{"id":65524,"date":"2022-05-08T07:22:38","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T11:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=65524"},"modified":"2022-05-15T10:51:13","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T14:51:13","slug":"you-are-not-a-lottery-ticket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/you-are-not-a-lottery-ticket\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are Not a Lottery Ticket: Don\u2019t Rely on Luck"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is business success a matter of luck or planning? If success is just a matter of luck, why bother with planning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an ongoing debate in the business community about the relative importance of planning versus luck in determining the success of a venture. For example, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates all attribute their success at least partially to luck. Peter Thiel disagrees. In the chapter titled “You are not a lottery ticket,” he emphasizes the importance of planning<\/a> and shares four ways of thinking about the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s why planning should not be underestimated, according to Thiel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

You Are Not a Lottery Ticket<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, most people equate luck with random chance, but as Peter Thiel points out in the chapter “You are not a lottery ticket,” this was not always the case. In the 18th and 19th centuries, most people believed there was a connection between your labor and your luck: The more you worked at something, the better your luck in that area became.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ways of Thinking About the Future<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Thiel says there are basically four perspectives you can have about the future, depending on how you answer two questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Do you expect the future to be better or worse than the present? If you think it will be better, that makes you an optimist. If you think it will be worse, then you\u2019re a pessimist.<\/li>
  2. Do you believe the future can be predicted? If you believe the future is determined by a chain of cause and effect that we can study and understand, then you\u2019ll see the future as determinate. If you see the future as a product mostly of random chance, you\u2019ll view it as indeterminate.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Thus, the four possible perspectives are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Determinate Optimism:<\/strong> You believe you can make the future better than the present, so you plan and work toward a brighter future.<\/li>
    2. Indeterminate Optimism: <\/strong>You expect circumstances to improve automatically, or feel entitled<\/a> to automatic progress. This outlook may motivate you to look for opportunities for near-term improvement or profit. But it tends to dissuade you from long-term planning because you can\u2019t predict what opportunities may come up in the future.<\/li>
    3. Determinate Pessimism: <\/strong>You see the future in terms of concrete problems that you don\u2019t have the means to solve. This motivates you to work to protect yourself from the fallout of these problems as much as possible.<\/li>
    4. Indeterminate Pessimism: <\/strong>You see the future as a gloomy blur. There\u2019s no point in planning to do anything, because you\u2019re not likely to benefit from it, and there\u2019s no way of knowing what you should try to protect yourself against.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      A Survey of Perspectives on the Future<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      Thiel illustrates his discussion of ways to think about the future with examples of how different views have prevailed in different societies throughout history\u2014and how that affected their actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      According to Thiel, Americans generally espoused a viewpoint of determinate optimism from the founding of the American colonies up until the 1960s. He attributes many of the feats of engineering that Americans accomplished in the 19th and 20th centuries to this attitude, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n