I don’t mean to sound nihilistic but isn’t chance (by definition, improbability) the main player in our lives? That and luck – although lucky for us, luck is self-made.
What is luck? An intangible force that allows good (or bad) stuff to happen. If you understand how to leverage it, you up your chances of a beautiful life. Looking down from the peak. That’s the good stuff.
Ways to leverage luck
The book that’s speaking to me right now is Quit, The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke. I’m convinced that dropping the grind in life that’s hard (and crucially, not worthwhile) is the fresh-tack gambit to get lucky.
If you want a bit of drama (and some of us do, totally get it), go hard and quit the thing right now that future projections suggest will take more than you invest.
Innate cognitive bias stops us dropping things we’ve already invested in – especially if it’s tied up with our sense of self worth. The bigger our prior commitment, the harder it is to walk away. Loss aversion and the sunk cost effect means we’ll hold the door open on goals that are no longer worth the grit, or inversely pour even more energy and resources into them to turn things around.
The world shifts and things don’t have to be terrible at this very moment to quit and start again. Work out your finite games and your infinite games. Play them right. Quit, restart, play them often.
Soft lock
On the subject of gaming, ‘soft lock’ is when a player gets into a situation where they haven’t died or failed, but progress in any direction is impossible, like if your character falls into a deep pit with no exit.
There are games where you miss something minor at the start and play for hours without realising there isn’t a way you can get to the next level or complete it. Great for corporate interest in the attention-economy, not so great for you. See Anne Helen Peterson’s Culture Study interview with Adrian Hon on good and bad gaming for more.
Want to break the soft lock? In a virtual world you can always press restart. Go back to the beginning of the level with a new outlook. Remember that in this world, you can press restart too. There’s autonomy in the here and now. Even if chance loves a curveball.
“A bird rests on a branch not because of his confidence in the branch but because of his confidence in his ability to fly.”
This isn’t a call to arms to quit hard stuff that’s worthwhile, just to think about the grindy stuff that takes, and will ultimately, continue to take. Torn over a decision? Science (well, magic) shows that when it comes to the questions we ask the tarot deck, we may already know the answers ourselves.
Quitting and the ego
“Quitting a game is a decision fraught with uncertainty because it is never clear exactly why you are losing. While you could be playing poorly, you could also be playing really well but still be losing in the game due to an unlucky run of cards. In other words, if you want to blame your losses on luck and keep playing, you can always find a way to do that. Quitting a game is the same as admitting that you might not be good enough compared to the other players, that you might not have an edge in the game that you’re playing in. That’s a blow to the ego few are willing to take.”
Quit, The Power Of Knowing When To Walk Away by Annie Duke
When you're chipping the stone to reveal the sculpture here, you might realise that a lot of the decisions we make to stick with losing runs are based on ego - subconsciously or otherwise.
A beautiful life
Of course, there’s no single peak, and behind the mountains are more mountains. But by quitting what’s not worthwhile - and pursuing what’s worth the climb you can see so much more.
And as luck would have it, an occasional retreat to base camp means you live to climb another day.