

989
00:57:05.391 --> 00:57:07.680
If you feel bad about the time you live

990
00:57:07.720 --> 00:57:11.617
in, well, it's not very hard to reach back and find a much worse time to live.

991
00:57:11.737 --> 00:57:12.400
If you feel bad

992
00:57:12.520 --> 00:57:17.800
about your particular talent or aptitudes for certain things, it's not hard to think of things

993
00:57:17.800 --> 00:57:19.911
that you'd be even worse at than whatever you're doing.

994
00:57:20.152 --> 00:57:21.700
It's funny, I had a viral tweet a couple

995
00:57:21.800 --> 00:57:23.887
years ago that I love.

996
00:57:24.268 --> 00:57:28.280
Name checking myself on my own podcast here, but this was a banger,

997
00:57:28.440 --> 00:57:29.624
so I'm proud of it.

998
00:57:29.765 --> 00:57:33.840
So I said, your ancestors survived centuries of floods, wars, famine,

999
00:57:34.021 --> 00:57:38.040
slavery and plagues for you to sit on the toilet and compare your life to people on the internet.

1000
00:57:39.921 --> 00:57:40.986
That's a vivid image.

1001
00:57:41.508 --> 00:57:41.749
Yeah.

1002
00:57:42.071 --> 00:57:44.160
The point isn't necessarily to make you feel guilty about it

1003
00:57:44.200 --> 00:57:44.582
though, right?

1004
00:57:44.803 --> 00:57:47.878
The point is just that like you can widen your frame of reference.

1005
00:57:47.999 --> 00:57:48.300
You can,

1006
00:57:48.420 --> 00:57:50.509
there's a different way to look at this, right?

1007
00:57:50.530 --> 00:57:52.840
We talk a lot about, you know, cognitive reframing

1008
00:57:52.860 --> 00:57:54.005
and all that in a lot of different ways.

1009
00:57:54.025 --> 00:57:55.773
And this is just another form of that.

1010
00:57:56.436 --> 00:57:57.340
Expanding your,

1011
00:57:57.581 --> 00:57:59.390
your frame of reference though is the way to do this.

1012
00:57:59.551 --> 00:58:01.480
And there's real tangible benefits to this

1013
00:58:01.560 --> 00:58:02.424
too, right?

1014
00:58:02.444 --> 00:58:06.300
So the research they've done, like positive emotions in general, gratitude especially

1015
00:58:06.440 --> 00:58:10.372
though, they literally do broaden your attentional scope.

1016
00:58:10.593 --> 00:58:13.100
When you broaden your scope, those positive

1017
00:58:13.200 --> 00:58:17.720
emotions kind of have a positive feedback loop where you broaden your attentional scope and you

1018
00:58:17.921 --> 00:58:22.035
start to see things, more things, more opportunities in your environment.

1019
00:58:22.055 --> 00:58:23.340
So it's like luck begets

1020
00:58:23.521 --> 00:58:23.762
luck.

1021
00:58:24.203 --> 00:58:26.573
There's like an upward spiral that kind of happens from this.

1022
00:58:27.055 --> 00:58:28.320
Because you expand your frame

1023
00:58:28.320 --> 00:58:30.650
of reference, you say, okay, well, this didn't happen.

1024
00:58:31.052 --> 00:58:31.735
That didn't happen.

1025
00:58:31.775 --> 00:58:32.258
I'm here.

1026
00:58:32.559 --> 00:58:32.780
Now you

1027
00:58:32.840 --> 00:58:34.185
see all these other possibilities.

1028
00:58:34.587 --> 00:58:38.180
You're going to see more chance opportunities in your environment

1029
00:58:38.301 --> 00:58:40.370
just by broadening your frame of reference.

1030
00:58:40.451 --> 00:58:40.692
Yeah.

1031
00:58:40.712 --> 00:58:41.475
It makes sense.

1032
00:58:41.596 --> 00:58:42.480
If you broaden that

1033
00:58:42.600 --> 00:58:48.240
aperture of how you see yourself, you open yourself up to way more connections and possibilities than

1034
00:58:48.240 --> 00:58:49.185
you would have had otherwise.

1035
00:58:49.326 --> 00:58:52.120
And I think this kind of explains that research that I talked

1036
00:58:52.160 --> 00:58:53.586
about at the top of the episode, right?

1037
00:58:53.606 --> 00:58:56.760
Where it's like the lucky people were the ones who spotted

1038
00:58:56.780 --> 00:58:58.146
the money sitting on the ground.

1039
00:58:58.167 --> 00:59:01.040
They're the ones who spotted the really interesting person sitting

1040
00:59:01.120 --> 00:59:04.880
in the coffee shop and started a conversation with them, which then just makes them feel luckier,

1041
00:59:05.641 --> 00:59:10.260
which then just makes it easier to imagine a world where they didn't see those things or take

1042
00:59:10.280 --> 00:59:14.817
that action, which is so yeah, it kind of becomes like a flywheel of good fortune.

1043
00:59:15.058 --> 00:59:15.540
This is also

1044
00:59:15.540 --> 00:59:20.260
going to be really important as we get into the next chapters, because as we get into earth luck

1045
00:59:20.701 --> 00:59:26.180
and human luck, so much of maximizing earth luck and human luck, like those are the two forms of

1046
00:59:26.200 --> 00:59:29.712
luck that you actually can actively increase in your life.

1047
00:59:30.394 --> 00:59:31.980
And so much of that we're going to find

1048
00:59:32.301 --> 00:59:38.399
is simply either a seen a wider range of possibilities than you see now.

1049
00:59:38.559 --> 00:59:38.780
And then

1050
00:59:39.321 --> 00:59:45.180
seeing the situation clearly, like being able to be realistic and rational about like a decision

1051
00:59:45.300 --> 00:59:45.842
in front of you.

1052
00:59:46.404 --> 00:59:51.080
And so if you are very kind of narrow minded and closed off and how you see

1053
00:59:51.160 --> 00:59:57.020
yourself and you just see yourself living a very unfortunate existence, you see yourself as very

1054
00:59:57.341 --> 01:00:00.070
uniquely victimized or screwed over in some way.

1055
01:00:00.471 --> 01:00:03.000
A, you're not going to have that wider horizon

1056
01:00:03.361 --> 01:00:05.228
to see future possibilities.

1057
01:00:05.328 --> 01:00:08.700
And then B, you're also probably not going to be objective about the

1058
01:00:08.740 --> 01:00:13.740
decisions immediately in front of you because you're going to be so invested in that one frame

1059
01:00:13.780 --> 01:00:18.240
of reference of yourself that you're not going to be willing to challenge it or question it in any

1060
01:00:18.320 --> 01:00:18.481
way.

1061
01:00:18.781 --> 01:00:25.540
Also, I think there are interestingly kind of two ways to really screw this up with your own

1062
01:00:25.620 --> 01:00:26.061
heaven luck.

1063
01:00:26.482 --> 01:00:33.300
I think one is to properly assess all of the unfortunate things that you've had to deal

1064
01:00:33.360 --> 01:00:37.559
with in your life without seeing the fortunate things that you've had in your life.

1065
01:00:37.579 --> 01:00:37.840
So like,

1066
01:00:37.960 --> 01:00:43.979
just really narrowly focusing on all the bad shit that's happened to you and like not widening your

1067
01:00:44.440 --> 01:00:46.547
perspective to include some of the better stuff.

1068
01:00:47.329 --> 01:00:50.539
Conversely, you can also screw this up by taking

1069
01:00:50.981 --> 01:00:57.160
credit for all of the good things that have happened to you and not acknowledging that a

1070
01:00:57.200 --> 01:00:59.229
significant amount of it was due to luck, right?

1071
01:00:59.269 --> 01:01:01.560
So it's like one version of this is, say, the

1072
01:01:01.981 --> 01:01:09.980
unfortunate person who just feels zero agency and that the world has just screwed them over time and

1073
01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:10.462
time again.

1074
01:01:10.984 --> 01:01:14.600
But the other version of this is somebody who was born on third base and thinks

1075
01:01:14.660 --> 01:01:15.403
they hit a triple.

1076
01:01:15.683 --> 01:01:20.700
Acknowledging your own fortune requires you to expand in both directions, if that

1077
01:01:20.760 --> 01:01:21.162
makes sense.

1078
01:01:21.544 --> 01:01:25.340
There's research on this gratitude stuff too that says this has to be grounded in

1079
01:01:25.400 --> 01:01:27.227
some sort of reality, right?

1080
01:01:27.287 --> 01:01:30.820
And you're right, there's two ways that that can go get out of

1081
01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:32.105
reality.

1082
01:01:32.165 --> 01:01:34.293
You can assess it outside the bounds of reality.

1083
01:01:34.594 --> 01:01:36.020
If you're going to be grateful about

1084
01:01:36.080 --> 01:01:40.373
something, it does have to be grounded in some sort of fact of your life.

1085
01:01:41.436 --> 01:01:42.259
Accurately, yes.

1086
01:01:42.540 --> 01:01:42.640
But

1087
01:01:42.660 --> 01:01:46.860
also too, like, yeah, you have to have a bias of like expanding that reference, like we're talking

1088
01:01:46.940 --> 01:01:48.086
about that frame of reference.

1089
01:01:48.407 --> 01:01:51.080
One thing that Buffett said too, that I really like, and I've

1090
01:01:51.120 --> 01:01:56.920
definitely felt this in my own life, is that he was giving a talk to MBA students about this topic,

1091
01:01:57.000 --> 01:01:57.963
about the ovarian lottery.

1092
01:01:57.983 --> 01:02:03.480
And he was explaining that like, because he feels so fortunate to be

1093
01:02:03.580 --> 01:02:10.438
who he is, he feels that gives him a sense of moral duty to give back and help others.

1094
01:02:10.699 --> 01:02:11.040
It's not

1095
01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:12.625
like, oh, I'm so fortunate.

1096
01:02:12.706 --> 01:02:16.920
Let me just like party like a rock star and think I'm better than

1097
01:02:16.920 --> 01:02:17.281
everybody.

1098
01:02:17.602 --> 01:02:18.787
It's actually quite the opposite.

1099
01:02:18.867 --> 01:02:22.620
It's when you are aware of all the ways things could

1100
01:02:22.680 --> 01:02:29.520
be worse, I think it makes you more compassionate and you feel more of a sense of duty to help

1101
01:02:29.620 --> 01:02:37.280
those around you and and like i realize i'm in in such an insanely privileged position some of it

1102
01:02:37.360 --> 01:02:44.180
i've earned some of it is just by pure chance and happenstance but because i'm here i do feel some

1103
01:02:44.260 --> 01:02:52.500
sort of obligation to do something with it if i just sat around spending all my money like watching

1104
01:02:53.443 --> 01:02:59.100
football games and going to the pool like i would i would feel fucking terrible about myself

1105
01:03:00.383 --> 01:03:06.840
it would feel like squandering such a a blessed and an incredible opportunity that that i've been

1106
01:03:06.880 --> 01:03:12.540
given and so in in a sense i do think this widening of your aperture expanding your frame

1107
01:03:12.580 --> 01:03:16.720
of reference considering all the possible alternatives that are worse than your current

1108
01:03:16.800 --> 01:03:21.700
situation not only does it make you more grateful for what you have it makes you more compassionate

1109
01:03:22.443 --> 01:03:27.220
and giving person in general to the to the other people around you there's another side to it too

1110
01:03:27.281 --> 01:03:28.259
that some people will go to,

1111
01:03:28.521 --> 01:03:30.480
which is extreme guilt around this.

1112
01:03:30.940 --> 01:03:32.500
And that can also lead to like an action

1113
01:03:32.500 --> 01:03:33.640
where it's like, well, I have all this,

1114
01:03:33.821 --> 01:03:35.279
I'm not going to do anything with it

1115
01:03:35.685 --> 01:03:36.520
because I have all this,

1116
01:03:36.560 --> 01:03:37.659
I'm not going to, you know,

1117
01:03:37.740 --> 01:03:38.619
go out and make more money

1118
01:03:38.925 --> 01:03:39.660
that you could give away

1119
01:03:39.761 --> 01:03:40.739
or, you know, something like that.

1120
01:03:41.201 --> 01:03:42.740
So I think that's the right balance to strike

1121
01:03:42.841 --> 01:03:44.180
is finding, you know,

1122
01:03:44.261 --> 01:03:45.500
not parting your ass off

1123
01:03:45.520 --> 01:03:47.560
versus, you know, being extremely guilty

1124
01:03:47.621 --> 01:03:48.620
and not doing anything either.

1125
01:03:49.002 --> 01:03:50.160
I start from a sense of guilt

1126
01:03:50.180 --> 01:03:50.980
a lot of times too, like,

1127
01:03:51.040 --> 01:03:52.900
oh God, I got lucky here.

1128
01:03:53.363 --> 01:03:55.600
A lot of people don't want to act on opportunities

1129
01:03:55.906 --> 01:03:56.660
because they feel guilt.

1130
01:03:56.801 --> 01:03:59.960
Well, it's not fair I have this opportunity, so I'm not going to take it.

1131
01:04:00.180 --> 01:04:00.300
Right.

1132
01:04:00.320 --> 01:04:03.784
Whereas I'm like, it's no, it's not fair for you to not take it.

1133
01:04:04.144 --> 01:04:13.013
So to kind of bring this home, you know, people who perceive themselves as lucky, as we've already discussed, they tend to report higher life satisfaction.

1134
01:04:13.033 --> 01:04:14.354
They tend to be happier people.

1135
01:04:14.394 --> 01:04:17.677
They tend to be more successful, see more opportunities.

1136
01:04:17.838 --> 01:04:20.320
They just report better outcomes kind of across the board.

1137
01:04:21.163 --> 01:04:25.160
there does seem to be a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of this which

1138
01:04:25.240 --> 01:04:32.300
is that the more fortunate you feel the more aware you are of alternative realities or alternative

1139
01:04:32.560 --> 01:04:38.340
versions of your life which then opens you up to seeing future opportunities it makes you kind of

1140
01:04:38.500 --> 01:04:42.940
more open-minded more flexible in your thinking which then allows you to take advantage of those

1141
01:04:43.000 --> 01:04:49.200
future opportunities and excel even more and live an even better life so heaven luck even though we

1142
01:04:49.320 --> 01:04:55.140
can't control it, even though it is all of the stuff that happens to us, what we can control

1143
01:04:55.561 --> 01:05:01.080
is our perspective on it, how we view our circumstances, and what are the alternative

1144
01:05:01.241 --> 01:05:04.914
circumstances that we can imagine for ourselves that we don't have.

1145
01:05:05.175 --> 01:05:06.620
So while we can't change our

1146
01:05:06.660 --> 01:05:09.434
heaven luck, we can change how we feel about our heaven luck.

1147
01:05:09.454 --> 01:05:10.640
And it turns out that that actually

1148
01:05:10.760 --> 01:05:15.415
matters as much, if not more than what heaven luck we have in the first place.

1149
01:05:16.238 --> 01:05:16.880
But the next two

1150
01:05:17.141 --> 01:05:21.080
we're going to talk about are actually the forms of luck that we can alter in our lives,

1151
01:05:21.140 --> 01:05:25.680
that we can improve, that we can get better at through different skills and practice.

1152
01:05:25.900 --> 01:05:29.880
So in the next chapter, we're going to talk about earth luck, which is the luck that is

1153
01:05:29.960 --> 01:05:31.406
generated by our environment.

1154
01:05:31.907 --> 01:05:35.240
And to explain that, we're going to go back to Napoleon,

1155
01:05:36.081 --> 01:05:40.680
except we're going to visit him as a teenager when he was a lonely, foreign, bullied student

1156
01:05:40.881 --> 01:05:44.293
at an academy in France and seemed to have nothing going for him.

1157
01:05:44.935 --> 01:05:46.360
Yet he still managed

1158
01:05:47.187 --> 01:05:48.820
to turn into the most powerful man in the world.

1159
01:05:52.203 --> 01:05:53.880
But first, a word from our sponsor.

1160
01:05:54.943 --> 01:05:56.560
This episode is brought to you by Quo.

1161
01:05:57.182 --> 01:05:59.460
This whole episode keeps landing on the same idea.

1162
01:05:59.740 --> 01:06:02.020
The lucky people are the ones who notice the opportunity

1163
01:06:02.040 --> 01:06:03.740
that everyone else walks past.

1164
01:06:04.082 --> 01:06:05.660
The money is on the ground for all of us,

1165
01:06:05.720 --> 01:06:07.179
but it's the lucky ones who look down

1166
01:06:07.281 --> 01:06:08.160
and actually pick it up.

1167
01:06:08.461 --> 01:06:10.720
So if you run a business, that gets very literal.

1168
01:06:11.043 --> 01:06:13.300
Your opportunity rarely announces itself.

1169
01:06:13.620 --> 01:06:15.500
Usually it's a phone ringing while you're buried

1170
01:06:15.641 --> 01:06:16.524
in doing something else.

1171
01:06:16.946 --> 01:06:18.393
And it doesn't just wait around.

1172
01:06:18.694 --> 01:06:20.060
If you miss that call, whoever you're

1173
01:06:20.080 --> 01:06:22.091
competing with is going to be the one that answers it.

1174
01:06:22.372 --> 01:06:23.820
That's why today's episode is brought to you

1175
01:06:23.820 --> 01:06:25.947
by Quo, spelled Q-U-O.

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The business phone system built so you never miss an opportunity.

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And the built-in AI agent handles your after-hours calls, answers questions, even books

1181
01:06:40.860 --> 01:06:44.496
appointments, so the opportunity gets caught when nobody's there to catch it.

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It's the number one

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1187
01:06:55.860 --> 01:06:58.731
so don't lose the payoff to a call that you never heard.

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Money is on the line.

1189
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1190
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That's Q-U-O.com slash solved.

1194
01:07:11.354 --> 01:07:12.217
All right, welcome back.

1195
01:07:12.538 --> 01:07:13.260
This is Solved.

1196
01:07:16.865 --> 01:07:18.349
everybody talks about hard work.

1197
01:07:18.891 --> 01:07:20.315
Everybody talks about discipline.

1198
01:07:21.118 --> 01:07:21.780
Everybody talks about

1199
01:07:21.820 --> 01:07:22.502
productivity.

1200
01:07:23.827 --> 01:07:24.950
Nobody talks about luck.

1201
01:07:25.893 --> 01:07:27.860
And definitely nobody talks about how you can

1202
01:07:27.920 --> 01:07:31.011
improve your own luck to achieve incredible things.

1203
01:07:31.392 --> 01:07:33.740
So I want to start with a story.

1204
01:07:34.701 --> 01:07:35.603
It's 1778.

1205
01:07:35.703 --> 01:07:40.414
It's a small military academy in France.

1206
01:07:40.855 --> 01:07:42.880
It's full of young boys from French

1207
01:07:42.980 --> 01:07:45.649
nobility, a bunch of rich, spoiled brats.

1208
01:07:45.790 --> 01:07:48.017
And there is this one nine-year-old there.

1209
01:07:48.037 --> 01:07:48.920
He's the

1210
01:07:48.980 --> 01:07:49.442
youngest.

1211
01:07:49.542 --> 01:07:50.566
He's the smallest.

1212
01:07:50.747 --> 01:07:52.112
He's definitely the poorest.

1213
01:07:52.674 --> 01:07:54.400
He's from an obscure island in the

1214
01:07:54.440 --> 01:07:56.004
Mediterranean called Corsica.

1215
01:07:57.128 --> 01:08:00.417
He's only technically French by pure happenstance.

1216
01:08:00.758 --> 01:08:01.560
The French happened

1217
01:08:01.721 --> 01:08:05.514
to invade Corsica and conquer it, I believe the year before he was born.

1218
01:08:06.317 --> 01:08:07.120
Otherwise, he would have

1219
01:08:07.541 --> 01:08:08.364
been born Italian.

1220
01:08:09.067 --> 01:08:12.940
He spoke with a thick Italian accent, actually his entire life.

1221
01:08:14.002 --> 01:08:19.500
He was ruthlessly bullied, ostracized, kind of seen as a joke in the academy,

1222
01:08:20.482 --> 01:08:21.526
but his name was Napoleon.

1223
01:08:22.108 --> 01:08:25.860
And ironically, he would go on to become the emperor of France,

1224
01:08:26.382 --> 01:08:32.140
one of the most powerful men in world history, and also one of the most incredible

1225
01:08:33.844 --> 01:08:34.746
historical figures.

1226
01:08:36.190 --> 01:08:40.540
There's a kind of a definitive biography on him by a historian named Andrew

1227
01:08:40.600 --> 01:08:41.002
Roberts.

1228
01:08:41.624 --> 01:08:43.471
I read that at the beginning of this year.

1229
01:08:43.491 --> 01:08:45.700
And at this point, I've read quite a few

1230
01:08:45.780 --> 01:08:48.067
biographies of major historical figures.

1231
01:08:48.689 --> 01:08:52.360
If you told me to pick one historical figure that you

1232
01:08:52.420 --> 01:09:00.060
could have put him in any context, any country, any time period, and he would have become

1233
01:09:00.140 --> 01:09:02.527
extraordinary, I think I would pick Napoleon.

1234
01:09:02.708 --> 01:09:06.800
By the time he's 14, it is so clear that this person

1235
01:09:07.001 --> 01:09:10.250
is exceptional at almost everything he does.

1236
01:09:11.033 --> 01:09:12.196
Yes, he was hardworking.

1237
01:09:12.317 --> 01:09:13.380
He was very disciplined.

1238
01:09:13.400 --> 01:09:13.440
He

1239
01:09:13.460 --> 01:09:14.525
was very intelligent.

1240
01:09:15.128 --> 01:09:17.439
But one of the things that was notable about Napoleon was his

1241
01:09:18.743 --> 01:09:20.367
situational awareness.

1242
01:09:20.387 --> 01:09:25.300
He had a very strong understanding of his position in the world

1243
01:09:26.586 --> 01:09:29.120
and where the opportunities were in the world.

1244
01:09:29.780 --> 01:09:31.420
And so in this military academy,

1245
01:09:32.181 --> 01:09:34.880
he was a bit of an academic prodigy

1246
01:09:35.844 --> 01:09:38.919
and he understood relatively early that,

1247
01:09:39.967 --> 01:09:40.640
you know, at the time,

1248
01:09:40.760 --> 01:09:42.840
artillery was kind of the new thing.

1249
01:09:43.302 --> 01:09:46.280
They had just invented various types of cannons and whatnot.

1250
01:09:46.860 --> 01:09:48.580
But to operate the artillery at the time,

1251
01:09:48.660 --> 01:09:50.600
you had to be extremely good at math

1252
01:09:50.681 --> 01:09:52.240
and you needed to be able to calculate

1253
01:09:52.585 --> 01:09:53.660
very quickly in your head.

1254
01:09:54.285 --> 01:09:55.300
And he was very good at that.

1255
01:09:55.440 --> 01:09:59.685
And so he understood that artillery was the highest leverage point within the military.

1256
01:09:59.765 --> 01:10:08.634
And so he studied and went into the artillery with kind of an intuitive understanding of like, this is going to be extremely important.

1257
01:10:08.794 --> 01:10:14.520
So if I can get really good at this before most other people, this is going to give me more opportunities.

1258
01:10:15.183 --> 01:10:18.740
he was a lonely kid he was on his own he was bullied he was picked on

1259
01:10:20.745 --> 01:10:26.480
but he also seemed to have this intuitive sense that if he could just accumulate as much knowledge

1260
01:10:26.600 --> 01:10:32.280
as possible as early as possible this would give him a compounded advantage throughout the rest of

1261
01:10:32.360 --> 01:10:38.500
life and so you you see very early on that there's just this like voracious appetite for knowledge he

1262
01:10:38.600 --> 01:10:39.964
was always in the library.

1263
01:10:39.984 --> 01:10:45.018
He always had a massive stack of books on his bedside.

1264
01:10:45.218 --> 01:10:45.900
He was reading

1265
01:10:46.762 --> 01:10:50.814
constantly, 10 hours a day, trying to understand everything, reading.

1266
01:10:51.256 --> 01:10:52.680
And he wasn't just reading

1267
01:10:53.422 --> 01:10:54.144
about anything.

1268
01:10:54.204 --> 01:11:00.160
He was reading about his history, politics, warfare, economics,

1269
01:11:00.921 --> 01:11:05.673
trying to understand all of the broad systems of society.

1270
01:11:06.776 --> 01:11:08.300
Because again, I think he understood

1271
01:11:09.462 --> 01:11:18.080
the context in which he lived, that he was in a very turbulent period in maybe the most powerful

1272
01:11:18.221 --> 01:11:21.653
country in the world at the time, France, right before the revolution.

1273
01:11:22.295 --> 01:11:23.520
And so with this expertise

1274
01:11:24.243 --> 01:11:28.500
and this incredible understanding, when the revolution eventually did happen,

1275
01:11:30.100 --> 01:11:36.560
Napoleon found himself in a very unique position because most of his peers that he had come up

1276
01:11:36.600 --> 01:11:40.355
through the academy with, they were children of the aristocrats.

1277
01:11:40.656 --> 01:11:41.700
They were terrified of the

1278
01:11:41.720 --> 01:11:42.282
revolution.

1279
01:11:42.302 --> 01:11:45.611
They were incredibly risk-averse.

1280
01:11:46.152 --> 01:11:47.496
They were not forward-thinking.

1281
01:11:47.516 --> 01:11:48.840
They were not

1282
01:11:48.940 --> 01:11:54.559
innovative in the way they saw politics or government or society in general.

1283
01:11:54.799 --> 01:11:54.960
Whereas

1284
01:11:55.020 --> 01:12:01.220
Napoleon, not only had he spent all of his teenage years studying historical situations like this,

1285
01:12:01.620 --> 01:12:11.528
But he himself had come from a revolutionary family in Corsica from a country that had been conquered by an empire and was rebelling against that empire.

1286
01:12:11.968 --> 01:12:26.900
And so he had a very intuitive understanding of both sides of the coin, kind of the old aristocratic and royalty on the one side, but also the people of France who were rising up and demanding their own rights and their own political freedoms.

1287
01:12:27.481 --> 01:12:35.120
what's really notable when you read Napoleon's story is that he was extremely good at spotting

1288
01:12:35.761 --> 01:12:42.540
high leverage opportunities and then he would act ferociously on those opportunities like he would

1289
01:12:42.620 --> 01:12:49.000
see an opening that was maybe a little bit risky but he could see that the upside was massive

1290
01:12:49.160 --> 01:12:55.480
and he would go all in on it very very quickly and so in this sense from the outside he looks

1291
01:12:55.540 --> 01:12:56.162
very lucky.

1292
01:12:56.343 --> 01:13:01.180
It's like his entire life is kind of this endless series of things working out for him

1293
01:13:01.461 --> 01:13:02.665
one after another, after another.

1294
01:13:03.106 --> 01:13:07.120
But when you really get in and analyze very deeply, uh, his

1295
01:13:07.200 --> 01:13:12.660
thought process, it's clear that these were calculated decisions where he was had a very

1296
01:13:12.720 --> 01:13:14.025
strong understanding of the upside.

1297
01:13:14.045 --> 01:13:15.592
I'll give you a really simple example.

1298
01:13:15.692 --> 01:13:17.620
So early on when he was

1299
01:13:17.861 --> 01:13:20.875
in power, all the other European powers were trying to get rid of him.

1300
01:13:21.116 --> 01:13:21.960
Everybody was like

1301
01:13:22.060 --> 01:13:24.510
terrified of him and terrified of what had happened in France.

1302
01:13:25.534 --> 01:13:27.140
And so the other European

1303
01:13:27.240 --> 01:13:32.658
powers were declaring war on him constantly and attacking him and fighting him.

1304
01:13:32.678 --> 01:13:33.260
He received some

1305
01:13:33.320 --> 01:13:38.720
intelligence that the Austrian army was moving across Northern Italy and was getting in position

1306
01:13:38.981 --> 01:13:40.525
to invade the South of France.

1307
01:13:41.729 --> 01:13:45.340
And for the French army to move to the South of France, they're going

1308
01:13:45.360 --> 01:13:46.767
to be behind the eight ball.

1309
01:13:46.787 --> 01:13:48.737
They were going to be behind schedule.

1310
01:13:48.817 --> 01:13:49.400
It was going to be very

1311
01:13:49.480 --> 01:13:50.927
difficult for them to get there in time.

1312
01:13:50.947 --> 01:13:53.680
They were going to be very disadvantaged once the

1313
01:13:53.780 --> 01:13:54.943
Austrian invasion started.

1314
01:13:56.026 --> 01:14:01.660
At the time, it was assumed that crossing the Alps was impossible,

1315
01:14:02.420 --> 01:14:03.363
especially in winter.

1316
01:14:03.623 --> 01:14:07.033
And so no army had even attempted it in centuries.

1317
01:14:08.095 --> 01:14:09.740
Napoleon looked at it

1318
01:14:09.860 --> 01:14:12.310
and he was like, well, we've got some pretty good engineers.

1319
01:14:12.451 --> 01:14:14.459
I bet they could figure it out.

1320
01:14:14.639 --> 01:14:14.780
And if

1321
01:14:14.840 --> 01:14:20.680
they could figure it out we can actually attack the austrian army from behind without them even

1322
01:14:20.760 --> 01:14:26.580
knowing that we're there and so he said fuck it let's do it right this thing that nobody had ever

1323
01:14:26.680 --> 01:14:31.680
done before that all the military strategists of the time thought was literally impossible

1324
01:14:32.964 --> 01:14:38.740
within a day he was like no i think we can figure it out let's go for it because he understood that

1325
01:14:38.780 --> 01:14:46.020
like the upside was that he would basically win the war before it even began all he had to do was

1326
01:14:46.040 --> 01:14:51.040
just you know figure out a little bit of the logistics of getting over the mountain and sure

1327
01:14:51.080 --> 01:14:57.380
enough his army figured it out they like devised all these new methods of you know they they like

1328
01:14:57.420 --> 01:15:04.240
built sleds for their cannons and shit and like dragged it up the mountaintops and um they somehow

1329
01:15:04.721 --> 01:15:09.115
they somehow managed it in an insane, insanely short period of time.

1330
01:15:09.817 --> 01:15:10.600
And then he ended up just

1331
01:15:10.740 --> 01:15:13.388
wiping out the Austrian army like days.

1332
01:15:13.910 --> 01:15:17.139
His whole story is just filled with moments like this of

1333
01:15:17.440 --> 01:15:24.839
just like him noticing the thing that nobody else's was noticing and him having the courage and wisdom

1334
01:15:25.922 --> 01:15:31.056
to act aggressively on that opportunity that nobody else was witnessing.

1335
01:15:31.517 --> 01:15:32.380
And I love Napoleon's

1336
01:15:32.440 --> 01:15:40.780
story because he is somebody who was born with a relatively low amount of heaven luck in one sense

1337
01:15:41.702 --> 01:15:48.740
but his earth luck the environment in the context that he was placed in there were always very large

1338
01:15:48.921 --> 01:15:55.000
openings with large upside and his genius he was brilliant at a lot of things but his genius was

1339
01:15:55.160 --> 01:16:02.180
really maximizing his earth luck, understanding the situation he was in and understanding,

1340
01:16:03.000 --> 01:16:08.180
sometimes intuitively, sometimes very intellectually, that there was extremely high upside

1341
01:16:08.722 --> 01:16:10.207
to some decisions over others.

1342
01:16:10.689 --> 01:16:13.640
And that if he could just continually place himself in the right

1343
01:16:13.720 --> 01:16:17.313
context over and over again, good things were going to happen.

1344
01:16:17.915 --> 01:16:19.320
Another example of Napoleon

1345
01:16:19.380 --> 01:16:27.100
kind of inventing his own luck, so to speak, is that he very famously would go eat and sleep

1346
01:16:27.401 --> 01:16:28.846
with his soldiers, right?

1347
01:16:28.967 --> 01:16:32.560
So at the time, generals of most European armies, they were like

1348
01:16:33.744 --> 01:16:34.647
quasi-royalty.

1349
01:16:34.667 --> 01:16:38.340
Some of them were princes, some of them were, they were all aristocrats.

1350
01:16:39.141 --> 01:16:42.171
And it was a very stratified military, right?

1351
01:16:42.211 --> 01:16:44.760
It's like the generals, you wouldn't catch them

1352
01:16:45.502 --> 01:16:46.585
dead near their soldiers.

1353
01:16:47.247 --> 01:16:52.240
Napoleon very regularly would leave his own tent, go down into the ranks,

1354
01:16:53.140 --> 01:16:57.535
sit around campfires, share stories, talk to his men, joke around with them.

1355
01:16:58.278 --> 01:16:58.780
His men had

1356
01:16:59.943 --> 01:17:00.885
nicknames for him.

1357
01:17:00.905 --> 01:17:02.229
They used to tease him.

1358
01:17:02.249 --> 01:17:06.280
He would very honestly go up to random foot soldiers

1359
01:17:06.541 --> 01:17:10.050
and ask for feedback on how things were being run.

1360
01:17:10.070 --> 01:17:12.196
Did they need anything?

1361
01:17:12.718 --> 01:17:13.500
How were they feeling?

1362
01:17:13.660 --> 01:17:18.745
And so he generated this immense amount of respect and loyalty among his men.

1363
01:17:19.045 --> 01:17:27.913
And as a result, what you noticed is that his armies, most of the battles that he fought, his army was outnumbered, yet they would still win.

1364
01:17:28.513 --> 01:17:36.520
There were often situations that most generals or military leaders would look at the map and say, that's impossible.

1365
01:17:37.704 --> 01:17:42.480
but napoleon would know that it was possible just because of the morale and the intensity

1366
01:17:43.203 --> 01:17:48.220
that his men were willing to fight for him and so from the outside you could look at it and say like

1367
01:17:48.260 --> 01:17:55.420
wow he got lucky over and over again um but actually there was an element that was happening

1368
01:17:55.561 --> 01:18:00.460
behind the scenes that other military leaders just weren't aware of that there was like kind

1369
01:18:00.480 --> 01:18:07.460
of this intangible emotional side that Napoleon had mastered and understood that gave him the

1370
01:18:07.500 --> 01:18:09.547
appearance of being lucky to others.

1371
01:18:10.129 --> 01:18:10.431
It's funny.

1372
01:18:10.451 --> 01:18:13.080
There was a thing that I saw when I was reading

1373
01:18:13.180 --> 01:18:14.465
the Napoleon book.

1374
01:18:15.368 --> 01:18:17.836
I was Googling around and finding a bunch of stuff on them.

1375
01:18:17.876 --> 01:18:18.779
And there was a

1376
01:18:19.241 --> 01:18:26.140
historical researcher who went and found all the most famous and prominent military commanders

1377
01:18:26.240 --> 01:18:26.963
throughout history.

1378
01:18:27.365 --> 01:18:29.032
So he took all of their major battles.

1379
01:18:29.092 --> 01:18:30.458
He took the size of the armies.

1380
01:18:30.619 --> 01:18:30.920
He took

1381
01:18:31.060 --> 01:18:37.660
the terrain and resources and circumstances into account and developed like a statistical model

1382
01:18:37.760 --> 01:18:43.034
that predicted how likely it was that each general would win or lose each battle.

1383
01:18:43.696 --> 01:18:44.980
He compared that

1384
01:18:45.180 --> 01:18:50.300
statistical prediction of how many battles each general should win versus how many battles they

1385
01:18:50.461 --> 01:18:56.420
actually won and then he he ranked them so the best generals were the ones who won the most over

1386
01:18:57.082 --> 01:19:04.020
their expected victories based on troop counts and resources and technology and obviously the

1387
01:19:04.060 --> 01:19:09.140
worst generals were were the ones who actually lost more battles than they were statistically

1388
01:19:09.340 --> 01:19:17.460
expected to win the chart is like almost hilarious because it's like a pretty clean curve right you've

1389
01:19:17.480 --> 01:19:21.980
got all the bad generals here at the bottom and then it like slowly rises up and you've got some

1390
01:19:22.060 --> 01:19:26.340
generals who are like modestly outperform expectation and then you've got this like

1391
01:19:27.442 --> 01:19:35.120
very small handful of outliers like i think julius caesar was one um i think uh there was like a

1392
01:19:36.303 --> 01:19:42.560
an english general who was one or english admiral who was one um a couple others and then there's

1393
01:19:42.620 --> 01:19:48.360
napoleon and he's like so far off the chart that it it looks like it's just broken like somebody

1394
01:19:48.541 --> 01:19:53.959
put in a the wrong number on an excel spreadsheet because he's like such an absurd outlier that it's

1395
01:19:54.240 --> 01:20:02.080
like statistically impossible like it shouldn't even happen okay i'm done nerdy now to bring this

1396
01:20:02.160 --> 01:20:08.460
back to luck and bring it back to napoleon's question to his generals are you lucky i think

1397
01:20:08.500 --> 01:20:13.940
what is encapsulated in that question for Napoleon, probably why he asked it, you know,

1398
01:20:14.080 --> 01:20:19.276
we talked in last chapter about that broadening the aperture of your frame of reference.

1399
01:20:20.139 --> 01:20:20.360
I think

1400
01:20:20.821 --> 01:20:24.615
what he was asking other generals is how wide is your aperture?

1401
01:20:24.675 --> 01:20:26.140
How wide is your frame of reference?

1402
01:20:26.541 --> 01:20:33.080
How broadly do you see yourself, your situation in history, your relationship with your men?

