Increase Your Luck Surface Area
Luck is not purely random. You can systematically increase the probability of fortunate events by combining passionate work with broad communication.
"Your Luck Surface Area is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated." Jason Roberts
The Luck Surface Area formula is deceptively simple: do interesting things, and tell people about them. But the insight runs deep. Paul Graham observes that when you read biographies of people who have done great work, "it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up." The solution is to make yourself a big target for luck by being curious, trying many things, meeting many people, reading widely, and asking lots of questions.
This connects to the concept of "scenius" those astonishingly productive periods in history (Renaissance Florence, Elizabethan England, Silicon Valley) where human mixing, risk-tolerant institutions, and rapid exchange of ideas create an environment where serendipity compounds. The individual version of scenius is maximizing your own surface area for lucky collisions. Will Larson echoes this when he advises being "discoverable" writing online, maintaining relationships, speaking at meetups because access to the most interesting opportunities depends on people being able to find you.
The formula also explains why pure heads-down work without communication leaves so much on the table. Success equals product times distribution. Many talented people fail not because their work is bad but because too few people ever encounter it. The entrepreneur who over-indexes on product and ignores distribution is shrinking their luck surface area to almost nothing.
Takeaway: Doing great work in private is only half the equation you must also broadcast it widely to let serendipity find you.
See also: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius | Do Things Then Tell People | Ideas Spread Through Networks Not Arguments