Luck Surface Area, After-Action Reviews, & More
Today at a Glance
- Question: Expanding your luck surface area.
- Quote: Separating creating from improving.
- Framework: After-Action Review.
- Tweet: Smoothest shot ever.
- Article: Life's real losers.
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Question I often ask myself:
How can I expand my luck surface area?
In the movie Interstellar (slight spoiler if you haven’t seen it!), there’s a scene in which the main characters discuss the habitability of a planet on the edge of a large black hole.
The protagonists realize that the proximity to the black hole makes life unlikely to exist on the planet. The black hole had absorbed all of the “lucky” events that might have been the spark for life. The asteroids carrying the seeds of life, the chance collisions—none of them had occurred.
The black hole had made the “luck surface area” of the planet minuscule.
I think about this a lot—it’s a powerful metaphor for life. The luckiest people have a massive luck surface area. They expose themselves to more luck than the average human.
Two keys to increase the size of yours:
- Remove the "black holes" that shrink your luck surface area. Cut the people and actions out of your life that are "anti-luck" and you'll immediately expose yourself to more chance positive encounters.
- Take deliberate actions that expand your luck surface area. It's hard to get lucky watching TV at home alone, but it's much easier to get lucky when you're out engaging with smart, interesting people.
A few of my favorite simple luck surface area expanding actions:
- Send one cold email or DM per day. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- Spend more time around optimists. Pessimists sound smart, optimists tend to get lucky.
- Share your thoughts publicly. Write and share, build and share.
- Build free time and boredom into your schedule. Free time is where your thoughts and ideas mingle. When you have free time, you have the headspace and bandwidth to take on potential non-linear opportunities.
Always remember the Luck Razor: When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger luck surface area.
Quote to unleash your creative side:
"Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator...At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment." - Kevin Kelly
Create first, improve later.
One Framework:
The After-Action Review
The After-Action Review (AAR) is a simple, powerful framework used by the military and leading corporations to make continuous improvements by reflecting on each completed action and distilling the relevant insights to inform future actions.
The AAR is grounded in four key questions:
- What did we intend to accomplish?
- What did we accomplish relative to our intention?
- Why did it happen this way?
- What will we do to adapt and refine for an improved outcome?
It is typically conducted after a major project or action to assess the performance of an individual or team and make adjustments necessary in advance of the next one.
While managers and employees can certainly benefit from engaging in a formal AAR in a professional setting, I find the AAR to be a useful template for informal, on-the-fly process improvements.
A few examples:
- After a difficult conversation with a partner or friend. Why didn't that go as I intended? What changes can I make next time?
- After a race or competition. Why didn't that go as well as I had hoped? What changes can I make to my training plan next time?
- After a meeting with a new mentor. Why didn't that prove as fruitful as I hoped? What changes can I make next time?
I like the framework because it puts an emphasis on my actions—the things I can control—rather than wasting energy worrying about that external factors that I cannot.
I typically just run through the questions in my head, but you can write them down if you'd like. Give it a shot coming out of your next project or personal event and let me know what you think.
One Tweet:
This is COLD. New goal for life: Do anything with as much swagger as this man carries on the table tennis circuit.
One Article:
This is a fascinating take on an article that made the rounds about the "rich-yet-miserable" class of NYC inhabitants who struggle to keep up with the culture of excess that surrounds them.
It's funny and eye-opening, especially the life advice it shares from the old woman with a terminal illness...
