fabricated serendipity revisited

i recently wrote about the concept of fabricating your own serendipity, which was a reminder to myself to deliberately try new things to create a funnel for opportunities.

i formularized luck $L$ as a function of exposure $E$, preparedness $P$, and mindset $M$:

$$L=(E⋅P)^M$$

i realized that my personal weakness in this equation is exposure. i have always been a generally pretty open minded guy and i enjoy reading, tinkering, and honing my skills in my own time. so here's my attempt at unraveling the mystery of exposure.

i break down exposure into two parts: search and action. search is the process of uncovering new possibilities, and action is choosing one of those possibilities and stepping through the door.

search is the act of broadening the probability distribution of encounters. in plain terms, it means putting yourself in situations you wouldn't normally be in. if you know your interests, start there and join a community related to them. if you don't, the best move is to maximize for novelty.

now with several new possibilities presented to you, how do you pick which door to step through? you cannot step through every door, but you can step through any of them.

$$P_t = \{ p_1, p_2, \ldots, p_n \}$$

let's say you have a bunch of possibilities presented to you at time $t$, represented by $P_t$. let's also define $O(p_i)$ as the opportunity result of acting on a given decision (this can be arbitrarily defined however you want: you can quantify it by number of doors opened, or impact of the decision made, etc).

$$p_t = \arg\max_{p \in P_t} O(p)$$

then the possibility you should "capture" is the one that maximizes for that opportunity function. recently, i have been defining it has the number of doors that it can open since i am still relatively young and don't really know what i want to do.

this might seem obvious, but for a while i turned down opportunities because i assumed they weren't good enough, or not worth the effort. in hindsight, it is nearly impossible to predict which doors will matter and you just have to start without overthinking.

yes the formula may be overkill, but it helps me organize my mental framing. the lesson is simple: any decision is better than standing still, just start somewhere, anywhere.