The Right Person in the Right Place at the Right Time
How people's lives can change in an instant
One useful way to look at your life and your opportunities is to look at it as a set of probabilities for any potential course of action. For example, if you were to start a job search, you might have a 50% chance of getting a new job offer in the next month that you accept, a 30% chance of getting a new job offer but you decide to stay in your current job, and a 20% chance of not getting a new job offer. If you decide to go on the dating apps, you might have a 40% chance of going on a date in the next week. If you’re hungry and decide to walk across the street to your local deli, you have a 99.999999% chance of making it without getting hit by a car.
For anything that you might want to do in the future, there is no guarantee it will actually happen. There’s simply a set of probabilities on a distribution of potential outcomes. And as time passes, that set of probabilities constantly changes. What might have seemed unlikely 1 year ago could seem exceedingly likely today. Maybe you had no chance to pass a calculus exam a year ago, but after diligent attendance and intensive tutoring, you stand a pretty good chance to ace your AP Calc AB exam in the late spring.
Your probability can change based on your own initiative and actions. But there are plenty of ways that probabilities can change that are completely outside of your control. Going back to the first example about trying to get a new job offer, the probability of success depends very heavily on both the local and national economy. If you graduated in the spring of 2009 with national unemployment over 9%, at the absolute trough of the Great Recession, you would find it very difficult to get an interview let alone a job offer. But if you graduated in the spring of 2018 with unemployment below 4%, it was much easier to get a job offer in hand.
Serenity Now
In other words, for whatever objective you want to accomplish, there are things you can do to improve your chances, and there are things that are completely out of your control. A big part of life is figuring that out. One of my favorite phrases is the Serenity Prayer. If you’re not familiar, it goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
All of our lives are shaped by a vast array of forces both within and out of our control. In some areas of life, we have a lot of agency, such as deciding what to eat for dinner. In other areas, we have little to no control. If I decide to fly on a commercial airliner, I can be extremely confident that I’ll get to my destination safely (on a per mile basis, travel by commercial airliner is the safest form of transportation), but once I’m onboard the flight, I have zero agency in determining whether I get there in one piece or not. At that point, it’s up to the pilot, the airline, and the plane manufacturer.
As you live your life, you will notice patterns in your behavior and in the behavior of others. You’ll make connections between behaviors and outcomes. As you gain experience and wisdom, you’ll gain a better idea of what tends to work and what doesn’t. So even though your probability of success is governed by both internal and external forces, you’ll learn which is which and how they interact with each other. But how can you tell what the actual probability is, and what proportion of it is driven by internal and external factors?
It’s a Copycat League
If you watch the NFL, one phrase you’ll inevitably come across is “it’s a copycat league”. Success begets imitators. If one team experiences sustained success, everybody else will strive to borrow, copy, and steal everything associated with that team. Players will crib the techniques and moves of that team’s players. Other coaching staffs will copy the formations and play designs. And rival front offices will try and poach as many coaches and players as they can from that team.
All of this is to say that we’re not very good at identifying all the factors that make something successful. Because inevitably, as the rest of the league strives to copy the successful team, the imitators oftentimes fail. The plays they copy don’t work without the same personnel. The coaches and players they poach aren’t in the same environment and don’t perform up to scratch. Sometimes plays can only work when you’re Patrick Mahomes, and they fail spectacularly if you’re not Patrick Mahomes.
Success has a thousand fathers. Everybody wants to take credit for something successful. And other people want to learn about the habits, techniques, and behavior of successful people. This can often be a fool’s errand, because even somebody who’s extraordinarily successful won’t know why they’re successful. Success is very often the confluence of a number of factors, both internal and external, and it’s not uncommon for people to be put into a position to succeed and not be aware that much of their success depends on things outside of their control.
Luck is the Intersection of Preparation and Opportunity
In sports, there is the concept of “value over replacement player” or VORP. What it denotes is the additional effectiveness that any given player has over a replacement level player, who represents a level of skill/play that is very common and easily replaceable for any given team. While Patrick Mahomes is singularly gifted in football, you can generally sign replacement players off the street or off another team’s practice squad.
But that metaphor extends to the rest of life as well. There are many opportunities in life that go to people who aren’t necessarily very talented or well suited for them. Maybe they just skate by or maybe they don’t quite cut it. But if you put the right person in the right place at the right time, something magical happens. You might be witnessing the birth of an extraordinary career or the start of a beautiful relationship.
In order to maximize the chance of something like that happening to you, you have to maximize the part of the equation that’s within your control. Keep practicing. Keep learning. Keep moving. Keep searching. There are certain species of sharks that have to constantly swim in order to breathe. If they stop moving, they die. That’s a lesson for life that more people should internalize.
It is absolutely true and absolutely heartbreaking that life isn’t fair. We don’t all get the same opportunities. Some of us start on third base while others never even get to the stadium. But regardless of our starting situations, we all have the capability to maximize the amount of what’s achievable within our own realm of possibility.
Get Up, Stand Up
So whether you’re pursuing a job, an education, a relationship, or whatever, you’ll give yourself the greatest chance of a good outcome by constantly trying. Creating the mindset to keep grinding, to keep learning, to keep trying to put yourself out there will pay dividends in the long run.
In the vast majority of situations in life, there is a positive bias for action. What that means is that more often than not, trying and attempting something is better than doing nothing or giving up. It’s proven that the easiest way to make more money is to switch jobs. The act of searching for a job, to not sit around and let inertia take hold, is a hassle. But if the objective is to make more money, searching for and getting a new job offer is one of the best ways to do it.
What about relationships? There are plenty of people who complain about their lack of luck in love. But complaining is the easy, do-nothing path of least resistance. And it happens to be one of the least attractive things you can do. Nobody likes whiners. So if your goal is to attract a romantic partner, you could start by not doing the things that make you unattractive. You can then progress onto things that make you more attractive, such as working out, building social confidence, wearing stylish, fitted clothes, and being a fun person to be around.
The world belongs to those who hustle. Who try new things. Who pick themselves up after getting knocked down in the dirt. It’s hard to do, and much harder to do it consistently. But if you keep moving and trying, you’ll eventually find yourself in a new, virtuous cycle.
Keep moving. Keep learning. Keep trying. Eventually you’ll find yourself in the right place at the right time.