1403
01:20:33.861 --> 01:20:37.420
That is ultimately upstream of all sorts of decisions that you're going to make,

1404
01:20:38.082 --> 01:20:42.900
especially in the heat of battle are you able to spot opportunities that other people are not going

1405
01:20:42.940 --> 01:20:46.820
to be able to spot are you gonna be able to act on those opportunities when most people are not

1406
01:20:46.840 --> 01:20:52.880
going to be able to act um are you going to pay attention to the small details that most people

1407
01:20:52.960 --> 01:21:00.580
ignore are you going to go talk to your men are you going to uh you know spend extra time scouting

1408
01:21:00.700 --> 01:21:06.240
terrain are you going to find new innovative ways to like use your resources that other people

1409
01:21:06.300 --> 01:21:11.240
wouldn't consider wouldn't think about all of these things are ultimately variations of earth

1410
01:21:11.320 --> 01:21:19.880
luck right it's finding high leverage decisions that make dozens and dozens if not hundreds of

1411
01:21:19.980 --> 01:21:26.080
other decisions skew in your favor when we get the human luck we're going to talk about actually

1412
01:21:26.200 --> 01:21:33.300
playing the probabilities of certain situations earth luck is like finding ways to skew those

1413
01:21:33.380 --> 01:21:36.008
probabilities to your advantage.

1414
01:21:36.289 --> 01:21:40.300
When Napoleon had dinner with his soldiers and hung and slept

1415
01:21:40.380 --> 01:21:45.418
around the same campfire as them, on the surface, that's a very low leverage behavior.

1416
01:21:45.638 --> 01:21:46.100
It feels like

1417
01:21:46.140 --> 01:21:50.776
he's wasting time, but he knows those men are going to talk to other men.

1418
01:21:51.498 --> 01:21:52.100
He's going to develop

1419
01:21:52.180 --> 01:21:52.983
a reputation.

1420
01:21:53.606 --> 01:21:55.072
People are going to really admire him.

1421
01:21:55.092 --> 01:21:57.140
That's going to have an outsized effect

1422
01:21:57.622 --> 01:21:58.384
on the next battle.

1423
01:21:58.745 --> 01:22:03.180
By spending that time with his men, it's going to skew dozens of them

1424
01:22:03.561 --> 01:22:04.826
slightly in his favor.

1425
01:22:05.108 --> 01:22:08.140
And then all of those variables that skew in his favor, they compound

1426
01:22:08.642 --> 01:22:09.546
when added together.

1427
01:22:10.028 --> 01:22:12.560
Now, I want to bring this back to Richard Wiseman, who was the researcher

1428
01:22:12.681 --> 01:22:17.180
who did the newspaper study and the cafe study that we talked about at the top of this podcast

1429
01:22:17.320 --> 01:22:18.463
episode.

1430
01:22:18.603 --> 01:22:25.320
Wiseman spent a decade studying luck and chance and people who perceive themselves as

1431
01:22:25.400 --> 01:22:25.721
lucky.

1432
01:22:26.764 --> 01:22:32.600
And he was the one to find that people who perceive themselves as lucky tend to score higher

1433
01:22:32.741 --> 01:22:35.534
on various measures of well-being, they tend to have better outcomes.

1434
01:22:35.776 --> 01:22:36.620
And really what he was

1435
01:22:36.780 --> 01:22:38.969
measuring was earth luck.

1436
01:22:39.009 --> 01:22:40.254
He wasn't measuring heaven luck.

1437
01:22:40.274 --> 01:22:41.960
He wasn't looking at, you know,

1438
01:22:42.060 --> 01:22:47.420
how wealthy were people's families that they were born into or what country did they grow up in or

1439
01:22:47.540 --> 01:22:47.861
whatever.

1440
01:22:48.724 --> 01:22:54.080
He also wasn't looking at human luck, which is taking calculated risk and decision

1441
01:22:54.180 --> 01:22:54.501
making.

1442
01:22:55.565 --> 01:22:58.857
He looked at earth luck, which was what are these people's mindsets?

1443
01:22:59.098 --> 01:22:59.760
How do they see the

1444
01:22:59.800 --> 01:23:00.182
world?

1445
01:23:01.146 --> 01:23:02.310
How do they spot opportunities?

1446
01:23:02.330 --> 01:23:03.957
How often do they see opportunities?

1447
01:23:04.017 --> 01:23:04.720
How often do they see

1448
01:23:04.800 --> 01:23:06.346
opportunities that other people don't see?

1449
01:23:07.390 --> 01:23:09.820
And how willing are they to act on those opportunities?

1450
01:23:10.481 --> 01:23:13.314
And he broke down earth luck into four principles.

1451
01:23:13.535 --> 01:23:14.540
And these four principles are

1452
01:23:14.921 --> 01:23:21.040
principles that we can all adopt to make us quote unquote luckier, but really to maximize

1453
01:23:21.301 --> 01:23:26.280
that ability to spot connections and opportunities in our environment.

1454
01:23:26.760 --> 01:23:35.847
So the first principle is people with a lot of earth luck, they maximize the opportunities when presented to them.

1455
01:23:36.688 --> 01:23:40.290
This is the piece of advice that Will Smith's dad gave him, right?

1456
01:23:41.051 --> 01:23:43.512
Luck is just when opportunity meets preparation.

1457
01:23:43.893 --> 01:23:51.919
It's like an opportunity presents itself, you go all in, you put in all your effort to make that opportunity work for you.

1458
01:23:52.039 --> 01:23:53.960
That's quote unquote luck.

1459
01:23:54.562 --> 01:23:58.980
there's no such thing as luck it's just opportunity and preparation what's interesting is that weisman

1460
01:23:59.060 --> 01:24:05.740
found that people who tended to be luckier they were better at acting on the opportunities in

1461
01:24:05.800 --> 01:24:10.940
their environment even like opportunities that maybe appeared small or insignificant at first so

1462
01:24:11.461 --> 01:24:18.760
he found that lucky people tended to have lots and lots of uh loose social ties they had much

1463
01:24:18.961 --> 01:24:20.105
wider social networks.

1464
01:24:20.125 --> 01:24:24.040
They were good at, when they met somebody new, they were good at following

1465
01:24:24.301 --> 01:24:24.401
up.

1466
01:24:24.441 --> 01:24:25.566
They were good at checking in.

1467
01:24:26.369 --> 01:24:28.577
They were good at introducing people to each other.

1468
01:24:29.179 --> 01:24:29.460
Similarly,

1469
01:24:29.620 --> 01:24:36.960
he found that lucky people were open-minded about things that they could do or things that they

1470
01:24:37.020 --> 01:24:37.462
could try.

1471
01:24:37.522 --> 01:24:43.640
Like if an opportunity to go to a new sort of event or try a new activity came along,

1472
01:24:44.503 --> 01:24:48.116
the lucky people were more likely to say, fuck it, let me give it a shot.

1473
01:24:48.317 --> 01:24:49.220
Let's see what happens,

1474
01:24:49.640 --> 01:24:49.881
right?

1475
01:24:50.925 --> 01:24:51.888
You have nothing to lose.

1476
01:24:52.451 --> 01:24:55.020
The second principle he found was that lucky people tended

1477
01:24:55.140 --> 01:24:57.108
to listen to their intuition more often.

1478
01:24:57.470 --> 01:25:00.140
This one is interesting because as we're going to find in

1479
01:25:00.200 --> 01:25:05.300
the next chapter, so much of human luck is kind of rational decision-making and understanding

1480
01:25:05.922 --> 01:25:08.651
the risk or the probability of like what's in front of you.

1481
01:25:09.414 --> 01:25:11.180
Earth luck seems to be much more

1482
01:25:12.103 --> 01:25:17.780
because it is much broader in terms of like what you're assessing and what opportunities

1483
01:25:18.301 --> 01:25:26.040
you're considering um it seems that people who rely on their their gut instinct tend to do better

1484
01:25:26.822 --> 01:25:32.860
we don't need to go down uh the rabbit hole too much of like what gut instinct is or like

1485
01:25:33.462 --> 01:25:39.000
daniel kahneman's work or just like type one thinking versus type two thinking but basically

1486
01:25:39.662 --> 01:25:44.560
what your gut instinct is is it is all of the connections that your unconscious is drawing

1487
01:25:44.660 --> 01:25:48.900
between your experiences and your knowledge without your full conscious awareness and

1488
01:25:49.201 --> 01:25:55.460
generally what you see among the research is that making decisions based on gut instinct

1489
01:25:56.442 --> 01:26:06.180
is better if it is if you are well informed or have a broad set of experience around a decision

1490
01:26:06.460 --> 01:26:09.803
And it performs poorly if you are in a completely new environment.

1491
01:26:09.843 --> 01:26:11.864
You have no fucking idea what you're doing.

1492
01:26:11.884 --> 01:26:13.125
You have no knowledge whatsoever.

1493
01:26:14.146 --> 01:26:34.960
I think when you look at Napoleon's case, all of that reading that he did when he was young, it built this like foundational layer of context and understanding of the world that when he was in those heated situations later on and he had to make really critical decisions in the spur of the moment.

1494
01:26:36.683 --> 01:26:40.000
he was able to, and they were able, generally he was able to make good decision.

1495
01:26:40.500 --> 01:26:40.641
Yeah.

1496
01:26:40.681 --> 01:26:44.640
And I think generally people who are quote unquote lucky are, there's probably a little bit

1497
01:26:44.660 --> 01:26:48.016
of a self-fulfilling prophecy here because they are, they have a wider aperture.

1498
01:26:48.036 --> 01:26:48.739
They they're

1499
01:26:49.061 --> 01:26:50.910
just better at that lateral thinking to begin with.

1500
01:26:50.971 --> 01:26:52.640
And so their intuition probably is a little

1501
01:26:52.700 --> 01:26:54.128
more informed, you know what I mean?

1502
01:26:54.148 --> 01:26:54.771
Just like you're saying.

1503
01:26:54.791 --> 01:26:56.420
So yeah, that's both tidbit I

1504
01:26:56.460 --> 01:26:57.142
would throw in there too.

1505
01:26:57.424 --> 01:27:01.920
Principle number three is lucky people expect good things to happen to

1506
01:27:01.940 --> 01:27:02.121
them.

1507
01:27:02.141 --> 01:27:04.509
There's just an optimism to it.

1508
01:27:04.649 --> 01:27:07.620
This is nothing groundbreaking, but generally optimists

1509
01:27:08.102 --> 01:27:10.490
are happier, better things happen to them.

1510
01:27:10.550 --> 01:27:11.413
They're healthier.

1511
01:27:12.016 --> 01:27:13.240
There is a self-fulfilling

1512
01:27:13.340 --> 01:27:15.146
prophecy to this as well.

1513
01:27:15.266 --> 01:27:19.480
And that when you expect good things to happen, you are more open to

1514
01:27:20.122 --> 01:27:25.880
finding the good silver linings of whatever does come and then focusing on those and then acting

1515
01:27:25.980 --> 01:27:26.301
on those.

1516
01:27:27.405 --> 01:27:31.540
And then principle number four is that lucky people tend to transform bad luck

1517
01:27:32.583 --> 01:27:36.437
into good luck, which is, this is the turning lemons in the lemonade.

1518
01:27:36.457 --> 01:27:37.280
So if something does

1519
01:27:37.360 --> 01:27:43.899
go against them, they're good at using it as a learning experience or taking a lesson from it or

1520
01:27:44.220 --> 01:27:47.371
adjusting their behavior, uh, going forward.

1521
01:27:47.933 --> 01:27:50.040
So you and I, we've both described ourselves as

1522
01:27:50.301 --> 01:27:50.882
lucky people.

1523
01:27:51.745 --> 01:27:57.280
Um, I'm curious, which of the four principles do you think you embody the most?

1524
01:27:57.644 --> 01:27:59.120
that like drives a lot of your luck?

1525
01:28:00.483 --> 01:28:02.500
I mean, a couple of them.

1526
01:28:03.141 --> 01:28:04.940
Lately, I've went back and forth

1527
01:28:05.203 --> 01:28:06.540
through this one throughout my life though,

1528
01:28:06.600 --> 01:28:08.040
but the chance opportunities one,

1529
01:28:08.947 --> 01:28:09.900
I've seen it more and more.

1530
01:28:10.340 --> 01:28:11.800
Sometimes I pull back and I kind of withdraw

1531
01:28:12.022 --> 01:28:13.880
and I get real into ruts and routines

1532
01:28:14.024 --> 01:28:14.619
and stuff like that.

1533
01:28:14.680 --> 01:28:16.660
And then I kind of do feel myself being like,

1534
01:28:16.761 --> 01:28:17.820
oh, nothing good ever happens.

1535
01:28:18.343 --> 01:28:19.820
But lately I've been like kind of trying

1536
01:28:19.820 --> 01:28:20.600
to get out a little bit more.

1537
01:28:20.700 --> 01:28:22.180
I used to work in coffee shops a lot,

1538
01:28:22.341 --> 01:28:23.140
you know, as I work remotely

1539
01:28:23.140 --> 01:28:24.200
and work in coffee shops a lot.

1540
01:28:24.220 --> 01:28:25.080
And I stopped doing that for a while.

1541
01:28:25.140 --> 01:28:26.180
Now I'm going back to doing that.

1542
01:28:26.200 --> 01:28:29.419
And I bump into just random people all the time now, which is kind of cool.

1543
01:28:30.602 --> 01:28:33.880
And I saw this, you know, in our line of work too.

1544
01:28:34.361 --> 01:28:36.440
So Steph, who works with us now, right?

1545
01:28:37.446 --> 01:28:39.640
This was a chance opportunity that you kind of forced me into.

1546
01:28:39.841 --> 01:28:44.960
I remember you got invited to this podcast networking thing and you were being all grumpy pants about it.

1547
01:28:45.060 --> 01:28:46.920
I know, like networking and meh.

1548
01:28:46.940 --> 01:28:48.600
And I was like, Drew, just shut up and go.

1549
01:28:48.680 --> 01:28:49.539
Yeah, yeah.

1550
01:28:50.243 --> 01:28:51.220
You'll be glad you did.

1551
01:28:51.240 --> 01:28:51.520
I was like, you go, Mark.

1552
01:28:51.663 --> 01:28:52.339
Why don't you go?

1553
01:28:52.984 --> 01:28:53.740
I'd be glad you did.

1554
01:28:54.482 --> 01:29:00.080
it turns out, yeah, we ended up, uh, we got a great, we got a great team, a great team member.

1555
01:29:01.484 --> 01:29:04.377
And, um, not only that, she kind of made her own luck there too, though, too.

1556
01:29:04.497 --> 01:29:05.140
She was one of the

1557
01:29:05.180 --> 01:29:06.305
organizers of that dinner.

1558
01:29:06.385 --> 01:29:10.000
She, you know, it's kind of putting herself out there and she organized

1559
01:29:10.060 --> 01:29:13.540
this dinner and a whole bunch of podcasters showed up and just so turned out, I was like,

1560
01:29:13.600 --> 01:29:15.592
Mark, we need to hire somebody who knows what the hell they're doing here.

1561
01:29:16.215 --> 01:29:17.040
And she was a perfect fit

1562
01:29:17.100 --> 01:29:17.381
for it.

1563
01:29:17.402 --> 01:29:18.366
So like that happened.

1564
01:29:18.687 --> 01:29:21.620
And so ever since then, I was like, Oh, I used to do this a lot.

1565
01:29:21.680 --> 01:29:29.220
I used to just throw myself into these situations that were, you know, high variance and a lot of contact, a lot of surface area with luck.

1566
01:29:29.561 --> 01:29:32.460
And I think that that I think is the best one out of all of them.

1567
01:29:32.500 --> 01:29:38.480
Anyways, just putting yourself in those in high variance situations where there's more opportunity.

1568
01:29:39.020 --> 01:29:43.820
Several of the last few people I've dated, I've just met through something I wasn't going to go to, but ended up going.

1569
01:29:44.084 --> 01:29:44.240
Yeah.

1570
01:29:44.785 --> 01:29:46.280
And some social event or something like that.

1571
01:29:46.483 --> 01:29:47.800
I'm tired, but I'm going to go anyway.

1572
01:29:47.981 --> 01:29:55.000
I end up meeting somebody that, you know, I develop a relationship or those sorts of things happen to me all the time, I think, too.

1573
01:29:55.541 --> 01:29:56.900
A little bit the intuition side, too.

1574
01:29:56.960 --> 01:29:58.560
I've noticed that a little bit as I get older.

1575
01:29:59.861 --> 01:30:06.660
If I'm listening to that part of myself where it's like, you know, you probably really should do this.

1576
01:30:07.063 --> 01:30:09.100
And instead of ignoring it, I'll go do it.

1577
01:30:09.140 --> 01:30:13.140
And I think there is, again, it's those connections I've made from all my experience in the past.

1578
01:30:13.464 --> 01:30:13.620
Yeah.

1579
01:30:14.283 --> 01:30:15.460
That one you got to be careful with, I think.

1580
01:30:15.560 --> 01:30:15.800
But yeah.

1581
01:30:15.980 --> 01:30:16.088
Yeah.

1582
01:30:16.689 --> 01:30:17.040
What about you?

1583
01:30:17.080 --> 01:30:17.479
What do you think?

1584
01:30:18.022 --> 01:30:20.240
I think I'm pretty good at maximizing opportunities.

1585
01:30:20.683 --> 01:30:20.820
Yeah.

1586
01:30:20.984 --> 01:30:21.216
Yeah.

1587
01:30:21.364 --> 01:30:21.679
You are.

1588
01:30:22.482 --> 01:30:24.439
You put yourself into a lot of situations too.

1589
01:30:24.720 --> 01:30:24.918
You are.

1590
01:30:25.060 --> 01:30:26.020
You're very open to experience.

1591
01:30:26.080 --> 01:30:27.460
You're more open to experience than I am.

1592
01:30:27.600 --> 01:30:31.220
So you just naturally put yourself into a lot more situations than I do.

1593
01:30:31.663 --> 01:30:34.380
I would say I'm extremely good at principle four too.

1594
01:30:34.940 --> 01:30:36.240
Transforming bad luck into good luck.

1595
01:30:36.500 --> 01:30:38.900
Like I almost have, it's almost actually a problem.

1596
01:30:39.000 --> 01:30:39.135
Yeah.

1597
01:30:40.021 --> 01:30:42.960
How, how well I can polish a turd.

1598
01:30:43.124 --> 01:30:43.360
I know.

1599
01:30:43.500 --> 01:30:43.898
In my life.

1600
01:30:44.923 --> 01:30:45.155
Yeah.

1601
01:30:45.745 --> 01:30:46.880
It takes me a little while to get there.

1602
01:30:47.002 --> 01:30:48.260
I notice you just go straight there.

1603
01:30:48.320 --> 01:30:48.440
Yeah.

1604
01:30:48.520 --> 01:30:49.918
I'm like, this is great.

1605
01:30:50.380 --> 01:30:51.700
It takes me, like I learned something,

1606
01:30:51.800 --> 01:30:52.459
but it's after the fact

1607
01:30:52.561 --> 01:30:53.319
and it takes me a little while.

1608
01:30:53.581 --> 01:30:54.440
You go straight there.

1609
01:30:54.904 --> 01:30:55.060
Yeah.

1610
01:30:55.221 --> 01:30:56.660
I feel very blessed.

1611
01:30:56.860 --> 01:30:58.659
So I feel like I have a lot of human luck

1612
01:30:58.901 --> 01:31:01.760
in that I think I am naturally very good

1613
01:31:01.760 --> 01:31:03.199
at the earth luck side of this.

1614
01:31:03.864 --> 01:31:05.840
I think I'm good at understanding

1615
01:31:06.769 --> 01:31:07.960
contexts and situations

1616
01:31:08.846 --> 01:31:10.780
that are likely to have a lot of upside.

1617
01:31:11.762 --> 01:31:14.720
I think I generally spot it earlier than most

1618
01:31:15.261 --> 01:31:19.973
and I'm very tolerant of setbacks, challenges, failures.

1619
01:31:20.654 --> 01:31:23.000
You know, so my whole career started

1620
01:31:23.301 --> 01:31:30.540
because my roommates had blogs on blogspot in 2007 and they were like, Hey Mark, you've got

1621
01:31:30.580 --> 01:31:31.524
some fun stories.

1622
01:31:31.624 --> 01:31:32.749
You should start a blog.

1623
01:31:33.010 --> 01:31:34.817
And I was like, what's the point?

1624
01:31:34.877 --> 01:31:35.580
Nobody's going to read

1625
01:31:35.620 --> 01:31:35.720
it.

1626
01:31:36.222 --> 01:31:36.663
Ha ha.

1627
01:31:37.165 --> 01:31:41.820
I started writing and I remember, you know, I got like a few months in and people started

1628
01:31:41.900 --> 01:31:43.790
showing up on my blog that I'd never met before.

1629
01:31:43.811 --> 01:31:45.600
You know, initially it was like my roommates and

1630
01:31:45.620 --> 01:31:48.992
a couple of friends and then like a couple of friends of friends.

1631
01:31:49.795 --> 01:31:51.120
And then six months in,

1632
01:31:51.240 --> 01:32:00.140
there's like random people from like California, Germany, the UK showing up and leaving comments

1633
01:32:00.200 --> 01:32:00.501
and stuff.

1634
01:32:00.521 --> 01:32:06.600
And I remember at that point I had a moment where I was like, oh, there's something

1635
01:32:06.720 --> 01:32:07.021
here.

1636
01:32:07.403 --> 01:32:12.299
Like if, if, if I just go all in on this, like something good is going to happen.

1637
01:32:12.319 --> 01:32:12.660
I remember

1638
01:32:12.760 --> 01:32:14.825
I quit my day job.

1639
01:32:15.947 --> 01:32:22.140
I quit my day job spring of 2008 and I was burning through savings.

1640
01:32:22.980 --> 01:32:27.140
Ironically, I had made a bunch of money playing poker the year before and I was burning through

1641
01:32:27.160 --> 01:32:28.124
all my poker winnings.

1642
01:32:28.787 --> 01:32:31.860
And I remember talking to my friend and I remember saying like,

1643
01:32:32.462 --> 01:32:36.858
I don't know if it's going to be this year or next year or the year after.

1644
01:32:36.978 --> 01:32:37.560
I just know that

1645
01:32:37.580 --> 01:32:41.293
if I keep doing this, big things are going to happen.

1646
01:32:41.533 --> 01:32:43.480
Like I just, I could tell like this is,

1647
01:32:43.640 --> 01:32:44.904
this is the future of media.

1648
01:32:44.964 --> 01:32:46.348
It's the future of creativity.

1649
01:32:47.171 --> 01:32:50.100
Um, cutting down all the middlemen

1650
01:32:50.140 --> 01:32:53.834
and gatekeepers between content creator and content consumer.

1651
01:32:53.934 --> 01:32:55.600
Like it just seemed inevitable.

1652
01:32:56.641 --> 01:33:01.300
And I, and I had an implicit understanding that like, I'm here very early and I have a

1653
01:33:01.380 --> 01:33:07.520
knack for this so if i just keep going it's gonna work out yeah and that was some intuition then you

1654
01:33:07.540 --> 01:33:12.657
think i think there was i mean coupled with you know some data too but yeah absolutely yeah um

1655
01:33:13.921 --> 01:33:18.540
but to come back to like the surface area piece i think that that might be the one you know

1656
01:33:19.323 --> 01:33:23.760
throwing throwing yourself into into situations like i do think that's that's that's been the

1657
01:33:23.800 --> 01:33:27.740
hardest one to learn i i've always been a bit of a loner and just wanted to do things myself

1658
01:33:28.322 --> 01:33:34.720
and also had like a delusional level of optimism of my own capacity to do things.

1659
01:33:36.502 --> 01:33:42.780
You know, I would say for me, the big aha moment around maximizing opportunities,

1660
01:33:43.920 --> 01:33:48.793
expanding surface area, you know, I lived as a nomad, digital nomad from 2009 to 2014.

1661
01:33:51.821 --> 01:33:55.920
and my career was doing really well.

1662
01:33:56.340 --> 01:33:59.020
But I remember right around the time

1663
01:33:59.061 --> 01:33:59.960
I got my first book deal,

1664
01:34:00.040 --> 01:34:01.480
which eventually became Subtle Art,

1665
01:34:02.302 --> 01:34:03.020
there was kind of this,

1666
01:34:03.343 --> 01:34:04.880
I started to have this awareness

1667
01:34:05.001 --> 01:34:07.080
that like by not being in the US,

1668
01:34:07.722 --> 01:34:10.960
there was just something about not being in the room

1669
01:34:11.344 --> 01:34:12.580
when a lot of things were happening,

1670
01:34:13.144 --> 01:34:14.920
not being able to meet people face-to-face

1671
01:34:14.940 --> 01:34:16.320
who were doing the same thing I was doing.

1672
01:34:17.581 --> 01:34:20.320
And in 2015, after getting my book deal,

1673
01:34:21.002 --> 01:34:25.032
I decided to move to New York initially as an experiment.

1674
01:34:25.994 --> 01:34:28.480
But that six months, I met more people

1675
01:34:28.621 --> 01:34:34.080
who were impactful on my career in that six months than I had like the five years prior combined.

1676
01:34:35.061 --> 01:34:36.987
And so many opportunities opened up.

1677
01:34:37.849 --> 01:34:41.740
So many people doing like interesting business stuff that,

1678
01:34:42.600 --> 01:34:47.820
you know, like I was learning so much so fast that it was moving to New York is in hindsight,

1679
01:34:47.920 --> 01:34:53.320
like one of the best decisions I ever made just because it like exposed me to so many chance

1680
01:34:53.400 --> 01:34:56.833
encounters that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise.

1681
01:34:57.235 --> 01:34:58.700
It's funny because I noticed as we're

1682
01:34:58.720 --> 01:35:03.858
going through this episode or this chapter, I still feel awkward just calling it luck.

1683
01:35:04.139 --> 01:35:04.280
Like

1684
01:35:05.323 --> 01:35:11.720
I keep finding these other words to replace it like chance encounters, maximizing opportunity,

1685
01:35:12.520 --> 01:35:13.966
expanding surface area.

1686
01:35:14.569 --> 01:35:16.457
This kind of comes back to the Western culture point.

1687
01:35:16.497 --> 01:35:17.000
Like I think it's

1688
01:35:17.120 --> 01:35:22.780
so ingrained in in us in western culture that like luck is something that happens to you it's not

1689
01:35:23.965 --> 01:35:27.079
it's not something you can control it's not something you can leverage or build

1690
01:35:27.762 --> 01:35:32.120
yeah it's funny even though we've been studying this for the past month and i'm like i still feel

1691
01:35:32.260 --> 01:35:41.139
awkward saying i've gotten luckier or i've gotten i've had more luck as my life has gone yeah yes

1692
01:35:42.362 --> 01:35:48.100
what should i think that's about i don't know man yeah it's just like it is very deep it just

1693
01:35:48.280 --> 01:35:52.940
feels like as soon as i call it luck it i'm like removing my own agency but it's like i don't know

1694
01:35:52.960 --> 01:35:58.180
what else to call it right like you call it boldness you can call it foresight you can call

1695
01:35:58.260 --> 01:36:02.498
it they're inextricable what the you're the skills and the effort and everything you put in is you

1696
01:36:02.960 --> 01:36:08.400
can't extricate that from chance encounters the surface area you're talking about the luck

1697
01:36:09.023 --> 01:36:10.871
around you, you just can't separate that.

1698
01:36:11.273 --> 01:36:12.680
I don't know what to make of it necessarily either.

1699
01:36:13.380 --> 01:36:17.400
I mean, you can talk about people have different beliefs about luck.

1700
01:36:17.820 --> 01:36:17.940
Right.

1701
01:36:19.062 --> 01:36:20.391
There's actually, it's kind of interesting.

1702
01:36:20.411 --> 01:36:21.600
There's these two main beliefs

1703
01:36:22.283 --> 01:36:25.920
that psychologists have identified and they sound kind of the same on the surface,

1704
01:36:26.262 --> 01:36:28.454
but when you dig into them, they're very different.

1705
01:36:28.474 --> 01:36:29.440
They have very different outcomes

1706
01:36:30.082 --> 01:36:30.464
around it.

1707
01:36:30.604 --> 01:36:30.865
Okay.

1708
01:36:31.307 --> 01:36:35.000
So the first is like this, the belief in luck, like, do you believe in luck?

1709
01:36:35.080 --> 01:36:35.241
Right.

1710
01:36:35.261 --> 01:36:36.710
People ask, yeah, you believe in luck.

1711
01:36:36.731 --> 01:36:37.435
You believe in fate.

1712
01:36:37.455 --> 01:36:38.220
You believe in chance,

1713
01:36:38.380 --> 01:36:44.700
whatever do you believe in luck that's a different question than are you lucky like the napoleon

1714
01:36:44.740 --> 01:36:50.300
question yeah which is what they call personal belief in personal luck so people usually have

1715
01:36:50.320 --> 01:36:54.560
these two different either have one of one of these two different frame of minds around this

1716
01:36:54.580 --> 01:36:59.440
okay these two different beliefs if you believe in luck because just luck is just this force and

1717
01:36:59.460 --> 01:37:03.380
it's almost like fatalism like luck is just a force acting on us and there is nothing we can do

1718
01:37:03.701 --> 01:37:08.460
about it right if that's what you believe you usually there's usually worse outcomes less

1719
01:37:08.500 --> 01:37:12.680
well-being you're less happy you don't have as much luck in your life do you think luck is like

1720
01:37:12.820 --> 01:37:18.560
kind of a cruel force that's out of your control um it's linked to neuroticism to some degree even

1721
01:37:18.640 --> 01:37:24.720
to again essentially it's just fatalism and we saw that throughout the western uh western mind

1722
01:37:24.860 --> 01:37:30.620
the the history of the western mind there's a strong kind of strain of fatalism that that runs

1723
01:37:30.640 --> 01:37:30.962
through that.

1724
01:37:31.304 --> 01:37:34.460
The other belief though, the belief in personal luck, like, are you personally lucky?

1725
01:37:34.880 --> 01:37:39.277
People who believe that, like you and I do, actually tend to be happier people.

1726
01:37:39.337 --> 01:37:40.200
They have

1727
01:37:40.300 --> 01:37:41.203
more luck in their life.

1728
01:37:42.588 --> 01:37:44.716
It's more hype and it's more life satisfaction.

1729
01:37:45.197 --> 01:37:45.940
And it's independent of

1730
01:37:46.261 --> 01:37:47.926
any other personality traits as well.

1731
01:37:48.587 --> 01:37:50.011
Okay.

1732
01:37:50.112 --> 01:37:52.499
It's Wiseman's that positive expectation.

1733
01:37:52.719 --> 01:37:52.940
It's that

1734
01:37:53.120 --> 01:37:55.207
principle number three, he says, right?

1735
01:37:56.652 --> 01:37:59.220
It operates more as a stable self-concept rather

1736
01:37:59.340 --> 01:38:02.330
than just the situational thing that happens to you again.

1737
01:38:02.952 --> 01:38:04.999
And so I think if you can adopt that,

1738
01:38:05.420 --> 01:38:10.840
um, where, you know, use that gratitude to widen your frame of reference and start seeing yourself

1739
01:38:10.940 --> 01:38:15.580
as someone who is lucky, personally lucky, you can actually reap the benefits of this.

1740
01:38:15.920 --> 01:38:20.820
It transfers, transforms into more of that, what you're talking about, where, you know,

1741
01:38:20.880 --> 01:38:24.460
we just have this idea that luck is just something that happens to you versus something that luck is

1742
01:38:24.661 --> 01:38:26.890
actually something that's a little bit within your control.

1743
01:38:27.813 --> 01:38:29.259
Something you can influence at least.

1744
01:38:29.280 --> 01:38:29.300
I

1745
01:38:29.400 --> 01:38:32.620
mean, you don't have a whole lot of control on the outcome of it, but you can at least influence the

1746
01:38:32.780 --> 01:38:33.603
odds like you're saying.

1747
01:38:34.225 --> 01:38:34.606
So yeah.

1748
01:38:35.369 --> 01:38:38.699
I guess one way to think about it, this is kind of a variation of

1749
01:38:39.442 --> 01:38:46.080
Raul's bill of ignorance, is that if you think you were to live your life a thousand times,

1750
01:38:46.801 --> 01:38:51.840
where on the continuum of outcomes do you think your current timeline is on?

1751
01:38:51.840 --> 01:38:51.975
Right.

1752
01:38:52.721 --> 01:38:54.432
Mine is like 998.

1753
01:38:57.469 --> 01:38:57.820
I'm going to say.

1754
01:38:57.840 --> 01:38:58.439
You really think so?

1755
01:38:58.683 --> 01:38:59.340
I think it's up there.

1756
01:38:59.500 --> 01:39:03.960
I mean, just given the starting point that I had and again, the people I saw around me

1757
01:39:04.040 --> 01:39:08.960
who had very similar starting points who didn't wind up, who went the other way, I'm up there.

1758
01:39:09.040 --> 01:39:12.200
I'd like 90th percentile for sure of where I could have ended up, I think.

1759
01:39:12.523 --> 01:39:13.360
I really do think that.

1760
01:39:13.540 --> 01:39:13.686
Me too.

1761
01:39:14.683 --> 01:39:16.420
So that's why I wouldn't draw that ball again.

1762
01:39:16.540 --> 01:39:16.791
I wouldn't.

1763
01:39:17.000 --> 01:39:18.280
Oh, definitely not put a ball.

1764
01:39:18.280 --> 01:39:18.980
I would not pull that lever again.

1765
01:39:18.980 --> 01:39:19.240
No, no, no, no.

1766
01:39:19.443 --> 01:39:19.656
Yeah.

1767
01:39:19.942 --> 01:39:20.580
If I had the chance.

1768
01:39:21.205 --> 01:39:22.999
but it's interesting because instead of like

1769
01:39:24.547 --> 01:39:27.280
trading it for somebody else's life a random person's life this is like

1770
01:39:28.284 --> 01:39:32.280
having a redo on your own life right right given the exact same circumstances

1771
01:39:32.683 --> 01:39:35.100
like that right yeah i don't i still don't think it would

1772
01:39:35.944 --> 01:39:38.900
no i'm definitely up in the 99th percentile yeah it's like

1773
01:39:39.823 --> 01:39:44.420
there's some like stupidly outsized returns on some of my decisions

1774
01:39:45.103 --> 01:39:49.560
but then it's like is that just because we can't imagine things better

1775
01:39:50.122 --> 01:39:54.640
like it's easier to imagine things worse yeah sure i can think about how i could do a lot of

1776
01:39:54.640 --> 01:39:59.240
things better on the margins but there's like when i think about like okay what's the version of my

1777
01:39:59.300 --> 01:40:05.380
life that's like 10x this life it's extremely hard for me to think about that yeah yeah i don't know

1778
01:40:05.400 --> 01:40:09.600
like i guess i go there like if there was a decision somewhere along the line that could

1779
01:40:09.600 --> 01:40:16.340
have 10x my current result where would it have been i can't think of anything that's a hard one

1780
01:40:16.340 --> 01:40:22.620
to come up with yeah i mean i don't know i just see all the things that had to like you know like

1781
01:40:23.142 --> 01:40:26.980
this job for instance mark like i applied twice to work with you actually the first time i got

1782
01:40:26.980 --> 01:40:31.480
an interview with you but i wasn't a right fit for the job you got unlucky thought that was unlucky

1783
01:40:31.661 --> 01:40:37.340
at the time right i like how we both made this same good luck bad luck who knows it turned out

1784
01:40:37.340 --> 01:40:43.360
to be a great luck actually because then two years later like this job came up uh a version of this

1785
01:40:43.400 --> 01:40:45.127
job came up, I was way better suited for it.

1786
01:40:45.529 --> 01:40:47.075
I was in way better position for it.

1787
01:40:47.195 --> 01:40:47.456
I was in the

1788
01:40:48.420 --> 01:40:51.940
middle of a PhD program and you're like, I need a researcher that knows psychology and neuroscience,

1789
01:40:52.100 --> 01:40:52.843
all this kind of stuff.

1790
01:40:54.770 --> 01:40:55.754
That turned out to be lucky.

1791
01:40:55.814 --> 01:40:57.220
And then when you made the decision,

1792
01:40:58.180 --> 01:41:01.700
could have been on a day you just, you had a good lunch and you're like, I like this guy.

1793
01:41:02.041 --> 01:41:05.260
There's so many things that go into this that I'm just like, no, I wouldn't roll that dice again.

1794
01:41:05.760 --> 01:41:06.342
I just wouldn't.

1795
01:41:06.462 --> 01:41:08.871
So I don't know.

1796
01:41:09.352 --> 01:41:11.720
I see myself as a personally lucky person, I guess is what

1797
01:41:11.720 --> 01:41:16.760
i'm saying and i yeah luck is a force in the in the grand scheme of things but when it comes down

1798
01:41:16.840 --> 01:41:20.540
to i wonder what the proportion of people who see themselves as lucky to unlucky is yeah i didn't

1799
01:41:20.580 --> 01:41:24.580
like i didn't see that i guess i didn't see that in the research yeah yeah if you're listening to

1800
01:41:24.620 --> 01:41:31.240
this and you in you genuinely believe yourself to be unlucky explain in the comments why please

1801
01:41:31.561 --> 01:41:36.540
yeah yeah i because i don't meet a whole lot of people like that i guess yeah and is it heaven

1802
01:41:36.620 --> 01:41:40.600
luck is it earth luck or is it human luck because it's one thing to just make like some rational

1803
01:41:40.721 --> 01:41:44.400
decisions and they kind of go against you, you know, it's like you go to school to be a software

1804
01:41:44.480 --> 01:41:47.333
engineer and then the next year chat GPT comes out.

1805
01:41:47.373 --> 01:41:49.080
Like it's like that was a rational decision

1806
01:41:49.180 --> 01:41:50.064
and just went against you.

1807
01:41:51.107 --> 01:41:53.115
That is unlucky in a lot of ways.

1808
01:41:53.315 --> 01:41:53.536
Okay.

1809
01:41:53.616 --> 01:41:54.580
Actually, I think there probably

1810
01:41:54.700 --> 01:41:59.360
are a fair amount of people who do see themselves as unlucky because something I dug up as well

1811
01:41:59.741 --> 01:42:02.530
is this connection between luck and anxiety.

