Photo by Alois Komenda on Unsplash

How to Get a Job Without Getting Lucky

The adaptation of the concept of 4 types of luck by Naval Ravikant.

Let’s talk about 4 types of Luck. I learned this concept from Naval, you can listen to him explaining this in his podcast with Joe Rogan.

I will give you the gist.

Follow Naval on Twitter.

TLDR — What are the 4 Types of Luck?

1. Blind luck — random lucky things that happen
2. Luck of Motion — lucky events that are generated by your hustle
3. Luck of Awareness — your ability to recognize lucky opportunities
4. Luck of Uniqueness — you build your unique personality that attracts lucky events

Let’s go through them one by one.

Type 1. Blind Luck

• All the lucky events that are outside of your control
• e.g. The country you were born
• The family you were born in
• The body you were born in
• The brain you were born with (general cognitive ability)
• So-called “Acts of God” — when things truly just happen with no logical explanation

Type 2. Luck of Motion

• The luck you create through “stirring the environment” i.e. by taking action
• You increase the “surface area of your luck” just by taking shots
  e.g. Just sitting and throwing darts with your eyes closed will result inevitably in you hitting the bulls-eye
• The hustle and the energy that you inject into your ecosystem will create some “lucky collisions”

Type 3. Luck of Awareness.

• This is the luck that comes from your ability to spot and recognize “lucky opportunities”
• You develop your knowledge, skills, experience, and deep understanding and your ability to recognize
• e.g. You are a gifted designer and you spot an NFT opportunity

Type 4. Luck of Uniqueness

• Your unique set of attributes attracts specific luck to you
• You possess a unique skill set and you build a reputation of a unique specialist
• When people think about a particular type of problem-solver they think of you and bring you the opportunity

Now, how do I apply this concept to Job Hunting?

Good question.

Here are some implications to meditate on:

• There is nothing you can do about the Type 1 Luck. Shit just happens. Sometimes it is good shit. Sometimes it is bad. But guess what? This is the only thing you can and should control — your own perception of the shit that is happening. You are always in charge of the narrative that you build around the Blind Luck Events.
  It’s important to understand that if you don’t do it consciously, your narrative will be constructed subconsciously. We do not control the “acts of god” that just happen. But we always control our attitude and the way we choose to react. Stoicism 101.

Type 1 Luck defines your childhood and early development.

• Type 2 Luck, the Luck of Motion, is still not quite in the area of your control. You are controlling the input (e.g. in job hunting, the number of resume applications, the number of LinkedIn connections, the number of coffee chats) but you don’t control what comes out of it. There is no direct correlation, however, the more energy you inject into your ecosystem the higher the chance to collide with a lucky event. This is by the way precisely the reason why it is so important not to get good at the wrong things. If your input is ineffective, do not be surprised when you get low output.

Type 2 Luck happens when you hustle.

• Type 3 Luck is a function of your experience. Both Life and Career experience. The more experienced you are, the deeper wisdom (hopefully) you develop. I define wisdom as an ability to see into the future (your ability to predict the consequences of your actions). As you can probably tell, your ability to discern what is in front of you does not only depend on your hard skills and technical knowledge. Your Wisdom depends on your holistic personal development.

Type 3 Luck happens when you mature your thinking.

• Lastly, Type 4 luck is the most interesting one as it points to the importance of building up the uniqueness of your mind. We all come into this world with some unique spark. This spark is our curiosity. A lot of skills are learned because we are driven by our curiosity. Other skills are mastered in our pursuit of solving our own problems. Then, we amalgamate everything we learn in a blend that is unique to us.
  Unique problem-solving ability lets you solve unique problems. If you combine your unique knowledge with high integrity, you become an opportunity magnet. People want to do business with you because you have built a reputation as the best in the game and because they know they can trust you.

Type 4 Luck is your Personal Brand. Brand is what you do.

This is great. Do you have any actionable steps I can take?

Absolutely.

