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Shadowing practice: The 3 Types of Luck — What 10x Winners Do Differently

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Full transcript

  1. Well, we need to systematically understand this.0:00
  2. And Morton really gets a lot of credit for this because we figured out how to do it.0:01
  3. You have to first of all define what luck is.0:07
  4. But if you're gonna study luck, you have to understand what it is and realize that luck is not an aura or something.0:09
  5. It's an event, it's a luck event.0:14
  6. And if we could put the parameters of what is a luck event and what with Morton's collaborating together, we'd define the luck event.0:16
  7. And I think this is a really good definition is A, you didn't cause it.0:24
  8. So if somebody says you make your own luck, it's not luck.0:28
  9. By definition, right?0:31
  10. Because there's bad luck too.0:33
  11. If I get a cancer diagnosis, I'm gonna say I make my own luck.0:34
  12. No, you didn't cause it.0:38
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  1. The second is it has potentially significant consequence, good or bad.0:39
  2. And the third is in some way it came as a surprise.0:43
  3. You didn't know that it would happen or when it would happen or what form it would take, right?0:48
  4. But there it is.0:54
  5. And any event that meets those three tests is a luck event.0:55
  6. And once you have that lens, you didn't cause a potential significant consequence, some element, some significant way as a surprise.1:01
  7. You begin to see there are luck events happening all the time.1:09
  8. And so then what Morton and I did was we looked at these companies and we said, well, now let's actually run the numbers and see, because we always had1:12
  9. comparatives in that study.1:22
  10. And we were able to demonstrate that the big winners, the ones who had the huge outsize returns relative to their direct comparisons, did not get more good luck.1:24
  11. They did not get less bad luck.1:34
  12. They did not get bigger spikes of luck and they didn't get better timing of luck.1:36
  13. So luck as a distributed variable was pretty even between those that were the huge 10x winners and their direct comparisons.1:40
  14. So clearly luck didn't separate.1:48
  15. And then that led to the observation that, but it was the return on luck, that when the luck came, they had this amazing ability relative to the comparison to1:50
  16. make more of the luck.2:02
  17. And that led to the return on luck as the critical variable.2:03
  18. So now we come to this study.2:07
  19. And I was looking through, just looking at the amount of luck that's in these people's lives.2:09
  20. And there's a whole chapter on it.2:14
  21. There's lots of permutations of luck, including the roulette wheel, which set of encoding she get thrown into at some stage of life that just put you there that you2:16
  22. didn't expect to be there.2:26
  23. We were talking about Grace Hopper earlier, how'd she end up in computer scientists?2:28
  24. Well, World War II happened.2:32
  25. She got pulled out of being a professor at Vassar.2:33
  26. She was assigned to this project at Harvard.2:35
  27. She didn't even know existed.2:37
  28. And it was the first computer, the Mark I.2:38
  29. And that cast the die for the rest of her life.2:41
  30. Well, without World War II or without that assignment, without, right, it would have been some other set of encodings that went off.2:42
  31. But then I'd started looking at what are the types of luck?2:49
  32. And I, through this study came to see, I think there are three.2:53
  33. There's what luck, which is a good event that goes your way or bad event.2:55
  34. A cancer event would be a bad luck, what luck?3:00
  35. There's who luck.3:02
  36. And I think this is the often underappreciated, gigantic kind of luck in life.3:04
  37. And my life is a continuous series of who luck events, starting with Joanne, but others as well.3:10
  38. And bad luck, the bad luck of my father.3:16
  39. And then there's zeitluck.3:19
  40. And zeitluck, which I didn't really see until this study, is when what you're doing just happens to fit with a particular zeitgeist that's happening at the time, which you3:21
  41. did not cause, but it is a huge reality.3:34
  42. So, I mean, Benjamin Franklin, you and I would never talk about Benjamin Franklin if he'd been born at a time that he wasn't there for the revolution and the3:37
  43. founding of the country.3:44
  44. And Alice Paul, if she'd been born 20 years later or 20 years earlier, she wouldn't have been there to bring the 19th Amendment and suffrage to a successful close.3:46
  45. She would have done something else, right?3:56
  46. But not that.3:58
  47. And so Jimmy Page had not been born in England, coming of age in the Blues Rock Revolution, right there as all this great music was happening, right?3:59
  48. I'll just say briefly, people need to read it, but the entire founding story of Led Zeppelin is kind of insane.4:08
  49. When you look at the number of things that had to go right, it's just wild.4:13
  50. And there's that great quote from Robert Plant saying, what was it?4:18
  51. The God's Roard and Lightning Crackled and Blake wrote a poem from under the ground and all England was reunited.4:21
  52. It's just this great moment in that basement that where they had that first song when they played train, caparola, and the four of them came together.4:29
  53. Anyway, Zeitluck is a big one too.4:38
  54. And then what we found in this study is, and I think it really is, it's a very true finding, they were really good at getting a return on luck4:40
  55. when the luck came because they have these things we called Natalie moments.4:48
  56. Not all time in life is equal.4:53
  57. And you recognize this is a not all time in life is equal moment.4:55
  58. And it requires an unequal response to an unequal moment.5:00
  59. And so now I come back to you Tim, if you're good at this return on luck thing, okay?5:05
  60. So the 610s balls are coming at you.5:10
  61. One of them is the one that you decide to hit.5:14
  62. What about your ability to kind of recognize it's a not all time in life is equal moment and to go to kind of a 10X intensity in that moment?5:17
  63. I'm curious how that plays out for you.5:29
  64. I think there's a lot of overlap.5:31
  65. And certainly, I think my maximizing return on luck has an ROI distribution, very similar to angel investing.5:33
  66. So 80 % of the times I hit the ball, it's like Marco and there's no polo.5:44
  67. Nobody hits it back, right?5:49
  68. But every once in a while I'm like, holy cow, I just scored the winning point in Wilburton.5:53
  69. That's crazy, didn't see that coming.5:57
  70. So I'll come back and answer that.5:59
  71. I think they're very closely related.6:01
  72. And I identify with the what, who, and zyte luck.6:04
  73. For instance, when I started angel investing, 2008, roughly 2008, 2009, 2010, I mean, it was just a beautiful time to angel invest.6:08
  74. Yes, there's some skill involved.6:17
  75. I tend to disbelieve people who attribute anything solely to luck or solely to skill.6:19
  76. It's usually some combination, but there are definitely periods of time where I felt that not all time in life is equal.6:24
  77. And this is where you need to apply some pressure to the vessel, right?6:34
  78. And that could be the first book, which we don't need to get into right now.6:40
  79. It could be early on the angel investing.6:46
  80. It could be, for instance, around 2015, deciding to like 10x, 20x, 30x down my bet on supporting science related to psychedelic assisted therapies.6:49
  81. And even back then, starting also, but now typically noninvasive, but sometimes invasive bioelectric medicine, brain stimulation, I think that's, I have very high conviction that that is around the7:03
  82. corner.7:18
  83. So taking a peek at the future that's not evenly distributed, I feel that way about bioelectric medicine right now.7:19
  84. So I think they're very tightly bound in a sense.7:24
  85. And question for you, there's this term that I came across, I wish I had the attribution, but I believe it was from someone in Silicon Valley or at least7:30
  86. someone in tech.7:38
  87. They talked about increasing the surface area of luck.7:39
  88. In other words, if you need luck, if we're talking about good luck to stick to you, how do you increase the surface area available to which that luck can7:43
  89. stick?7:54
  90. And when I think about my own who luck, for instance, it was entirely dependent in the world of startups.7:54
  91. And even one could argue the success of the first book on me moving to Silicon Valley, being in the middle of that switchbox.8:02
  92. Without that, forget it.8:10
  93. There was not enough surface area to which who luck could really stick.8:11
  94. And I'm just wondering if that resonates.8:17
  95. So first of all, I think whatever the size of the surface, the idea of luck and return on luck is always operating, if you will, right?8:19
  96. Because I mean, you could be my family in rural Northern Oklahoma, my father's side, isn't Silicon Valley.8:30
  97. But my grandmother, who grew up there, she had luck and return on luck that her life was affected by.8:38
  98. I mean, she was this beautiful Oklahoma farm girl and she was working at the Wichita Airport and this dashing test pilot, who was my grandfather, Jimmy Collins, landed for8:45
  99. fuel on a Memorial Day weekend.8:56
  100. And they met.8:59
  101. And four days later, they were married.9:00
  102. And it was like, OK, this is a who luck moment, but we're both going to seize the not all time in life is equal.9:02
  103. And boom, right?9:08
  104. So that notion of the luck and return on luck can happen sort of anywhere.9:10