1812
01:42:02.550 --> 01:42:05.540
You know, we talked about that, like widening

1813
01:42:05.580 --> 01:42:07.887
the aperture, widening your frame of reference.

1814
01:42:08.650 --> 01:42:09.874
Anxiety does the opposite.

1815
01:42:10.756 --> 01:42:11.940
And a lot of people

1816
01:42:12.020 --> 01:42:14.629
are pretty anxious, right?

1817
01:42:15.311 --> 01:42:17.940
What anxiety does is it really narrows your focus on something.

1818
01:42:18.080 --> 01:42:20.128
Obviously, you're more vigilant when you're anxious.

1819
01:42:20.148 --> 01:42:23.240
You're more focused on the bad things

1820
01:42:23.621 --> 01:42:24.664
when you're anxious, right?

1821
01:42:25.146 --> 01:42:29.840
And this has the effect of you ending up missing a lot of those

1822
01:42:29.900 --> 01:42:33.580
opportunities that you would otherwise see if you had that wider frame of reference.

1823
01:42:34.141 --> 01:42:40.547
And so I think there's a fair amount of people who probably do walk around thinking they're quite unlucky because of that.

1824
01:42:40.668 --> 01:42:48.696
If you're anxious about your life in general or something, and I notice this when I go through periods of anxiety too, I miss all sorts of things around me.

1825
01:42:48.716 --> 01:42:49.977
I miss all sorts of opportunities.

1826
01:42:50.578 --> 01:42:52.340
I don't engage with the world as much.

1827
01:42:52.821 --> 01:42:59.320
It's interesting because if you think about anxiety, it is quite literally an expectation of misfortune.

1828
01:42:59.625 --> 01:42:59.738
Yeah.

1829
01:43:00.200 --> 01:43:00.395
Right.

1830
01:43:00.540 --> 01:43:09.800
So it's like when you're anxious, let's say you have to go on stage and publicly speak in front of hundreds of people and you're absolutely mortified beforehand.

1831
01:43:10.801 --> 01:43:19.760
The thing you're mortified about is the absolute worst case scenario that is a one in a 10,000 chance of happening is that you go out there and you just bomb so hard.

1832
01:43:19.920 --> 01:43:22.406
You have a panic attack or you puke in front of everybody.

1833
01:43:22.446 --> 01:43:28.840
Like it just, it is so unlikely yet in your mind, that is probably what you're expecting that to happen.

1834
01:43:28.900 --> 01:43:29.100
Yeah.

1835
01:43:29.621 --> 01:43:29.781
Yeah.

1836
01:43:29.821 --> 01:43:33.083
This is explained actually in attentional control theory.

1837
01:43:33.844 --> 01:43:39.288
This was a theory back from the 2000s, but there's these two systems kind of operating in your mind.

1838
01:43:39.568 --> 01:43:43.071
You have a goal directed system and then you have a stimulus driven system.

1839
01:43:43.251 --> 01:43:43.672
Okay.

1840
01:43:43.912 --> 01:43:47.675
When you're less anxious, you have a goal directed orientation, right?

1841
01:43:47.695 --> 01:43:49.716
You're like, what am I trying to accomplish here?

1842
01:43:50.097 --> 01:43:52.278
You're again, wider aperture.

1843
01:43:52.358 --> 01:43:53.119
You can see the goal.

1844
01:43:53.139 --> 01:43:54.380
You can see the forest for the trees.

1845
01:43:54.740 --> 01:43:57.403
When you're anxious, though, it's that stimulus driven system.

1846
01:43:57.703 --> 01:44:03.608
You're thinking about the individual stimuli that you're talking about puking and being embarrassed in front of everyone.

1847
01:44:03.988 --> 01:44:06.570
So there's kind of a neurological level of that.

1848
01:44:06.590 --> 01:44:18.140
And there's two executive functions that go along with that too, like inhibition, the ability to filter out irrelevant information in your environment.

1849
01:44:18.200 --> 01:44:23.700
uh that's uh decreased under anxiety and during anxiety again you're vigilant and you're looking

1850
01:44:23.780 --> 01:44:28.560
for all those stimuli in your environment i just i just had another made another connection okay

1851
01:44:28.901 --> 01:44:34.100
which is that you know there there's kind of a conventional wisdom of like don't make choices

1852
01:44:34.200 --> 01:44:39.700
out of fear right it's like especially major life decisions like you shouldn't make a major decision

1853
01:44:40.865 --> 01:44:44.380
because you're avoiding something you're afraid of you should be making a major decision because

1854
01:44:44.480 --> 01:44:46.368
you're excited about what you're stepping into.

1855
01:44:46.388 --> 01:44:49.300
I think the reason that's really good advice is

1856
01:44:49.340 --> 01:44:52.920
that when you're afraid of something, you're very myopic and you're only focused on that

1857
01:44:53.261 --> 01:44:54.384
one single variable.

1858
01:44:54.986 --> 01:44:59.760
Yet when you are excited about something, your view of the future and

1859
01:44:59.780 --> 01:45:04.540
what's possible is probably very expansive and you've probably drawn a lot of different

1860
01:45:04.701 --> 01:45:06.752
connections or seen a lot of different opportunities.

1861
01:45:06.913 --> 01:45:08.220
And you probably make a luckier

1862
01:45:08.320 --> 01:45:08.742
decision.

1863
01:45:08.943 --> 01:45:09.264
Yes.

1864
01:45:10.068 --> 01:45:10.329
Yes.

1865
01:45:10.369 --> 01:45:12.960
Because when you're avoiding the single thing out of fear,

1866
01:45:14.084 --> 01:45:17.979
you're only accounting for that single variable you're not accounting for the dozens and hundreds

1867
01:45:18.300 --> 01:45:24.460
and millions of other variables right right yeah so um yeah there's that inhibition side there's

1868
01:45:24.500 --> 01:45:30.680
a shifting side to um to this where it's your ability to direct attention flexibility between

1869
01:45:30.780 --> 01:45:34.958
stimuli and tasks so again that's like if you have that wider aperture you can do that you know

1870
01:45:35.841 --> 01:45:41.600
anxious anxious people do measurably have a reduced ability to notice things in their

1871
01:45:41.680 --> 01:45:47.260
retirement that again they get that myopic so it's so crazy isn't it yeah dude my wife is like

1872
01:45:48.284 --> 01:45:52.320
it's a it happened think about it when you're anxious you get fixated yeah right and you do

1873
01:45:52.420 --> 01:45:56.139
you just get this tunnel vision and you can't see anything else around dude my wife so my wife is

1874
01:45:56.922 --> 01:46:02.460
yeah very anxious person we were walking down the street i think just a week ago and we were

1875
01:46:02.701 --> 01:46:08.960
on the other side of the street there was like this it was like a man in like a ballerina tutu

1876
01:46:09.702 --> 01:46:18.000
with like a bright red wig but like full hairy chest going on carrying like a handbag

1877
01:46:18.862 --> 01:46:24.800
a really expensive handbag and on roller skates and i'm like gawking at this person being like

1878
01:46:25.662 --> 01:46:32.160
holy shit look at that and my wife is just like dude to do completely walks by it and i like

1879
01:46:32.200 --> 01:46:38.300
leaned over i'm like did you see that and she's like what literally this happens with your with

1880
01:46:38.320 --> 01:46:40.567
your vision, right?

1881
01:46:40.668 --> 01:46:44.580
When you are anxious or you're stressed in any way, your vision literally

1882
01:46:44.700 --> 01:46:45.142
narrows.

1883
01:46:45.363 --> 01:46:49.557
Like your peripheral vision kind of gets quieted down in your brain.

1884
01:46:49.637 --> 01:46:50.520
It literally narrows

1885
01:46:50.600 --> 01:46:50.922
like this.

1886
01:46:50.962 --> 01:46:52.991
So there's a physiological side to this too.

1887
01:46:53.011 --> 01:46:54.940
That explains a lot about my marriage.

1888
01:46:55.840 --> 01:46:56.081
Yeah.

1889
01:46:56.121 --> 01:46:56.402
Right.

1890
01:46:56.883 --> 01:46:57.124
Right.

1891
01:46:58.226 --> 01:47:00.432
She fixates on a few things about you too, huh?

1892
01:47:00.833 --> 01:47:01.054
Yeah.

1893
01:47:01.535 --> 01:47:01.776
Yeah.

1894
01:47:02.798 --> 01:47:03.460
So another thing

1895
01:47:03.560 --> 01:47:09.898
I found in, in the research, and it's not, it's not super great research.

1896
01:47:09.939 --> 01:47:10.460
I'll say that, but

1897
01:47:10.460 --> 01:47:14.780
there's some things that are kind of pointing towards this is just how much the environment

1898
01:47:14.981 --> 01:47:18.312
actually matters versus things like personality.

1899
01:47:18.332 --> 01:47:18.874
Okay.

1900
01:47:19.516 --> 01:47:20.820
And kind of some of these preliminary

1901
01:47:21.021 --> 01:47:26.340
studies, what they found is your personality, like traits, like we talked about in the change

1902
01:47:26.400 --> 01:47:30.880
episode, all of those traits, they don't matter nearly as much as the environment that you put

1903
01:47:30.940 --> 01:47:37.440
yourself in when it comes to opportunities in your life and luck in your life right so like one study

1904
01:47:37.581 --> 01:47:41.180
this was the digital environments but you talked about this a little bit with your blogging and

1905
01:47:41.200 --> 01:47:45.660
stuff like that there's this digital sure environment that you got into and it was novel

1906
01:47:45.780 --> 01:47:51.600
and there was a lot of uh variation a lot of serendipity involved with it right they did this

1907
01:47:51.660 --> 01:47:58.200
where um and it's self-report stuff so again this is preliminary okay but um people who engaged in

1908
01:47:58.280 --> 01:48:03.934
more high variance digital environments met more people online.

1909
01:48:03.995 --> 01:48:06.140
They found more interesting content

1910
01:48:06.301 --> 01:48:06.663
online.

1911
01:48:06.683 --> 01:48:10.080
They learned more online than people kind of just went to the same ones that were

1912
01:48:10.481 --> 01:48:13.030
lower variance environments.

1913
01:48:13.612 --> 01:48:15.900
I think this could easily translate into the real world too.

1914
01:48:16.540 --> 01:48:20.540
I mean, there's obviously an application for this in digital environments and online,

1915
01:48:20.660 --> 01:48:21.543
even social media.

1916
01:48:22.085 --> 01:48:26.880
But the point was like what they did is they measured all these people's

1917
01:48:26.940 --> 01:48:30.860
personality traits, you know, gave them a personality test, measured all of them.

1918
01:48:31.701 --> 01:48:38.120
Almost none of that predicted whether or not they found, like got lucky, had a serendipitous

1919
01:48:38.220 --> 01:48:41.494
encounter, met new people, found interesting content, any of that.

1920
01:48:41.554 --> 01:48:42.900
It was strictly almost

1921
01:48:43.121 --> 01:48:45.190
the environment that they put themselves into.

1922
01:48:45.310 --> 01:48:47.500
It's interesting because I do think this is

1923
01:48:47.580 --> 01:48:52.580
important because I know one of the criticisms Richard Wiseman's work has gotten is people have

1924
01:48:52.600 --> 01:48:56.676
said like, oh, you're just describing extroversion and openness to new experiences.

1925
01:48:56.837 --> 01:48:57.560
Like that's not

1926
01:48:57.700 --> 01:48:57.981
luck.

1927
01:48:58.021 --> 01:48:59.867
That's just personality, you know?

1928
01:48:59.927 --> 01:49:03.880
So like, I do think this finding is very relevant to that

1929
01:49:03.980 --> 01:49:07.391
because it's not, it's, it's behavior based.

1930
01:49:07.451 --> 01:49:09.357
It's not necessarily personality.

1931
01:49:09.418 --> 01:49:09.618
Sure.

1932
01:49:09.658 --> 01:49:10.140
An extrovert

1933
01:49:10.240 --> 01:49:14.540
is probably going to be better at having a large social network than a introverted person,

1934
01:49:14.761 --> 01:49:18.575
but ultimately it's the behavior that drives opportunities.

1935
01:49:18.615 --> 01:49:18.796
Right.

1936
01:49:19.057 --> 01:49:19.258
Right.

1937
01:49:19.438 --> 01:49:19.920
And that behavior

1938
01:49:20.041 --> 01:49:21.560
is choosing high variance environments.

1939
01:49:21.760 --> 01:49:21.920
Yes.

1940
01:49:22.041 --> 01:49:23.620
So again, go back to like my coffee shop example.

1941
01:49:23.660 --> 01:49:25.440
Instead of me sitting at home all day, every day

1942
01:49:25.703 --> 01:49:26.739
and working from my laptop,

1943
01:49:27.767 --> 01:49:29.240
I'll go out and bump into people.

1944
01:49:30.040 --> 01:49:31.480
And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

1945
01:49:31.600 --> 01:49:34.320
Or I'll go to that party that I decided not to go to.

1946
01:49:34.620 --> 01:49:37.920
Or there's a bigger thing you can think about though here too.

1947
01:49:38.321 --> 01:49:39.760
Like you talked about moving to New York.

1948
01:49:39.923 --> 01:49:40.040
Yeah.

1949
01:49:40.662 --> 01:49:41.980
That's a high variance environment

1950
01:49:42.101 --> 01:49:44.940
versus if you're living out in rural Idaho or whatever, right?

1951
01:49:45.902 --> 01:49:47.360
I think there's a lot of people too.

1952
01:49:48.663 --> 01:49:54.700
you could be the hardest working, most creative, talented person, and maybe you want to go be an

1953
01:49:54.881 --> 01:49:58.280
actor, but if you're not going to move out here to LA and you're, you insist on living in rural

1954
01:49:58.320 --> 01:50:01.580
Montana or whatever it is, I'm sorry, but that's just not going to happen.

1955
01:50:01.841 --> 01:50:07.020
Dude, I just had this conversation with a guy I know who's a YouTube consultant.

1956
01:50:07.240 --> 01:50:07.280
Yeah.

1957
01:50:08.302 --> 01:50:12.380
He was a big YouTuber a number of years ago, kind of pivoted into consultancy,

1958
01:50:13.323 --> 01:50:18.540
seemed to be doing great for a couple years but he lives on the other side of the world yeah and

1959
01:50:19.483 --> 01:50:23.839
he was here for vidcon yeah a couple weeks ago and i had a whole conversation with him like

1960
01:50:24.422 --> 01:50:28.560
i was like dude if you want to take the because he's it seems like he he's kind of in a rough

1961
01:50:28.861 --> 01:50:34.020
rough patch business wise and i was like how often do you come out to la and he's like wow

1962
01:50:34.120 --> 01:50:39.760
it's the first time i've been here in three years and i'm like bro like you gotta fish where the

1963
01:50:39.800 --> 01:50:44.040
fish are like you can't you can't just expect everybody to come to you even though he like

1964
01:50:44.080 --> 01:50:47.860
that's a digital environment that he's operating in so it seems like you could do everything remote

1965
01:50:48.000 --> 01:50:53.620
nope nope no you can't because it's it's and it was funny because we were at a local event here

1966
01:50:53.640 --> 01:51:01.700
in venice and just in the hour that he and i were there together we bumped into like three different

1967
01:51:01.800 --> 01:51:08.320
people who knew us online and like had really interesting conversations with them it's a very

1968
01:51:08.440 --> 01:51:08.902
real thing.

1969
01:51:08.943 --> 01:51:13.180
And I think especially for young people, this is such an important piece of advice.

1970
01:51:13.460 --> 01:51:19.820
Like if you, whatever industry you want to go into, you should strongly consider physically

1971
01:51:20.061 --> 01:51:22.911
moving yourself to the epicenter of that industry, right?

1972
01:51:22.931 --> 01:51:25.560
So if you want to be in finance, like you

1973
01:51:25.600 --> 01:51:26.724
should go to London, New York.

1974
01:51:26.784 --> 01:51:31.880
If you want to be in tech, like go to the Bay area, especially if

1975
01:51:31.900 --> 01:51:36.820
you're young, especially if you don't have other obligations or responsibilities to balance,

1976
01:51:37.262 --> 01:51:41.840
putting yourself in that high variance, high relevance environment to your goals,

1977
01:51:42.342 --> 01:51:44.532
it's just going to open up so many random opportunities.

1978
01:51:44.833 --> 01:51:45.154
It's funny.

1979
01:51:45.214 --> 01:51:46.500
I, I, uh, invested

1980
01:51:46.620 --> 01:51:47.383
in a company here.

1981
01:51:48.166 --> 01:51:52.340
Um, and I was talking to the co-founders and I asked them how they met each

1982
01:51:52.360 --> 01:51:52.561
other.

1983
01:51:52.601 --> 01:51:57.079
And they were like, Oh, we were roommates in Palo Alto when we both moved there.

1984
01:51:57.099 --> 01:51:57.380
And it was

1985
01:51:57.420 --> 01:51:59.694
funny because they both moved there to work at other companies.

1986
01:51:59.855 --> 01:52:00.660
And then they were roommates.

1987
01:52:00.860 --> 01:52:04.339
And then after like a year, they're like, Oh, we should just start our own company together.

1988
01:52:04.359 --> 01:52:04.500
And

1989
01:52:04.520 --> 01:52:07.320
It's like that never happens unless you move to Palo Alto.

1990
01:52:07.862 --> 01:52:09.420
That's a high variance environment there too.

1991
01:52:09.682 --> 01:52:09.793
Yeah.

1992
01:52:10.164 --> 01:52:10.298
Yeah.

1993
01:52:10.562 --> 01:52:11.499
Your business partner, Raj.

1994
01:52:11.884 --> 01:52:12.058
Yes.

1995
01:52:12.260 --> 01:52:13.000
Can you talk about how you met him?

1996
01:52:13.623 --> 01:52:14.620
Meta meta poker game.

1997
01:52:15.201 --> 01:52:15.488
Meta.

1998
01:52:16.665 --> 01:52:17.680
Very super meta.

1999
01:52:18.042 --> 01:52:18.600
Very, very meta.

2000
01:52:19.001 --> 01:52:19.351
It's funny.

2001
01:52:19.740 --> 01:52:24.620
He and I joke because that night I won a bunch of money and he lost a bunch of money.

2002
01:52:26.501 --> 01:52:32.500
But we joke that it was actually the highest ROI poker game he'd ever played in his life.

2003
01:52:32.520 --> 01:52:33.621
Yeah.

2004
01:52:34.382 --> 01:52:36.184
But yeah, just sat down next to him.

2005
01:52:36.364 --> 01:52:48.196
I was looking to get into AI for personal growth and development and had already been talking to a number of startups about partnering with them or doing something with them.

2006
01:52:48.736 --> 01:52:52.500
Sat down next to Raj, start chatting very casually.

2007
01:52:52.641 --> 01:52:57.760
and one of the first things he says to me he's like oh i've been building ai products for 10

2008
01:52:57.860 --> 01:53:01.940
years i've sold my first two companies i'm thinking about getting into mental health

2009
01:53:02.983 --> 01:53:08.520
what are you working on and i was like oh my god okay i don't i'm not like a fate person i don't

2010
01:53:08.580 --> 01:53:14.340
really believe in that sort of thing but wow yeah yeah but it's like sometimes it just slaps you in

2011
01:53:14.360 --> 01:53:23.919
the face and it's like hey moron here it is here's your opportunity take it yeah okay and there's i

2012
01:53:24.280 --> 01:53:27.260
think you can bring it down to earth too if you're not one of those people who is going to move to

2013
01:53:27.280 --> 01:53:32.640
new york london or la or whatever it is just like i was saying go to the go to the coffee shop or

2014
01:53:32.660 --> 01:53:37.520
whatever just like last week i went was watching one of the world cup games with some friends and

2015
01:53:37.741 --> 01:53:40.860
some of my friends were like oh we're gonna go grab a drink and i was like how can i tag along

2016
01:53:40.900 --> 01:53:41.121
you know?

2017
01:53:41.141 --> 01:53:44.175
So it went, and we ran into this guy I met 10 years ago.

2018
01:53:44.195 --> 01:53:45.120
I haven't talked to him since

2019
01:53:45.401 --> 01:53:46.767
or whatever and got caught up with him.

2020
01:53:47.008 --> 01:53:49.980
He's running an, like a, he's importing teak wood

2021
01:53:50.241 --> 01:53:53.058
now, like as a business that what she wasn't doing at the time.

2022
01:53:53.098 --> 01:53:53.460
And he's like,

2023
01:53:53.801 --> 01:53:55.105
now I got a source of teak wood.

2024
01:53:55.145 --> 01:53:57.453
I have, right.

2025
01:53:57.573 --> 01:53:58.215
I'm a woodworker.

2026
01:53:58.236 --> 01:53:59.339
So it's actually a fortunate

2027
01:53:59.620 --> 01:54:00.144
thing for me.

2028
01:54:00.204 --> 01:54:02.420
I wouldn't have done that if I wouldn't have just decided, yeah, I'll go grab

2029
01:54:02.480 --> 01:54:03.244
a drink with you guys.

2030
01:54:03.264 --> 01:54:03.546
You know?

2031
01:54:03.727 --> 01:54:06.280
So, so stuff like that, just like increasing your surface area.

2032
01:54:06.440 --> 01:54:07.627
If you're like, Oh, my life is boring.

2033
01:54:07.647 --> 01:54:10.000
And you know, all of this, just stuff like that,

2034
01:54:10.020 --> 01:54:15.160
just simple stuff like that what's interesting is that uh this is something that um companies

2035
01:54:15.260 --> 01:54:21.140
have understood for a long time so if you look at um like corporate floor plans where where they put

2036
01:54:21.260 --> 01:54:26.220
different like there's all sorts of stories about like pixar and apple and how they like lay out

2037
01:54:26.240 --> 01:54:29.960
their floor plans and how they put the engineers next to the artists and make sure that they all

2038
01:54:30.080 --> 01:54:37.380
they have to talk to each other um and it just like they they measure this and they see real out

2039
01:54:37.561 --> 01:54:41.253
like increased outputs in terms of creativity and innovative ideas.

2040
01:54:41.855 --> 01:54:43.180
Google did something super cool

2041
01:54:43.240 --> 01:54:47.420
in their early days, which is they, uh, I'm trying to remember what they called it, but, um, in their

2042
01:54:47.480 --> 01:54:54.620
early days, um, their entire engineering team had one day a week to work on whatever they had.

2043
01:54:54.861 --> 01:54:55.443
Yeah.

2044
01:54:55.985 --> 01:54:56.707
And 20% of our time.

2045
01:54:56.727 --> 01:54:56.888
Yeah.

2046
01:54:57.008 --> 01:55:00.500
It was, it was, you, you had to come in, you had to work on

2047
01:55:00.600 --> 01:55:03.434
something, but it was, it could be any project you wanted.

2048
01:55:03.474 --> 01:55:04.740
And some of Google's most valuable

2049
01:55:04.901 --> 01:55:09.120
assets came out of like google maps came out of that and gmail gmail came out of that like a bunch

2050
01:55:09.240 --> 01:55:15.000
of kind of the early infrastructure of the internet came out of just google engineers

2051
01:55:15.040 --> 01:55:22.240
screwing around on a friday afternoon um because google understood these are brilliant creative

2052
01:55:22.361 --> 01:55:26.900
people if we give them opportunity to explore their interests they're going to find so many

2053
01:55:26.960 --> 01:55:32.720
things that we would never think of and they did okay yeah so i mean i think the point you know i

2054
01:55:32.840 --> 01:55:37.640
And like I said, I've kind of had a lot of like really good earth luck just in general, like the people around me and everything.

2055
01:55:38.242 --> 01:55:41.460
I felt like I didn't do a whole lot to influence that.

2056
01:55:41.601 --> 01:55:42.399
Later on in my life, I did.

2057
01:55:42.520 --> 01:55:43.980
But early on, I had just good earth luck.

2058
01:55:44.420 --> 01:55:53.520
But the whole point of this is that like you can't design the city that you live in or whatever, but you can choose the city that you live in, right?

2059
01:55:53.902 --> 01:55:55.180
There is some influence to this.

2060
01:55:55.220 --> 01:55:57.159
Whereas heaven luck, we don't have any control over it.

2061
01:55:57.367 --> 01:55:57.620
Correct.

2062
01:55:58.200 --> 01:56:00.600
Earth luck, we can influence it to some degree.

2063
01:56:01.000 --> 01:56:09.027
The way I think about it is earth luck is, you know, heaven luck is the super macro stuff that we have zero control over.

2064
01:56:09.887 --> 01:56:18.594
Human luck is like the micro stuff, the day to day decisions, the calculations, you know, it's like, should I buy a house or not?

2065
01:56:18.614 --> 01:56:21.316
Should I get a new car or not?

2066
01:56:21.336 --> 01:56:26.080
Like all of these things that you can kind of sit down and calculate the expected value of.

2067
01:56:27.222 --> 01:56:35.020
earth luck to me is like the periodic high leverage decisions that alter thousands of

2068
01:56:35.060 --> 01:56:40.580
other decisions so it's where you decide to live what city you decide to live what industry you

2069
01:56:40.640 --> 01:56:46.120
decide to go into what partner you choose to marry like this is something that you don't think of

2070
01:56:46.842 --> 01:56:54.000
as luck right but it's like if you choose to marry a partner who is very emotionally unstable

2071
01:56:54.141 --> 01:56:58.100
is like constantly in crises,

2072
01:56:58.721 --> 01:57:00.079
makes lots of bad decisions.

2073
01:57:00.700 --> 01:57:01.399
Terrible with their money.

2074
01:57:01.641 --> 01:57:02.560
Terrible with their money.

2075
01:57:02.900 --> 01:57:05.440
You know, it's like unpredictable, volatile.

2076
01:57:06.620 --> 01:57:07.060
Guess what?

2077
01:57:07.100 --> 01:57:07.719
Look at the odds.

2078
01:57:08.001 --> 01:57:09.440
You're probably going to create

2079
01:57:09.501 --> 01:57:10.920
a lot of bad luck for yourself

2080
01:57:11.082 --> 01:57:12.720
because you are choosing to share a life

2081
01:57:12.780 --> 01:57:15.560
with a person who creates

2082
01:57:15.601 --> 01:57:17.160
all sorts of downside opportunities.

2083
01:57:17.745 --> 01:57:18.600
Whereas if you marry somebody

2084
01:57:18.641 --> 01:57:20.000
who's like extremely reliable,

2085
01:57:20.160 --> 01:57:21.179
makes really good decisions,

2086
01:57:21.480 --> 01:57:23.220
is a great communicator,

2087
01:57:23.681 --> 01:57:29.700
has a great social network is very good at making new friends and finding new opportunities you are

2088
01:57:29.740 --> 01:57:33.980
increasing your earth luck by being with that person and sharing your life with that person

2089
01:57:34.141 --> 01:57:39.140
so it's like these mega decisions that create all sorts of downstream effects in other areas

2090
01:57:39.200 --> 01:57:45.800
of your life and it it can be easy to look at a situation and be like well that guy just got lucky

2091
01:57:45.960 --> 01:57:51.160
because his wife's super smart and it's like no he's not lucky he fucking chose her right like

2092
01:57:51.441 --> 01:57:58.520
Like there's a certain understanding that like a good partner is going to make all the other areas of your life better.

2093
01:57:58.781 --> 01:58:06.360
Out of the three lucks, I think first luck is the hardest to kind of conceptualize, but I also think it's the most important.

2094
01:58:07.021 --> 01:58:12.460
I think it is what creates the greatest outcomes for us in our lives.

2095
01:58:13.140 --> 01:58:16.660
Having luck, you're really just trying to make peace with it, find a way to feel good about it.

2096
01:58:17.222 --> 01:58:22.520
human luck you're just trying to make rational decisions and kind of be objective about the

2097
01:58:22.560 --> 01:58:29.160
situation you're in but earth luck is like it feels like earth luck is where the biggest gains

2098
01:58:29.802 --> 01:58:34.260
come from the biggest wins come from and that they kind of come back to the poker analogy

2099
01:58:34.942 --> 01:58:40.780
you know if heaven luck is the cards you're dealt and human luck is uh the way you choose to play

2100
01:58:40.820 --> 01:58:46.380
those cards earth luck is the table that you choose to play at or it's the game you choose

2101
01:58:46.440 --> 01:58:46.962
to enter.

2102
01:58:47.584 --> 01:58:52.399
And some games have far more players and far more cards being dealt than others.

2103
01:58:52.459 --> 01:58:52.640
Some

2104
01:58:53.182 --> 01:58:56.974
games have more opportunities and more variants than others.

2105
01:58:57.576 --> 01:58:58.760
And there's that old saying,

2106
01:58:58.880 --> 01:59:01.710
it's like play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right?

2107
01:59:01.931 --> 01:59:03.758
Play good games, win good prizes.

2108
01:59:03.818 --> 01:59:03.938
Game

2109
01:59:04.540 --> 01:59:08.330
selection is such a huge part of life.

2110
01:59:09.172 --> 01:59:12.640
And finding the right game to situate yourself in that matches

2111
01:59:12.740 --> 01:59:18.240
your talents, that fits your goals, that gives you more surface area for good things to happen

2112
01:59:18.906 --> 01:59:20.280
is just so key.

2113
01:59:20.280 --> 01:59:20.391
Yeah.

2114
01:59:20.520 --> 01:59:25.479
I think what you're kind of getting at is about power laws, what we call power laws.

2115
01:59:25.720 --> 01:59:25.840
Yes.

2116
01:59:26.000 --> 01:59:26.111
Okay.

2117
01:59:27.241 --> 01:59:31.800
And power laws, they determine basically the ceiling of your outcome, right?

2118
01:59:32.060 --> 01:59:34.180
So yeah, you pick the right table, you pick the right game.

2119
01:59:34.564 --> 01:59:35.780
Some tables have bigger pots.

2120
01:59:36.402 --> 01:59:36.678
Yes.

2121
01:59:37.322 --> 01:59:40.080
Whether you win that or not is kind of how you play the game and the human luck, right?

2122
01:59:40.160 --> 01:59:43.639
But which tables you sit down at really do matter, right?

2123
01:59:43.800 --> 01:59:46.820
And we've kind of alluded to this already, the career you pick and all of that, right?

2124
01:59:48.081 --> 01:59:51.860
There are the, what I would call power law environments, right?

2125
01:59:52.682 --> 01:59:54.699
So let's just take an example.

2126
01:59:54.920 --> 01:59:56.400
Let's say you want to be a dentist, okay?

2127
01:59:56.801 --> 01:59:58.640
And let's say you want to be the best dentist in the world.

2128
01:59:59.982 --> 02:00:03.638
How much more are you earning as the best dentist in the world compared to the 20th

2129
02:00:04.263 --> 02:00:05.300
best dentist in the world?

2130
02:00:06.503 --> 02:00:07.920
Or the second best dentist in the world.

2131
02:00:07.920 --> 02:00:09.360
Or even the average dentist, right?

2132
02:00:09.520 --> 02:00:11.242
Maybe twice as much.

2133
02:00:11.302 --> 02:00:11.643
I don't know.

2134
02:00:11.763 --> 02:00:12.564
Three times as much.

2135
02:00:12.584 --> 02:00:12.784
Yeah.

2136
02:00:12.884 --> 02:00:13.124
Right.

2137
02:00:13.945 --> 02:00:20.674
So my point, though, like dentistry, accounting, manual labor, construction jobs, whatever, those have a ceiling.

2138
02:00:21.014 --> 02:00:24.118
Those are the tables where you sit down and like the pot is only so big.

2139
02:00:24.218 --> 02:00:24.438
Right.

2140
02:00:24.698 --> 02:00:26.080
And it's not going to get any bigger than that.

2141
02:00:26.100 --> 02:00:27.740
Yeah, the success curve is pretty flat.

2142
02:00:27.981 --> 02:00:29.040
Pretty flat there, right?

2143
02:00:29.140 --> 02:00:35.760
So these are the industries where effort and skill actually do compound pretty reliably.

2144
02:00:36.201 --> 02:00:38.240
It just limits out pretty early, right?

2145
02:00:39.941 --> 02:00:44.460
There's no real single event in any one of these industries or tables that you sit at

2146
02:00:44.600 --> 02:00:49.800
that could wildly give you wild success in any one of these, right?

2147
02:00:49.800 --> 02:00:56.498
But compare that to something like entrepreneurship or the publishing world or technology.

2148
02:00:58.040 --> 02:01:07.680
One of these where it's like there are wild, wild gains to be had from very, very minor differences in really quality or yeah, results.

2149
02:01:07.700 --> 02:01:08.047
Yeah.

2150
02:01:08.129 --> 02:01:08.700
And result.

2151
02:01:08.920 --> 02:01:13.980
You can be 1% better at like product design and probably make 100 times more money.

2152
02:01:14.429 --> 02:01:14.600
Right.

2153
02:01:15.082 --> 02:01:16.420
If you're a software company.

2154
02:01:16.523 --> 02:01:16.680
Right.

2155
02:01:17.322 --> 02:01:21.980
let's just i don't know randomly pick the publishing industry okay why would you pick

2156
02:01:22.000 --> 02:01:28.040
that one right so i'm i'm sitting across from someone who's sold millions and millions of books

2157
02:01:28.321 --> 02:01:35.040
right how would you uh how would you characterize that in terms of your earth luck that you've had

2158
02:01:36.024 --> 02:01:40.180
see it's funny because the success the outcome has been so disproportionate it's actually fucked

2159
02:01:40.220 --> 02:01:45.900
with my head yeah right like subtle the subtle art not giving a fuck i think if you look at kind

2160
02:01:45.920 --> 02:01:51.120
of like the median self-help book the subtle art not giving a fuck has probably produced

2161
02:01:51.781 --> 02:01:56.493
20 000 times the result yeah right like a two what is that two million percent

2162
02:02:00.644 --> 02:02:05.960
increased result it's not 20 000 times better than the median so it's probably it's maybe twice as

2163
02:02:06.000 --> 02:02:14.300
good as the median self-help book uh so that curve that success curve is just insanely steep and it

2164
02:02:14.380 --> 02:02:18.780
is and you see this in the publishing industry you see this in media in general and entertainment

2165
02:02:18.920 --> 02:02:28.460
in general uh that it's like the 0.001 generates like 90 of the money and coming back to the game

2166
02:02:28.500 --> 02:02:34.038
analogy again it's like being aware of the game that you're signing up to play right like i

2167
02:02:34.820 --> 02:02:40.320
originally wanted to be a musician one of the things that you have to be very sober about if

2168
02:02:40.440 --> 02:02:46.677
you want to pursue music is that you are signing up for a game that out of a thousand people 999

2169
02:02:47.901 --> 02:02:52.860
of them are not really going to make much money at all and then that one person out of a thousand

2170
02:02:52.960 --> 02:02:58.300
is going to be incredibly successful and have a like a hell of a career right so that's the game

2171
02:02:58.320 --> 02:03:03.739
you're signing up for and it's important to know and understand that curve because any sort of luck

2172
02:03:04.160 --> 02:03:09.720
that you stumble into in a game like that you're going to have like a massively outsized upside

2173
02:03:10.422 --> 02:03:15.360
than again, say like if you go into accounting or dentistry or whatever, like a lucky dentist is

2174
02:03:15.460 --> 02:03:18.935
probably not that much better off than an unlucky dentist.

2175
02:03:18.955 --> 02:03:20.140
Whereas a lucky musician

2176
02:03:20.963 --> 02:03:23.232
is much better off than an unlucky musician.

2177
02:03:23.252 --> 02:03:23.473
Right.

2178
02:03:23.734 --> 02:03:23.934
Right.

2179
02:03:24.336 --> 02:03:25.380
And we, we look at people in

2180
02:03:25.420 --> 02:03:29.139
those industries in those like asymmetric industries where it's not a bell curve.

2181
02:03:29.199 --> 02:03:29.280
It's

2182
02:03:29.561 --> 02:03:34.080
like a lot of, a few people make all of the returns in it or get all the success in whatever

2183
02:03:34.201 --> 02:03:34.964
way that's measured.

2184
02:03:35.185 --> 02:03:35.426
Right.

2185
02:03:35.566 --> 02:03:35.747
Yeah.

2186
02:03:35.868 --> 02:03:38.780
We look, a lot of us from the outside, look it in and say,

2187
02:03:38.920 --> 02:03:44.440
oh they got lucky and yes they did they got lucky but they also were playing a game in which the

2188
02:03:44.500 --> 02:03:50.360
luck had outsized yes uh effects that had outsized returns on it yeah and so that that's the earth

2189
02:03:50.420 --> 02:03:55.960
luck aspect of this right choosing that game and choosing that realm to play in i guess it's like

2190
02:03:56.201 --> 02:04:01.760
that can make all the difference yeah yeah it's interesting not to keep coming back to napoleon

2191
02:04:02.502 --> 02:04:07.840
i can't agree to pull you back okay all right i'm keeping you on a short leash on this one right

2192
02:04:08.100 --> 02:04:09.261
Napoleon, he's my man.

2193
02:04:09.442 --> 02:04:11.724
I just, I'm a little obsessed with the guy right now.

2194
02:04:11.944 --> 02:04:18.791
The interesting thing about Napoleon that's very related to this, he didn't become emperor with some elaborate coup attempt.

2195
02:04:18.831 --> 02:04:25.458
Like he didn't have like thousands of armed forces lined up and he didn't like mastermind and plan this massive thing.

2196
02:04:26.218 --> 02:04:27.720
It was relatively spontaneous.

