Luck

I decided to end my writing hiatus today – it has indeed been a while since I’ve posted, in fact, I can actually crack my favourite dad joke here. I haven’t posted since last year!

Anyway, the reason for my hiatus has not been a negative reason, which gives me immense pride, although does not excuse me from the fact that indeed, I could have, and should have, written more.

In the past few months, I forced myself to look at the same things over and over, through different lenses. And this allowed me to expand my horizons and also allowed me to look for more efficient ways to do what I’d like to do. And for the first time in a while, I bought myself a very clever planner! You can find it in this link if you want to give it a try. I highly recommend it, made myself accountable for each day of the week, every week of the month, and every month of the year. And now that we’re reaching the end of January, I can confidently say that this impacted me in a strong and positive manner. I gained insights I never would have, had I not written things down everyday as I did.

Now, onto the thought that occurred to me while I was actually watching Person of Interest (an interesting TV show!) where Harold says, “Luck is merely a construct.”

And this got me thinking back to all the examples that actually prove this. Garry Kasparov, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ryan Holiday, Robert Greene, Jerry Seinfeld, Picasso, MS Dhoni, Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, Usain Bolt, Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Jobs and the list goes on. You can find at least one example from every field where luck proves to be a construct indeed. While I was thinking of all of these examples, a summary of luck came to my mind.

“The inexperienced call it fate, the amateurs call it luck, and the daily practitioners call it persistence.”

Expanding on this, I believe if you persist enough, day in, day out, when the weather is bad, when your mood’s awful, when you’re completely exhausted, when you continue to persist and go through your routine over and over, somehow, “the tables turn” or “fate smiles upon you” or “your lucky days arrive”. But when you really look at it, and think about it, it simply means you have, in a very literal sense, constructed the very environment, the very conditions, that turn every interaction into an opportunity, that turn every mundane second you spent repeating into those golden seconds that lead to those golden hours, days, months and years.
I experienced this myself recently. During my hiatus, I forced myself to continue such repetitive tasks, such as listening to Arabic, or solving chess puzzles everyday, or reading everyday, or force myself to do pushups and pullups before I slept. And the more I did this, I realised that all those “ordinary” moments of my daily life, speaking to colleagues, meeting new people, allowed me to use these repetitive things in a useful manner. I could now speak to a colleague in Arabic (not very well, mind you!) and find more colleagues to practice speaking Arabic to, which in time might lead me to grasp the language completely. I was able to speak to some senior colleagues about the books I read, and the ideas from the books, and they got back to me asking for recommendations since they found those ideas interesting. I ended up meeting people in the gym whom I saw doing more advanced calisthenics exercises and had the confidence to approach them and ask for progression advice based off of my strong foundation. So within a few months, I now had more people that I could talk to about varying ideas from different aspects of my life. And I think that is the ultimate point of such repetitive tasks: you gain mastery over the skills you were putting into use, and as such, now gain access to different aspects of the world you didn’t think of previously, or were not able to access previously. Which then further opens you up to more opportunities.

One specific examples of such interactions through repetitive work that come to mind is MS Dhoni.

MS Dhoni

The most successful captain of Indian cricket came from a very humble background, as can be seen in his biographical film. I distinctly remember seeing live matches where Dhoni employed his signature helicopter shot, and always found it such a weird shot. I tried it myself when I was playing cricket as a teenager but with no success. When I think of how he learnt to play this shot, I remember the specific scene in the film, but until now, did not pay attention to how this specific opportunity came to him.

He was already quite a talented and hardworking cricketer, having spent almost all of his development years playing cricket, and through his dedication to the sport, got a job in railways. The advice he received from his boss once was to play all kinds of cricket, including tennis ball cricket, which he was reluctant to play because he was told it has a detrimental impact to when you play red/white ball cricket. On following this advice, he played a match and saw a player employ this shot, and quickly understood how unorthodox the shot was, and how it could be employed during a match to confuse the bowlers. He learned this from the player, and then proceeded to employ this shot during the international matches, and became known for his unorthodox batting style.

Had he not spent all those years training, day in and day out, he never would’ve realised the importance of such a shot, much less the environment and circumstances that led to him learning this shot and employing it in international matches, becoming his signature shot.

Similar stories can be found in all such practitioners, the story of the Nike logo, how Arnold got bodybuilding advice and further opportunities, how Tendulkar’s straight drive was known for its perfect technical nature, and the list goes on. All such practice, not only makes you a master of your practice, but opens up avenues in the most unexpected ways.

I, for one, will continue to explore these unexpected avenues, as I believe they lead to an abundance of opportunities. Luck afterall, is merely a construct.