American accent training on a real Tim Ferriss Show conversation about luck

This clip is a two person conversation from The Tim Ferriss Show, the kind of unscripted back and forth where a guest works out an idea in real time rather than reciting a script. That makes it good material for english speaking practice: you are chasing natural rhythm, not a stage delivery.

The level is B2 and the pace is 189 words per minute, faster than about half the clips in the catalogue, so it rewards someone who already has the basics and wants to close the gap to native speed. The accent is American throughout, and the topic itself, a researcher explaining how he and a collaborator named Morton defined a 'luck event', gives you a reason to listen twice: once for the ideas, once for how the sentences are built.

The reductions and rhetorical turns in this luck event conversation

A few lines carry more than they first appear to. Working through them is where the pronunciation payoff of this clip sits.

  • "But if you're gonna study luck, you have to understand what it is and realize that luck is not an aura or something." The reduced "gonna" is doing real work here, it lets the speaker move fast into the actual claim without slowing down on the conditional.
  • "So if somebody says you make your own luck, it's not luck." This is a spoken argument compressed into one breath, notice how the stress falls hard on "make" and again on "luck" at the end, that double stress is what carries the logic without extra words.
  • "If I get a cancer diagnosis, I'm gonna say I make my own luck." A second "gonna", this time inside a hypothetical the speaker builds only to knock down in the next line, "No, you didn't cause it." Say both lines together and you get the full rise and fall of the argument.

How to shadow this Tim Ferriss Show clip line by line

Do not start at the top and read straight through. Work the definition lines first, since everything after them depends on getting the terms right.

  • Start with lines 3 to 6, where the speaker sets up the core claim, "You have to first of all define what luck is." Shadow this line on its own three or four times before moving on, this is B2 english shadowing practice at its plainest, one sentence, one idea.
  • Take lines 7 to 12 as a unit. This is the three part test for a luck event building itself in real time, with the two "gonna" reductions inside it. Repeat the block until the reductions stop feeling like separate words you are inserting and start feeling like part of the sentence.
  • Move to line 15, the longest sentence in the opening stretch: "You didn't know that it would happen or when it would happen or what form it would take, right?" Break it at each "or" first, then say it whole, matching the falling pitch on the tag "right?" at the end.
  • Finish with lines 22 to 29, where the speaker reports the actual research finding. This section moves faster and carries more technical vocabulary, so treat it as a fluency check: if you can keep pace here after working the earlier lines, the improve your english speaking work from the first three steps has paid off.
  • Record yourself on at least one full block and compare it against the original before moving to the next clip. A conversation like this one is also a fair test of general english listening practice, since the ideas only land if you catch the connective phrases between them, not just the content words.
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