2197
02:04:27.820 --> 02:04:33.760
is what he did is he put himself continually put himself in a political position where he was

2198
02:04:34.642 --> 02:04:42.460
always there as a an appealing alternative to whatever kind of political upheaval the uh the

2199
02:04:42.520 --> 02:04:47.640
french revolution was going through and sure enough eventually an opportunity arose like a

2200
02:04:47.740 --> 02:04:52.700
window opened and he was there ready to take it but he wasn't sitting there trying to pry a window

2201
02:04:52.860 --> 02:05:01.380
open with like storming paris with thousands of troops power law situation yeah upside is emperor

2202
02:05:01.941 --> 02:05:10.320
of france all right i'm done okay i'll i'll leave it to rest well no okay but so there's these power

2203
02:05:10.380 --> 02:05:15.600
laws environments but there's also like power law moments throughout history too right and this kind

2204
02:05:15.620 --> 02:05:19.980
of this is where heaven luck and earth luck kind of meet each other a little bit so you know for

2205
02:05:20.020 --> 02:05:25.100
example like everybody says you know if you wanted to be uh bill gates or bill or steve jobs or

2206
02:05:25.100 --> 02:05:29.320
whatever then be born when bill gates and steve jobs were born mid-50s was like the time if you

2207
02:05:29.320 --> 02:05:34.060
wanted to hit the computing revolution that was the perfect time to be born malcolm gladwell talks

2208
02:05:34.100 --> 02:05:38.260
about this in his books right there's like a heaven luck aspect to that but then they were

2209
02:05:38.401 --> 02:05:42.920
they played the game they they caught that revolution at the right time and they were in

2210
02:05:42.980 --> 02:05:46.672
that arena so you can take that you know from like 75 to 1975 to 1985 that was about like if you were

2211
02:05:49.501 --> 02:05:54.100
in the peak of your career, prime beginning of your career, that was a great time to be.

2212
02:05:54.140 --> 02:05:54.200
And

2213
02:05:54.200 --> 02:05:55.385
that's exactly where they were.

2214
02:05:55.566 --> 02:05:55.767
Yeah.

2215
02:05:55.907 --> 02:05:56.148
Right.

2216
02:05:56.751 --> 02:05:58.920
Um, another one would have been like social networking,

2217
02:05:59.100 --> 02:06:01.911
roughly 2004 to 2010 ish, something like that.

2218
02:06:02.112 --> 02:06:03.719
That's when you and I were coming.

2219
02:06:03.739 --> 02:06:04.020
That's when

2220
02:06:04.100 --> 02:06:04.883
you and I were coming up.

2221
02:06:05.184 --> 02:06:08.637
You like built your whole career really on social media.

2222
02:06:08.918 --> 02:06:09.139
Right.

2223
02:06:09.159 --> 02:06:09.199
So

2224
02:06:09.380 --> 02:06:10.868
like you hit the perfect time for that.

2225
02:06:11.331 --> 02:06:13.000
And really it was, it was Facebook tried to build anything

2226
02:06:13.080 --> 02:06:14.405
on Facebook now and good luck.

2227
02:06:14.445 --> 02:06:14.706
Right.

2228
02:06:14.767 --> 02:06:15.309
Like, yeah.

2229
02:06:15.891 --> 02:06:18.400
What's fascinating too is, is it, so if you look

2230
02:06:18.420 --> 02:06:25.700
at mark zuckerberg yeah it's the stuff he was building right before he built facebook it's

2231
02:06:25.740 --> 02:06:30.520
actually pretty crazy so like the project he built in high school with one of his friends

2232
02:06:31.002 --> 02:06:36.440
it was essentially spotify oh yeah it was just too early like uh the computing power hadn't

2233
02:06:36.480 --> 02:06:40.120
caught up yet and it wasn't really scalable across the internet and then he built something

2234
02:06:40.200 --> 02:06:46.540
else even before that that was like that was also like has gone on to become like a multi-billion

2235
02:06:46.600 --> 02:06:47.222
dollar company.

2236
02:06:47.664 --> 02:06:50.534
And he was like building this stuff for fun as a teenager.

2237
02:06:51.276 --> 02:06:52.420
And it just so happened

2238
02:06:52.480 --> 02:06:56.155
that like, he was too early on a lot of these concepts and ideas.

2239
02:06:56.256 --> 02:06:57.280
And then Facebook was the

2240
02:06:57.400 --> 02:07:00.675
one that he like hit perfectly hit the right moment perfectly.

2241
02:07:01.076 --> 02:07:01.940
So on the one hand, you could

2242
02:07:01.980 --> 02:07:05.900
look at somebody like Zuckerberg and be like, I do got really lucky built the right thing at the

2243
02:07:05.920 --> 02:07:06.341
right time.

2244
02:07:06.742 --> 02:07:08.006
And yeah, sure, he did.

2245
02:07:08.568 --> 02:07:12.760
But he was also putting himself in those positions repeatedly,

2246
02:07:13.563 --> 02:07:17.740
knowing and understanding that like okay if i keep building these amazing software products

2247
02:07:18.302 --> 02:07:23.860
eventually one's going to catch at the right moment and and it you know it'll take off from

2248
02:07:23.900 --> 02:07:28.900
there i i think of it as like and maybe this is because i like surfing but like i think of it as

2249
02:07:28.920 --> 02:07:36.000
like waves waves come and even if you miss one there's going to be another one um and so in one

2250
02:07:36.040 --> 02:07:41.120
sense it is heaven luck and that like sure there's only one computing revolution or there's only one

2251
02:07:41.741 --> 02:07:48.640
social media revolution but there's always another wave coming you know on the horizon

2252
02:07:48.680 --> 02:07:52.220
and if you just wait and put yourself try to put yourself in the right position

2253
02:07:53.183 --> 02:07:59.060
you can catch it and ride it right such as like right now with ai right yeah here's the next wave

2254
02:07:59.421 --> 02:08:04.280
totally and and i mean you've you jumped on that too pretty early on and um i think that'll be

2255
02:08:05.003 --> 02:08:08.500
we'll see how that plays out but i mean i don't think there's anybody right now who denies that

2256
02:08:09.343 --> 02:08:14.560
that's this is the wave now for sure and the thing about trying to catch waves like this is that

2257
02:08:15.783 --> 02:08:21.780
there's very little downside to trying yes yeah right oh yeah worst case scenario you try to

2258
02:08:21.800 --> 02:08:25.780
build facebook before the world's ready for facebook and so you just you know you wasted

2259
02:08:26.542 --> 02:08:31.680
a year of your life or something working on something um that's like not compared to the

2260
02:08:31.860 --> 02:08:36.053
upside of building Facebook, that's a very small downside.

2261
02:08:36.514 --> 02:08:38.620
So you lose very little, but you stand

2262
02:08:38.660 --> 02:08:41.288
to gain just an absurd amount.

2263
02:08:41.469 --> 02:08:44.257
And again, this is it's, it's game selection.

2264
02:08:44.658 --> 02:08:45.280
You know, it's like

2265
02:08:45.481 --> 02:08:47.528
knowing which game to insert yourself into.

2266
02:08:47.548 --> 02:08:49.034
Yeah.

2267
02:08:49.456 --> 02:08:50.620
I want to point out just a little bit of the

2268
02:08:50.660 --> 02:08:51.986
heaven luck involved in this too.

2269
02:08:52.006 --> 02:08:54.196
So Zuckerberg born in 1984, same as us.

2270
02:08:54.277 --> 02:08:55.040
He's like a month older

2271
02:08:55.121 --> 02:08:56.219
than I am, I think, something like that.

2272
02:08:58.264 --> 02:08:59.020
Let's see, Sam Altman,

2273
02:08:59.805 --> 02:09:01.179
CEO of OpenAI.

2274
02:09:01.661 --> 02:09:02.512
I think he was born in 85 or 86.

2275
02:09:03.760 --> 02:09:04.536
Dario Amadei,

2276
02:09:05.926 --> 02:09:06.736
head of Anthropic.

2277
02:09:06.816 --> 02:09:07.120
He was born

2278
02:09:07.140 --> 02:09:07.322
in 1983.

2279
02:09:07.342 --> 02:09:07.544
So we're

2280
02:09:09.040 --> 02:09:10.373
in one of those windows again, I think.

2281
02:09:10.393 --> 02:09:11.080
We're going to see

2282
02:09:11.161 --> 02:09:12.313
that again, which is pretty

2283
02:09:13.020 --> 02:09:13.404
interesting.

2284
02:09:13.566 --> 02:09:15.060
And there'll be another one after

2285
02:09:15.201 --> 02:09:15.282
us.

2286
02:09:15.484 --> 02:09:16.920
Ten years from now, there'll be another one.

2287
02:09:17.000 --> 02:09:18.111
There absolutely will be.

2288
02:09:18.192 --> 02:09:18.898
So I'm not trying

2289
02:09:19.100 --> 02:09:21.140
to say, oh, if you weren't born in one of these years, then you're

2290
02:09:21.140 --> 02:09:21.463
screwed.

2291
02:09:21.503 --> 02:09:22.190
No, not at all.

2292
02:09:22.311 --> 02:09:23.220
The next wave

2293
02:09:23.220 --> 02:09:28.360
will come only they were as lucky as us i know right there was i mean you think about it though

2294
02:09:28.380 --> 02:09:33.340
too yeah born in the born in the mid 80s like we grew up without the internet yeah it came at the

2295
02:09:33.380 --> 02:09:37.739
right time we're kind of like adolescents i wasn't like it was even later for me because i was in

2296
02:09:38.001 --> 02:09:42.460
up out of nowhere town that didn't get the internet for a while you know so i got delayed by a couple

2297
02:09:42.520 --> 02:09:47.560
of years even more which was probably a good thing i just think our generation was incredibly lucky

2298
02:09:48.286 --> 02:09:49.940
because we got all the best music.

2299
02:09:50.844 --> 02:09:51.420
Oh, you think so?

2300
02:09:52.260 --> 02:09:52.840
90s, man.

2301
02:09:52.901 --> 02:09:53.439
Oh, the 90s, okay.

2302
02:09:53.480 --> 02:09:53.686
The 90s.

2303
02:09:54.300 --> 02:09:55.960
I don't know if you're going to say like Screamo Punk or something.

2304
02:09:56.060 --> 02:09:56.300
I don't know.

2305
02:09:56.300 --> 02:09:57.039
It was the best music.

2306
02:09:57.123 --> 02:09:57.380
It was.

2307
02:09:57.481 --> 02:09:58.040
Absolutely was.

2308
02:09:58.541 --> 02:09:58.820
There was.

2309
02:09:59.001 --> 02:10:00.536
There's a lot of other ways we were lucky, though, too.

2310
02:10:02.041 --> 02:10:05.760
Just not growing up with devices glued to our face.

2311
02:10:07.703 --> 02:10:08.959
Being free-range kids and all that.

2312
02:10:09.923 --> 02:10:11.220
Every generation has their good luck.

2313
02:10:11.769 --> 02:10:12.460
I think that was ours.

2314
02:10:14.043 --> 02:10:16.778
And yeah, we'll see how that plays out.

2315
02:10:17.400 --> 02:10:17.440
Okay.

2316
02:10:17.760 --> 02:10:17.941
Yeah.

2317
02:10:18.382 --> 02:10:25.880
Heaven luck sets the context in the container, I guess, in which we live our life

2318
02:10:25.960 --> 02:10:27.203
and make our decisions.

2319
02:10:28.045 --> 02:10:32.817
Earth luck is the way we position ourselves in our life.

2320
02:10:33.639 --> 02:10:33.940
And there are

2321
02:10:33.960 --> 02:10:37.873
certain advantageous places to position yourself versus others.

2322
02:10:38.616 --> 02:10:39.760
Heaven luck, we don't control.

2323
02:10:39.961 --> 02:10:47.000
Earth luck, we have some control, but it's like periodic, large-scale decision-making.

2324
02:10:48.281 --> 02:10:56.211
In the next chapter, we're going to get into human luck, which is the day-to-day probabilistic understanding of like, is this going to work?

2325
02:10:56.872 --> 02:10:57.893
Is this a good decision?

2326
02:10:58.794 --> 02:11:03.500
How do I set myself up to make sure I'm making a good decision and not screwing myself over?

2327
02:11:04.422 --> 02:11:11.359
this is when we get into actually understanding uh how much failure is to be expected how much

2328
02:11:11.640 --> 02:11:18.240
is normal and how to best proceed in situations that are largely ambiguous and and unclear

2329
02:11:19.766 --> 02:11:23.600
and so we'll be coming back with special guest annie duke who's a former professional poker

2330
02:11:23.700 --> 02:11:28.840
player and a phd in cognitive science and decision making and she's going to help us

2331
02:11:28.900 --> 02:11:34.880
understand all of the amazing ways that we can help maximize our luck in our day-to-day decision

2332
02:11:34.960 --> 02:11:35.241
making.

2333
02:11:38.628 --> 02:11:40.612
First, a quick word from our sponsors.

2334
02:11:41.113 --> 02:11:44.239
This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

2335
02:11:44.259 --> 02:11:44.780
You

2336
02:11:44.780 --> 02:11:49.457
know the friend who's been about to launch something for like three years?

2337
02:11:49.838 --> 02:11:50.240
Yeah, don't be

2338
02:11:50.300 --> 02:11:50.702
that guy.

2339
02:11:51.103 --> 02:11:55.077
The whole lesson of human luck is that it doesn't reward the best idea.

2340
02:11:55.278 --> 02:11:55.840
It rewards the

2341
02:11:55.920 --> 02:11:57.526
person who actually started.

2342
02:11:57.727 --> 02:12:00.177
And what stops people is never the idea.

2343
02:12:00.277 --> 02:12:01.060
It's the logistics

2344
02:12:01.281 --> 02:12:02.224
picture behind it.

2345
02:12:02.546 --> 02:12:03.911
How do I actually build a store?

2346
02:12:04.212 --> 02:12:05.155
How do I take payments?

2347
02:12:05.456 --> 02:12:05.778
How do I look

2348
02:12:06.581 --> 02:12:07.143
legit?

2349
02:12:07.183 --> 02:12:08.227
Like I know what I'm doing.

2350
02:12:08.729 --> 02:12:11.178
Good news is Shopify has already solved all that.

2351
02:12:11.258 --> 02:12:11.660
And it's all

2352
02:12:11.720 --> 02:12:14.331
waiting for you at shopify.com slash solved.

2353
02:12:14.652 --> 02:12:16.700
When a customer is ready to pay, Shopify checkout is

2354
02:12:16.800 --> 02:12:17.985
built to close the sale.

2355
02:12:18.145 --> 02:12:20.354
And when they come back, their details are saved.

2356
02:12:20.715 --> 02:12:21.900
One tap and they're done.

2357
02:12:22.342 --> 02:12:26.980
Set up and checkout handles themselves, so you get to the fun part, growing the actual business.

2358
02:12:27.360 --> 02:12:32.820
The luck was never in having the idea, it's in the starting, and Shopify removed every excuse not to.

2359
02:12:33.240 --> 02:12:37.880
With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business, so go make it one.

2360
02:12:38.482 --> 02:12:41.080
Start your free trial at shopify.com slash solved.

2361
02:12:41.361 --> 02:12:44.720
Start your free trial at shopify.com slash solved.

2362
02:12:45.202 --> 02:12:45.727
And we're back.

2363
02:12:46.252 --> 02:12:47.180
Welcome back to Solved.

2364
02:12:50.347 --> 02:12:56.020
for this next chapter i am joined by a special guest annie duke is here annie duke is a former

2365
02:12:56.160 --> 02:13:01.860
professional poker player an author a business consultant an educator and a mother of four

2366
02:13:02.522 --> 02:13:07.200
annie duke has won multiple world series of poker bracelets and over four million dollars worth of

2367
02:13:07.300 --> 02:13:12.260
winnings throughout her career more importantly annie duke is an academic and an educator she

2368
02:13:12.340 --> 02:13:17.979
has a PhD in cognitive psychology from UPenn, where she specializes in decision science.

2369
02:13:18.340 --> 02:13:18.400
She

2370
02:13:18.440 --> 02:13:24.440
is a three-time author of Thinking in Bets, How to Decide and Quit, When to Know When to Walk Away.

2371
02:13:24.900 --> 02:13:29.300
And today she is here with me to help break down how to think about luck in our day-to-day lives

2372
02:13:29.561 --> 02:13:31.708
and make better decisions in the face of it.

2373
02:13:32.210 --> 02:13:33.635
So Annie, welcome to the show.

2374
02:13:34.257 --> 02:13:34.960
It's great to have

2375
02:13:35.000 --> 02:13:35.301
you here.

2376
02:13:35.742 --> 02:13:41.320
And my first question for you is what Napoleon asked all of his generals, which is how

2377
02:13:41.440 --> 02:13:42.062
lucky are you?

2378
02:13:42.504 --> 02:13:43.628
Oh, how lucky am I?

2379
02:13:43.668 --> 02:13:43.949
Yes.

2380
02:13:44.330 --> 02:13:47.139
I'm going to give you a slightly unexpected answer.

2381
02:13:47.260 --> 02:13:47.400
Okay.

2382
02:13:48.821 --> 02:13:54.240
I assume when you're asking me how lucky I am, you're asking me if on average I've had good luck

2383
02:13:54.300 --> 02:13:55.223
or bad luck.

2384
02:13:55.645 --> 02:13:58.254
But I actually think of luck as a relatively neutral term.

2385
02:13:58.575 --> 02:14:00.080
Luck is just a force

2386
02:14:00.180 --> 02:14:03.087
that happens upon you, basically.

2387
02:14:03.649 --> 02:14:07.117
Do I have a better than average outcome than expectation

2388
02:14:08.862 --> 02:14:12.500
given what my possible outcomes were when I was born?

2389
02:14:13.223 --> 02:14:13.938
I would guess yes.

2390
02:14:14.160 --> 02:14:14.271
Okay.

2391
02:14:14.942 --> 02:14:15.250
Right?

2392
02:14:15.435 --> 02:14:15.640
Yeah.

2393
02:14:16.985 --> 02:14:19.920
I would say, I would say yeah, I do.

2394
02:14:20.403 --> 02:14:21.900
You're in, you're a general of the army.

2395
02:14:22.040 --> 02:14:22.660
Welcome aboard.

2396
02:14:23.148 --> 02:14:23.460
Thank you.

2397
02:14:25.147 --> 02:14:26.240
Let me set some context here.

2398
02:14:26.361 --> 02:14:28.740
So this episode, we're talking about luck

2399
02:14:28.841 --> 02:14:30.080
and we're actually talking about it through,

2400
02:14:30.481 --> 02:14:32.957
there's a ancient Chinese framework called San Sai.

2401
02:14:34.302 --> 02:14:37.040
And the Chinese believe that there are three types of luck.

2402
02:14:37.201 --> 02:14:39.880
They called it heaven luck, earth luck, and human luck.

2403
02:14:40.621 --> 02:14:43.000
So heaven luck is the luck that you're born into, right?

2404
02:14:43.060 --> 02:14:44.140
It's the country you're born in.

2405
02:14:44.220 --> 02:14:45.079
It's the year you're born.

2406
02:14:45.300 --> 02:14:47.340
It's who your parents are, all those things.

2407
02:14:47.561 --> 02:14:49.520
It's the luck that's completely outside of your control.

2408
02:14:50.280 --> 02:14:53.540
The earth luck is the environment that you place yourself in.

2409
02:14:53.660 --> 02:14:55.720
So some environments are luckier than others, right?

2410
02:14:55.840 --> 02:15:00.817
Like you can, the poker analogy is table selection, right?

2411
02:15:01.900 --> 02:15:03.759
Like there are better and worse tables to play at

2412
02:15:03.941 --> 02:15:05.920
in terms of like increasing your chances of winning.

2413
02:15:06.753 --> 02:15:06.879
Okay.

2414
02:15:07.080 --> 02:15:07.240
Right.

2415
02:15:07.260 --> 02:15:10.883
So like the city you live in is a way to increase your earth luck.

2416
02:15:10.923 --> 02:15:14.126
You can put yourself in an environment where good things are more likely to happen.

2417
02:15:14.406 --> 02:15:20.991
And then human luck, which is what we're going to talk about today, is about navigating the probabilities of decision making.

2418
02:15:21.312 --> 02:15:21.512
Right.

2419
02:15:21.572 --> 02:15:24.654
It's like there's always uncertainty around anything you choose to do.

2420
02:15:25.355 --> 02:15:28.818
So how do you develop an awareness and a consciousness of that uncertainty?

2421
02:15:28.858 --> 02:15:31.560
And then how do you make good decisions in spite of it?

2422
02:15:32.061 --> 02:15:32.283
Okay.

2423
02:15:32.303 --> 02:15:35.360
So can we, can I just take a second to like unpack those three things?

2424
02:15:35.540 --> 02:15:35.643
Yes.

2425
02:15:35.663 --> 02:15:36.280
I would love that.

2426
02:15:36.341 --> 02:15:37.533
Okay, so I love that.

2427
02:15:38.800 --> 02:15:42.239
That's a great sort of three buckets to put things in.

2428
02:15:42.840 --> 02:15:45.659
So heaven luck, no quibble with, agree.

2429
02:15:45.860 --> 02:15:52.340
And actually, I was going to say, there's sort of two ways that I would think about

2430
02:15:52.501 --> 02:15:55.060
in the sort of colloquial sense, am I lucky?

2431
02:15:55.781 --> 02:16:00.680
It's not just am I sort of at the right tail of my possible outcomes, right, that were

2432
02:16:00.841 --> 02:16:01.660
available to me.

2433
02:16:02.062 --> 02:16:06.340
But it's also I was lucky with all sorts of circumstances of my birth.

2434
02:16:06.940 --> 02:16:07.080
Right.

2435
02:16:07.482 --> 02:16:09.918
So I always think about like, what if I had been born in 1600?

2436
02:16:10.920 --> 02:16:11.216
Yes.

2437
02:16:11.840 --> 02:16:12.008
Right.

2438
02:16:14.265 --> 02:16:15.380
I would have been property.

2439
02:16:16.069 --> 02:16:16.180
Yes.

2440
02:16:16.362 --> 02:16:18.400
So that would have been bad.

2441
02:16:18.963 --> 02:16:20.354
And your talents would have been wasted.

2442
02:16:21.383 --> 02:16:21.557
Right.

2443
02:16:21.866 --> 02:16:22.119
Exactly.

2444
02:16:22.505 --> 02:16:22.618
Okay.

2445
02:16:23.066 --> 02:16:23.900
So that's the heaven luck.

2446
02:16:24.142 --> 02:16:25.100
So agree completely.

2447
02:16:25.461 --> 02:16:28.840
I think that we really need to focus on that in terms of how we understand how people's

2448
02:16:28.881 --> 02:16:29.459
lives turns out.

2449
02:16:29.580 --> 02:16:29.720
Right.

2450
02:16:30.241 --> 02:16:36.800
what environment you put yourself in means that you're changing the distribution of outcomes that

2451
02:16:36.880 --> 02:16:38.748
that actually doesn't have to do with luck, right?

2452
02:16:38.768 --> 02:16:41.780
So any environment that you choose has different,

2453
02:16:42.140 --> 02:16:44.934
a different distribution of outcomes that are associated with it.

2454
02:16:45.316 --> 02:16:46.220
That's true of like,

2455
02:16:46.601 --> 02:16:53.180
what city you choose to live in, or what career you choose, what mate you choose or partner,

2456
02:16:54.384 --> 02:16:57.580
that's going to all have like a different distribution of outcomes that are associated

2457
02:16:57.761 --> 02:16:58.062
with it.

2458
02:16:58.663 --> 02:17:01.512
That's actually under the skill category, right?

2459
02:17:01.573 --> 02:17:03.860
So when we think about it, there's only two

2460
02:17:03.960 --> 02:17:06.050
things that are going to determine how your life turns out.

2461
02:17:06.552 --> 02:17:07.115
One is luck.

2462
02:17:07.436 --> 02:17:08.300
We can't control that,

2463
02:17:08.400 --> 02:17:09.765
but that's like the heaven luck.

2464
02:17:10.668 --> 02:17:13.056
But we can think about heaven luck in the same way.

2465
02:17:13.076 --> 02:17:14.160
Heaven is like

2466
02:17:15.345 --> 02:17:19.160
you're put on earth, which is like this environment, and you're born into a certain

2467
02:17:19.160 --> 02:17:20.044
environment, right?

2468
02:17:20.466 --> 02:17:23.138
But that's true of any environment that you end up with.

2469
02:17:23.178 --> 02:17:23.620
That's really

2470
02:17:23.761 --> 02:17:24.624
like heaven luck.

2471
02:17:25.167 --> 02:17:28.300
The environments you end up with, though, that's the quality of the decisions

2472
02:17:28.501 --> 02:17:28.802
you make.

2473
02:17:29.204 --> 02:17:32.800
And the quality of the decisions you make is the other thing that determines how your

2474
02:17:32.840 --> 02:17:37.860
life turns out, because those decisions change the distribution of possible outcomes that are

2475
02:17:37.920 --> 02:17:38.624
available to you.

2476
02:17:39.206 --> 02:17:41.960
If you make bad decisions, they're going to make it more likely that you

2477
02:17:42.020 --> 02:17:44.068
end up with bad outcomes.

2478
02:17:44.429 --> 02:17:47.180
If you make good decisions, it's going to be more likely that

2479
02:17:47.180 --> 02:17:48.385
you end up with good outcomes.

2480
02:17:48.727 --> 02:17:51.660
But none of that is a guarantee, because we can go through a green

2481
02:17:51.720 --> 02:17:52.804
light and get in an accident.

2482
02:17:52.844 --> 02:17:57.160
And I've run some red lights accidentally, of course, but I've run

2483
02:17:58.263 --> 02:18:00.068
some red lights and gotten through just fine.

2484
02:18:00.129 --> 02:18:03.920
The way I think about it is there's kind of

2485
02:18:04.201 --> 02:18:11.320
these macro decisions that once made, they kind of determine the context of hundreds or thousands

2486
02:18:11.481 --> 02:18:12.766
of other micro decisions, right?

2487
02:18:12.786 --> 02:18:14.052
So it's like who you marry, right?

2488
02:18:14.072 --> 02:18:15.840
Like that is kind of a macro

2489
02:18:15.940 --> 02:18:22.300
level decision that is going to set up the context for hundreds, thousands of other decisions that

2490
02:18:22.340 --> 02:18:23.144
happen throughout your life.

2491
02:18:23.285 --> 02:18:23.506
Yeah.

2492
02:18:23.787 --> 02:18:26.360
So now we can take that concept of heaven luck and say, well,

2493
02:18:26.420 --> 02:18:29.009
that's really what earth luck is, right?

2494
02:18:29.109 --> 02:18:32.300
It's just that we're aware that we hopefully are aware that

2495
02:18:32.320 --> 02:18:36.176
we're making the choice about what environment that we want to be in.

2496
02:18:36.517 --> 02:18:37.220
And depending on the

2497
02:18:37.280 --> 02:18:42.480
environment we're in, there's going to be a different probability that sort of good things

2498
02:18:42.520 --> 02:18:44.209
happen to us and bad things happen to us.

2499
02:18:44.591 --> 02:18:46.220
And what we're trying to do with our decisions

2500
02:18:47.022 --> 02:18:50.031
is improve that distribution in our favor.

2501
02:18:50.211 --> 02:18:50.432
Right.

2502
02:18:50.713 --> 02:18:53.160
So speaking of which, let's get into

2503
02:18:53.802 --> 02:18:54.525
thinking in bets.

2504
02:18:54.887 --> 02:18:58.140
So why should people think about their choices in terms of bets?

2505
02:18:58.600 --> 02:18:59.265
Because they are.

2506
02:19:01.036 --> 02:19:01.580
Explain that.

2507
02:19:01.960 --> 02:19:02.261
Okay.

2508
02:19:02.643 --> 02:19:07.400
So whether you know it or not, every decision that you've ever made has been a bet.

2509
02:19:07.920 --> 02:19:11.583
So we can take this like into a simple like poker example, right?

2510
02:19:11.703 --> 02:19:14.986
Here I'm going to use money or chips because that's what you bet in poker.

2511
02:19:15.507 --> 02:19:20.170
If I have a hand, I could choose to play that hand or not, right?

2512
02:19:21.251 --> 02:19:27.116
If I fold, I'm making a bet that that would have not been a good choice for me, that I would have moved away from my goals.

2513
02:19:27.917 --> 02:19:28.797
But maybe that's not true.

2514
02:19:28.817 --> 02:19:29.518
Maybe it's not, right?

2515
02:19:29.538 --> 02:19:31.139
But I have to make my best guess of that.

2516
02:19:31.179 --> 02:19:32.000
It's called a forecast.

2517
02:19:33.061 --> 02:19:39.327
And if I play the hand, I'm making a bet that this is going to be what we call positive expected value.

2518
02:19:39.387 --> 02:19:43.571
In other words, this is going to have a positive return on the money that I'm going to put into the pot.

2519
02:19:43.972 --> 02:19:52.640
And I'm saying, I think this is a better way for me to invest my money than other choices that I could make, which includes choices that I might make in the future.

2520
02:19:52.820 --> 02:20:00.720
So if I invest in this hand, that may take money away from my ability to invest in hands in the future, right?

2521
02:20:00.760 --> 02:20:07.360
Which kind of gets at the point you were making before of like when you choose to marry someone, then there's all sorts of things that happen after that, right?

2522
02:20:07.440 --> 02:20:11.620
So there's some path dependency to how that's going to affect your future as well.

2523
02:20:12.061 --> 02:20:22.460
So when I make a choice, like I choose to raise, what I'm saying is that my forecast is that this is going to increase the chances that I make money.

2524
02:20:22.821 --> 02:20:24.949
on this hand that I have good things happen to me.

2525
02:20:25.030 --> 02:20:27.520
Now we can take that into who do I marry,

2526
02:20:27.700 --> 02:20:27.921
right?

2527
02:20:27.941 --> 02:20:29.146
This is a bet as well.

2528
02:20:29.547 --> 02:20:32.960
I have a set of values and people have different things that

2529
02:20:33.000 --> 02:20:34.666
they want to get out of marriage.

2530
02:20:35.107 --> 02:20:38.940
So whatever your values are, you've sampled the world, right?

2531
02:20:38.980 --> 02:20:39.040
So

2532
02:20:39.482 --> 02:20:42.898
you have some sort of model of what you think is going to be a good partner for you.

2533
02:20:42.958 --> 02:20:43.320
You know what

2534
02:20:43.340 --> 02:20:44.204
your values are.

2535
02:20:44.727 --> 02:20:47.300
And at some point you're going to have to make a choice and that's going to be a

2536
02:20:47.360 --> 02:20:48.683
bet.

2537
02:20:48.844 --> 02:20:54.960
I'm going to bet that this person is going to help me to achieve the things that I want out

2538
02:20:55.020 --> 02:21:01.420
of this marriage more than other options that I might have available to me now or in the future.

2539
02:21:01.781 --> 02:21:05.976
Because if I marry this person, that stops me from marrying somebody else later.

2540
02:21:06.478 --> 02:21:07.020
And so it's

2541
02:21:07.200 --> 02:21:12.080
always this sort of comparison between options and which thing is the best thing for me to invest in.

2542
02:21:12.642 --> 02:21:18.080
but there's a hitch and this is the hitch that's the big problem is that when we're making those

2543
02:21:18.220 --> 02:21:23.600
bats it's under the influence of uncertainty yeah like it's highly uncertain for two reasons

2544
02:21:24.221 --> 02:21:31.920
one is we're not omniscient yeah bummer and then the second thing is just luck so i could be all

2545
02:21:31.960 --> 02:21:38.240
knowing yes right so imagine i'm omniscient now i'm an all-knowing being and i do know that this

2546
02:21:38.481 --> 02:21:42.156
is the best option in terms of the chances that I'm going to have a good outcome.

2547
02:21:42.618 --> 02:21:43.080
I still have

2548
02:21:43.140 --> 02:21:48.600
the word chance in there because all that means is that that outcome is associated with a set of

2549
02:21:48.740 --> 02:21:49.142
options.

2550
02:21:49.463 --> 02:21:52.233
Those options are going to occur at some probability.

2551
02:21:52.995 --> 02:21:54.240
And when I sort of calculate the

2552
02:21:54.300 --> 02:22:00.920
payoff across that set of possibilities, that has the highest return than other options I might

2553
02:22:01.000 --> 02:22:01.301
choose.

2554
02:22:01.603 --> 02:22:03.771
But it doesn't guarantee I'm not going to get a bad outcome.

2555
02:22:03.832 --> 02:22:05.900
That's the influence of luck.

2556
02:22:05.940 --> 02:22:08.019
And that's why these decisions are really bad.

2557
02:22:08.320 --> 02:22:08.434
Yeah.

2558
02:22:09.121 --> 02:22:13.118
Kind of in sum, it's no decision in life is ever 100%.

2559
02:22:13.822 --> 02:22:14.835
It's also never 0%.

2560
02:22:15.482 --> 02:22:17.840
It's always some probability in the middle.

2561
02:22:18.261 --> 02:22:26.900
And that probability is often opaque to us due to lack of information and also just chance, right?

2562
02:22:27.000 --> 02:22:27.310
Right.

2563
02:22:28.201 --> 02:22:35.780
And so our decision making is very much determined by accumulating as much information as possible.

2564
02:22:36.200 --> 02:22:45.835
And like, and also, I guess, rationally interpreting that information when making a decision, but also understanding that like, nothing is a sure thing.

2565
02:22:46.316 --> 02:22:49.060
There's always a chance something could go wrong.

2566
02:22:49.260 --> 02:22:53.325
I think there's kind of two ways that sort of that last bit can go wrong.

2567
02:22:54.086 --> 02:22:55.427
There's two directions that can go.

2568
02:22:56.028 --> 02:23:03.276
If you acknowledge that the world is probabilistic, right, that whatever you choose, there's going to be some distribution of outcomes.

2569
02:23:04.217 --> 02:23:06.820
They're going to occur, you know, with some probability.

2570
02:23:08.485 --> 02:23:13.560
and you sort of, you know, you understand that you can't know, like, first of all,

2571
02:23:13.600 --> 02:23:16.659
that that distribution is there and you can't control which outcome you actually observe.

2572
02:23:16.699 --> 02:23:16.820
Like

2573
02:23:17.242 --> 02:23:21.400
if I'm 95% to win a hand of poker, that means 5% of the time I'm going to lose,

2574
02:23:21.721 --> 02:23:22.744
like by definition.

2575
02:23:23.045 --> 02:23:26.856
And the problem is, I don't know which that 5% is.

2576
02:23:27.017 --> 02:23:28.080
Could it be this time that

2577
02:23:28.100 --> 02:23:28.602
I'm playing?

2578
02:23:29.184 --> 02:23:31.252
Or is it going to be the next time or the time after that?

2579
02:23:31.272 --> 02:23:33.240
I just know that if I play

2580
02:23:33.982 --> 02:23:39.580
that hand a hundred times, 95% of the time I'll win and five times, you know, five times I'm

2581
02:23:39.620 --> 02:23:39.981
going to lose.

2582
02:23:40.001 --> 02:23:40.883
And I just don't know.

2583
02:23:41.484 --> 02:23:48.540
So that's like a very unsettling fact, I think, for

2584
02:23:50.185 --> 02:23:54.620
people in general, like cognitively for us to sort of wrap our heads around this idea that like,

2585
02:23:54.680 --> 02:23:57.732
we can't know what's going to occur on the next time.

2586
02:23:58.214 --> 02:23:59.720
On top of that, what we sort of realize is

2587
02:23:59.800 --> 02:24:04.520
because we don't have a lot of information, we don't even know what the probability distribution

2588
02:24:04.821 --> 02:24:05.163
looks like.

2589
02:24:05.183 --> 02:24:06.670
We're making some sort of forecast of that.

2590
02:24:06.690 --> 02:24:07.896
We're making a guess at that.

2591
02:24:08.278 --> 02:24:08.680
I sort of see

2592
02:24:08.720 --> 02:24:10.746
that there's two reactions that happen to that.

2593
02:24:11.368 --> 02:24:15.240
Reaction number one is actually being way over

2594
02:24:15.320 --> 02:24:20.860
confident, like thinking that you know a lot more about what could happen in the future than you

2595
02:24:20.980 --> 02:24:22.405
actually do, right?

2596
02:24:22.545 --> 02:24:26.677
And you see this all the time with people where they're just so sure that if

2597
02:24:27.700 --> 02:24:31.800
they, you know, make a certain decision that it's going to work out well, that they're almost,

2598
02:24:32.000 --> 02:24:34.992
they're constantly surprised by these bad outcomes, right?

2599
02:24:35.515 --> 02:24:36.820
So something bad happens,

2600
02:24:36.940 --> 02:24:38.568
and they're just like, so surprised by it.

2601
02:24:38.909 --> 02:24:40.115
And then they say, oh, so unlucky.

2602
02:24:40.476 --> 02:24:41.260
Yeah, it's like,

2603
02:24:42.342 --> 02:24:48.020
not really, like, 5% is going to happen 5% of the time, like, the problem is that they just way

2604
02:24:48.823 --> 02:24:50.349
overestimated, right?

2605
02:24:50.409 --> 02:24:53.140
Like they had way too much certainty about the way that the world was going

2606
02:24:53.160 --> 02:24:53.622
to work.

2607
02:24:53.642 --> 02:24:57.360
So that's one reaction to it is basically to turn away from the uncertainty.

2608
02:24:58.763 --> 02:24:59.906
and say, I know.

2609
02:25:00.187 --> 02:25:05.040
And I think that's a very common thing that you see in people, right?

2610
02:25:05.140 --> 02:25:09.880
So the other thing that happens is people are like, well, I can't know, so I'm just going to

2611
02:25:09.900 --> 02:25:10.383
go with my gut.

2612
02:25:10.544 --> 02:25:10.845
Yeah, yeah.

2613
02:25:11.127 --> 02:25:11.348
Right?

2614
02:25:11.408 --> 02:25:12.897
Like, there's no way to know, so whatever.

2615
02:25:13.017 --> 02:25:13.480
I'm just going to

2616
02:25:13.540 --> 02:25:13.881
wing it.

2617
02:25:14.001 --> 02:25:18.193
And that one is an equally bad mistake.

2618
02:25:18.634 --> 02:25:20.720
Like overselling and then just going, well,

2619
02:25:20.780 --> 02:25:22.266
whatever, I'm just going to go with my gut.

