Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck - fictivekin.github.io  ## Metadata - Author: **fictivekin.github.io** - Full Title: Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck - Category: #articles - URL: https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html ## Highlights - Chance... something fortuitous that happens unpredictably without discernable human intention. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsn95sf44hpmjgym0pwavwr)) - A certain [basic] level of action “stirs up the pot”, brings in random ideas that will collide and stick together in fresh combinations, lets chance operate. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsp481ax0vx64sxpt0rxryd)) - *Un*luck runs out if you keep stirring up things so that random elements can combine, by virtue of you and their inherent affinities. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsp6e197yf8xn877zbjw3e8)) - Chance II springs from your energetic, generalized motor activities... the freer they are, the better. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspaadfdr8zkd5xc81nqfqz)) - Chance III involves involves a special receptivity, discernment, and intuitive grasp of significance unique to one particular recipient. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspb9syqqnm1kjcnd0373yv)) - Chance favors the prepared mind ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspbexzshywcn62h5jr679x)) - The classic example of [Chance III] occured in 1928, when Sir Alexander Fleming’s mind instantly fused at least five elements into a conceptually unified nexus [when he discovered penicillin—one of the most important medical breakthroughs ever]. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspdf876nw8qxt5xf3hr4vk)) - [Chance IV] *favors the individualized action*. This is the fourth element in good luck—an active, but unintentional, subtle individualized prompting of it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgsph0qwa0v7ftr0k40d83x1)) - Chance IV is the kind of luck that develops during a probing action which has a distinctive personal flavor. The English Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, summed up the principle underlying Chance IV when he noted: “We make our fortunes and we call them fate.” Chance IV comes to you, unsought, because of who you are and how you behave. ...Chance IV is so personal, it is not easily understood by someone else the first time around... here we probe into the subterranean recesses of personal hobbies and behavioral quirks that autobiographers know about, biographers rarely. [In neurological terms], Chance III [is] concerned with personal *sensory receptivity*; its counterpart, Chance IV, [is] involved with personal *motor behavior*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspn08wvxp3wdfpr52175b9)) - In a highly uncertain world, a bias to action is key to catalyzing success, and luck, and is often to be preferred to thinking things through more throughly. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hryhs4254j0a2reepjprrnyp)) - Whereas the lucky connections in Chance II might come to anyone with disposable energy as the happy by-product of any aimless, circular stirring of the pot, the links of Chance IV can be drawn together and fused only by *one* quixotic rider cantering in on his own homemade hobby horse to intercept the problem at an odd angle. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspsb4nyrdeyf4jyqv027jp)) - Chance I is completely impersonal; you can’t influence it. Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore. Chance III favors those who have a sufficient background of sound knowledge plus special abilities in observing, remembering, recalling, and quickly forming significant new associations. Chance IV favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hgspspv7vmfd1xgdp1t8vbt1))