Meditate on the concept of Blind luck

• Your mind is a meaning-generating machine. You see signs where there are no signs. And this is bad news and good news for you. Bad news — you can get lost in the entanglement of your thoughts/interpretations about the meaning of a particular event. Good news — if you come to the realization that you are hard-wired to generate meaning from every single thing you can start engineering those meanings intentionally. Example. “Oh! A dead cat on the Road! I will probably get rich.” Ridiculous. I know. But so as saying “Oh, dead cat. Some bad shit is about to go down…” Both are nonsense, but one is priming your mind to a positive outlook. Another one sets your mind to vibrate as an attractor of some shitty event. And this is how the Universe works. You get what you believe.
• You never experience reality. Only your perception of your reality. You don’t know what objective reality is. You experience the world through your 5 senses, and even that information is stored in your mind first passing through the filters of your conditioning (life experience, upbringing, culture, language, parental influence, etc.) Engineer your perception intentionally. Develop your ability to see things the way you want them to see i.e. in the most rational, productive, and constructive way. Everything is an illusion anyway. Your mind is your world. So why not leverage it and create your world deliberately?
• I’ll have to add to that. To truly leverage the illusion you have to learn how to see through the illusion. You have to see that your thoughts are unreal. And you have to confirm for yourself through your direct experience that your thoughts are not you. Thoughts change. You, the Witness of Thoughts, always remain the same — unchanged. You don’t have to listen to everything that happens between your ears. You have to listen to what happens between the words.
• Be mindful of your language. Every time you use: “I am just not lucky” or apply any other kind of self-deprecating language to yourself you are literally programming it into your mind. If you convince yourself that this is your identity, how do you think you will show up in the world?
• There is no such thing as Good luck or Bad luck. It is always the Mind that decides what is the meaning of a particular event. You are not the Mind. You are the Seer of the Mind. You can drive it. Or it can drive you. The choice is yours.

Execute your Luck of Motion.

• Do the Wheel of Life exercise. Understand what are the areas of your life that you need to work on. Those are the areas where you will need to create a lot of motion (put the hard work in).

What you focus on expands.

• Do the Values exercise. Get absolute clarity on the things that are important to you. Your core values are your core drivers. They pull you and they push you.
• Understand what is NOT important. Do a Negative Visualization exercise. Imagine what will happen if you continue investing in the things that are opposite to your Values. This negative vision is your driver too. Go TO your values and FROM your negative vision.
• Study Essentialism. As the name implies, Essentialism is about focusing on the essentials — the things that truly matter. What are the high-impact activities and what are the low-impact activities? What is the real needle-moving work? What is busy work that makes no sense whatsoever? What will happen if you do busy work?
• Talk to strangers. Talk to more strangers. Every day.
• Join communities. Go to meetups. Attend networking events. Place yourself in the environments where serendipity can take place.
• Send cold emails. Persuasive writing is one of the most important skills in life. Get really good at getting people to want to talk to you.
• Work smart, not hard. But once you’ve narrowed down the smart things to work on. Work hard.

Grow your Luck of Awareness.

• Assemble your own Board of Advisors. Who are the smartest, the wisest people you know? Model their thinking. Study their decision-making principles. Integrate what you need into your own map of reality.
• If you are the dumbest person in the room, you are in the right room. Spend more time with people who will elevate your intelligence.
• Get yourself a mentor. 2–3 mentors — even better. Choose those who will challenge your thinking.
• Hire a coach. There are 2 ways people learn. It’s either through reality or through another person who becomes their reality. Which one do you think is the easiest/more efficient?
• Write/Journal. It works. Period.
• When in doubt, apply the Luck Razor:

The Luck Razor: when choosing between two paths, choose the path with the largest luck surface area

Double down on your Luck of Uniqueness

• The more you spend time alone, the more you become yourself. The more time you spend with others, the more you become like others. Conformity is the Enemy.
• Identify your Strengths, and make them your Superpowers. Identify your Weaknesses, and find ways to balance them out.
• Integrity over everything. Reputation is the ultimate currency. You can only be an opportunity magnet when people trust you.
• “Competition is for losers.” ~ Peter Thiel. Make yourself so unique that you become a monopoly.

• You are a niche of one. You are a 1-person business. Build yourself as such.

Final thoughts

Everything starts with the Locus of Control.

Do you believe that things are happening to you?
Or you are the one who makes things happen?

The Law of Attraction states that you attract what you think.

The Law of Action states that no matter how hard you think if you don’t take action your reality will not change.

There is a degree of truth to both.

Thinking incites emotion. Emotion drives behavior. New behavior leads to new experiences. The new experience gives birth to new thinking. It’s a loop.

Take the concept of 4 types of luck and see if you can apply it to your own map of reality.

At the end of the day, if it works for you, you can integrate it. But if you know that certain things don’t work for you, why do you still believe in them?

👋 Thanks for reading!

I’m on a mission to enable 1M humans to actualize their full potential and live a Purpose-Driven Life.

Like this article?
👉🏼 DM me on LinkedIn.
👉🏼 Or check my free resources HERE.