2620
02:25:22.989 --> 02:25:25.740
Those are both going to get you into a very bad place

2621
02:25:25.740 --> 02:25:28.780
because you want to land somewhere in the middle, which is acknowledging the uncertainty,

2622
02:25:29.341 --> 02:25:34.660
but being very careful to at least try to make your best guess about what the outcomes are that

2623
02:25:34.700 --> 02:25:38.660
might be associated with a choice that you might make and what the probability of those things

2624
02:25:38.740 --> 02:25:39.383
occurring is.

2625
02:25:40.146 --> 02:25:43.720
Because here's the thing, and this kind of goes back to like decisions are just bets.

2626
02:25:44.961 --> 02:25:47.187
You're doing it anyway.

2627
02:25:47.308 --> 02:25:51.520
Somewhere in your mind, you have to be making these types of calculations,

2628
02:25:52.162 --> 02:25:55.335
whether it's explicit or not, whether you realize it's happening or not.

2629
02:25:55.676 --> 02:25:56.540
Because when you choose to

2630
02:25:56.560 --> 02:26:00.760
get married to somebody, somewhere in there, you're saying, I think this is the best match

2631
02:26:00.820 --> 02:26:03.353
for me compared to other people that I might be seeing.

2632
02:26:03.373 --> 02:26:04.780
And I can imagine the different outcomes

2633
02:26:04.880 --> 02:26:05.985
that might come from this.

2634
02:26:06.085 --> 02:26:08.596
And I think I'm more likely to be happy with them.

2635
02:26:08.978 --> 02:26:09.480
Or like in the

2636
02:26:09.560 --> 02:26:10.826
simplest sense, right?

2637
02:26:10.846 --> 02:26:13.660
When you're trying to decide when you're supposed to leave the house

2638
02:26:13.740 --> 02:26:17.680
to get somewhere, you have to be making an estimate of how long it's going to take you to

2639
02:26:17.740 --> 02:26:18.182
get there.

2640
02:26:18.483 --> 02:26:19.025
Number one.

2641
02:26:19.426 --> 02:26:21.574
Number two, how bad it is if you're late.

2642
02:26:22.196 --> 02:26:23.320
So it's funny because I was

2643
02:26:23.360 --> 02:26:26.972
actually going to use this example because this morning I came here late.

2644
02:26:27.554 --> 02:26:29.139
Oh, okay.

2645
02:26:29.159 --> 02:26:29.520
Let's talk

2646
02:26:29.600 --> 02:26:29.982
about it.

2647
02:26:30.123 --> 02:26:33.359
And I was, it's funny because I was thinking about it this morning in terms of bets,

2648
02:26:33.600 --> 02:26:33.801
right?

2649
02:26:33.881 --> 02:26:40.080
So it's, I had a lot of work to catch up on this morning and I kind of sat there and I was

2650
02:26:40.080 --> 02:26:42.149
like, okay, I could leave 10, 15 minutes late.

2651
02:26:42.591 --> 02:26:44.359
Probably nothing bad is going to happen.

2652
02:26:44.499 --> 02:26:44.660
Maybe

2653
02:26:44.760 --> 02:26:48.631
I raise my chance of getting a ticket or getting an accident by like 1%.

2654
02:26:48.792 --> 02:26:49.393
Yeah.

2655
02:26:50.196 --> 02:26:51.700
But I also get that

2656
02:26:51.760 --> 02:26:55.116
extra 15 minutes to prep and to get some work done and everything.

2657
02:26:55.136 --> 02:26:55.940
And so there's like this,

2658
02:26:56.541 --> 02:27:00.580
this cost benefit analysis that kind of goes on your head, but it's our minds don't seem like

2659
02:27:01.142 --> 02:27:03.651
very defaulted to think in this manner.

2660
02:27:03.671 --> 02:27:04.975
Like it's right.

2661
02:27:04.995 --> 02:27:06.380
Cause it's in my head, it's immediately

2662
02:27:06.460 --> 02:27:11.217
like, like, well, I leave late all the time and I drive fast all the time.

2663
02:27:11.237 --> 02:27:11.879
So I'll be fine.

2664
02:27:11.939 --> 02:27:12.100
I was

2665
02:27:12.180 --> 02:27:13.044
fine every other time.

2666
02:27:13.064 --> 02:27:14.330
So I'll be fine this time too.

2667
02:27:14.530 --> 02:27:14.771
Right.

2668
02:27:14.872 --> 02:27:16.760
Which is probabilistically not true.

2669
02:27:16.860 --> 02:27:22.460
Like it's, if I'm going to, if I'm going to drive recklessly, uh, every time I leave the house,

2670
02:27:22.741 --> 02:27:26.115
statistically at some point, I'm going to get in that accident.

2671
02:27:26.215 --> 02:27:26.537
Yes.

2672
02:27:26.577 --> 02:27:27.360
The risk accrue.

2673
02:27:28.101 --> 02:27:28.804
That is true.

2674
02:27:28.885 --> 02:27:29.186
Yes.

2675
02:27:29.367 --> 02:27:31.235
The traffic example is such a good example.

2676
02:27:31.255 --> 02:27:32.460
Cause so this is what I would ask

2677
02:27:32.500 --> 02:27:33.243
you is what I'm saying.

2678
02:27:33.263 --> 02:27:34.688
Like how much risk can you afford?

2679
02:27:35.129 --> 02:27:38.280
Like imagine that you were making that

2680
02:27:38.360 --> 02:27:39.627
same decision this morning.

2681
02:27:39.748 --> 02:27:42.120
And what you were talking about, by the way, is an opportunity

2682
02:27:42.281 --> 02:27:42.944
cost problem.

2683
02:27:42.964 --> 02:27:43.165
Yes.

2684
02:27:43.365 --> 02:27:43.606
Right.

2685
02:27:43.687 --> 02:27:46.720
So if you choose to leave where you're going to get here on time,

2686
02:27:46.780 --> 02:27:50.940
you lose the opportunity and the gains that might come from the work that you wanted to catch up on.

2687
02:27:51.421 --> 02:27:51.643
Right.

2688
02:27:51.663 --> 02:27:54.560
So this is like these are the types of tradeoffs that we have to make all the time.

2689
02:27:55.180 --> 02:27:58.940
Imagine you were in a situation, though, where the thing you were going to,

2690
02:27:59.640 --> 02:28:02.131
like if you were late, it was the end of the world.

2691
02:28:02.493 --> 02:28:02.713
Yeah.

2692
02:28:03.336 --> 02:28:04.140
When would you have left?

2693
02:28:04.560 --> 02:28:05.941
It's like hours earlier.

2694
02:28:34.200 --> 02:28:35.358
There's an accident on the 10th.

2695
02:28:35.564 --> 02:28:35.738
Right.

2696
02:28:36.107 --> 02:28:36.300
Right.

2697
02:28:36.603 --> 02:28:37.800
Super annoying, but whatever.

2698
02:28:38.460 --> 02:28:45.360
So to tie this back to luck, I think what a lot of people experience as bad luck is,

2699
02:28:46.422 --> 02:28:50.480
say, they overestimate their ability to get to LAX and get through TSA.

2700
02:28:51.507 --> 02:28:52.340
It's all backed up.

2701
02:28:52.440 --> 02:28:53.459
There's something going on.

2702
02:28:54.102 --> 02:28:57.660
That flight that is actually super important, they do miss.

2703
02:28:58.622 --> 02:29:01.640
And they say, ah, this was such bad luck.

2704
02:29:01.840 --> 02:29:11.120
without realizing that there actually was a probability distribution of like all of their behaviors that they chose up until that point that they just weren't consciously thinking through.

2705
02:29:11.300 --> 02:29:25.700
This is where like we just need to sort of separate out like sort of colloquially how we think about luck versus the way that, say, in an academic sense, you might think about this idea of luck.

2706
02:29:26.240 --> 02:29:28.160
So two things could be true.

2707
02:29:28.982 --> 02:29:32.020
One is you attribute something to bad luck that was actually bad decision making.

2708
02:29:32.120 --> 02:29:32.980
That's what you just described.

2709
02:29:33.220 --> 02:29:33.320
Yeah.

2710
02:29:33.484 --> 02:29:33.660
Right.

2711
02:29:33.760 --> 02:29:41.519
So if you really can't miss and you leave at the average time, right, for travel, hey,

2712
02:29:42.181 --> 02:29:46.340
if you miss your flight, that's not really bad luck in that sense.

2713
02:29:46.500 --> 02:29:54.020
Like you made a decision that where, you know, some percentage of the time that was actually

2714
02:29:54.622 --> 02:29:59.400
a percentage that you couldn't tolerate, you were actually going to miss that flight, right?

2715
02:29:59.480 --> 02:30:03.200
So I would call that bad decision making that you're actually attributing to luck, right?

2716
02:30:03.661 --> 02:30:07.980
But you could leave lots and lots of time and some crazy thing could happen.

2717
02:30:08.420 --> 02:30:11.960
Like, I think I remember one time, like I left a ton of time to get somewhere because

2718
02:30:12.121 --> 02:30:13.760
I was getting my son to a football game.

2719
02:30:14.061 --> 02:30:18.180
This was in LA and the presidential motorcade.

2720
02:30:21.124 --> 02:30:22.540
I mean, it would have been faster to walk.

2721
02:30:22.962 --> 02:30:23.440
Yeah, right.

2722
02:30:23.681 --> 02:30:27.000
And so obviously, like we didn't, we were late and whatever, right?

2723
02:30:27.140 --> 02:30:31.380
So I made a reasonable decision in this thing that was like completely unknowable to me,

2724
02:30:31.722 --> 02:30:31.846
right?

2725
02:30:32.360 --> 02:30:38.000
Like at that time, there was no way for me to know that, that this was going to occur

2726
02:30:38.101 --> 02:30:39.740
and it was going to be like right in my way.

2727
02:30:40.523 --> 02:30:44.420
And then it didn't matter what date I had in terms of how long it took me to get there.

2728
02:30:44.500 --> 02:30:46.100
Like I just wasn't going to get there, right?

2729
02:30:46.880 --> 02:30:49.980
Colloquially speaking, we would call that bad luck, right?

2730
02:30:50.021 --> 02:30:51.060
Because I made a good decision.

2731
02:30:51.380 --> 02:30:51.480
Right.

2732
02:30:52.086 --> 02:30:53.480
I left enough time.

2733
02:30:53.600 --> 02:30:58.160
I thought about the distribution and I was at a good end of the scale for what my values

2734
02:30:58.281 --> 02:31:00.320
were that day and how much risk I could tolerate.

2735
02:31:00.540 --> 02:31:05.300
And then the president decided to, I think this was like in 2009 or something like that,

2736
02:31:05.380 --> 02:31:05.460
right?

2737
02:31:05.520 --> 02:31:07.840
Like the president just decided to screw me up.

2738
02:31:08.420 --> 02:31:08.460
Okay.

2739
02:31:08.661 --> 02:31:09.299
Thanks, Obama.

2740
02:31:09.620 --> 02:31:10.298
Thanks, Obama.

2741
02:31:10.600 --> 02:31:10.780
Right.

2742
02:31:11.221 --> 02:31:13.860
So let's call that in the colloquial sense, bad luck.

2743
02:31:13.960 --> 02:31:16.840
But if we step away from like, well, what really is luck?

2744
02:31:16.920 --> 02:31:18.625
remember it's just a force that acts upon you.

2745
02:31:18.646 --> 02:31:22.437
I would just call that luck.

2746
02:31:22.477 --> 02:31:23.360
Like there's volatility

2747
02:31:23.440 --> 02:31:24.986
around anything that you do.

2748
02:31:25.046 --> 02:31:28.540
And sometimes you might be at the very, very far left tail of bad

2749
02:31:28.660 --> 02:31:30.004
outcomes, right?

2750
02:31:30.024 --> 02:31:32.712
That's just like way, way, way, way out at the tail.

2751
02:31:33.474 --> 02:31:35.440
And it's just in the mix.

2752
02:31:35.740 --> 02:31:43.060
And here's the thing is that I think I really truly believe this, that you live a happier life

2753
02:31:43.822 --> 02:31:48.100
if you stop putting the word bad and good on the word luck.

2754
02:31:48.626 --> 02:31:49.320
It's just variance.

2755
02:31:49.642 --> 02:31:50.479
It's just variance.

2756
02:31:50.940 --> 02:31:52.800
And not only do I think you're happier

2757
02:31:52.921 --> 02:31:54.800
because you're not sitting there thinking like,

2758
02:31:54.880 --> 02:31:56.739
whoa, it's me, like, look at this bad luck,

2759
02:31:56.900 --> 02:31:57.499
like da, da, da.

2760
02:31:58.361 --> 02:32:00.700
You know, I think that when you sort of get caught up

2761
02:32:00.781 --> 02:32:02.080
in this sort of bad luck thing,

2762
02:32:02.841 --> 02:32:05.240
you know, you ruminate, you sort of, you know,

2763
02:32:05.901 --> 02:32:06.920
you're like droopy drawers.

2764
02:32:07.100 --> 02:32:07.777
You're like, why me?

2765
02:32:08.100 --> 02:32:08.578
Why me?

2766
02:32:08.861 --> 02:32:10.453
Like, what did I do to deserve this?

2767
02:32:11.421 --> 02:32:13.140
And I don't think that's a particularly happy way

2768
02:32:13.220 --> 02:32:13.501
to live.

2769
02:32:13.681 --> 02:32:20.900
And if you start thinking that the good luck is going to continue to come, that's going

2770
02:32:20.900 --> 02:32:23.191
to cause you to make some pretty bad decisions going forward.

2771
02:32:23.613 --> 02:32:25.140
So there's kind of two reasons

2772
02:32:25.200 --> 02:32:30.360
that I think that it's really way better for your life to get out of this sort of good and bad thing

2773
02:32:30.440 --> 02:32:31.203
when it comes to luck.

2774
02:32:31.846 --> 02:32:35.460
Reason number one is that I actually don't think it's possible, even if you

2775
02:32:35.540 --> 02:32:39.520
accepted the idea of good and bad luck, to know in the moment whether that was good or bad luck.

2776
02:32:39.921 --> 02:32:45.680
Because I think that you need that to develop over time because there's this path issue, right?

2777
02:32:45.882 --> 02:32:46.060
Right.

2778
02:32:46.181 --> 02:32:47.540
As to whether that was good or bad luck.

2779
02:32:48.043 --> 02:32:50.280
I'll give you an example actually from my own life of this problem.

2780
02:32:51.040 --> 02:32:57.180
So at the end of my first time in graduate school, because my first time in graduate school, I did not actually get my PhD.

2781
02:32:57.723 --> 02:32:58.720
I had done five years.

2782
02:32:59.503 --> 02:33:03.080
So when people leave graduate school, it's usually around their qualifying exams.

2783
02:33:03.320 --> 02:33:05.660
Otherwise, they're called like major area exams, right?

2784
02:33:05.700 --> 02:33:12.080
So this is when you're showing enough expertise that they say to you, OK, we're going to allow you to now go and pursue your doctorate.

2785
02:33:12.140 --> 02:33:15.020
It usually occurs like three years, two and a half, three years in.

2786
02:33:15.824 --> 02:33:16.740
It's a really big hurdle.

2787
02:33:17.381 --> 02:33:18.900
And a lot of people leave at that point.

2788
02:33:20.067 --> 02:33:20.356
I did not.

2789
02:33:21.511 --> 02:33:21.840
I stayed.

2790
02:33:22.902 --> 02:33:24.959
And I actually did the full five years.

2791
02:33:26.124 --> 02:33:28.900
And I had my dissertation research done.

2792
02:33:29.685 --> 02:33:30.740
And I was on the job market.

2793
02:33:30.981 --> 02:33:32.659
I already had job talks lined up.

2794
02:33:33.240 --> 02:33:33.300
Right?

2795
02:33:33.380 --> 02:33:35.420
So, like, I'm really far down the road.

2796
02:33:35.921 --> 02:33:42.780
But I had been suffering for about the last year of graduate school with a chronic illness

2797
02:33:43.465 --> 02:33:45.400
that then became really, really acute.

2798
02:33:46.122 --> 02:33:48.500
And I landed in the hospital actually for a couple of weeks.

2799
02:33:49.101 --> 02:33:53.140
So I had to cancel all my job talks and pull myself off the job market.

2800
02:33:53.580 --> 02:33:58.640
Now you can imagine at the time, I was like, felt like this was really bad luck.

2801
02:33:58.861 --> 02:34:00.239
I was very like, woe is me.

2802
02:34:00.400 --> 02:34:01.260
This is so terrible.

2803
02:34:02.463 --> 02:34:03.700
Why does this happen to me?

2804
02:34:03.820 --> 02:34:04.999
Why is this happening to me?

2805
02:34:05.100 --> 02:34:05.280
Right?

2806
02:34:05.361 --> 02:34:08.220
Like, you know, honestly, like in retrospect, I don't think it was particularly helpful,

2807
02:34:08.642 --> 02:34:11.800
but also I don't think it was bad luck in retrospect.

2808
02:34:12.681 --> 02:34:15.040
So I then leave graduate school.

2809
02:34:15.181 --> 02:34:15.920
I take time off.

2810
02:34:15.980 --> 02:34:19.200
So I'm going to now take a year off and go back out on the job market the next year.

2811
02:34:20.081 --> 02:34:22.315
And I had been there on a fellowship.

2812
02:34:23.602 --> 02:34:26.760
And as I told you before, my dad was a school teacher and my mom didn't work.

2813
02:34:26.840 --> 02:34:30.000
So as you can imagine, nobody was like, here's a bunch of money while you recuperate.

2814
02:34:31.565 --> 02:34:36.720
and when you leave graduate school nsf says oh by the way your stipend's gone yeah okay so now

2815
02:34:36.720 --> 02:34:42.838
i have no money so that's actually why i started playing poker because i wanted to do something um

2816
02:34:43.661 --> 02:34:50.400
that was like okay it's not restarting a new career at least i didn't think so at the time

2817
02:34:51.143 --> 02:34:55.360
um it's very flexible hours because they didn't feel very well yeah so committing to a nine to

2818
02:34:55.644 --> 02:34:56.600
would have been really hard.

2819
02:34:56.800 --> 02:34:57.000
Right.

2820
02:34:57.203 --> 02:34:57.420
Right.

2821
02:34:58.044 --> 02:34:59.540
And so it kind of like ticked the boxes

2822
02:34:59.722 --> 02:35:01.320
and then like, okay, I'll just do this for a while

2823
02:35:01.360 --> 02:35:03.320
and then I can leave and I'll go back to graduate school

2824
02:35:03.481 --> 02:35:05.820
and I'll go back out on the job market next year.

2825
02:35:06.623 --> 02:35:08.180
And obviously I started playing poker

2826
02:35:08.485 --> 02:35:09.298
and I kept playing poker

2827
02:35:09.763 --> 02:35:11.980
and I didn't go back to graduate school for quite a while,

2828
02:35:12.140 --> 02:35:14.000
actually for a couple of decades.

2829
02:35:14.140 --> 02:35:14.250
Yeah.

2830
02:35:15.105 --> 02:35:16.078
To go finish my PhD.

2831
02:35:16.801 --> 02:35:18.460
But like in retrospect,

2832
02:35:18.781 --> 02:35:20.240
if we're going to use the word good or bad,

2833
02:35:20.321 --> 02:35:20.997
wasn't that good luck?

2834
02:35:21.682 --> 02:35:22.980
Because look what happened, right?

2835
02:35:23.182 --> 02:35:24.920
Like I became a professional poker player

2836
02:35:25.040 --> 02:35:26.504
before it was ever on television.

2837
02:35:27.828 --> 02:35:32.260
You know, by 1999, I was the winningest woman in the game.

2838
02:35:32.842 --> 02:35:36.358
I won World Series of Poker Bracelets and the Tournament of Champions.

2839
02:35:36.458 --> 02:35:36.780
And like,

2840
02:35:37.180 --> 02:35:39.311
then all of a sudden, in 2002, I was on TV.

2841
02:35:39.612 --> 02:35:41.200
And then we can even take it further, which is

2842
02:35:41.903 --> 02:35:44.655
ending up on TV is what got businesses to pay attention to me.

2843
02:35:44.675 --> 02:35:45.820
And then they asked me to get

2844
02:35:46.423 --> 02:35:48.513
in touch with them and like, come speak to them.

2845
02:35:48.533 --> 02:35:49.940
And they didn't know necessarily I had the

2846
02:35:49.960 --> 02:35:51.145
background in cognitive psychology.

2847
02:35:51.166 --> 02:35:52.673
So I started merging that together.

2848
02:35:53.496 --> 02:35:54.280
And then I started building

2849
02:35:54.380 --> 02:35:58.520
this business of going giving talks at the intersection of poker and cognitive psychology

2850
02:35:59.142 --> 02:36:04.880
and then that allowed me to develop a consulting business where now I consult mainly in finance

2851
02:36:04.980 --> 02:36:09.820
but also for startups in those two worlds because the finance people I work with are in venture so

2852
02:36:09.880 --> 02:36:15.980
that obviously is a reasonable crossover I got back to teaching which I absolutely love I would

2853
02:36:15.980 --> 02:36:21.420
have never had the audience for the books that I wrote had I not been on television I would just

2854
02:36:21.480 --> 02:36:23.268
been another academic writing a book, right?

2855
02:36:23.288 --> 02:36:26.140
But now I'm like a poker player writing a book.

2856
02:36:26.160 --> 02:36:26.220
So

2857
02:36:26.300 --> 02:36:27.164
look what that did.

2858
02:36:27.245 --> 02:36:29.294
And so, you know, so on and so forth, right?

2859
02:36:29.334 --> 02:36:30.580
So the thing is this thing that I

2860
02:36:30.720 --> 02:36:36.940
was wallowing in, wallowing in it at the time about my bad luck and why does this happen to

2861
02:36:37.020 --> 02:36:37.963
me and so on and so forth.

2862
02:36:39.026 --> 02:36:43.800
You know, with the passage of time, I would completely rejudge that.

2863
02:36:44.160 --> 02:36:44.260
Yeah.

2864
02:36:44.440 --> 02:36:46.733
So why not just not judge it at all?

2865
02:36:46.794 --> 02:36:47.880
Wouldn't that be happier?

2866
02:36:48.220 --> 02:36:48.461
Yeah.

2867
02:36:48.841 --> 02:36:50.884
So you have this concept of resulting, right?

2868
02:36:50.904 --> 02:37:02.160
Which is, it makes sense that if everything is kind of a probabilistic distribution, then you can't really judge the quality of a decision based on the quality of the results.

2869
02:37:02.380 --> 02:37:02.640
Right.

2870
02:37:02.920 --> 02:37:07.343
But the point that you raise with that story is that like, what is the result, right?

2871
02:37:07.383 --> 02:37:18.271
Like you can go and redraw the goalposts 20 different times over 20 years and define a different result as the result of that decision.

2872
02:37:18.331 --> 02:37:30.580
And, you know, one of the things I've written before is that is the concept of deserve is like itself often just counter counterproductive for almost any kind of conversation.

2873
02:37:31.987 --> 02:37:34.400
and I think it's for a similar reason.

2874
02:37:34.540 --> 02:37:35.738
Like it's just, you don't know,

2875
02:37:36.401 --> 02:37:38.160
do you deserve good things to happen to you?

2876
02:37:38.281 --> 02:37:41.360
Like, do I deserve good or bad things to happen?

2877
02:37:41.545 --> 02:37:41.978
I don't know.

2878
02:37:42.362 --> 02:37:42.778
I don't know.

2879
02:37:43.582 --> 02:37:43.920
You know what?

2880
02:37:44.244 --> 02:37:44.860
So that's interesting.

2881
02:37:44.960 --> 02:37:47.080
So two things there is that now I have to go off

2882
02:37:47.120 --> 02:37:48.980
and think more deeply about what is the result.

2883
02:37:49.367 --> 02:37:49.540
Yeah.

2884
02:37:50.923 --> 02:37:52.800
Not something I have written about

2885
02:37:53.083 --> 02:37:54.480
and now you have my mind turning.

2886
02:37:54.721 --> 02:37:55.999
So now I'm going to be distracted

2887
02:37:57.471 --> 02:37:58.660
because that's such a good point.

2888
02:37:59.081 --> 02:38:06.120
so i'm gonna i'm gonna go mull that over now um but i think you're so like right in the zone there

2889
02:38:06.240 --> 02:38:10.800
with that idea of deserve because when you're judging something as bad luck what are you saying

2890
02:38:10.900 --> 02:38:17.220
i didn't deserve that exactly right yes so i think that's like such a deep point is that when we get

2891
02:38:17.260 --> 02:38:23.600
into that idea of like what what do we deserve to have happen to us right like it's i just think

2892
02:38:23.700 --> 02:38:26.649
it's like a very, a very unhappy way to live.

2893
02:38:26.809 --> 02:38:27.150
It is.

2894
02:38:27.331 --> 02:38:30.299
And it's, and it's, it's unhappy regardless

2895
02:38:30.701 --> 02:38:31.705
of which direction you go.

2896
02:38:31.745 --> 02:38:35.300
So if you are a person who believes everything good should happen to you,

2897
02:38:35.360 --> 02:38:36.969
you deserve everything good in the world.

2898
02:38:37.572 --> 02:38:39.000
That's not going to lead you to a good place.

2899
02:38:39.381 --> 02:38:41.810
You should be very disappointed.

2900
02:38:42.171 --> 02:38:44.399
But if you're also, if you're a person who believes you don't

2901
02:38:44.680 --> 02:38:48.440
deserve any good things to happen to you, that's also going to take you to a very dark place.

2902
02:38:48.460 --> 02:38:48.500
So

2903
02:38:48.520 --> 02:38:53.260
it's almost like the only safe place to be is to just be like, I don't know what I deserve.

2904
02:38:53.441 --> 02:38:54.587
I think that's exactly right.

2905
02:38:54.667 --> 02:38:57.060
And obviously, if you feel like only bad things are going to happen

2906
02:38:57.140 --> 02:38:59.129
to you, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway.

2907
02:38:59.711 --> 02:39:01.660
That gets you into the, why should I try?

2908
02:39:02.421 --> 02:39:06.920
Here's one of the problems is that if you sort of automatically say, oh, that was such bad luck,

2909
02:39:07.581 --> 02:39:10.680
you're not going to go back and look at what the quality of your decision was.

2910
02:39:11.321 --> 02:39:16.400
If you say that was good luck, you're also not going to go back and look at what the quality

2911
02:39:16.440 --> 02:39:17.204
of your decision was.

2912
02:39:17.585 --> 02:39:18.489
Both of those are true.

2913
02:39:18.711 --> 02:39:20.740
So once we start to sort of make this judgment,

2914
02:39:21.100 --> 02:39:21.320
Yeah.

2915
02:39:21.641 --> 02:39:21.801
Right.

2916
02:39:21.821 --> 02:39:24.623
And instead we should be asking, well, what was the influence of luck?

2917
02:39:25.243 --> 02:39:25.624
Neutral.

2918
02:39:25.964 --> 02:39:29.887
What was the influence of luck and what was the quality of the decision that I made?

2919
02:39:30.207 --> 02:39:34.130
And look at sort of look at that as a as a question.

2920
02:39:34.351 --> 02:39:34.591
Yeah.

2921
02:39:34.791 --> 02:39:35.091
Right.

2922
02:39:35.531 --> 02:39:37.453
Because here's the problem.

2923
02:39:38.274 --> 02:39:41.036
Just saying I got bad luck isn't going to make your life better in the future.

2924
02:39:41.636 --> 02:39:41.916
Right.

2925
02:39:42.076 --> 02:39:44.939
Because if you just say bad luck, then there's no examination.

2926
02:39:44.979 --> 02:39:46.600
There's no looking back and saying.

2927
02:39:46.640 --> 02:39:52.260
removing agency yeah from yourself and you're you're you're going to lose an opportunity to learn

2928
02:39:54.064 --> 02:40:00.439
what was the decision that i made what were did did i choose something that had you know a

2929
02:40:01.401 --> 02:40:08.540
probability distribution that actually wasn't very good for me yeah right compared to other

2930
02:40:08.640 --> 02:40:14.080
options i could have chosen because if i can figure that out then the next time i make the

2931
02:40:14.120 --> 02:40:15.707
same decision, my forecast will be better.

2932
02:40:16.129 --> 02:40:18.340
Again, going back to that idea of like, there's only two

2933
02:40:18.420 --> 02:40:22.957
things that determine how your life turns out, luck and the quality of your decisions.

2934
02:40:23.459 --> 02:40:23.680
What we

2935
02:40:23.780 --> 02:40:28.140
really want to focus on is decision quality and say, look, luck, luck is there in the background.

2936
02:40:28.180 --> 02:40:29.225
It's going to happen anyway.

2937
02:40:29.667 --> 02:40:32.540
And once we start getting caught up in this, like, well, I just got

2938
02:40:32.600 --> 02:40:38.097
so unlucky, we lose sight of, well, what was the quality of the decision in the first place?

2939
02:40:38.760 --> 02:40:38.860
And

2940
02:40:39.221 --> 02:40:47.700
I think part of the reason is because in the moment, cognitively, it feels better to say it

2941
02:40:47.860 --> 02:40:50.527
was bad luck than to say it was a bad decision.

2942
02:40:51.289 --> 02:40:51.590
Right?

2943
02:40:51.650 --> 02:40:52.212
Of course.

2944
02:40:52.533 --> 02:40:55.240
It's Yeah, it's a natural human

2945
02:40:56.504 --> 02:40:57.287
bias, right?

2946
02:40:57.327 --> 02:40:59.294
It's, it's actually called self serving bias.

2947
02:40:59.314 --> 02:41:00.157
There's a name for it.

2948
02:41:00.177 --> 02:41:00.799
Yes.

2949
02:41:00.839 --> 02:41:01.080
Yes.

2950
02:41:01.221 --> 02:41:04.736
It's a, if something great happens, it's because I'm a genius.

2951
02:41:04.756 --> 02:41:05.680
And if something bad happens,

2952
02:41:05.781 --> 02:41:07.860
it's because the world's awful and I'm so unlucky.

2953
02:41:08.923 --> 02:41:10.800
So this is what we can think about, right?

2954
02:41:10.920 --> 02:41:13.400
It's like, you know, you can go search Wikipedia

2955
02:41:13.622 --> 02:41:15.279
for list of cognitive biases, right?

2956
02:41:15.481 --> 02:41:17.740
And you're going to see like this ginormous list, right?

2957
02:41:17.740 --> 02:41:19.060
Because there's a lot of dissertations

2958
02:41:19.162 --> 02:41:20.080
that people have to write.

2959
02:41:20.200 --> 02:41:20.287
Yes.

2960
02:41:21.061 --> 02:41:23.920
So there's a lot of individual biases

2961
02:41:24.102 --> 02:41:25.300
resulting among them, right?

2962
02:41:25.561 --> 02:41:27.120
And self-serving bias.

2963
02:41:28.122 --> 02:41:30.335
But the thing is that I think that for like

2964
02:41:31.985 --> 02:41:33.759
the most parsimonious way to look at it

2965
02:41:34.423 --> 02:41:36.578
actually comes from Daniel Kahneman,

2966
02:41:37.060 --> 02:41:42.040
which is that what we're really all sort of cognitively trying to accomplish

2967
02:41:43.046 --> 02:41:45.600
is to advance our self-narrative in a positive way.

2968
02:41:45.720 --> 02:41:45.916
Yes.

2969
02:41:46.142 --> 02:41:46.274
Right?

2970
02:41:46.481 --> 02:41:47.800
Like we want to feel good about ourselves.

2971
02:41:47.901 --> 02:41:50.820
And every time we're interpreting things that are happening in the world,

2972
02:41:51.662 --> 02:41:55.020
we want to feel a little better about ourselves at all times, which is fine.

2973
02:41:55.080 --> 02:41:57.080
And I wouldn't ask anybody not to do that, right?

2974
02:41:57.160 --> 02:41:58.660
Because otherwise you get sad and depressed.

2975
02:41:58.961 --> 02:42:00.100
And I don't want anybody to be depressed.

2976
02:42:00.160 --> 02:42:01.118
I want people to be happy.

2977
02:42:01.480 --> 02:42:01.981
Right.

2978
02:42:02.021 --> 02:42:03.963
So, of course, we want to feel good about ourself.

2979
02:42:04.643 --> 02:42:09.167
But the question is, like, which self?

2980
02:42:09.848 --> 02:42:11.650
Which I know sounds weird, right?

2981
02:42:11.690 --> 02:42:12.771
Like, what do you mean, which self?

2982
02:42:13.031 --> 02:42:14.712
Me, myself, right?

2983
02:42:15.093 --> 02:42:17.075
Oh, but there's different versions of yourself.

2984
02:42:17.575 --> 02:42:20.077
There's the version of you now.

2985
02:42:20.898 --> 02:42:22.960
And then there's all the versions of you in the future.

2986
02:42:23.841 --> 02:42:37.040
And this is the real cognitive problem is that we have this constant street fight happening between us in the now, present us, and future us.

2987
02:42:38.003 --> 02:42:40.900
And that is like the Jets and the Sharks, man.

2988
02:42:41.060 --> 02:42:42.500
This is like a battle.

2989
02:42:43.360 --> 02:42:48.720
And what's happening when you say, oh, that was bad luck, is that you're protecting present you.

2990
02:42:49.503 --> 02:42:54.420
right because if present you has to say well maybe it wasn't bad luck like maybe i made a

2991
02:42:54.440 --> 02:42:59.720
bad decision now you have to actually be opening to open to going and checking yeah and you know

2992
02:42:59.720 --> 02:43:04.100
what you might find out you might find out that you made a bad decision does that advance your

2993
02:43:04.140 --> 02:43:09.980
self-narrative well not right then yeah right now so now you now your self-narrative is going to

2994
02:43:09.980 --> 02:43:15.940
take a hit you have to take a step backwards and we don't like that very much right but if you can

2995
02:43:16.120 --> 02:43:22.040
spot that error in your decision making, guess what happens to all the future versions of you?

2996
02:43:22.782 --> 02:43:23.686
They do better.

2997
02:43:23.706 --> 02:43:26.440
Because going back to that idea of earth luck,

2998
02:43:27.361 --> 02:43:27.642
right?

2999
02:43:27.702 --> 02:43:30.980
Like I now get to make decisions that are going to put me in better neighborhood.

3000
02:43:31.701 --> 02:43:38.540
You just triggered a kind of an epiphany in me, which is, which is there's all these platitudes

3001
02:43:38.560 --> 02:43:39.626
that you hear all the time.

3002
02:43:39.646 --> 02:43:42.380
It's like everything happens for a reason or like the universe has a

3003
02:43:42.420 --> 02:43:47.020
plan for me you know it doesn't right it's just all this like kind of gobbledygook but like it it

3004
02:43:47.562 --> 02:43:52.540
it's designed to make people feel better in the moment right when some when there's either a bad

3005
02:43:52.660 --> 02:43:56.820
outcome or they made a bad decision yeah that differentiation between present self and the

3006
02:43:56.820 --> 02:44:02.240
future self right and it's like the epiphany i had is that a lot of a lot of these kind of

3007
02:44:02.340 --> 02:44:09.060
colloquial platitudes i think they kind of evolved as mental tools to allow people who don't understand

3008
02:44:09.140 --> 02:44:14.700
any of this stuff to be more adaptive when something doesn't go their way right because

3009
02:44:14.800 --> 02:44:20.660
it's like if something bad happens and or you screw up or you make a poor decision or whatever

3010
02:44:20.740 --> 02:44:26.640
and you you're not a probabilistic thinker you you're not a bayesian thinker like you don't you

3011
02:44:26.680 --> 02:44:31.920
don't reason in these ways it makes sense though like telling yourself something like you know god

3012
02:44:31.980 --> 02:44:37.440
has a plan and and it's this happened for a good reason everything happens for a reason yeah that

3013
02:44:37.540 --> 02:44:45.680
like mentally primes you to look for those lessons and be aware of maybe the positive result that has

3014
02:44:45.720 --> 02:44:52.660
not yet occurred and whereas if you did not believe in that you would just be kind of wallow

3015
02:44:52.700 --> 02:44:59.038
away and be like why me poor me i would say so i'm gonna agree with you partially um yeah so i

3016
02:44:59.780 --> 02:45:03.700
can understand what you're saying about it gets you to maybe think maybe some positive things

3017
02:45:03.720 --> 02:45:04.600
will happen in the future.

3018
02:45:04.880 --> 02:45:04.980
Yeah.

3019
02:45:05.081 --> 02:45:05.879
But what it doesn't do

3020
02:45:05.961 --> 02:45:07.140
is get you to look at your decision.

3021
02:45:07.281 --> 02:45:07.900
No, it doesn't.

3022
02:45:07.900 --> 02:45:08.020
Right?

3023
02:45:08.221 --> 02:45:09.699
So that's the thing I want you to do.

3024
02:45:10.143 --> 02:45:10.380
Yes.

3025
02:45:10.500 --> 02:45:11.880
So going back to this idea,

3026
02:45:12.000 --> 02:45:13.540
of course I want you to feel good about yourself.

3027
02:45:13.842 --> 02:45:14.780
I want to feel good about myself.

3028
02:45:14.860 --> 02:45:16.439
I want to feel awesome at all times, right?

3029
02:45:16.701 --> 02:45:18.099
Like I'm like everybody else.

3030
02:45:19.021 --> 02:45:21.759
If you can shift your mindset to say,

3031
02:45:23.286 --> 02:45:26.080
like, okay, I'm really going to take care of future me.

3032
02:45:26.384 --> 02:45:26.580
Yeah.

3033
02:45:27.063 --> 02:45:29.640
I want future me to create better earth luck.

3034
02:45:30.905 --> 02:45:32.079
And the only way I can do that

3035
02:45:32.241 --> 02:45:34.560
is by choosing better environments to be in.

