I did a very deep dive on the "literature of luck" last year - sharing it here for those who want to go further into how to actively pursue luck.
Publishing your work increases your luck
81–89 of 89 posts
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#82I’ve been hesitating to publicize my project because there’s always something more I can add, or a bug to fix. I think things like: If I do a “Show HN” post, will I get too many users at the same time? Is there a better way to quietly get the first few customers and fix the issues that they uncover? I’m reading “The Mom Test” now to learn how to talk to potential users. Here’s what I’m working on: https://headlamptes…
OK, commenters, I followed your advice and posted it on Show HN!
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was careful not to say that this is a surefire path to success. My whole point is that publishing increases your odds. If you're writing blogs, streaming, posting videos, and publishing software my position is that you have a better chance of being noticed than if you didn't do those things. "Publishing" has gradations as well, which range from hitting the "post" button to "self promotion," as you say.
> If you're writing blogs, streaming, posting videos, and publishing software my position is that you have a better chance of being noticed than if you didn't do those things If that doesn't bear fruit then you have wasted your time though. I don't think that framing this as "increasing your odds" or "having a better chance" is helpful for most people. If you're starting from zero you're looking for a moonshot, becau…
Don't put cart before horses.
Blog post is not about "starting from zero" it is about starting from point where someone already did interesting or useful work.
It is also not saying anything about moonshots to get someone super rich or super famous.
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#84No post body was provided.
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#85No post body was provided.
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#86I dislike the metaphor of luck. None of this is luck. All of this work is taking common opportunities and making them great. Does it increase your chance of being “lucky”? No, it increases your chance of being visible. Visibility is not luck. You’re not lucky, you are more visible. You are seizing the opportunity many others do not by building in public. Many do not because people online can suck and tear you down. B…
I don't think the opportunities come reliably. Also the people online might suck or they might not. All of this has its own reasons of happening or not happening, and from an individual's own perspective, luck works well as a device to make sense of these events. Luck itslef doesn't need to really exist for this to work, like how dark matter also probably doesn't exist as such, but it works as a concept.
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#87I don't agree, sorry to say: 1. If your work sucks, the criticism and reputational damage may make it worse than having not published at all. 2. Even if it's good, its unlikely that you will get enough traction for it to matter 3. the 'right people' are inundated with pitches, the odds they care what you have to say are tiny, and trying more times will not help of you're on the wrong track to begin with.
If somebody considers any sort of creative expression (despite it sucking or not) as a pitfall for your job or any other prospects, I don't understand why would you even entertain a discussion with them?
You always have to start somewhere, so if everyone would adhere to what you are saying - we would have 0 content in this world.
Also the answers in this entire post directly dispute #2 #3
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing a Show HN and getting too many users would be a great problem to have! In most cases it takes a lot of work to get any users, so I wouldn't be trying to limit it at all if I were you. Good luck!
Maybe if you’re trying to run a business and need more DAU’s, not so much if you’re trying to donate software to open source and don’t want to see twenty shallow dismissals about how it’s wrong/could be better (but god forbid anyone actually submit a pull request or issue!)
Your contribution process can be too cumbersome/hostile for this to be worthwhile. Almost everything calling itself a "wiki" nowadays falls in this category, for example—because they're modelled on GitHub's wikis, i.e., they're not really wikis. Other stuff hosted on GitHub is like this, generally, for that matter. GitHub is like Facebook: perceived to be extremely convenient for everyone who already lives their lives there—so it's hard for them to see the costs—but actually revealed to be incredibly operationally inefficient to anyone willing to measure it. I've stopped filing bugs on GitHub entirely because of a combination of these factors (velocity) along with GitHub's worse-than-Facebook stance on privacy and the general low quality of interactions that occur there. For anyone not primarily concerned with collecting green squares and its adjacent activities, it's not worth the time.
Re: Publishing your work increases your luck
#89It’s true, I can attest! The idea of “increasing your luck surface area” is real. You can create a lot of opportunities for yourself by being public about what you’re up to. It got me a job working with Taylor Otwell, before his businesses took off, and now working at Fly to help with Laravel adoption. My side projects have made helped people learn, given me an audience, and earn extra income.
Not just sharing work, but sharing stories as well. I recently did a 3-peaks challenge for charity and tweeted about my accomplishments which has led to my next line of work. I also shared about buying my first house which led to 2 news articles and 1 podcast 30 second audio clip that have all paid money, and given me more exposure. It's been great!
Could you explain more about how buying your first house led to news articles and a podcast that all generated revenue? Seems like it would not be reproducible by many people but interesting nonetheless.