Success Sequence - Improving Your Odds
December 4, 2023
#241
I posted last Friday on Charlie Munger. One thing that struck me as I read further on his life over the weekend was the role of luck, & improving your odds of experiencing luck.
Charlie talked frequently about luck.
Some good fortune is completely out of your control. Where you are born. Who your parents are. Your health (ie avoiding some catastrophic disease).
While luck is involved, there are ways to actively increase your odds of getting lucky.
For example, you are more likely to get lucky investing in a tech startup if you decide to live in Silicon Valley.
You are more likely to meet a high quality future spouse via the introduction of good friends than randomly at some bar.
You are more likely to avoid sickness if you choose to exercise regularly.
You are likely to make more money if you pursue a career in finance rather than education.
This leads me to revisit the success sequence (Aug 2022).
Success sequence (do things in this order).
get a job / professional training
get married
have kids
Do these things in this order and you vastly increase the odds of having a successful, fulfilling life. Add to this #4: stay married, and your odds increase further. Add to this further the compounding effect of doing this over 3-4-5 generations and your progeny are more likely than not to be well-off by most standards.
This sequence improves your odds, nothing is guaranteed.
Yes. There are miserable people that follow this pattern. And, yes, there are happy people that have taken a different approach. Following this sequence vastly increases your odds a successful, fulfilling life.
Back to Munger. These type of sequences/patterns/habits that increase your odds of success seemed obvious to him, and perhaps they were after 99 years. He seemed to hold very little empathy for those that took a different path and were struggling.
It is worth noting that this same concept (“what steps can I actively take to improve my odds of success”) can be carried over to many other aspects of life: health, career, education, family.
Defining “success” in each of those areas is perhaps worthy of a separate series of AO4 essays.
Mungers comments on luck underscored for me importance of understanding the role statistics/odds play in everything we do.