3036
02:45:34.762 --> 02:45:35.739
And I can only do that

3037
02:45:35.942 --> 02:45:37.580
if I examine the decisions that I'm making

3038
02:45:38.285 --> 02:45:40.460
and try to figure out when I've made an error

3039
02:45:41.006 --> 02:45:42.400
or when I've made a really good one.

3040
02:45:42.461 --> 02:45:43.600
Because if I've made a really good one,

3041
02:45:43.661 --> 02:45:44.500
I want to repeat that.

3042
02:45:45.162 --> 02:45:46.200
If I made a really bad one,

3043
02:45:46.302 --> 02:45:47.180
I don't want to repeat it.

3044
02:45:47.240 --> 02:45:48.380
I want to get the lessons from that.

3045
02:45:48.420 --> 02:45:50.760
So I always have to be going back to that, right?

3046
02:45:50.942 --> 02:45:51.700
And instead of just saying,

3047
02:45:51.780 --> 02:45:52.538
oh, this is bad luck,

3048
02:45:52.900 --> 02:45:54.119
which makes me feel better now,

3049
02:45:54.782 --> 02:45:57.340
I can say, I'm one of those people

3050
02:45:58.024 --> 02:46:00.460
who's willing to go look and find mistakes

3051
02:46:00.702 --> 02:46:02.380
because I'm taking care of future me.

3052
02:46:02.942 --> 02:46:05.320
And then you get to still feel good about yourself, right?

3053
02:46:05.420 --> 02:46:08.180
So you get the benefits of all those versions of yourself

3054
02:46:08.180 --> 02:46:10.720
that are going to benefit from the examination that you're doing.

3055
02:46:11.463 --> 02:46:13.140
And you don't have to feel bad about yourself

3056
02:46:13.160 --> 02:46:14.619
because you know you're taking care of future me.

3057
02:46:15.041 --> 02:46:16.699
So you can kind of think about it as like,

3058
02:46:18.061 --> 02:46:22.760
you know, do I want to like hang out and like scroll and whatever?

3059
02:46:22.940 --> 02:46:24.119
Or do I want to go to the gym?

3060
02:46:24.321 --> 02:46:25.980
And I really don't want to go to the gym today.

3061
02:46:26.622 --> 02:46:27.800
But why do you go to the gym?

3062
02:46:27.860 --> 02:46:29.280
Because you're taking care of future you.

3063
02:46:29.985 --> 02:46:32.160
and then you feel pretty good about that choice, right?

3064
02:46:32.301 --> 02:46:33.719
So do that with your decisions too.

3065
02:46:33.981 --> 02:46:35.840
If you can get yourself to feel good about your choice

3066
02:46:35.921 --> 02:46:37.339
to go to the gym when you don't want to

3067
02:46:38.488 --> 02:46:40.120
because you know you're taking care

3068
02:46:40.221 --> 02:46:41.739
of all the future versions of you,

3069
02:46:42.301 --> 02:46:44.340
particularly 80-year-old you who wants to be able

3070
02:46:44.380 --> 02:46:46.900
to like go up the stairs and carry groceries, right?

3071
02:46:47.480 --> 02:46:50.620
Then think about that with your decision making also, right?

3072
02:46:50.700 --> 02:46:53.960
Like shift that and then we don't get in that quandary

3073
02:46:54.021 --> 02:46:55.400
of wait, do I have to be depressed

3074
02:46:55.582 --> 02:46:56.900
in order to become a better decision maker?

3075
02:46:57.001 --> 02:46:58.660
No, you get to still feel good about yourself.

3076
02:46:58.941 --> 02:47:02.520
There's actually, for people, a great book that I would recommend from Hal Hirschfeld.

3077
02:47:02.640 --> 02:47:04.000
It's called Future You.

3078
02:47:05.443 --> 02:47:07.220
He's just done a whole bunch of work in this space.

3079
02:47:08.564 --> 02:47:11.500
And, you know, it's really leveraging this concept of mental time travel.

3080
02:47:13.006 --> 02:47:13.980
And here's the thing.

3081
02:47:14.080 --> 02:47:18.420
Like, we don't have an actual time machine, which is a bummer, but we can imagine the future.

3082
02:47:19.562 --> 02:47:23.460
And that is actually a big distinction between us and, like, a pigeon.

3083
02:47:23.803 --> 02:47:23.920
Yeah.

3084
02:47:23.940 --> 02:47:24.722
Right.

3085
02:47:24.742 --> 02:47:30.540
So we are, as far as we know, the only species that can imagine beyond our own death,

3086
02:47:30.741 --> 02:47:31.545
as a matter of fact.

3087
02:47:31.605 --> 02:47:31.806
Right.

3088
02:47:31.846 --> 02:47:34.540
So like we have this really powerful tool available to us.

3089
02:47:35.161 --> 02:47:37.909
And so just just constantly ask yourself, which self.

3090
02:47:38.872 --> 02:47:39.152
Right.

3091
02:47:39.253 --> 02:47:41.780
And start saying all those selves

3092
02:47:41.961 --> 02:47:45.776
that are going to be in the future are the things that I want to take care of.

3093
02:47:46.077 --> 02:47:46.800
And I'm going to get

3094
02:47:46.860 --> 02:47:49.333
in my mental time machine and I'm going to travel over there.

3095
02:47:49.353 --> 02:47:50.800
I'm going to look at how do I think

3096
02:47:50.840 --> 02:47:52.106
their life is going to turn out.

3097
02:47:52.126 --> 02:47:52.326
Yeah.

3098
02:47:53.250 --> 02:47:55.520
Given the choice that I'm thinking about making this minute.

3099
02:47:55.981 --> 02:48:00.160
It's interesting because this kind of, this brings a lot of themes of this episode full circle

3100
02:48:00.601 --> 02:48:06.417
in that I think of what we experience as luck is very perceptually based.

3101
02:48:06.437 --> 02:48:06.798
Yes.

3102
02:48:06.838 --> 02:48:07.059
Right.

3103
02:48:07.099 --> 02:48:07.440
So it's,

3104
02:48:07.780 --> 02:48:12.220
if you think about heaven luck, it is imagining all of the alternative contexts and situations

3105
02:48:12.401 --> 02:48:14.811
you could have been born into and then the one you were born into.

3106
02:48:15.233 --> 02:48:16.920
And then depending on your

3107
02:48:17.000 --> 02:48:22.700
ability to imagine better or worse situations, you are going to define yourself as having good

3108
02:48:22.700 --> 02:48:23.242
or bad luck.

3109
02:48:23.403 --> 02:48:23.604
Yeah.

3110
02:48:24.006 --> 02:48:26.135
I think it's similar in our decision making as well.

3111
02:48:26.235 --> 02:48:27.259
In some ways, it's kind

3112
02:48:27.440 --> 02:48:31.620
of having a lack of an imagination of just not being able to imagine the alternative futures

3113
02:48:32.262 --> 02:48:33.545
or the alternative paths.

3114
02:48:33.786 --> 02:48:34.187
Yeah.

3115
02:48:34.267 --> 02:48:34.488
Right.

3116
02:48:34.568 --> 02:48:38.960
To orient yourself towards, you know, what actually happened.

3117
02:48:39.060 --> 02:48:43.900
And so if your imagination is kind of biased in one direction or the other, right, you're only

3118
02:48:44.001 --> 02:48:47.480
thinking about the worst futures that you could potentially have or you're only thinking about

3119
02:48:47.500 --> 02:48:52.600
the worst past that you you could potentially have you're not going to have uh you're not

3120
02:48:52.600 --> 02:48:57.020
going to have clarity around you know making these decisions making these choices moving forward

3121
02:48:57.301 --> 02:49:02.880
so there's actually uh so that actually gets into like if you're if you're only imagining like sort

3122
02:49:02.900 --> 02:49:08.100
of these worse for you know versions of the future um that that now you're getting like really deeply

3123
02:49:08.220 --> 02:49:13.260
in into the work of daniel kahneman and amos taberski so daniel kahneman won a nobel prize

3124
02:49:13.340 --> 02:49:15.809
actually for work on just that problem.

3125
02:49:16.712 --> 02:49:19.020
Not from like a clinical psychology perspective,

3126
02:49:19.201 --> 02:49:21.690
but from a behavioral economics perspective.

3127
02:49:21.830 --> 02:49:24.380
So for those people who've heard of prospect theory,

3128
02:49:24.480 --> 02:49:27.780
which is why he won the Nobel prize for it, Tversky would have won it as well, but he had

3129
02:49:27.920 --> 02:49:28.723
passed by then.

3130
02:49:28.743 --> 02:49:28.943
Yeah.

3131
02:49:29.345 --> 02:49:34.300
When we think about prospect theory, what it shows is that we experience

3132
02:49:35.062 --> 02:49:40.536
losses much more keenly than we experience identical gains, right?

3133
02:49:40.597 --> 02:49:41.920
So you can think about

3134
02:49:41.960 --> 02:49:46.078
it this way, you know, there's arguments about whether it's like two to one or 1.5 to one,

3135
02:49:46.600 --> 02:49:52.480
but we can think about it this way, that if you lose $50 at Blackjack, it's going to feel about

3136
02:49:52.640 --> 02:49:56.634
as bad to you as winning $100 at Blackjack feels good.

3137
02:49:56.895 --> 02:49:58.360
But then why is Blackjack so fun?

3138
02:49:59.462 --> 02:50:00.509
Why do I like it so much?

3139
02:50:00.529 --> 02:50:01.716
Well, is it though when you lose though?

3140
02:50:01.736 --> 02:50:02.300
That's the question.

3141
02:50:02.300 --> 02:50:03.386
Why do I like it so much?

3142
02:50:03.426 --> 02:50:04.391
Is it when you lose?

3143
02:50:04.773 --> 02:50:06.120
So that gets into that, like,

3144
02:50:06.440 --> 02:50:07.866
why are we thinking like, oh, it's bad luck.

3145
02:50:07.906 --> 02:50:08.770
It's bad luck, right?

3146
02:50:09.935 --> 02:50:11.200
So now we can sort of take that

3147
02:50:11.300 --> 02:50:12.042
into the future.

3148
02:50:12.684 --> 02:50:16.274
And we can talk about what's called loss aversion.

3149
02:50:17.397 --> 02:50:18.600
And this kind of follows

3150
02:50:18.821 --> 02:50:27.020
from this central insight of prospect theory that when we're making choices, right, we know that

3151
02:50:27.120 --> 02:50:31.118
there's a distribution of outcomes that could occur at some probability, right?

3152
02:50:31.198 --> 02:50:31.540
And what we're

3153
02:50:31.620 --> 02:50:36.260
really supposed to be doing is what we would call taking a weighted average of those things.

3154
02:50:36.722 --> 02:50:41.640
So any of the outcomes have some payoff associated with them and some probability.

3155
02:50:41.720 --> 02:50:45.680
And we can multiply those things together and we can come up with what we would call an expected value.

3156
02:50:46.261 --> 02:50:50.020
So you could think about that as a return on investment.

3157
02:50:50.941 --> 02:50:58.000
But what we know is that for any prospective return on investment, we could end up getting a lot more or a lot less.

3158
02:50:58.343 --> 02:50:59.040
We're going to end up in there.

3159
02:50:59.100 --> 02:51:04.360
That's just what's going to happen on average in the same way that if you flip a coin, yeah,

3160
02:51:04.501 --> 02:51:06.420
you could get three heads in a row on a fair coin.

3161
02:51:06.520 --> 02:51:09.077
But like after 10,000 flips, you're going to end up with 50-50.

3162
02:51:10.041 --> 02:51:12.360
So this is kind of like an abstract concept.

3163
02:51:12.461 --> 02:51:14.580
But this idea of expected value is really important.

3164
02:51:15.141 --> 02:51:19.260
And it's particularly important sort of to the resulting concept because on one flip

3165
02:51:19.340 --> 02:51:20.835
of the coin, I can't get 50% heads, right?

3166
02:51:21.380 --> 02:51:23.860
So we misinterpret these outcomes a lot.

3167
02:51:24.320 --> 02:51:48.260
But what this insight about loss aversion is, is that when we're sort of on the go forward and we're thinking about do I want to choose option A or option B, is that sort of independent of what the expected value is, independent of how much that on average is going to get us to either move toward our goals or away from our goals,

3168
02:51:48.641 --> 02:51:55.560
will tend to choose the option that has the lowest sort of absolute loss associated with us.

3169
02:51:55.580 --> 02:52:00.580
So in other words, we're living in kind of the possibility of those bad universes,

3170
02:52:01.363 --> 02:52:06.060
and we'll pick options that sort of have maybe a less bad universe associated with them,

3171
02:52:06.321 --> 02:52:08.359
even if the gains might be a lot greater.

3172
02:52:09.121 --> 02:52:11.640
Someone who's really loss averse, for example, would never start a company.

3173
02:52:12.921 --> 02:52:17.280
They're less likely to quit the job that they hate, even though they hate their job,

3174
02:52:17.681 --> 02:52:24.140
because they're so focused on this, what if I take the new job and I hate that too, right?

3175
02:52:24.381 --> 02:52:31.080
Even though the chances of a better future version of themselves are greater if they were to take

3176
02:52:31.160 --> 02:52:33.406
that risk and quit, right?

3177
02:52:33.467 --> 02:52:38.160
So it's not just like, oh no, like it's really, you know, it's sort of

3178
02:52:38.220 --> 02:52:45.220
bad psychologically speaking, like in a clinical sense, like for your mental health, to be living

3179
02:52:45.321 --> 02:52:49.160
in those bad universes that might occur in the future,

3180
02:52:49.562 --> 02:52:51.959
but it also makes you make bad choices, right?

3181
02:52:52.240 --> 02:52:53.860
Like it makes you choose things

3182
02:52:53.880 --> 02:52:56.580
that are gonna make your life worse on average

3183
02:52:57.043 --> 02:52:59.560
because you're not quitting the job you hate

3184
02:52:59.661 --> 02:53:00.720
because you're so afraid

3185
02:53:00.861 --> 02:53:02.659
that the new job might turn out poorly also.

3186
02:53:03.022 --> 02:53:04.140
So how do we counteract that?

3187
02:53:04.700 --> 02:53:04.763
Mm.

3188
02:53:08.223 --> 02:53:10.600
You said before something about,

3189
02:53:11.909 --> 02:53:13.560
if you don't think probabilistically,

3190
02:53:13.740 --> 02:53:14.519
you're like a Bayesian.

3191
02:53:14.820 --> 02:53:14.880
Right.

3192
02:53:15.582 --> 02:53:18.880
So let me just add some nuance to that.

3193
02:53:19.661 --> 02:53:23.580
Everybody thinks probabilistically and like a Bayesian because it's happening under the

3194
02:53:23.645 --> 02:53:23.757
hood.

3195
02:53:24.182 --> 02:53:26.520
So the question is if you don't think explicitly.

3196
02:53:26.880 --> 02:53:27.020
Right.

3197
02:53:27.521 --> 02:53:31.220
So I want to just sort of think about what's implicit and what's explicit because part

3198
02:53:31.260 --> 02:53:34.780
of the way that you solve a lot of these problems is to make that explicit.

3199
02:53:35.220 --> 02:53:35.420
Explicit.

3200
02:53:35.560 --> 02:53:35.660
Yeah.

3201
02:53:35.767 --> 02:53:35.900
Right.

3202
02:53:36.244 --> 02:53:37.480
And this is something really important.

3203
02:53:37.540 --> 02:53:43.260
It's something I teach in my classes that you have to not allow these things to just

3204
02:53:43.322 --> 02:53:44.000
run under the hood.

3205
02:53:44.040 --> 02:53:55.480
And the reason is that those forecasts that you're coming up with, the way that you're sort of like forecasting what you think the probability is of things occurring in the future, what you think the outcomes might be associated with those and so on and so forth.

3206
02:53:55.743 --> 02:53:56.440
Sometimes it's right.

3207
02:53:56.840 --> 02:53:56.957
Yeah.

3208
02:53:57.362 --> 02:53:58.420
But sometimes it's wrong.

3209
02:53:59.102 --> 02:54:02.040
And if you leave it implicit, you can never figure out which.

3210
02:54:02.760 --> 02:54:02.895
Right.

3211
02:54:03.040 --> 02:54:07.060
So making it explicit actually is going to help you to spot errors, you yourself spot errors.

3212
02:54:07.822 --> 02:54:10.380
It's also going to help other people to see what you're thinking is.

3213
02:54:10.480 --> 02:54:11.879
And they may have really good input.

3214
02:54:11.962 --> 02:54:12.140
Right.

3215
02:54:12.160 --> 02:54:13.999
So you can get other minds in there.

3216
02:54:14.401 --> 02:54:17.580
So when we think about that kind of hidden information problem, right?

3217
02:54:17.641 --> 02:54:18.600
Like we're not omniscient.

3218
02:54:19.121 --> 02:54:23.040
Well, if we make it explicit and we get other people to sort of look at our thinking, we

3219
02:54:23.202 --> 02:54:24.219
get closer to omniscience.

3220
02:54:24.821 --> 02:54:27.240
It also kind of solves the self-serving bias a little bit.

3221
02:54:27.320 --> 02:54:29.100
So my wife loves to make predictions.

3222
02:54:29.921 --> 02:54:32.660
And whenever she's right, she always remembers.

3223
02:54:32.900 --> 02:54:34.200
And she's like, I knew it.

3224
02:54:34.320 --> 02:54:35.680
I told you this was going to happen.

3225
02:54:36.343 --> 02:54:37.840
And I always tell her, I'm like, it's funny.

3226
02:54:37.900 --> 02:54:40.380
You never remember the predictions you made that never happened.

3227
02:54:40.602 --> 02:54:42.460
And she's like, oh, I didn't make those predictions.

3228
02:54:42.760 --> 02:54:47.860
You know, so it's the making it explicit is important because it documents your predictions

3229
02:54:48.362 --> 02:54:52.320
in a way that you can actually objectively go back and be like, okay, why did I think

3230
02:54:52.382 --> 02:54:53.020
this was going to happen?

3231
02:54:53.060 --> 02:54:53.920
And why was I wrong?

3232
02:54:54.420 --> 02:54:54.540
Yeah.

3233
02:54:54.620 --> 02:54:59.420
So that's actually an incredibly important point because making it explicit improves

3234
02:54:59.420 --> 02:55:00.206
you in a variety of ways.

3235
02:55:02.561 --> 02:55:09.000
One is the act of making it explicit has been shown to make your decisions more accurate.

3236
02:55:09.346 --> 02:55:10.100
It reduces error.

3237
02:55:10.242 --> 02:55:11.500
Just the act of doing that, right?

3238
02:55:11.720 --> 02:55:11.800
Interesting.

3239
02:55:12.040 --> 02:55:15.640
Number two is it allows other people to examine what you're looking at.

3240
02:55:15.680 --> 02:55:20.540
So they're more likely to help you and sort of fill in the gaps and give you different

3241
02:55:20.600 --> 02:55:24.860
ways to think about it, spot errors in your thinking.

3242
02:55:25.441 --> 02:55:26.820
And so that's all kind of in the moment.

3243
02:55:26.960 --> 02:55:30.279
So we've got you're more likely to be more accurate, but then also other people, you

3244
02:55:30.460 --> 02:55:35.320
can bring other people into the equation and you can, you know, inch closer to omniscience,

3245
02:55:35.460 --> 02:55:38.380
like inch closer to omniscience, unfortunately, because they're not omniscient either.

3246
02:55:38.440 --> 02:55:40.940
But it helps you to get different perspectives on the thing.

3247
02:55:41.181 --> 02:55:43.180
But then the accountability thing is really important.

3248
02:55:43.740 --> 02:55:43.940
Right?

3249
02:55:44.000 --> 02:55:48.580
Because now it actually gives us a way to go and say, here's what I was thinking.

3250
02:55:49.242 --> 02:55:50.500
Here's how these things turned out.

3251
02:55:50.560 --> 02:55:51.419
Let me go back and look.

3252
02:55:51.840 --> 02:55:52.020
Right?

3253
02:55:52.140 --> 02:55:54.680
Let me think, like, was I anticipating this?

3254
02:55:55.324 --> 02:55:56.760
How was I thinking about this?

3255
02:55:57.162 --> 02:56:00.340
Did I actually foresee what happened?

3256
02:56:00.440 --> 02:56:03.300
The things that I learned after the fact, could I have known them?

3257
02:56:04.262 --> 02:56:07.020
If I could have known them, why didn't I include it in the first place?

3258
02:56:07.020 --> 02:56:09.400
So maybe I should include that going forward, right?

3259
02:56:09.861 --> 02:56:15.220
It's such an important point, this sort of accountability piece, because not only does

3260
02:56:15.661 --> 02:56:19.755
knowing you're going to be accountable improve the quality of the decision that you make,

3261
02:56:21.340 --> 02:56:25.700
because just the knowledge that someone might look at it in the future makes you less biased.

3262
02:56:26.224 --> 02:56:27.520
It's a really good debiasing tool.

3263
02:56:27.760 --> 02:56:30.960
But then you also get to close the feedback loops, which actually does make you more accurate

3264
02:56:31.065 --> 02:56:31.378
as well.

3265
02:56:31.880 --> 02:56:34.980
Do you recommend keeping like a decision journal?

3266
02:56:35.201 --> 02:56:41.600
Like, is this something, is this some sort of regular practice that normal people can do on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis?

3267
02:56:42.222 --> 02:56:43.700
So I love that question.

3268
02:56:44.561 --> 02:56:49.380
I don't think you need a decision journal because I think if you make a good decision, you'll create a record of it anyway.

3269
02:56:50.020 --> 02:56:53.520
So journaling sort of feels like I make a decision and then I journal about it.

3270
02:56:53.705 --> 02:56:53.818
Yeah.

3271
02:56:54.141 --> 02:56:59.960
So I just like have an aversion to that term for that reason because I think any good decision process is going to produce a record.

3272
02:57:00.304 --> 02:57:00.460
Yeah.

3273
02:57:00.800 --> 02:57:10.314
How much, how deep, how big the record is, is going to depend on how much time the decision deserves.

3274
02:57:10.995 --> 02:57:14.860
And different decisions deserve different amounts of thought that are put into them.

3275
02:57:16.001 --> 02:57:33.160
And the way that we think about how much time and effort and attention am I supposed to put into this thought, we want to think about, again, going back to trade-offs, the more effort or time that I put into a decision, I should be increasing the accuracy of the decision, right?

3276
02:57:33.301 --> 02:57:36.760
So what this brings us to is like, well, how tolerant am I of error?

3277
02:57:36.880 --> 02:57:41.300
Because obviously every decision that I ever make, I can't put like full process into.

3278
02:57:41.924 --> 02:57:43.560
I shouldn't make every single thing explicit.

3279
02:57:43.780 --> 02:57:47.660
I shouldn't be making probabilistic distributions about whether to brush my teeth in the morning.

3280
02:57:48.342 --> 02:57:49.199
I hope you're not doing that.

3281
02:57:50.044 --> 02:57:50.339
Okay.

3282
02:57:51.703 --> 02:57:53.840
So because if we did that, we'd never get down the stairs.

3283
02:57:54.028 --> 02:57:54.220
Right.

3284
02:57:54.320 --> 02:57:54.453
Right.

3285
02:57:54.584 --> 02:57:54.780
Right.

3286
02:57:54.881 --> 02:57:58.460
Like you'd have to be like creating these distributions for like what shirt you want

3287
02:57:58.460 --> 02:57:58.760
to wear.

3288
02:57:58.880 --> 02:58:00.700
Like that would be nuts.

3289
02:58:01.200 --> 02:58:01.340
All right.

3290
02:58:01.421 --> 02:58:02.960
So how do we actually figure this out?

3291
02:58:03.040 --> 02:58:06.260
Well, again, through this frame of how much error can I tolerate?

3292
02:58:06.460 --> 02:58:11.800
And that gets you to two really big ideas, long-term impact, not short-term impact, long-term

3293
02:58:11.921 --> 02:58:15.580
impact of the decision and how easy it is to reverse the decision.

3294
02:58:16.321 --> 02:58:19.919
Because being able to reverse the decision or quit what you're doing reduces impact.

3295
02:58:20.140 --> 02:58:21.660
So they're actually sort of the same thing.

3296
02:58:21.781 --> 02:58:23.300
We're just sort of putting it into two buckets.

3297
02:58:23.860 --> 02:58:30.480
So I just think about this as like the intern versus CEO problem or the dating versus marrying

3298
02:58:30.724 --> 02:58:31.334
problem, right?

3299
02:58:31.861 --> 02:58:38.720
So if you're hiring an intern and they don't work out, it's probably not going to have a really big impact on your business in the long run.

3300
02:58:39.081 --> 02:58:41.900
It might feel bad in the short run, but we don't care about short-term us, right?

3301
02:58:42.000 --> 02:58:46.280
We care about long-term us because that creates a lot better short-term us's in the future.

3302
02:58:46.720 --> 02:58:48.420
You know, it's not going to be a big deal if it doesn't work out.

3303
02:58:48.500 --> 02:58:50.180
So how much effort should you put into that?

3304
02:58:50.300 --> 02:58:51.880
Probably not very much, right?

3305
02:58:51.940 --> 02:59:00.420
You should have a couple of boxes that you tick, you know, reasonable references, you know, whatever, and go ahead and hire them.

3306
02:59:00.480 --> 02:59:02.879
You might end up with like 20 people that are perfectly good.

3307
02:59:03.400 --> 02:59:07.140
But CEO, better put a lot of time into that.

3308
02:59:07.660 --> 02:59:11.180
Dating, if you have a bad date, whatever, right?

3309
02:59:11.380 --> 02:59:12.840
Marrying, all right.

3310
02:59:13.181 --> 02:59:16.120
So we can sort of think about those things in those categories, right?

3311
02:59:16.703 --> 02:59:19.900
So basically what you want to ask yourself is two questions, right?

3312
02:59:21.301 --> 02:59:26.020
The first one is just, if I, you know, if I sort of imagine this not turning out well

3313
02:59:26.181 --> 02:59:28.540
in the future, how big of a deal is that?

3314
02:59:29.262 --> 02:59:35.700
and if it's a small deal don't spend a lot of time if it's a big deal you should be creating

3315
02:59:35.800 --> 02:59:39.980
a pretty strong record of why you're deciding what you're doing right you should be doing these

3316
02:59:40.040 --> 02:59:43.780
forecasts you should be thinking about the outcomes you should be comparing options you

3317
02:59:43.780 --> 02:59:47.920
should be getting other people's input like all of these things like with my clients would create

3318
02:59:48.021 --> 02:59:51.700
decision rubrics right and then we're creating a record and we're quantifying their qualitative

3319
02:59:51.800 --> 02:59:55.800
opinions that we're doing a whole bunch of stuff but these are for really big decisions where

3320
02:59:55.820 --> 02:59:57.950
they're slinging millions of dollars into companies.

3321
02:59:58.553 --> 03:00:00.160
For little decisions, I would tell

3322
03:00:00.200 --> 03:00:00.923
them not to do that.

3323
03:00:00.983 --> 03:00:03.413
Like, please don't do that for small decisions.

3324
03:00:03.774 --> 03:00:04.778
And then the other one is,

3325
03:00:05.600 --> 03:00:06.986
you know, sort of how quittable is it?

3326
03:00:07.407 --> 03:00:10.660
So I'm going to urge people to sort of lose that one

3327
03:00:10.700 --> 03:00:12.528
way door, two way door analogy.

3328
03:00:12.568 --> 03:00:15.140
The reason why I don't like it is it suggests that it's binary.

3329
03:00:15.760 --> 03:00:16.805
You can either quit or you can't.

3330
03:00:16.906 --> 03:00:17.428
It's not true.

3331
03:00:17.730 --> 03:00:18.573
You can quit anything.

3332
03:00:19.036 --> 03:00:19.900
Just some things are a

3333
03:00:19.960 --> 03:00:21.444
higher cost to quit than others.

3334
03:00:21.926 --> 03:00:26.680
So it's a very low cost to let go of an intern because letting

3335
03:00:26.740 --> 03:00:28.366
go of someone is quitting, right?

3336
03:00:28.446 --> 03:00:31.195
So a very low cost to let go of an intern.

3337
03:00:31.336 --> 03:00:32.500
It's very low cost to

3338
03:00:33.203 --> 03:00:36.114
not go on another date with a person or even walk out in the middle of it.

3339
03:00:37.018 --> 03:00:37.520
Not a big deal,

3340
03:00:37.921 --> 03:00:41.330
but it's very high cost to lose a CEO.

3341
03:00:41.911 --> 03:00:44.518
It's a very high cost to end a marriage, right?

3342
03:00:44.899 --> 03:00:45.100
We can

3343
03:00:45.140 --> 03:00:46.627
sort of think about it along that range.

3344
03:00:46.668 --> 03:00:46.929
Okay.

3345
03:00:46.949 --> 03:00:49.140
So now that kind of brings us back to this problem

3346
03:00:49.220 --> 03:00:52.736
of like, so how do we get someone to actually quit their job, right?

3347
03:00:52.776 --> 03:00:53.740
Like instead of being

3348
03:00:53.840 --> 03:00:54.562
loss averse.

3349
03:00:55.263 --> 03:00:57.909
And it goes into this zone, right?

3350
03:00:58.030 --> 03:01:02.660
So what we want to start doing is notice that what

3351
03:01:02.981 --> 03:01:09.260
I'm asking you to do in that situation is to say, what does the future look like for this decision?

3352
03:01:09.520 --> 03:01:10.646
Is it going to be a big deal?

3353
03:01:10.747 --> 03:01:13.220
Is it going to be a big cost to reverse the decision?

3354
03:01:13.960 --> 03:01:18.280
You want to step back and start being explicitly probabilistic in your thinking

3355
03:01:18.742 --> 03:01:22.019
when you're thinking about, should I stay in this job or go to a new one as well?

3356
03:01:22.059 --> 03:01:22.180
Like,

3357
03:01:22.220 --> 03:01:26.718
it's sort of a very similar idea of how do we actually make these things probabilistic?

3358
03:01:27.040 --> 03:01:27.100
And

3359
03:01:27.200 --> 03:01:28.345
how do we get into the future?

3360
03:01:28.707 --> 03:01:31.920
So you want to combine those two things and basically all sort

3361
03:01:31.940 --> 03:01:33.064
of good decision hygiene.

3362
03:01:33.426 --> 03:01:35.875
I actually did this with someone who really hated their job.

3363
03:01:36.658 --> 03:01:37.120
And they had a

3364
03:01:37.180 --> 03:01:37.622
new job.

3365
03:01:37.662 --> 03:01:41.820
And they were talking to me for advice about whether they should go to the new job.

3366
03:01:41.840 --> 03:01:41.920
They

3367
03:01:41.940 --> 03:01:43.126
were an ER doctor.

3368
03:01:43.147 --> 03:01:45.660
And there was a whole bunch of things that were going on, which where they were

3369
03:01:45.760 --> 03:01:47.387
just had been unhappy for many years.

3370
03:01:47.848 --> 03:01:50.940
And they now had an opportunity to go work for an insurance

3371
03:01:51.081 --> 03:01:53.090
company, help them evaluate claims, right?

3372
03:01:53.291 --> 03:01:55.320
So they described to me what was going on in the

3373
03:01:55.360 --> 03:01:56.144
job that they were in.

3374
03:01:56.264 --> 03:01:57.993
And honestly, I was super confused.

3375
03:01:58.595 --> 03:01:59.540
Because I was like, you've hated it for

3376
03:01:59.560 --> 03:01:59.942
years.

3377
03:01:59.962 --> 03:02:00.725
Like, why aren't you?

3378
03:02:00.745 --> 03:02:02.512
I don't, I don't get it.

3379
03:02:02.954 --> 03:02:04.460
So I said to them, well, what's the issue?

3380
03:02:04.560 --> 03:02:06.450
Like, why don't you want to go take this new job?

3381
03:02:06.490 --> 03:02:07.536
And they said that sentence.

3382
03:02:07.677 --> 03:02:08.260
What if I hate that

3383
03:02:08.340 --> 03:02:08.641
one too?

3384
03:02:08.963 --> 03:02:13.620
I wanted to take this person who obviously, under the hood, the probability is

3385
03:02:13.660 --> 03:02:17.400
occurring under the hood they're a bayesian right so let's make it explicit and i said okay

3386
03:02:18.022 --> 03:02:22.760
well let's imagine it's a year from now and you're in the job you're in what are the chances that

3387
03:02:22.760 --> 03:02:27.580
you're happy right so i'm just moving them into that kind of think about future you

3388
03:02:27.720 --> 03:02:32.898
and let's think about that probabilistically and they said uh zero

3389
03:02:36.747 --> 03:02:42.480
they had like years worth of evidence right i said all right so uh imagine you take the new

3390
03:02:42.520 --> 03:02:42.741
job.

3391
03:02:42.761 --> 03:02:44.951
And I understand that you're worried it might not work out.

3392
03:02:45.112 --> 03:02:45.394
Okay.

3393
03:02:45.816 --> 03:02:46.760
But imagine you take the new

3394
03:02:46.820 --> 03:02:48.107
job and it's a year from now.

3395
03:02:48.247 --> 03:02:49.695
And what are the chances that you're happy?

3396
03:02:50.117 --> 03:02:50.740
And they said, that's

3397
03:02:50.780 --> 03:02:52.531
hard for me to guess because I haven't taken it before.

3398
03:02:52.552 --> 03:02:53.860
I go, just give me your best guess.

3399
03:02:54.801 --> 03:02:59.314
They said, 50-50, you know, which is an answer you often get, right?

3400
03:02:59.836 --> 03:03:00.899
And I said, oh, is 50%

3401
03:03:01.380 --> 03:03:02.243
greater than zero?

3402
03:03:04.589 --> 03:03:06.333
And she said, yes.

3403
03:03:06.915 --> 03:03:08.920
And she actually literally quit the next day.

3404
03:03:09.140 --> 03:03:09.236
Wow.

3405
03:03:09.420 --> 03:03:12.947
She had been like agonizing over this decision for really years.

3406
03:03:12.967 --> 03:03:16.734
I mean, she this was a new job offer, but she had been thinking about leaving for a very long time.

3407
03:03:17.075 --> 03:03:19.940
And when I just put it in those terms, it was like, it just.

3408
03:03:20.821 --> 03:03:25.567
It really is funny how the loss aversion and the emotions that are wrapped up in it.

3409
03:03:26.067 --> 03:03:30.573
And of course, you get stuff like identity, fear of change and all this stuff.

3410
03:03:30.633 --> 03:03:36.740
It all gets wrapped up in it and it muddies that under the hood kind of unconscious Bayesian thinking.

3411
03:03:37.242 --> 03:03:42.760
it's funny I remember back when I was thinking about trying to start my first business yeah and

3412
03:03:43.562 --> 03:03:48.860
it was middle of the 2008 crisis job market was in the total gutter yeah it was like total

3413
03:03:49.462 --> 03:03:53.700
total dog shit job market times and I was struggling I was getting by with like some

3414
03:03:53.780 --> 03:03:58.320
odd jobs here and there I just finally landed like the first real job of my life and I hated it and

3415
03:03:58.520 --> 03:04:04.200
and I remember sitting there and and I struggled with it for weeks I remember you know sitting

3416
03:04:04.300 --> 03:04:09.340
down and kind of writing out best case scenario, worst case scenario, you know, if I do it, if I

3417
03:04:09.420 --> 03:04:11.006
don't, all that, all those sorts of things.

3418
03:04:11.227 --> 03:04:14.400
And I remember coming to the realization that

3419
03:04:15.304 --> 03:04:18.640
the worst case scenario, if I quit, if I quit this, try to start my own business,

3420
03:04:19.001 --> 03:04:20.247
it doesn't work and I go broke.

3421
03:04:20.468 --> 03:04:23.200
And then I got to go get, go, go back and get another job in two

3422
03:04:23.260 --> 03:04:23.481
years.

3423
03:04:23.882 --> 03:04:31.379
I realized that in terms of the job market, an unemployed 23 year old and an unemployed 24

3424
03:04:31.800 --> 03:04:36.760
year old or with both with zero job experience, there's like no difference between the two.

3425
03:04:36.860 --> 03:04:40.680
Like I'm literally losing nothing by taking another year and trying to do this thing.

3426
03:04:41.162 --> 03:04:44.540
And not only that, but the job market will likely be better when I come back in a year.

3427
03:04:45.501 --> 03:04:51.240
And, and I remember as soon as I realized that I felt so stupid because I was like,

3428
03:04:51.360 --> 03:04:56.480
I'm actually in a better position if I try this and it fails, you know, for a year, because then

3429
03:04:56.520 --> 03:05:00.093
it's, I'm probably going to come back to a better situation.

3430
03:05:00.374 --> 03:05:01.940
And I will have learned all sorts of

3431
03:05:01.980 --> 03:05:02.804
things in the process.

3432
03:05:02.844 --> 03:05:05.335
So here's the interesting thing about loss aversion.

3433
03:05:05.897 --> 03:05:06.560
And this is what you

3434
03:05:06.560 --> 03:05:09.092
were sort of feeling in there is that it's, it's asymmetric.

3435
03:05:09.353 --> 03:05:10.900
When we're thinking about starting

3436
03:05:11.081 --> 03:05:12.769
something, we're very loss averse.

3437
03:05:12.789 --> 03:05:14.538
We're thinking about the bad things that could happen.

3438
03:05:14.558 --> 03:05:14.940
We sort of,

3439
03:05:15.140 --> 03:05:19.040
we want, we kind of want like a guarantee that it's going to work out well, otherwise we don't

3440
03:05:19.060 --> 03:05:19.542
want to do it.

3441
03:05:19.703 --> 03:05:19.984
Right.

3442
03:05:20.807 --> 03:05:24.080
But we're not loss averse to the option that we're already exercising.

