Silicon Valley is now teaching luck

Hi there,

There is apparently now a class in a prestigious, new Silicon Valley school that’s funded by the tech elite called The Geometry Luck. (…which sounds either like a fascinating new academic discipline or something Gwyneth Paltrow would sell you for $89 with a crystal.)

But the idea behind it stopped me.

Because most of us talk about luck as if it is random.

You either have it or you don't.

You were born under the right star, met the right person, or just happened to buy Bitcoin while the rest of us were busy deciding whether we needed an air fryer.

And obviously, some luck really is random: birth, timing, health, etc.

But what if there’s another category of luck?

The kind you cannot control, but can make considerably more likely.

What if the shape of your life has a geometry? And some life shapes, i.e. structures give more opportunities for luck to discover you?

That is the idea behind the Geometry of Luck course which promises to teach students about expanding the lens and design of their life and “arranging it so good fortune flows through it."

The luck equation

The name for the course comes from a talk by Soleio, one of Facebook's first two product designers (he designed the Like button) and now a Silicon Valley investor who teaches the course. He breaks luck down into three parts:

Luck = Orientation × Surface Area × Novel Action

1. Orientation

Say someone tells you they desperately want to break into the film industry. But they work from home, spend every evening with the same three people, and haven't spoken to anyone new since the Obama administration.

That isn't really a motivation problem, but it is a probability problem.

Orientation is about putting yourself near the people, ideas and places where the future you want is more likely to show up. Soleio uses Johnny Appleseed to make the point.

Most of us grew up with the folk version, the barefoot wanderer scattering seeds wherever he roamed. The real John Chapman was more strategic. He watched where settlers were heading, got there ahead of them, and planted nurseries where he expected towns to spring up. He was standing where the future was moving.

But orientation isn't only about where you stand. It's also about what you notice once you're there, and that has a lot to do with the mindset you bring into the room.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied people who called themselves very lucky or very unlucky. He once asked them to count the photographs in a newspaper. The unlucky people took about two minutes. The lucky ones took seconds, because on page two, in type over two inches high, it said: Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.

The unlucky people mostly missed it. They were too busy counting. They were also noticeably more anxious, and anxiety narrows attention.

The people who considered themselves lucky tended to be more relaxed and open, so they looked at the world with a wider lens and found the answer in seconds. They weren't handed more opportunities. They just noticed more of the ones already around them.

2. Surface area

You could be building something remarkable in your spare bedroom, but if only six people know about it, luck only has six ways in.

In 1973, the sociologist Mark Granovetter asked people how they'd found their new jobs. Most who found work through a contact heard about it not from a close friend, but from someone they saw only occasionally or rarely. He called it The Strength of Weak Ties. Your close circle mostly knows what you know. Your acquaintances are bridges into places you'd never walk into on your own.

It's the old "I know a guy" phenomenon. You know a guy, who knows a guy, whose college roommate's ex-wife's pickleball partner is hiring for exactly the job you've been quietly wanting for three years.

So surface area is about giving those bridges something to carry. So maybe go to awkward dinners and tell more people what you're working on, even though it feels a little like bragging or oversharing.

3. Novel action

So you orient yourself, expand your circle and reach, and then something finally happens. Someone invites you somewhere, a connection gets made, or an idea strikes.

What are you going to do about it?

Novel action is about how you capitalize on that moment. Because this is where most of us go straight back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Novel action means doing something different enough to create a new branch in your life. You can't control when the opening shows up, but you do get to decide what you do with it. Sometimes that's as small as saying "why not?" instead of automatically producing the seventeen reasons why not.

READER POLL

Final Thought

The multiplication sign matters. Because the three parts multiply, a zero anywhere wipes out the rest. You can be in the right place, ready to act, but if nobody knows you're there, it comes to nothing. Or you can run into opportunities constantly and do nothing with them. Still nothing.

None of this means unlucky people are to blame. But within whatever shape we've been given, there's usually more room than we think.

Soleio's deeper point and one that I find more compelling is that luck moves through networks of people. As he puts it: "Luck isn't something that you have. It's something that you leave behind."

And this leads to a much better question than "How do I get lucky?"

Instead it’s about “How do I become part of someone else's luck?

Can you make the introduction, share an opportunity and recommend someone? Because remember Granovetter: to somebody out there, you are the weak tie, the bridge into the place they've been trying to find.

So this week, move one step closer to where it might happen, give the world one more way to find you, and when something opens up, walk through it.

No crystal required.

Catch you next week,

Shakila