Luck Surface Area, After-Action Reviews, & More | the Curiosity Chronicle

Pessimists sound smart, optimists tend to get lucky.

The luckiest people have a massive luck surface area. They expose themselves to more luck than the average human.

Remove the "black holes" that shrink your luck surface area. Cut the people and actions out of your life that are "anti-luck" and you'll immediately expose yourself to more chance positive encounters.

Take deliberate actions that expand your luck surface area. It's hard to get lucky watching TV at home alone, but it's much easier to get lucky when you're out engaging with smart, interesting people.

Always remember the Luck Razor: When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger luck surface area.

"Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator...At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment." - Kevin Kelly

The After-Action Review (AAR) is a simple, powerful framework used by the military and leading corporations to make continuous improvements by reflecting on each completed action and distilling the relevant insights to inform future actions.

The AAR is grounded in four key questions:

While managers and employees can certainly benefit from engaging in a formal AAR in a professional setting, I find the AAR to be a useful template for informal, on-the-fly process improvements.