3443
03:05:24.682 --> 03:05:29.440
right so like you weren't really thinking about like uh well what if the thing i'm doing right

3444
03:05:29.480 --> 03:05:34.140
now turns out really badly right you're worried about what if the thing that i'm doing in the

3445
03:05:34.180 --> 03:05:40.040
future works out badly okay so what that means is that we're not we're not thinking about the status

3446
03:05:40.220 --> 03:05:47.120
quo as an option right so when i'm saying like think about the option that you're considering

3447
03:05:47.522 --> 03:05:51.620
and like what are the possible outcomes what are the probabilities of those occurring and then

3448
03:05:52.041 --> 03:05:54.591
to your point, what would I do if I saw those?

3449
03:05:55.013 --> 03:05:56.739
Like, what would I do in reaction to that?

3450
03:05:56.760 --> 03:05:56.860
What

3451
03:05:56.940 --> 03:05:57.905
would the world look like?

3452
03:05:58.005 --> 03:06:01.380
What would, if I did that thing, what do I think would occur after that?

3453
03:06:01.480 --> 03:06:01.641
Right?

3454
03:06:01.681 --> 03:06:05.100
Like, so we're, we're thinking about, you know, I'm asking you to think about this,

3455
03:06:05.180 --> 03:06:08.320
but you have to do that for the status quo too, because you have to have a comparison.

3456
03:06:08.621 --> 03:06:08.862
Right.

3457
03:06:09.204 --> 03:06:09.385
Right.

3458
03:06:09.405 --> 03:06:12.640
Because what you're trying to decide is, should I stay in the job I'm in?

3459
03:06:13.040 --> 03:06:13.281
Yeah.

3460
03:06:13.902 --> 03:06:16.709
Or should I switch?

3461
03:06:16.729 --> 03:06:20.940
And what happened with my doctor friend is that

3462
03:06:21.402 --> 03:06:23.570
she was only thinking about the switch.

3463
03:06:24.313 --> 03:06:26.280
And she was only worried about the bad outcomes that were

3464
03:06:26.320 --> 03:06:27.023
associated with it.

3465
03:06:27.043 --> 03:06:31.357
And she wasn't even thinking about the option that she was currently exercising,

3466
03:06:32.360 --> 03:06:37.100
the job that she was already in, as something where she should apply the exact same thinking

3467
03:06:37.221 --> 03:06:38.186
in the same process.

3468
03:06:38.206 --> 03:06:40.680
So that's kind of number one is that we have to realize that we always

3469
03:06:40.700 --> 03:06:41.988
have to be comparing to something.

3470
03:06:42.551 --> 03:06:44.000
And when you're thinking about doing something new,

3471
03:06:44.080 --> 03:06:47.895
you have to remember to include the status quo in that process.

3472
03:06:47.955 --> 03:06:49.340
Because the question is,

3473
03:06:49.581 --> 03:06:54.537
is the thing I'm doing good for me and helping to advance me to my goals in comparison to the

3474
03:06:55.540 --> 03:06:57.046
new thing that I'm thinking about?

3475
03:06:57.468 --> 03:07:00.340
Then to get out of the loss aversion problem, you have to

3476
03:07:00.380 --> 03:07:04.180
think about the whole probability distribution and the whole outcome distribution together.

3477
03:07:04.881 --> 03:07:08.636
And then you have to think, well, okay, but like, what's the cost to quit?

3478
03:07:09.479 --> 03:07:09.760
Meaning,

3479
03:07:10.661 --> 03:07:16.860
if I do this thing, and it doesn't work out, like, what's the cost for me to stop doing it?

3480
03:07:17.162 --> 03:07:19.820
And then how bad is that anyway?

3481
03:07:20.020 --> 03:07:22.340
Like, what are the other things that I could do in response?

3482
03:07:22.540 --> 03:07:27.180
So the decision no longer becomes like last and final, which is the way that we sort of

3483
03:07:27.220 --> 03:07:30.900
think about things, which is really funny because like if you look backwards, you know

3484
03:07:31.002 --> 03:07:32.220
that decisions aren't last and final.

3485
03:07:32.260 --> 03:07:34.220
But we think about forward decisions as last and final.

3486
03:07:34.840 --> 03:07:38.080
You aren't as worried about a bad outcome because you've already planned for it.

3487
03:07:38.961 --> 03:07:44.160
And if you get an outcome that you don't like, you're less likely to think about it as a

3488
03:07:44.260 --> 03:07:49.820
failure because it was already included in the mix and you already had a plan for it.

3489
03:07:50.441 --> 03:07:53.273
So this kind of goes back to this core idea of luck, right?

3490
03:07:53.293 --> 03:07:55.100
Which is when you're thinking about

3491
03:07:55.100 --> 03:07:57.208
an option and should I do this thing?

3492
03:07:57.228 --> 03:07:58.614
Should I go start my own company?

3493
03:07:59.176 --> 03:08:00.200
What you're thinking about

3494
03:08:00.300 --> 03:08:02.429
is there's some distribution of things that could occur.

3495
03:08:02.570 --> 03:08:04.920
I could end up on sort of like luck could

3496
03:08:05.041 --> 03:08:07.390
influence me toward outcomes that are undesirable.

3497
03:08:07.832 --> 03:08:09.640
It could give me outcomes that are desirable.

3498
03:08:10.323 --> 03:08:14.380
if I get those undesirable outcomes, which is what makes us afraid to start things,

3499
03:08:14.861 --> 03:08:17.373
let me kind of live in that and imagine what that looks like.

3500
03:08:17.795 --> 03:08:18.800
And then I can do two things.

3501
03:08:18.860 --> 03:08:23.096
I can think, well, okay, if I end up there, can I come back, right?

3502
03:08:23.136 --> 03:08:24.260
Can I come back to where I am

3503
03:08:24.340 --> 03:08:24.621
now?

3504
03:08:24.782 --> 03:08:29.880
Or is there something better that I could go to or whatever, like sort of plan for that?

3505
03:08:30.401 --> 03:08:34.400
And then you can go beyond that and say, well, let's imagine that I sort of ended up in that

3506
03:08:34.540 --> 03:08:41.639
world, looking back, what would be the signals that that was how things were unfolding?

3507
03:08:42.100 --> 03:08:42.200
What

3508
03:08:42.220 --> 03:08:43.564
would I do if I see those signals?

3509
03:08:44.146 --> 03:08:44.367
Right?

3510
03:08:44.507 --> 03:08:48.480
And now you've sort of metabolized those,

3511
03:08:48.781 --> 03:08:51.150
the possibility of those things occurring in advance.

3512
03:08:51.532 --> 03:08:53.400
And you sort of get out of this

3513
03:08:53.500 --> 03:08:57.392
resulting problem because it's just in there.

3514
03:08:57.593 --> 03:08:59.820
It's funny because hearing you describe that,

3515
03:09:00.141 --> 03:09:03.520
there's a concept in stoicism called negative visualization that comes from Seneca.

3516
03:09:04.589 --> 03:09:05.900
and the way he wrote about it,

3517
03:09:05.920 --> 03:09:07.160
it was very much just kind of,

3518
03:09:07.280 --> 03:09:10.740
I think, undercut people's loss aversion, right?

3519
03:09:10.800 --> 03:09:12.480
It's like to help people realize that,

3520
03:09:12.600 --> 03:09:14.400
hey, worst case scenario is actually not as bad

3521
03:09:14.440 --> 03:09:16.300
as it feels like it's gonna be.

3522
03:09:16.923 --> 03:09:18.120
Having this conversation about it,

3523
03:09:18.120 --> 03:09:20.480
I realize now that it actually like ties in very well

3524
03:09:20.560 --> 03:09:23.740
to decision-making because it kind of corrects

3525
03:09:23.840 --> 03:09:26.660
that loss aversion and those negative sentiments

3526
03:09:26.822 --> 03:09:28.600
that we have, those irrational negative sentiments

3527
03:09:28.741 --> 03:09:30.740
that we have about potential bad outcomes.

3528
03:09:30.881 --> 03:09:32.899
So actually, interestingly enough, with my clients,

3529
03:09:33.741 --> 03:09:36.228
We include this, it's called a premortem, right?

3530
03:09:36.349 --> 03:09:39.940
So we want to think about the bad thing happening

3531
03:09:40.543 --> 03:09:42.312
before it happens instead of after.

3532
03:09:42.372 --> 03:09:43.015
It's a lot better.

3533
03:09:43.076 --> 03:09:43.940
You're going to think about it more

3534
03:09:44.000 --> 03:09:44.362
clearly.

3535
03:09:44.884 --> 03:09:47.836
I want to throw another kind of strategy or tactic at you.

3536
03:09:47.856 --> 03:09:48.820
Okay, all right, I'm ready.

3537
03:09:49.140 --> 03:09:52.837
And it actually, it ties into something that is common in the poker world, right?

3538
03:09:52.897 --> 03:09:53.400
Which is that

3539
03:09:54.122 --> 03:09:55.849
you combat volatility with volume.

3540
03:09:56.230 --> 03:09:58.800
I've started seeing this show up in the productivity world.

3541
03:09:59.222 --> 03:10:03.540
alex hormosi has this concept that he he started saying that he says volume negates luck

3542
03:10:04.443 --> 03:10:08.900
um which is basically that like if you take a thousand shots on goal yeah at some point

3543
03:10:09.302 --> 03:10:12.820
yeah you know at some point it's not luck anymore like you're yeah yeah yeah then you get into the

3544
03:10:12.880 --> 03:10:18.119
all skill part yeah so i'm curious like what's your reaction to that i i realize that this isn't

3545
03:10:18.701 --> 03:10:22.278
some things some decisions in life are not volume-based decisions like you can't

3546
03:10:22.861 --> 03:10:27.120
marry a thousand times and you can't fire a thousand ceos but um but you can't go on a

3547
03:10:27.140 --> 03:10:35.080
thousand dates and you, um, and you can, uh, you know, send a thousand job resumes to,

3548
03:10:35.321 --> 03:10:36.324
to job positions, right?

3549
03:10:36.344 --> 03:10:40.440
There is something here that I think is useful and it's, um,

3550
03:10:41.702 --> 03:10:44.800
and I'm, I'm wondering how, how you would orient that in your decision-making.

3551
03:10:45.061 --> 03:10:45.623
Okay.

3552
03:10:45.643 --> 03:10:47.670
So let me just, can I just rephrase?

3553
03:10:47.851 --> 03:10:48.052
Sure.

3554
03:10:48.333 --> 03:10:50.300
Volume reduces the influence of luck on the

3555
03:10:50.320 --> 03:10:50.681
outcome.

3556
03:10:51.303 --> 03:10:51.624
I agree.

3557
03:10:51.644 --> 03:10:52.346
It doesn't negate.

3558
03:10:52.727 --> 03:10:55.576
Nothing negates luck, sadly.

3559
03:10:56.218 --> 03:10:56.799
It just is.

3560
03:10:56.839 --> 03:10:57.020
There's

3561
03:10:57.040 --> 03:10:57.703
skill and luck.

3562
03:10:57.844 --> 03:11:01.140
And so there's a couple of ways that you can reduce the influence of luck on the

3563
03:11:01.220 --> 03:11:02.123
outcome, right?

3564
03:11:02.143 --> 03:11:03.989
So volume is one.

3565
03:11:05.133 --> 03:11:07.360
That's true, whether it's a high volatility world or a low

3566
03:11:07.380 --> 03:11:08.744
volatility world, right?

3567
03:11:09.165 --> 03:11:09.908
This is a fun one.

3568
03:11:10.730 --> 03:11:14.040
So if you're like the Boston Red Sox, and you're

3569
03:11:14.060 --> 03:11:18.200
playing a little league team, there's going to be zero influence of luck on the outcome, right?

3570
03:11:18.280 --> 03:11:20.186
Like that's going to only be determined by skill.

3571
03:11:20.868 --> 03:11:24.700
But as you match the skill of two great teams,

3572
03:11:24.780 --> 03:11:28.200
like, you know, the Red Sox versus the Yankees, although to be fair, I don't know if they're

3573
03:11:28.240 --> 03:11:30.032
equally matched this year, but let's pretend they are.

3574
03:11:30.052 --> 03:11:30.796
We'll pretend they are.

3575
03:11:30.877 --> 03:11:31.380
We'll pretend they

3576
03:11:31.400 --> 03:11:31.501
are.

3577
03:11:31.842 --> 03:11:33.871
Then the influence of luck becomes much greater.

3578
03:11:34.132 --> 03:11:35.940
So when we have very big skill gaps,

3579
03:11:36.081 --> 03:11:39.840
we can also reduce the influence of luck on the outcome just because the skill is going to

3580
03:11:39.900 --> 03:11:40.502
dominate there.

3581
03:11:40.924 --> 03:11:45.380
So like in poker, if we're equally matched, it's going to be like the deal of the

3582
03:11:45.420 --> 03:11:46.747
cards in the short run, right?

3583
03:11:46.767 --> 03:11:47.531
Like just what happens.

3584
03:11:47.551 --> 03:11:49.240
Like in the long run, we'll end up with

3585
03:11:49.300 --> 03:11:50.144
equal amounts of money.

3586
03:11:50.204 --> 03:11:53.600
But in the short run, who wins in that given game if we're equally matched

3587
03:11:53.700 --> 03:11:59.079
and skill, right, is going to be determined by like, do you win the races, right?

3588
03:11:59.099 --> 03:11:59.520
Like when we're

3589
03:11:59.721 --> 03:12:01.747
50-50, do you come out on top?

3590
03:12:01.827 --> 03:12:05.017
And there's a lot of like short-term fall there.

3591
03:12:05.117 --> 03:12:06.120
So it's a question

3592
03:12:06.240 --> 03:12:08.930
of like, how much is luck influencing the outcome?

3593
03:12:08.951 --> 03:12:11.239
You can't, you can neither negate it or not.

3594
03:12:11.339 --> 03:12:11.460
Like

3595
03:12:11.801 --> 03:12:12.986
it just is, it's just there.

3596
03:12:13.046 --> 03:12:14.934
So I would just like to say that.

3597
03:12:15.135 --> 03:12:15.356
Okay.

3598
03:12:15.376 --> 03:12:16.280
So now on the volume issue,

3599
03:12:16.900 --> 03:12:24.226
There are definitely a lot of types of decisions where you can get volume, right?

3600
03:12:24.286 --> 03:12:26.788
So this just portfolio theory, right?

3601
03:12:26.848 --> 03:12:33.354
Like if you're in venture, it's a lot better to have invested in 70 companies than it is to have in five.

3602
03:12:34.394 --> 03:12:41.320
In five, you're going to have a much greater influence of luck on the outcome in terms of what we would call realizing your edge, right?

3603
03:12:41.400 --> 03:12:47.780
So let's assume that you're investing at an edge where in poker, you might, let's say

3604
03:12:47.780 --> 03:12:50.720
you have a 5% edge, which would be a really nice edge to have in poker, by the way.

3605
03:12:51.342 --> 03:12:53.460
So you're making 5 cents on every dollar that you invest.

3606
03:12:53.861 --> 03:12:58.160
You might lose a lot of money or win a lot of money as opposed to specifically 5 cents

3607
03:12:58.202 --> 03:12:58.660
on your dollar.

3608
03:12:58.800 --> 03:13:04.260
But if you play 1,500 hours of poker, you'll end up with 5% more than you churned through

3609
03:13:04.362 --> 03:13:05.120
the game, right?

3610
03:13:05.522 --> 03:13:07.520
So that's generally portfolio theory.

3611
03:13:07.620 --> 03:13:11.360
If I can play for 1500 hours, which is like thousands and thousands and thousands and

3612
03:13:11.400 --> 03:13:16.640
thousands of hands, I'm better off than if I play one in terms of reducing that sort

3613
03:13:16.660 --> 03:13:19.020
of appearance of luck in what's going on.

3614
03:13:19.420 --> 03:13:21.159
Okay, so that's one thing that's true.

3615
03:13:21.942 --> 03:13:24.539
And that's true, like of a lot of different stuff.

3616
03:13:24.800 --> 03:13:32.560
But your instinct of like, it's not true of everything is right, unless you think about

3617
03:13:33.042 --> 03:13:37.900
your life, how your life turns out as a portfolio of all the decisions that you've made.

3618
03:13:38.400 --> 03:13:41.314
So are each of those decisions isomorphs to each other?

3619
03:13:41.354 --> 03:13:42.560
Are they identical to each other?

3620
03:13:42.841 --> 03:13:46.580
Not in the way that investing in a startup is, but generally they're going to be relatively

3621
03:13:46.741 --> 03:13:47.745
similar to each other, right?

3622
03:13:47.766 --> 03:13:50.800
So we can really understand kind of like this idea of create a

3623
03:13:50.860 --> 03:13:54.275
portfolio of decisions when the decisions are looking similar to each other.

3624
03:13:54.817 --> 03:13:55.420
Our minds have

3625
03:13:55.540 --> 03:14:01.100
trouble when they look very different, except for, I'm going to go back to this idea of earth luck,

3626
03:14:01.241 --> 03:14:03.320
I'm going to pull that term in again.

3627
03:14:03.942 --> 03:14:04.639
It's just Earthluck.

3628
03:14:04.760 --> 03:14:08.119
I like that Earthluck is winning you over, over the course of this conversation.

3629
03:14:10.724 --> 03:14:12.420
I like it as a category, right?

3630
03:14:12.540 --> 03:14:18.040
But I'm using it as, but going back to what I said about, yes, I'm just going to say yes.

3631
03:14:19.561 --> 03:14:23.540
I'm going to stop and I'm just going to say, yes, I like it as a term because I think that

3632
03:14:23.580 --> 03:14:24.720
it creates a great distinction.

3633
03:14:24.980 --> 03:14:29.260
Yeah, well, it's funny because when we were prepping this episode, we really struggled

3634
03:14:29.343 --> 03:14:29.879
with Earthluck.

3635
03:14:30.101 --> 03:14:34.100
Like we probably spend as much time on the earth luck section is all the other sections.

3636
03:14:34.260 --> 03:14:35.100
And I had the same issue.

3637
03:14:35.160 --> 03:14:38.300
I was like, how is this any different than the other types of luck?

3638
03:14:38.861 --> 03:14:43.080
But as we worked through it, we're like, okay, yeah, there is kind of a category.

3639
03:14:43.361 --> 03:14:44.139
A category, right?

3640
03:14:44.420 --> 03:14:48.360
Decisions that are much more impactful than, yeah.

3641
03:14:48.769 --> 03:14:49.040
I agree.

3642
03:14:49.441 --> 03:15:01.679
So now let's think about all the decisions that you make, whether it's who do you invest in if you're investing in a company or a stock or whatever, right?

3643
03:15:02.961 --> 03:15:08.080
Like what house you buy, who you marry, but then like, what am I eating for lunch?

3644
03:15:08.760 --> 03:15:08.917
Yeah.

3645
03:15:09.360 --> 03:15:10.321
Okay, right.

3646
03:15:10.341 --> 03:15:23.052
Like, you know, at the end, how your life turns out is going to be kind of the total of luck plus the quality of all the decisions that you ever made.

3647
03:15:23.632 --> 03:15:32.600
So I don't really think of decisions as one offs, because it's in the portfolio of decisions that you've made in your life.

3648
03:15:33.321 --> 03:15:41.268
And when we get down to decision quality, the principles that we're talking about apply to any type of decision that you make.

3649
03:15:41.309 --> 03:15:52.740
So if you can improve your decision quality, if you can improve your process, it's going to improve the outcome of decisions that are like, feel like they're one-offs, as well as decisions that are obviously repeating.

3650
03:15:53.780 --> 03:15:58.600
And so that's why I sort of say like, okay, yeah, like it feels like the marriage decision

3651
03:15:58.722 --> 03:15:59.939
is a one-off, but it's not really.

3652
03:16:00.482 --> 03:16:03.020
It's in the portfolio of decisions that you make in your life.

3653
03:16:03.060 --> 03:16:07.080
And at the end of your life, as you look back and you say, was it a good life?

3654
03:16:08.222 --> 03:16:10.920
It's going to be the result of luck plus the quality of your decisions.

3655
03:16:11.700 --> 03:16:13.580
And so it's just a portfolio.

3656
03:16:14.220 --> 03:16:14.619
I like that.

3657
03:16:15.063 --> 03:16:15.720
I like that a lot.

3658
03:16:16.644 --> 03:16:17.520
Last question for you.

3659
03:16:17.725 --> 03:16:17.940
Okay.

3660
03:16:18.301 --> 03:16:27.840
What is an example of either a terrible decision you've made that turned out great or a great decision that went really poorly?

3661
03:16:28.705 --> 03:16:29.500
How much time do you have?

3662
03:16:35.641 --> 03:16:42.020
When poker exploded all over television, I happened to have just had my fourth child.

3663
03:16:42.461 --> 03:16:45.399
So I missed out on the first six months of this whole situation.

3664
03:16:46.483 --> 03:16:52.200
and the thing is that the way people played um you know and i had been playing professionally

3665
03:16:52.401 --> 03:16:58.220
for about eight years at that point the way that people played before that you know it's it's kind

3666
03:16:58.260 --> 03:17:03.440
of like that uh boston red sox versus little league versus boston red sox versus boston red

3667
03:17:03.480 --> 03:17:08.220
sox um if you could put the identical teams together it was a little more like that second

3668
03:17:08.320 --> 03:17:13.020
thing in the sense that if you were actually playing in high stakes poker high stakes

3669
03:17:13.080 --> 03:17:16.109
tournaments, mostly you knew what you were doing.

3670
03:17:16.129 --> 03:17:20.000
Okay, so now I come in and Chris Moneymaker,

3671
03:17:20.440 --> 03:17:26.773
best name ever, has now won the World Series of Poker in my absence.

3672
03:17:27.555 --> 03:17:30.040
And in fact, when he won

3673
03:17:30.120 --> 03:17:35.120
that, I came in 10th that year and I was two weeks from, I mean, I was so pregnant during that.

3674
03:17:35.140 --> 03:17:35.180
It

3675
03:17:35.200 --> 03:17:36.344
was like crazy.

3676
03:17:36.886 --> 03:17:38.211
I come back from my first tournament.

3677
03:17:38.271 --> 03:17:40.520
First of all, it's like, there's

3678
03:17:40.580 --> 03:17:43.753
like 10 times as many people as a tournament like that.

3679
03:17:44.195 --> 03:17:45.540
And the players are really different.

3680
03:17:46.300 --> 03:17:46.581
Right?

3681
03:17:46.662 --> 03:17:49.754
Like they they don't play like the players that I'm used to.

3682
03:17:50.236 --> 03:17:51.380
So anyway, it's a situation

3683
03:17:51.460 --> 03:17:52.545
where I raise with a hand.

3684
03:17:52.565 --> 03:17:55.900
I have King Queen, what's called on the button, I'm last to act,

3685
03:17:55.960 --> 03:17:57.264
and everybody is folded before me.

3686
03:17:57.706 --> 03:18:01.900
And this player who I've never laid eyes on, calls in the big

3687
03:18:01.940 --> 03:18:02.762
blank.

3688
03:18:02.863 --> 03:18:04.227
And the board comes ace 10.

3689
03:18:05.230 --> 03:18:06.153
Blank.

3690
03:18:06.293 --> 03:18:08.540
So for those who don't know poker, that means I have ace

3691
03:18:08.780 --> 03:18:16.440
king queen blank 10 so if I can get a jack uh then obviously I would have the very best hand possible

3692
03:18:16.440 --> 03:18:24.220
uh the problem is that there's only four jacks in the deck and so like the chances that I get a

3693
03:18:24.480 --> 03:18:34.120
jack on the very next card um are eight percent so just just so we're clear I am not playing this

3694
03:18:34.160 --> 03:18:35.385
hand to try to get a jack.

3695
03:18:35.786 --> 03:18:37.392
I just want to make that really clear.

3696
03:18:38.376 --> 03:18:39.340
If I were, that would be a

3697
03:18:39.420 --> 03:18:40.442
really bad decision.

3698
03:18:41.103 --> 03:18:42.586
It wasn't as bad a decision as that.

3699
03:18:43.027 --> 03:18:43.989
But this guy bets.

3700
03:18:44.029 --> 03:18:44.911
And that usually

3701
03:18:49.680 --> 03:18:53.654
signals that the person's hand is somewhat weak.

3702
03:18:53.874 --> 03:18:55.560
So I call because I'm like, ha, ha, ha, I know

3703
03:18:55.600 --> 03:18:56.785
that he doesn't have a good hand.

3704
03:18:57.287 --> 03:18:58.271
I'm just going to call him.

3705
03:18:58.291 --> 03:18:59.516
I could hit a jack.

3706
03:18:59.998 --> 03:19:00.420
But I'm doing

3707
03:19:00.500 --> 03:19:02.146
this to set up a bluff on the next card.

3708
03:19:02.467 --> 03:19:05.096
So the next card comes, it's nothing.

3709
03:19:05.879 --> 03:19:06.280
I still have

3710
03:19:06.340 --> 03:19:06.601
nothing.

3711
03:19:06.641 --> 03:19:07.324
I have King high.

3712
03:19:07.686 --> 03:19:08.308
He bets again.

3713
03:19:08.328 --> 03:19:09.072
And now I raise him.

3714
03:19:09.594 --> 03:19:11.020
And oh, he called really fast.

3715
03:19:12.441 --> 03:19:14.607
So then the final card was a jack.

3716
03:19:14.748 --> 03:19:15.109
Of course.

3717
03:19:16.152 --> 03:19:16.353
Right.

3718
03:19:16.714 --> 03:19:17.175
Of course.

3719
03:19:18.199 --> 03:19:18.600
Suck out.

3720
03:19:19.541 --> 03:19:19.942
Exactly.

3721
03:19:20.284 --> 03:19:22.534
And he checked and I moved all in and he called, right?

3722
03:19:22.594 --> 03:19:23.860
So anyway, I turned my hand over

3723
03:19:23.900 --> 03:19:26.451
and then he very angrily turned over an ace and a nine.

3724
03:19:26.933 --> 03:19:28.378
So like, here was the problem.

3725
03:19:28.399 --> 03:19:28.740
This is why

3726
03:19:28.820 --> 03:19:29.725
this was a bad decision.

3727
03:19:30.006 --> 03:19:31.353
I kind of had him in the right zone.

3728
03:19:31.373 --> 03:19:32.760
Like I kind of knew he had a bad ace.

3729
03:19:33.861 --> 03:19:37.193
But what I got wrong was that like, he wasn't the Red Sox.

3730
03:19:37.494 --> 03:19:37.796
Yes.

3731
03:19:38.016 --> 03:19:38.679
Do you know what I mean?

3732
03:19:38.699 --> 03:19:38.940
Yes.

3733
03:19:39.601 --> 03:19:42.436
He wasn't calling me because he thought he was catching me in a bluff.

3734
03:19:42.456 --> 03:19:43.140
He was calling me because

3735
03:19:43.180 --> 03:19:44.525
he thought his hand was pretty good.

3736
03:19:45.087 --> 03:19:45.347
Right.

3737
03:19:45.448 --> 03:19:49.060
So that was a pretty bad play that turned out really,

3738
03:19:49.140 --> 03:19:51.188
really, really well because I hit that 8%.

3739
03:19:51.549 --> 03:19:54.560
Like I kind of liked my logic, but here's why I think

3740
03:19:54.600 --> 03:19:55.585
it was a really bad decision.

3741
03:19:56.007 --> 03:19:58.259
Because there were 10 times as many people in the tournament.

3742
03:19:58.339 --> 03:19:58.460
Like

3743
03:19:58.781 --> 03:20:02.180
it's not like it was unknowable to me that the people were probably not experts.

3744
03:20:02.820 --> 03:20:04.748
Yes, I kind of had him in the right zone.

3745
03:20:04.768 --> 03:20:05.892
I don't fault myself for that.

3746
03:20:05.952 --> 03:20:07.840
I fault myself for just

3747
03:20:07.900 --> 03:20:09.225
being on autopilot.

3748
03:20:09.947 --> 03:20:10.268
Right.

3749
03:20:10.409 --> 03:20:13.800
And like not thinking about like, well, wait, is he going to play like

3750
03:20:13.840 --> 03:20:15.530
the people that I'm used to playing against?

3751
03:20:15.792 --> 03:20:17.240
And when I went and told like, I think I told

3752
03:20:17.280 --> 03:20:19.266
Eric Seidel the hand and he started laughing at me.

3753
03:20:19.286 --> 03:20:23.660
He was just like, what is wrong with you?

3754
03:20:23.961 --> 03:20:26.980
It's one of those you didn't deserve that jack, right?

3755
03:20:27.440 --> 03:20:32.424
No, I definitely, I did not deserve to what we call suck out there.

3756
03:20:32.504 --> 03:20:35.367
Like, it was just like, but it was like, it was so obvious.

3757
03:20:35.387 --> 03:20:37.168
It was such an obvious error to make.

3758
03:20:37.208 --> 03:20:42.732
Like, how could there be 10 times as many people in this tournament and they all play like the experts that I'm used to playing against?

3759
03:20:42.752 --> 03:20:45.515
Like, I mean, that was idiotic, idiotic.

3760
03:20:45.675 --> 03:20:48.717
And obviously I changed my model after that.

3761
03:20:48.737 --> 03:20:52.380
But, but so that, that's like a really bad decision that worked out really well.

3762
03:20:52.380 --> 03:20:53.780
because that was really early in the tournament.

3763
03:20:54.100 --> 03:20:55.480
I ended up making the final table.

3764
03:20:56.083 --> 03:20:57.540
I made a lot of money in that tournament

3765
03:20:57.721 --> 03:20:59.838
because I got really lucky in that one spot

3766
03:21:00.765 --> 03:21:03.040
because I would have had like no chance after that.

3767
03:21:03.160 --> 03:21:03.918
So that was pretty bad.

3768
03:21:04.361 --> 03:21:05.620
You know what the interesting thing is?

3769
03:21:05.700 --> 03:21:08.079
Like, I don't really think about those hands too much

3770
03:21:08.945 --> 03:21:11.200
because I don't think there's a lot to be learned from them.

3771
03:21:11.420 --> 03:21:13.260
It's like, all right, I put all my money in with aces

3772
03:21:13.523 --> 03:21:15.019
and you called me with fives really bad

3773
03:21:15.100 --> 03:21:15.680
and you got a five.

3774
03:21:15.760 --> 03:21:17.020
Like, what am I supposed to learn about it?

3775
03:21:17.060 --> 03:21:18.660
That happens all the time.

3776
03:21:18.883 --> 03:21:19.659
And here's the thing.

3777
03:21:20.081 --> 03:21:21.780
And I think this is actually really important

3778
03:21:21.860 --> 03:21:23.306
for people to recognize in life.

3779
03:21:23.928 --> 03:21:26.840
The better you are at poker, the more likely you're going to make

3780
03:21:26.900 --> 03:21:28.630
a good decision that doesn't turn out well.

3781
03:21:29.052 --> 03:21:30.560
Because the majority of your decisions are

3782
03:21:30.560 --> 03:21:32.129
going to be better than average.

3783
03:21:32.149 --> 03:21:34.180
And you're going to be getting these situations where the person

3784
03:21:34.260 --> 03:21:39.860
against you has a very low probability of winning or at minimum, they're losing to the amount of

3785
03:21:39.900 --> 03:21:41.065
money that they put in the pot.

3786
03:21:41.688 --> 03:21:42.913
And honestly, what are you hoping for?

3787
03:21:43.837 --> 03:21:43.997
Right?

3788
03:21:44.017 --> 03:21:44.640
Like you're hoping

3789
03:21:45.303 --> 03:21:49.060
that somebody is going to hit a five on you because it means they're putting their money in

3790
03:21:49.160 --> 03:21:50.405
with fives against you.

3791
03:21:50.486 --> 03:21:54.040
Like if you linger on that and you start thinking about how unlucky you are

3792
03:21:54.301 --> 03:21:58.900
and so on and so forth, it's going to make you play bad going forward instead of just saying

3793
03:21:58.960 --> 03:22:00.226
like, well, what am I hoping for?

3794
03:22:00.909 --> 03:22:01.110
Right?

3795
03:22:01.130 --> 03:22:03.300
Like this is just going to happen to me because I'm on

3796
03:22:03.380 --> 03:22:05.047
average making better decisions than most.

3797
03:22:05.469 --> 03:22:05.690
Right?

3798
03:22:05.750 --> 03:22:07.920
So the worse the decisions you make, the less

3799
03:22:08.040 --> 03:22:09.306
likely you're getting bad luck.

3800
03:22:09.808 --> 03:22:12.460
The better the decisions you make, the more likely you're getting

3801
03:22:12.540 --> 03:22:12.882
bad luck.

3802
03:22:12.902 --> 03:22:16.800
So like, why are you like, why are you lingering on them except just to go back and check

3803
03:22:16.880 --> 03:22:17.704
the decision.

3804
03:22:17.744 --> 03:22:21.520
So I just don't think there's like a lot of use in that because that was kind of the

3805
03:22:21.580 --> 03:22:25.257
point of playing, right, is to get people to make bad decisions about you.

3806
03:22:25.277 --> 03:22:25.840
And that's where you're

3807
03:22:25.840 --> 03:22:27.748
going to get what looks like bad luck.

3808
03:22:28.330 --> 03:22:30.760
I think in poker, it's very explicit that there's not a

3809
03:22:30.920 --> 03:22:34.520
whole lot of value in thinking through like counterfactuals like, oh, what if that five

3810
03:22:34.620 --> 03:22:35.102
didn't come?

3811
03:22:35.163 --> 03:22:39.299
Like, it doesn't matter what came on the flop if you have aces versus fives.

3812
03:22:39.319 --> 03:22:39.480
Like,

3813
03:22:40.621 --> 03:22:43.032
it's a good decision no matter what comes on the flop.

3814
03:22:43.112 --> 03:22:44.720
Whereas, you know, I think in life,

3815
03:22:44.841 --> 03:22:48.020
people get tripped up a lot more of thinking like, you know, like, well, what if that,

3816
03:22:48.120 --> 03:22:52.660
what if that red light had not had changed a little bit quicker or like, what if, you know,

3817
03:22:52.861 --> 03:22:55.652
and we kind of convince ourselves that that matters.

3818
03:22:55.873 --> 03:22:56.315
It doesn't.

3819
03:22:56.475 --> 03:22:56.696
Yeah.

3820
03:22:56.977 --> 03:22:57.640
I went to graduate

3821
03:22:57.761 --> 03:22:59.448
school because that's what I was supposed to do.

3822
03:22:59.789 --> 03:23:01.074
Parents were both educators.

3823
03:23:01.677 --> 03:23:02.380
Uh, they had both

3824
03:23:02.400 --> 03:23:03.243
gone to graduate school.

3825
03:23:03.866 --> 03:23:06.015
Um, education was a really big thing in my family.

3826
03:23:06.035 --> 03:23:07.340
And I'm not saying

3827
03:23:07.461 --> 03:23:10.857
like, if I had thought it through, I might not have ended up at graduate school.

3828
03:23:11.098 --> 03:23:11.420
And this is

3829
03:23:11.480 --> 03:23:16.340
an important thing to understand is that you can end up with the right outcome, but sort of, you

3830
03:23:16.340 --> 03:23:20.716
know, or even the best option for you, and still have not made a great decision.

3831
03:23:21.138 --> 03:23:21.760
It was more just

3832
03:23:21.780 --> 03:23:26.560
like I was at college, and then I was taking the GRE, and then I was applying to graduate school.

3833
03:23:26.960 --> 03:23:30.558
I don't really think I thought very much about like, well, what do I really want to do?

3834
03:23:30.578 --> 03:23:30.899
Is this

3835
03:23:31.120 --> 03:23:32.106
the best choice for me?

3836
03:23:32.186 --> 03:23:34.318
Is this going to get me the outcomes that I want in my life?

3837
03:23:34.338 --> 03:23:34.620
It was just

3838
03:23:34.660 --> 03:23:37.793
like, no, this is what my maiden name is letterer.

3839
03:23:37.813 --> 03:23:39.419
This is what a letterer is supposed to do.

3840
03:23:39.479 --> 03:23:39.620
So I

3841
03:23:39.640 --> 03:23:40.122
went and did that.

3842
03:23:40.443 --> 03:23:41.467
I don't think that's a good choice.

3843
03:23:41.909 --> 03:23:44.500
My decision to leave and not come back

3844
03:23:44.600 --> 03:23:48.394
and get my PhD, I also think was pretty bad for a very similar reason.

3845
03:23:48.414 --> 03:23:49.538
I was sick.

3846
03:23:49.678 --> 03:23:50.160
I went off and

3847
03:23:50.200 --> 03:23:55.000
played poker, but I don't remember ever explicitly sitting down and saying, should I have gone back?

3848
03:23:55.540 --> 03:23:55.701
Right?

3849
03:23:55.721 --> 03:23:59.480
Like I didn't compare like, what does it look like if I stay playing poker versus what

3850
03:23:59.480 --> 03:24:04.560
does it look like if I go back and I complete my PhD, even if I don't go out on the job market?

3851
03:24:04.700 --> 03:24:06.629
Like I didn't think through any of that stuff.

3852
03:24:07.111 --> 03:24:09.160
It was a little bit like I'm doing this, I'm making

3853
03:24:09.300 --> 03:24:11.467
money, I guess I'll just keep doing it.

3854
03:24:11.487 --> 03:24:11.708
Right.

3855
03:24:11.908 --> 03:24:12.229
Right.

3856
03:24:12.731 --> 03:24:15.800
Worked out fabulously, but I don't really

3857
03:24:15.880 --> 03:24:20.760
consider either of those things particularly good decisions because I don't think that I was

3858
03:24:21.602 --> 03:24:22.846
super thoughtful about them.

3859
03:24:23.508 --> 03:24:27.880
And I think that I actually took a really big lesson from that later

3860
03:24:28.081 --> 03:24:32.340
on because when I was thinking, as I started getting asked to, to like give these talks,

3861
03:24:32.762 --> 03:24:34.631
I actually did think more deliberately about it.

