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Many of the best luck engineers I know faced significant, uncontrollable bad luck early in life. They had to learn the skill of luck.
Unscheduled calls wander. You ask how someone’s doing, they mention a problem, you riff on a solution—and suddenly you’ve stumbled into an opportunity neither of you planned.
Avoid people who bore you. And avoid being the boring person in the room. Interesting people get more luck, not because they’re necessarily smarter, but because they’re memorable.
groupies in their lives. They prefer spending time with people who knew them befor
If you’re over the age of 25, a good rule of thumb is to assume your first thoughts about new trends are wrong. It’s fine to have no opinion on new trends. But if you want to have an opinion, put 20 hours into it first.
Give aggressively, give early, give without permission. The pie isn’t fixed—it expands when you give freely.
Find the most talented people you know and help them as much as you can, permissionlessly.
When you have a clear introduction that describes what you do: “I create Super Bowl-level commercials for fintech companies on social media”, they can now realise ways they can help you: “Oh, my friend Barry is the marketing director at Amex. Let me introduce you!”.
Surprise generosity creates loyalty. People remember who exceeded their expectations. They tell others. They come back. They reciprocate.