Luck Surface Area

So I came across this concept from Jason Robert, which I found incredibly brilliant — it’s called the Luck Surface Area.

In essence, your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you’re passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated. It implies that you can directly control the amount of luck you receive. In other words, you make your own luck.

In Austin Kleon’s book, “Show Your Work” (which, I highly recommend), he says — “It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn’t online, it doesn’t exist.” This does not mean you have to live online if you don’t want to. Rather, you can let you work live online. I do feel like this applies to us more so now, especially with the advent of social platforms and its ability to enable so many people to make a living off it.

Here’s the thing. People want to be excited about things. Passion is infectious, and so people naturally get pulled into your orbit when you’re hacking away at something that genuinely excites you. Ingenuity also shows — so find something that makes you come alive and chase it relentlessly. You benefit, and the spillover effects benefit those around you.

I love learning and documenting my growth. I read a lot — so I created a channel on telegram whereby I exhale all the knowledge, insights, compelling and inspirational content I vacuum up from books, articles, videos and more. I post my progress, challenges, failures and some sporadic thoughts along the way. My friends love it.

So, back to the concept of Luck Surface Area. Robert formalized the concept into the equation L = D * T, where L is luck, D is doing and T is telling (His blog post, here). Essentially — the more you do and the more people you tell about it, the larger your Luck Surface Area will become. Here’s the visualization.

While doing this, I built a community of voracious learners and inspiring individuals, who in return, share about their knowledge too. This positive feedback loop is something that has kept me going, even through difficult times.

While I do think there is some truth to this whole concept, I think it is important to remember that “Success is determined not so much by the size of one’s brain as it is by the size of one’s thinking.”

Set Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (BHAGs) for yourself — Always shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

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I write more about productivity hacking, reading intelligently and learning broadly here. Check it out :)