Playing to get Lucky: My Operating System for a Random Universe

We are born into this universe inside a body we didn't choose, to parents we didn't pick, at a time in history we didn't select, and in a place we didn't choose. We go through the first five years of childhood, the most important phase of our lives according to our current understanding of neuroscience, without any control over how much love we get from our parents, how much nutrient-rich food is available to us, or how much physical touch we receive.

We don't choose which school we go to, if any; our parents pick that for us, if we have them. These and several other factors together make up what I call the Ovarian Lottery.

One ball is drawn out of what is now 350,000 babies born per day, and one of them is you.

You didn't choose any of your circumstances of birth, yet it is the most important event you will ever participate in. It will dictate how well you do in life more than anything else, more than how hard you work or which university you attend.

An individual's ability to generate wealth over their lifetime is a function of their privilege.

A function of being born at the right place and right time, with the right brain wiring to ride a wave they had very little control over.

Luck is the single most important factor in determining life trajectories. Luck has more to do with our success and failure in the traditional sense than anything else. The Ovarian Lottery is only the beginning; luck stays with us until we die.

Let us take a couple of examples

• A person working at a company whose stock just exploded will find themselves being way wealthier than their peers instantly. They were similarly skilled to people working in similar roles in other companies, but they were at the right place at the right time.

Now let's take a less common example.

• Sometimes, development in one area can lead to lucky breaks in a totally different area. The development of television led to a huge growth in the net worths of sports players. Until this development, revenue generated from sports was limited to how many people would fit in a stadium at a particular time. TVs allowed sporting events to be broadcasted to millions at the same time, and revenue from advertisements skyrocketed, increasing the demand for sports and hugely benefiting the net worths of these players. Just think about how many kilo-meters you can go in India without seeing an advertisement with a cricket player.

In both cases, we see how being at the right place at the right time surpasses skill and competence. The cricket players born before the development of TV were as skilled, serious, and worthy as the ones now, but they weren't born at the right time to benefit to such a degree as the ones we have now.

Wrestling with Truth

When I first wrestled with these concepts, they caused me immense pain and anguish, at times enough to trigger entire existential crises. But I'm not a quitter, so I kept wrestling with these internally, chiseling away unproductive patterns of thought and exploring the problem from various dimensions until I found something beautiful.

I was spending too much time focusing on other people's luck and privilege, and not enough thinking about what I had to offer to the world or where I had advantages. I needed to embrace reality without any judgment or pre-conceived notions of what it should be.

This meant accepting the role of luck, randomness, and privilege in the universe.

This made me a hyper-realist—someone who works with reality as it is, and not how I wish it should be. When I say I'm a hyper-realist, I'm not saying that dreams can't come true. I'm saying that the best way to achieve your dreams is to work with reality.

If luck is a fundamental property of the universe, and one most important in determining success, then let's focus on getting lucky.

I saw the role of luck in the universe no longer as a barrier to what I wanted, but as an invitation to play games in which I can get lucky.

In an instant, my focus was not on the luck of others, but on finding ways in which I could get lucky. This meant finding games which have historically showered luck on people and playing them with a game plan.

I was now only interested in playing games where I could get lucky.

To get lucky, we have to first play

This is obvious yet often overlooked. Before my epiphany, I was so focused on other people's luck that I had forgotten to play the game myself. There is no luck without being in the ring. Luck can't play its part if you are not playing yours.

To take the example of investing, Howard Marks put it beautifully:

In investing, luck is what happens when external events collide with your portfolio.

You can't get lucky unless you have a portfolio that will absorb the events of the world. You need to be in the ring. You need to play to get lucky.

But, how do we decide which game to play?

Finding games to play

Each one of us is wired differently and has a different set of advantages in the world. I'm glad I was not born 5,000 years ago; otherwise, I would have been some animal's lunch (I don’t run very fast).

Finding games is a personal journey of discovering what excites you, what you’re good at, and what games are being offered in the world at the time and place you were born. (Although I wouldn't restrict myself to the place I was born).

I leave the joy of figuring out what games you want to play to you.

Stoicism x Bhagavad Gita x Tao Te Ching

My Operating System

Now that we have come to peace with the fact that luck and randomness are fundamental properties of the universe and have found games we would like to get lucky in, we need an operating system for maximizing luck. It's time to invoke the giants of the past.

Stoicism

Stoicism is probably the most misunderstood concept on the internet. It is often mistaken for suppressing your emotions.

Stoicism is simply about dividing the world into what you control and what you don't, then directing all your focus, energy, and brainpower to the former.

We don't control the randomness. That's exactly what makes it random. No one controls it—not me, not you, not anyone.

We do not control the universe we are born into, one that is fundamentally random.

We do not control who gets lucky and who doesn't.

We do not control whether we get lucky or not.

We do control our thoughts and reactions to this reality.

We do control our actions in response to this reality.

By focusing all our energy on things we can control, we increase our chances of getting lucky. This way, we don't waste brain cells on things that don't contribute to the result.

Bhagavad Gita - Karm Yogi

In university, I took a course titled 'The Philosophical Wisdom of Early India' to try to understand a girl I was dating better. It only gave me existential dread. In hindsight, I was not ready to appreciate the rich wisdom offered to me. Only now do I see the practical utility of that course.

The Bhagavad Gita introduces the concept of Karm-Yogi, which teaches us to act with discipline and detachment. It's about doing our work sincerely and leaving the results to a higher power.

The higher power is mathematics and the gods of randomness and luck.

No wonder people who are Karm-Yogis get ahead in life. They are in tune with the truth and reality. This sounds counter-intuitive because we are trying to maximize our luck. How does not paying any attention to the result do any good for us?

Tao Te Ching

The previous two paragraphs boil down to this:

The way is not the way. That is the way of the Tao.

Stoicism teaches us to focus all our energy on things we can control.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches us to fulfill our duties faithfully without worrying about the result.

Tao Te Ching tells us that the way is not the way. The indirect way is the way to go.

The best way to get lucky is to not focus on luck at all. It is to focus on the process.

The paradox is that by focusing on the process and not the outcome, we get to where we want earlier.

We control the process and not the outcome, but almost all humans spend large amounts of time focusing on the outcome, and often, on other people's outcomes instead of focusing on the process.

It is possible to train your brain not to dwell on luck, yours or others'. Doing this gives you a huge competitive advantage over someone who will get discouraged by their neighbour's success or their own setbacks and waste brain cells and resources on these.

In moments like these, all we need to do is focus on the long-term horizon and remind ourselves of the game we are playing.

Ultimately, this is only possible if we are patient. It only works because we are operating with multiple decades in mind. We can afford to be patient because we know we will make our mark eventually. Patience is my ultimate advantage, the more impatient the world becomes, the more my patience allows me to stand out.

Investing - My Preferred Game to Get Lucky In

I love investing because it's a math game and because we only need to get lucky once in our entire life to change our life's trajectory. It is an infinite game of extreme patience that miraculously coexists peacefully and beautifully with my restless mind.

The secret to investing is that there is no secret to investing.

All of us can build wealth over a lifetime and achieve our dreams if we spend less than we earn and invest wisely. This is the power of compounding. If you don't believe me, spend a weekend calculating how much your dream life costs and how far you could get over the course of your entire life with compounding.

You are worried about competition?

I am telling you there is no competition!

No one is willing to play the long-term game.

Are you?

My email is bundiwal(at)icloud(dot)com.

I read every email.