3862
03:24:34.671 --> 03:24:36.440
Like how much time do I want to be spending on

3863
03:24:36.480 --> 03:24:36.661
this?

3864
03:24:36.701 --> 03:24:37.645
What do I want to talk about?

3865
03:24:37.685 --> 03:24:38.770
What am I getting out of it?

3866
03:24:38.790 --> 03:24:41.120
Is this bringing me joy?

3867
03:24:41.600 --> 03:24:45.755
And then I started comparing that to poker in a really deliberate way.

3868
03:24:46.016 --> 03:24:47.160
You know, how do I feel

3869
03:24:47.200 --> 03:24:51.060
when I'm doing this versus how do I feel when I'm doing poker as I was balancing out how I wanted

3870
03:24:51.160 --> 03:24:52.365
to allocate my time?

3871
03:24:53.008 --> 03:24:55.920
You know, I feel like it's like you're sort of caught in a tide type of

3872
03:24:56.000 --> 03:24:56.523
decisions.

3873
03:24:56.603 --> 03:24:58.251
Like this is just sort of how things are going.

3874
03:24:58.332 --> 03:25:00.060
So I will just keep going that way.

3875
03:25:00.321 --> 03:25:01.646
And those can work out really well.

3876
03:25:01.666 --> 03:25:05.260
They did for me, but I don't think that it was because I made

3877
03:25:05.461 --> 03:25:06.165
a good decision.

3878
03:25:06.226 --> 03:25:08.640
I think it was because it just turned out well.

3879
03:25:09.100 --> 03:25:09.241
Yeah.

3880
03:25:09.783 --> 03:25:13.640
I never thought of Chris Moneymaker as earth luck, but maybe he was your earth luck.

3881
03:25:13.920 --> 03:25:15.640
Chris Moneymaker was definitely my earth luck.

3882
03:25:15.660 --> 03:25:15.878
Yes.

3883
03:25:16.201 --> 03:25:16.883
Right?

3884
03:25:17.364 --> 03:25:18.026
For sure.

3885
03:25:18.127 --> 03:25:18.548
For sure.

3886
03:25:18.588 --> 03:25:21.898
That put me in a very different world because without that,

3887
03:25:24.101 --> 03:25:30.520
I am very sure that I would not have ended up finishing my PhD, which I did with Phil

3888
03:25:30.600 --> 03:25:32.950
Tetlock and Barb Millers, which was amazing.

3889
03:25:33.371 --> 03:25:35.460
Everybody should go get the book Superforecasting,

3890
03:25:35.580 --> 03:25:36.002
by the way.

3891
03:25:36.102 --> 03:25:38.834
It will change the way you think about decision making.

3892
03:25:38.974 --> 03:25:40.360
It's an incredible book.

3893
03:25:40.540 --> 03:25:46.840
Getting asked to come talk to people did was, it brought me back to the cognitive science,

3894
03:25:46.940 --> 03:25:52.360
because I started thinking about the way that those two disciplines could inform each other.

3895
03:25:52.861 --> 03:25:57.480
That was just so exciting to me to think about, like the intersection of the two things that I'd,

3896
03:25:57.801 --> 03:26:02.520
the only two things really that I had done in my life professionally, that wouldn't have happened

3897
03:26:02.600 --> 03:26:04.166
without that event occurring.

3898
03:26:04.587 --> 03:26:05.872
I had no control over that.

3899
03:26:05.932 --> 03:26:08.060
Yeah, I'm very grateful for that moment

3900
03:26:08.200 --> 03:26:13.579
of luck having happened because then that opens this whole other thing that I end up doing.

3901
03:26:13.599 --> 03:26:13.740
And I

3902
03:26:14.101 --> 03:26:18.740
end up starting off giving these talks, that suite of talks and it actually ended up as Thinking

3903
03:26:18.840 --> 03:26:19.583
Embeds.

3904
03:26:19.744 --> 03:26:21.691
I then I'm writing two books after that.

3905
03:26:21.731 --> 03:26:23.698
I'm now finishing up my next one.

3906
03:26:23.859 --> 03:26:24.120
I end up

3907
03:26:24.160 --> 03:26:24.782
consulting.

3908
03:26:24.923 --> 03:26:26.669
I love my clients so much.

3909
03:26:26.749 --> 03:26:29.319
I go very deep with a very small group of clients.

3910
03:26:29.339 --> 03:26:29.700
So I get

3911
03:26:29.740 --> 03:26:32.472
to know them very well over very, very long periods of time.

3912
03:26:32.994 --> 03:26:34.340
It's really exciting for me.

3913
03:26:34.420 --> 03:26:35.243
It's fulfilling.

3914
03:26:35.363 --> 03:26:37.510
I really, really enjoy the work that I do.

3915
03:26:37.530 --> 03:26:40.540
And that all can be traced back to that

3916
03:26:41.041 --> 03:26:47.680
moment because without that sort of developing that brand, which I can't do unless that moment

3917
03:26:47.760 --> 03:26:51.814
happens, you know, none of those opportunities would have been available to me.

3918
03:26:52.376 --> 03:26:53.640
So I'm just like,

3919
03:26:53.720 --> 03:26:55.245
I'm so grateful for that.

3920
03:26:55.265 --> 03:26:59.560
And then I co-founded a nonprofit, which is the Alliance for Decision

3921
03:26:59.660 --> 03:27:00.183
Education.

3922
03:27:00.725 --> 03:27:04.340
And we're saying, hey, let's bring all of this decision stuff that we're doing for

3923
03:27:04.380 --> 03:27:05.967
adults and bring it into K through 12.

3924
03:27:05.987 --> 03:27:08.780
Because if we go back to the beginning, you know, the total

3925
03:27:08.840 --> 03:27:11.794
of your life is luck and the quality of your decisions.

3926
03:27:11.874 --> 03:27:13.100
Why aren't we teaching kindergartners

3927
03:27:13.180 --> 03:27:14.205
how to make better decisions?

3928
03:27:15.149 --> 03:27:16.114
Why aren't we starting earlier?

3929
03:27:16.154 --> 03:27:17.480
We do it like maybe in college

3930
03:27:17.661 --> 03:27:18.544
if you take an elective.

3931
03:27:18.945 --> 03:27:23.180
Like you can teach a lot of things to a kindergartner about decision

3932
03:27:23.180 --> 03:27:23.763
in education.

3933
03:27:24.125 --> 03:27:26.980
Obviously, you can get really deep on probability and things like that as kids get

3934
03:27:27.221 --> 03:27:27.562
older.

3935
03:27:28.064 --> 03:27:31.457
But how about just teaching a kid that they're an agent of their own decisions?

3936
03:27:32.220 --> 03:27:32.340
Like,

3937
03:27:32.380 --> 03:27:34.127
just things like that, like, right?

3938
03:27:34.167 --> 03:27:37.300
So I don't get to do that and have the impact that that

3939
03:27:37.380 --> 03:27:39.576
nonprofit has on the world without 2002 happening.

3940
03:27:40.740 --> 03:27:42.099
Andy Duke, thank you very much.

3941
03:27:45.661 --> 03:27:47.628
First, a quick word from our sponsors.

3942
03:27:48.532 --> 03:27:50.820
This episode is brought to you by Purpose,

3943
03:27:51.021 --> 03:27:53.168
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3944
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03:28:04.701 --> 03:28:05.745
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3951
03:28:09.200 --> 03:28:12.373
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3953
03:28:14.020 --> 03:28:14.342
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3954
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3955
03:28:18.520 --> 03:28:19.545
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3956
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3957
03:28:23.120 --> 03:28:23.662
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3960
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3961
03:28:32.621 --> 03:28:33.645
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3962
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3963
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So if you want an AI mentor

3964
03:28:37.361 --> 03:28:41.000
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3965
03:28:41.060 --> 03:28:45.513
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3966
03:28:45.713 --> 03:28:47.318
That's solved.deals.purpose.

3967
03:28:49.205 --> 03:28:49.709
And we're back.

3968
03:28:50.253 --> 03:28:51.180
Welcome back to Solved.

3969
03:28:55.821 --> 03:29:08.900
It's funny doing these Solved episodes because there is a consistent pattern that has begun to emerge, which is that whichever episode we're doing, the experience of doing it seems to take on the character of that episode's theme.

3970
03:29:09.080 --> 03:29:16.720
So, for example, when we did an episode on procrastination, it took us like an extra three months of preparation to actually shoot that episode.

3971
03:29:17.080 --> 03:29:28.712
When we did the episode on shame, Drew and I screwed that episode up so much that we actually felt very ashamed of how much we screwed it up beforehand and how much stuff we had to reshoot.

3972
03:29:29.132 --> 03:29:36.880
When we did the happiness episode, we felt very light and easy and fulfilled because it was a very easy episode to shoot and a ton of fun.

3973
03:29:37.060 --> 03:29:39.744
When we did Confidence, I felt very confident about it.

3974
03:29:40.104 --> 03:29:43.388
When we did Change, we completely changed the set and the format.

3975
03:29:43.588 --> 03:29:45.871
And this episode is about luck.

3976
03:29:46.632 --> 03:29:52.860
And since we began taping this episode, everything unlucky seems to have been happening.

3977
03:29:53.420 --> 03:29:55.860
Drew was having health issues, sleep issues.

3978
03:29:56.123 --> 03:29:57.560
We had production issues.

3979
03:29:57.740 --> 03:29:58.860
We had a hard drive failure.

3980
03:29:59.641 --> 03:30:05.700
And now I have an empty chair across from me because Drew's flight got delayed and he

3981
03:30:05.760 --> 03:30:07.940
was not able to get here for the last day of recording.

3982
03:30:08.320 --> 03:30:11.880
So I carry on to the end of the Luck episode.

3983
03:30:12.000 --> 03:30:15.920
I stumble through the finish line of this Luck episode all alone.

3984
03:30:16.242 --> 03:30:17.460
But let's go back to the top.

3985
03:30:17.740 --> 03:30:20.740
Why is Luck so underrated as a factor?

3986
03:30:21.000 --> 03:30:23.122
Why don't we think about it more?

3987
03:30:23.362 --> 03:30:25.984
And why do we tend to think about it the wrong ways?

3988
03:30:26.845 --> 03:30:30.928
Because as Annie Duke said, everything in life either is skill or luck.

3989
03:30:30.988 --> 03:30:33.470
It's either a decision you made or it is chance.

3990
03:30:33.751 --> 03:30:38.375
And we spend so much time thinking about our decisions, we rarely think about the chance element.

3991
03:30:38.675 --> 03:30:43.399
And when we do, it's usually to preserve our good feelings about ourselves.

3992
03:30:43.459 --> 03:30:45.020
It's a self-serving bias.

3993
03:30:45.161 --> 03:30:48.400
We tell ourselves like, oh, there's nothing I could do.

3994
03:30:48.480 --> 03:30:51.820
That was just bad luck, even though it likely was a bad decision.

3995
03:30:52.060 --> 03:30:56.980
We tell ourselves that we're brilliant and we're so smart, even though maybe we benefited

3996
03:30:57.124 --> 03:30:57.719
from good luck.

3997
03:30:57.940 --> 03:31:01.840
Why do we seem to have such a hard time thinking about luck and fortune?

3998
03:31:02.624 --> 03:31:04.080
And why do we avoid doing so?

3999
03:31:04.341 --> 03:31:05.779
Well, I think there's a few reasons.

4000
03:31:06.161 --> 03:31:08.500
For one, there's a legibility issue.

4001
03:31:08.820 --> 03:31:14.040
It's unclear how much of what happens in our lives is ultimately within our control and

4002
03:31:14.100 --> 03:31:16.388
how much is just a factor of circumstance.

4003
03:31:17.190 --> 03:31:20.000
Like that's a blurry line that we often don't have a

4004
03:31:20.120 --> 03:31:21.727
clear sense of what is what.

4005
03:31:22.048 --> 03:31:24.820
And to get clarity around that line, we have to ask honest questions

4006
03:31:24.900 --> 03:31:30.020
of ourselves, which are quite uncomfortable, which is how much control do we have over our

4007
03:31:30.080 --> 03:31:30.542
own lives?

4008
03:31:30.582 --> 03:31:32.851
How much can we affect in our own lives?

4009
03:31:33.292 --> 03:31:34.597
And that doesn't feel very good.

4010
03:31:35.079 --> 03:31:35.300
We don't

4011
03:31:35.320 --> 03:31:36.724
like to admit a lot of those things.

4012
03:31:37.206 --> 03:31:41.720
On top of that, our brain's natural tendency is to ascribe

4013
03:31:41.921 --> 03:31:45.893
meaning and value to good fortune or bad.

4014
03:31:46.173 --> 03:31:48.320
We operate based on the just world hypothesis

4015
03:31:48.863 --> 03:31:52.400
that if something good happens to us, it must be because there's something great about us.

4016
03:31:52.560 --> 03:31:55.876
Or if something bad happens to us, it must be because we did something wrong.

4017
03:31:56.178 --> 03:31:56.680
And ultimately,

4018
03:31:57.040 --> 03:31:59.069
this can lead us into one of two traps.

4019
03:31:59.189 --> 03:32:01.780
There's the fatalism trap, which is everything is luck.

4020
03:32:01.961 --> 03:32:05.271
I have control over nothing, so why even bother and try?

4021
03:32:05.853 --> 03:32:07.940
Or you have the self-serving delusion,

4022
03:32:08.181 --> 03:32:10.227
which is, I earned everything.

4023
03:32:10.267 --> 03:32:11.711
There is no luck in my life.

4024
03:32:12.092 --> 03:32:13.075
I'm pretty awesome.

4025
03:32:14.118 --> 03:32:14.740
Don't even bother

4026
03:32:14.840 --> 03:32:15.683
me with this bullshit.

4027
03:32:15.944 --> 03:32:20.520
The fatalism trap removes our responsibility to improve our own lives,

4028
03:32:20.841 --> 03:32:25.180
and the delusion trap protects our ego and prevents us from learning from our failures.

4029
03:32:25.561 --> 03:32:29.680
We briefly covered some of the Western thought around luck, and we landed on the ancient Chinese

4030
03:32:29.780 --> 03:32:32.370
framework of Sansai, which is heaven luck.

4031
03:32:32.912 --> 03:32:35.060
It's the genetic lottery, the ovarian lottery,

4032
03:32:35.722 --> 03:32:41.320
what you're born into the earth luck which is the broader environmental context that you put

4033
03:32:41.380 --> 03:32:47.340
yourself in which is generally determined by a handful of very high leverage decisions you make

4034
03:32:47.360 --> 03:32:53.540
throughout your life and then there's the human luck which is your ability to navigate each choice

4035
03:32:53.781 --> 03:33:00.320
each decision on a day-to-day basis to maximize your probability of achieving your goals if life

4036
03:33:00.420 --> 03:33:03.993
is a game of poker, then heaven luck is the cards that we get dealt.

4037
03:33:04.695 --> 03:33:05.980
Earth luck is the table we

4038
03:33:06.080 --> 03:33:07.484
choose to sit down and play at.

4039
03:33:08.447 --> 03:33:12.017
And human luck is the choices that we make as we play.

4040
03:33:12.519 --> 03:33:12.920
All three

4041
03:33:13.060 --> 03:33:15.569
have a very profound effect on our outcomes.

4042
03:33:16.110 --> 03:33:18.358
Heaven luck, we have zero control over.

4043
03:33:18.378 --> 03:33:18.478
Earth

4044
03:33:19.080 --> 03:33:22.874
luck, we have some control over, but on a very macro broad level.

4045
03:33:23.336 --> 03:33:24.580
And then human luck, we have

4046
03:33:24.700 --> 03:33:26.507
full control over our decisions.

4047
03:33:26.908 --> 03:33:30.040
When it comes to heaven luck, there's generally a temptation

4048
03:33:30.442 --> 03:33:33.120
to ascribe some sort of inherent value

4049
03:33:33.221 --> 03:33:35.380
based on where we were born,

4050
03:33:35.660 --> 03:33:37.380
the circumstances we were born into,

4051
03:33:37.722 --> 03:33:38.499
how we grew up.

4052
03:33:39.202 --> 03:33:40.379
And the funny thing is,

4053
03:33:40.480 --> 03:33:43.680
is that it works against us in both cases,

4054
03:33:43.781 --> 03:33:46.000
whether we were born into really good circumstances

4055
03:33:46.283 --> 03:33:48.120
or we were born into really bad circumstances.

4056
03:33:48.761 --> 03:33:50.740
So if we're born in the really great circumstances,

4057
03:33:51.242 --> 03:33:53.700
there's a tendency to experience some sense of guilt,

4058
03:33:53.901 --> 03:33:56.000
of like, what did I do to deserve this?

4059
03:33:56.340 --> 03:33:58.559
Why was I blessed with all of these privileges

4060
03:33:59.142 --> 03:34:05.160
and benefits when I didn't earn anything that the other people around me had to work really hard for.

4061
03:34:05.540 --> 03:34:09.940
Now, while it's useful to see the discrepancies and the benefits that maybe we were born into,

4062
03:34:11.001 --> 03:34:15.637
kind of just an ever-present sense of guilt is not very useful or productive.

4063
03:34:16.019 --> 03:34:16.400
Ultimately,

4064
03:34:16.740 --> 03:34:21.700
we should take all of the things that we've been blessed with and try to leverage them to help

4065
03:34:21.901 --> 03:34:22.182
others.

4066
03:34:22.684 --> 03:34:26.560
If you were born with a particularly large amount of heaven luck, then I would say

4067
03:34:26.600 --> 03:34:32.760
you have a moral duty or responsibility to leverage that heaven luck to distribute some of the benefits

4068
03:34:32.880 --> 03:34:35.471
that you've received to as many people as possible.

4069
03:34:35.933 --> 03:34:37.700
Now on the flip side, if you were born into a

4070
03:34:37.740 --> 03:34:44.120
situation with very little heaven luck, then that doesn't really change the fact that you are

4071
03:34:44.200 --> 03:34:46.167
responsible for the outcomes in your life.

4072
03:34:46.408 --> 03:34:49.660
It may not be fair that you were born into West Africa

4073
03:34:49.841 --> 03:34:54.700
instead of Norway, but even if you were born there, it is still your responsibility to make the most

4074
03:34:54.820 --> 03:34:56.767
of that situation that you possibly can.

4075
03:34:57.068 --> 03:35:00.420
So heaven luck tells us a lot about the circumstances from

4076
03:35:00.520 --> 03:35:04.294
which we came, but they don't really tell us about what we should do.

4077
03:35:04.314 --> 03:35:05.760
And because ultimately,

4078
03:35:06.021 --> 03:35:10.740
the longer we're alive, the more our individual decisions play into our long-term results,

4079
03:35:11.380 --> 03:35:16.900
it is hard to say that heaven luck should necessarily matter a whole lot to us at all.

4080
03:35:17.180 --> 03:35:22.000
Our takeaway in this episode is that the goal with heaven luck is simply to become aware of it

4081
03:35:22.563 --> 03:35:25.400
and to develop some sense of gratitude around it.

4082
03:35:25.500 --> 03:35:27.440
And the way we develop that sense of gratitude

4083
03:35:27.984 --> 03:35:30.420
is to remind ourselves and take perspectives

4084
03:35:30.662 --> 03:35:32.380
of all of the potential realities

4085
03:35:32.763 --> 03:35:34.900
that we could have been born into, but we were not.

4086
03:35:35.321 --> 03:35:37.000
So while there may be things about our lives

4087
03:35:37.000 --> 03:35:38.360
that we feel bad about today,

4088
03:35:39.562 --> 03:35:41.760
surely you can imagine an infinite amount

4089
03:35:41.800 --> 03:35:44.260
of worse possible lives that you could have lived,

4090
03:35:45.027 --> 03:35:45.740
but you're not living.

4091
03:35:46.200 --> 03:35:48.540
And because of that, gratitude is accessible

4092
03:35:49.201 --> 03:35:52.168
in any moment at any time to any person.

4093
03:35:52.589 --> 03:35:56.398
Now this brings us to earth luck, which is a set of broad

4094
03:35:57.441 --> 03:36:01.415
environmentally based decisions that we each have to make throughout our lives.

4095
03:36:01.757 --> 03:36:02.620
And the result of

4096
03:36:02.680 --> 03:36:09.020
those decisions is that it either increases or decreases the surface area for good things to

4097
03:36:09.100 --> 03:36:09.923
happen to us.

4098
03:36:10.725 --> 03:36:15.800
For example, if I aspire to be a famous television actor and I'm trying to start

4099
03:36:15.860 --> 03:36:21.980
my acting career in Boise, Idaho, I'm probably going to run into a lot of bad luck, or at least

4100
03:36:22.080 --> 03:36:24.067
I'm going to have very little good luck.

4101
03:36:24.389 --> 03:36:27.520
But if I move to Los Angeles and I surround myself with

4102
03:36:27.961 --> 03:36:33.780
Hollywood and hundreds of other aspiring actors and producers and screenwriters, I am increasing

4103
03:36:33.961 --> 03:36:38.700
my surface area for something serendipitous to happen to me that I can leverage and take

4104
03:36:38.780 --> 03:36:40.307
advantage of and benefit from.

4105
03:36:40.669 --> 03:36:42.960
So there is a class of decisions throughout our lives that

4106
03:36:43.141 --> 03:36:48.600
greatly influence the probabilistic outcomes of hundreds, if not thousands of other decisions

4107
03:36:49.082 --> 03:36:50.326
that happen down the road.

4108
03:36:50.567 --> 03:36:54.280
The job or career you decide to pursue, the city that you decide to

4109
03:36:54.340 --> 03:36:58.215
live in, the partner that you decide to marry and spend a life with.

4110
03:36:58.557 --> 03:36:59.420
All of these things are

4111
03:36:59.621 --> 03:37:05.260
one-time decisions that not only will greatly influence thousands of other decisions, but in

4112
03:37:05.340 --> 03:37:10.278
many cases, they will set the context and basis of all of those thousands of decisions.

4113
03:37:10.619 --> 03:37:10.780
And so

4114
03:37:10.860 --> 03:37:23.120
Maximizing earth luck is really just about understanding yourself, your goals, and what is the best environment to place yourself into that is going to maximize the opportunity of achieving those goals.

4115
03:37:23.600 --> 03:37:32.890
This happens with the relationships you choose to build, the networks you choose to enmesh yourself into, the environment that you choose to live in.

4116
03:37:33.631 --> 03:37:43.040
All of these things have outsized impacts on all of the other decisions that you make, but also the decisions that are foisted upon you in the first place.

4117
03:37:43.500 --> 03:37:51.287
Now, what's interesting is that earth luck is kind of the first luck that there is some research on how you can develop skills to expand it.

4118
03:37:51.547 --> 03:37:55.930
So, for example, developing good social skills can expand your earth luck.

4119
03:37:56.090 --> 03:38:07.940
If you are better able to meet and talk to and connect with new people, it's going to open doors for you wherever you go in situations that doors might have otherwise been closed.

4120
03:38:08.320 --> 03:38:12.125
Another skill that we talked about is simply having an open mind.

4121
03:38:12.285 --> 03:38:25.380
Being open to more consequences or more experiences seems to allow people to draw connections and find opportunities and environments that people who are a little bit more closed-minded literally don't even see in front of them.

4122
03:38:25.540 --> 03:38:38.592
In fact, some researchers have even gone as far as measuring luck in people based on how much they're aware of in their environment, how much they pay attention to, and how quickly they act on opportunities once they spot them.

4123
03:38:38.792 --> 03:38:43.135
And then once you spot those opportunities, this is when human luck comes into play.

4124
03:38:43.296 --> 03:38:48.340
Because even the best opportunities in life, there's always going to be a chance of failure.

4125
03:38:48.841 --> 03:38:51.276
Nothing is ever 100% and nothing is ever 0%.

4126
03:38:52.101 --> 03:38:55.600
There is always some probabilistic distribution of outcomes

4127
03:38:56.102 --> 03:38:59.840
that you are setting up bets when you decide to pursue them.

4128
03:39:00.040 --> 03:39:03.360
And because every decision you make has a probabilistic outcome,

4129
03:39:03.801 --> 03:39:07.420
it means that you can't necessarily judge the quality of your decisions

4130
03:39:08.004 --> 03:39:09.940
based on the quality of your results.

4131
03:39:10.461 --> 03:39:12.800
You can move to LA to try to make something happen,

4132
03:39:12.920 --> 03:39:16.920
but even if nothing happens, it doesn't mean that moving to LA was a bad decision.

4133
03:39:17.360 --> 03:39:32.280
You can marry the partner you're in love with and be extremely happy with them for many years, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good decision depending on their traits and qualities and personality and the situations that they place you into over the coming years.

4134
03:39:32.761 --> 03:39:41.060
Now, we have to be careful around this because we have all sorts of cognitive biases that prevent us from judging our decisions objectively and accurately.

4135
03:39:41.501 --> 03:39:48.269
We have a self-serving bias, so we like to take credit for all the good things that happen and blame bad luck for all the bad things that happen.

4136
03:39:48.549 --> 03:39:57.900
We have loss aversion, which causes us to overestimate the negative impact of failure and therefore not take a chance even when the odds are in our favor.

4137
03:39:58.340 --> 03:40:07.228
Andy Duke and I talked about all sorts of different methods and ways that you can kind of counteract these biases and try to make better decisions consistently.

4138
03:40:07.688 --> 03:40:14.133
And she raised a great point that it's we're always doing kind of this probabilistic thinking underneath the hood.

4139
03:40:14.293 --> 03:40:22.560
It's just what we experience as intuition is our subconscious doing some of the statistical analysis and placing bets accordingly.

4140
03:40:23.261 --> 03:40:29.125
But the problem is, is that our intuitions under the hood are not super accurate.

4141
03:40:29.245 --> 03:40:37.491
So the best way to make these decisions accurate is to take the implicit intuitive decision making and make it explicit to actually write it out.

4142
03:40:37.872 --> 03:40:40.674
Try to forecast the results of a major life decision.

4143
03:40:41.154 --> 03:40:48.680
Try to see all of the contingencies and path dependencies and and what the actual cost of failure looks like.

4144
03:40:49.180 --> 03:40:57.667
Because once you do that, not only do you get more objectivity and more clarity around the decision itself, but it creates a form of accountability.

4145
03:40:57.807 --> 03:41:08.456
You can go back and look at old decisions that you made and spot blind spots, spot biases, spot things that you didn't consider that you didn't look for.

4146
03:41:08.636 --> 03:41:12.960
Find patterns of mistakes that you consistently make when you try to make decisions.

4147
03:41:13.280 --> 03:41:17.884
The other thing that she talked about is developing a practice of doing a pre-mortem.

4148
03:41:18.865 --> 03:41:28.833
This is very similar to the stoic practice of negative visualization where you intentionally imagine the worst case scenario and ask yourself, what factors led to this worst case scenario?

4149
03:41:28.913 --> 03:41:31.735
What are the warning signs that this thing is not going to go well?

4150
03:41:31.956 --> 03:41:37.320
How are we going to define and measure success and define and measure failure in the context of this decision?

4151
03:41:37.781 --> 03:41:39.300
Developing a sense of what all these things

4152
03:41:39.320 --> 03:41:41.460
are gonna look like before you make the decision

4153
03:41:41.641 --> 03:41:43.980
is going to help you make a much better decision

4154
03:41:44.262 --> 03:41:47.680
and then ironically, make failure much less likely

4155
03:41:48.003 --> 03:41:49.780
because you're gonna know what to look out for

4156
03:41:50.021 --> 03:41:52.600
and you're gonna know what to prevent before it happens.

4157
03:41:52.920 --> 03:41:55.000
And then finally, there's a volume approach

4158
03:41:55.525 --> 03:41:56.800
to a lot of these decisions

4159
03:41:57.204 --> 03:41:58.620
because the fact of the matter is,

4160
03:41:58.781 --> 03:42:00.560
is that anytime you were doing something

4161
03:42:00.822 --> 03:42:03.120
with a probabilistic outcome,

4162
03:42:03.822 --> 03:42:05.380
many, many times in sequence,

4163
03:42:05.823 --> 03:42:07.220
there's gonna be a lot of volatility.

4164
03:42:07.541 --> 03:42:12.660
You're going to go through periods where you do have a lot of negative outcomes, even though you made good decisions.

4165
03:42:12.941 --> 03:42:16.960
You're going to go through periods where you have a lot of positive outcomes, even though maybe you made bad decisions.

4166
03:42:17.382 --> 03:42:19.520
There's always going to be a little bit of variance.

4167
03:42:19.780 --> 03:42:24.740
And the best way to negate the impact of that variance is to increase volume.

4168
03:42:25.180 --> 03:42:30.680
Because the more you increase volume, the more you weight everything towards skill and the less you weight things towards luck.

4169
03:42:31.041 --> 03:42:36.620
On top of that, as you increase volume, you give yourself more opportunities and reps to learn from your failures.

4170
03:42:37.205 --> 03:42:39.020
and because you're moving quicker,

4171
03:42:39.543 --> 03:42:40.900
you will find out if something

4172
03:42:41.182 --> 03:42:43.200
is not the right path quicker as well.

4173
03:42:43.962 --> 03:42:46.580
So how should we really approach luck

4174
03:42:46.944 --> 03:42:48.300
and consider luck in our lives?

4175
03:42:48.682 --> 03:42:50.700
I think there's a general rule of thumb

4176
03:42:51.225 --> 03:42:52.820
that is probably useful to follow,

4177
03:42:53.100 --> 03:42:56.740
which is that anything from the present moment forward,

4178
03:42:57.581 --> 03:42:59.900
you should act as though you have full control

4179
03:43:00.081 --> 03:43:01.960
over everything, even though you don't.

4180
03:43:02.742 --> 03:43:05.680
You should make decisions as if everything is up to you.

4181
03:43:06.885 --> 03:43:10.440
even though there's going to be things that you can't predict that are going to happen.

4182
03:43:10.940 --> 03:43:16.120
Then when you're looking in hindsight, that's when you should try to be honest about what was you

4183
03:43:16.582 --> 03:43:21.040
and what was the environment, what was heaven luck, what was earth luck, and what was human

4184
03:43:21.140 --> 03:43:21.361
luck.

4185
03:43:21.623 --> 03:43:25.520
So while that's how we should approach our decisions, there's still a few other levers that

4186
03:43:25.560 --> 03:43:31.220
we can pull to help us gain more perspective, more clarity, and a little bit more luck in our lives.

4187
03:43:31.640 --> 03:43:35.604
So one is kind of like a gratitude journal, but with a twist.

4188
03:43:36.065 --> 03:43:46.615
Sit down every night or every week or whatever it is, write down some good things that happened to you, some things that you're grateful for, but also be very explicit on why you're grateful for them.

4189
03:43:47.016 --> 03:43:51.200
What are the worst possible outcomes that could have happened but didn't happen?

4190
03:43:51.621 --> 03:44:04.540
But next, I want you to go a step further, which is to write out what are some potential things that you could be lucky about in the near future that could break your way, that could go well, could happen.

4191
03:44:05.021 --> 03:44:12.240
This is a simple exercise in drawing connections in your environment so that you are more well equipped to spot them when they do emerge.

4192
03:44:12.802 --> 03:44:17.100
right when you tell yourself like hey i could actually meet somebody really cool at this event

4193
03:44:17.140 --> 03:44:22.240
i'm going to this weekend instead of dreading it you help prime your mind to see the opportunities

4194
03:44:22.501 --> 03:44:28.440
in it the second easy thing you can do to increase your luck today is just show up just do more

4195
03:44:28.520 --> 03:44:34.380
things be in more rooms accept more invitations introduce yourself to more people again the more

4196
03:44:34.480 --> 03:44:39.540
surface area you create for yourself for serendipity the more likely that serendipity is

4197
03:44:39.660 --> 03:44:40.163
to happen.

4198
03:44:40.464 --> 03:44:43.999
Now, a lot of people don't do this because they feel like it's a waste of time or,

4199
03:44:44.700 --> 03:44:48.659
you know, it's if nine out of 10 people they meet, nothing's going to come of it.

4200
03:44:48.699 --> 03:44:48.940
It's like,

4201
03:44:48.980 --> 03:44:50.807
well, why waste all that effort?

4202
03:44:51.370 --> 03:44:53.880
But if you think of it the other way, that one out of 10 people

4203
03:44:53.940 --> 03:45:00.840
you meet could have a pretty significant impact on your life, then it makes sense to work through

4204
03:45:00.940 --> 03:45:03.552
those other nine people as quickly as you possibly can.

4205
03:45:04.014 --> 03:45:05.400
There's also something to be said about

4206
03:45:05.520 --> 03:45:07.004
making asymmetric bets.

4207
03:45:08.327 --> 03:45:12.979
Annie talked a lot about how emotionally our approach to betting is

4208
03:45:13.481 --> 03:45:19.579
asymmetric to the downside, which is that we tend to overestimate the costs of failing and

4209
03:45:20.080 --> 03:45:22.629
underestimate the benefits of success.

4210
03:45:23.050 --> 03:45:25.960
You can look for situations where there is an outsized

4211
03:45:26.101 --> 03:45:27.927
benefit with very little cost.

4212
03:45:28.510 --> 03:45:31.180
Again, walking into a room and introducing yourself to someone is

4213
03:45:31.581 --> 03:45:32.925
a perfect example of that.

4214
03:45:33.386 --> 03:45:37.960
I mean, when I met my wife, I was in a loud nightclub and she was just

4215
03:45:38.060 --> 03:45:42.154
like the first girl that walked in the door that I saw that I was attracted to.

4216
03:45:42.716 --> 03:45:43.960
I lost nothing by

4217
03:45:44.040 --> 03:45:48.658
going over and talking to her, but what I gained was a partner for the rest of my life.

4218
03:45:49.059 --> 03:45:49.260
And then

4219
03:45:49.380 --> 03:45:53.717
finally, the last lever is how you choose to respond when things go wrong.

4220
03:45:53.938 --> 03:45:54.440
There's a lot of

4221
03:45:54.460 --> 03:45:58.860
research showing that people who experience more luck in their lives, they tend to bounce back

4222
03:45:58.980 --> 03:45:59.462
faster.

4223
03:45:59.502 --> 03:46:01.771
They don't dwell on the failures as long as others.

4224
03:46:01.892 --> 03:46:03.860
They don't get mired in like the,

4225
03:46:04.843 --> 03:46:05.525
why me?

4226
03:46:05.625 --> 03:46:07.070
What did I do to deserve this?

4227
03:46:07.091 --> 03:46:08.315
This isn't fair.

4228
03:46:08.957 --> 03:46:09.820
The world's unfair.

4229
03:46:11.022 --> 03:46:14.214
They just try to learn something and move on as quickly as possible.

4230
03:46:14.897 --> 03:46:15.660
And so ultimately,

4231
03:46:16.440 --> 03:46:22.740
we imagine luck as being kind of this cosmic force that is thrust upon each of us in different ways.

4232
03:46:22.880 --> 03:46:27.760
Some of us are just seem to be born extremely lucky and others seem to be born extremely unlucky.

4233
03:46:28.060 --> 03:46:34.847
But like Annie said, luck is actually just kind of this ever-present roulette wheel to everything we do.

4234
03:46:35.027 --> 03:46:41.453
And over a long enough period of time, all of us are going to experience good luck and bad luck in different proportions.

4235
03:46:41.533 --> 03:46:48.300
And we're actually going to be very poor at identifying what the good luck is and what the bad luck is and where it begins and ends.

4236
03:46:48.720 --> 03:47:03.980
Instead, it's simply more useful to acknowledge that everything we do in our lives has some element of chance to it, but we can manipulate our circumstances and our situations and our decisions to leverage our chances more optimally.

4237
03:47:04.360 --> 03:47:10.325
We can put ourselves in situations that increase the odds of positive outcomes based on our goals.

4238
03:47:10.745 --> 03:47:19.752
We can develop habits and skills that allow us to have more opportunities and to gain that volume that minimizes volatility.

4239
03:47:20.072 --> 03:47:30.840
And then we can implement some basic decision-making practices and some basic mental practices that help us notice opportunities and make high conviction decisions on them sooner than we otherwise would.

4240
03:47:31.142 --> 03:47:33.438
In sum, this is what luck actually is.

4241
03:47:33.920 --> 03:47:36.100
It's developing a series of perspectives

4242
03:47:36.863 --> 03:47:40.520
towards chance and probability that benefit ourselves

4243
03:47:40.823 --> 03:47:42.500
and developing habits and behaviors

4244
03:47:42.762 --> 03:47:45.520
that leverage the randomness in the world

4245
03:47:46.270 --> 03:47:47.020
better than others.

4246
03:47:47.480 --> 03:47:51.220
And so at the end of the day, Will's father was correct.

4247
03:47:52.161 --> 03:47:53.740
Maybe there isn't such a thing as luck.

4248
03:47:54.221 --> 03:47:56.880
There's just when opportunity meets preparation.

4249
03:47:57.624 --> 03:47:58.180
Thank you all.

4250
03:47:59.243 --> 03:48:04.740
I will see you next month with another great episode and just a reminder we do have a free

4251
03:48:04.840 --> 03:48:09.640
pdf guide for this full episode if you go to solvepodcast.com slash luck you can download it

4252
03:48:09.640 --> 03:48:14.540
for free get all of our resources citations references big thank you to Annie Duke for

4253
03:48:14.600 --> 03:48:22.400
coming out and helping us out with this one and as always please follow subscribe support the show

4254
03:48:22.540 --> 03:48:23.244
any way you can.

4255
03:48:23.304 --> 03:48:24.228
We really appreciate it.

4256
03:48:24.650 --> 03:48:25.755
My name is Mark Manson.

4257
03:48:25.955 --> 03:48:26.940
I have no co-host.

4258
03:48:27.480 --> 03:48:30.450
I'm terribly unlucky, or am I lucky?

4259
03:48:31.594 --> 03:48:32.156
Stay tuned.

4260
03:48:32.277 --> 03:48:33.260
We'll find out next month.