Advice from the lucky

Every family has one. A cousin who opened a small phone accessories shop in Ismailia at exactly the right moment, sold it at exactly the right moment, and now gives advice whenever the family sits together.

The advice is specific. Wake before six. Never borrow. Always pay suppliers in cash. Do not take a partner. He did all of these things and he did very well, so the younger cousins remember them.

The trouble is that he also did a hundred other things, and some of what happened to him was simply luck. The street was about to get busier because of a road nobody had announced yet. A bigger shop nearby closed the same year. A buyer wanted exactly what he had on the day he decided to sell. None of that appears in the advice, because nobody remembers the parts they did not choose. When something works, we look back at our habits and hand them the credit.

So the habits get copied, and the luck does not come with them.

Dismiss luck altogether, though, and you miss something useful. Luck cannot be planned, but you can arrange to be in its way. Stay in the game long enough to be standing there when something good passes. Try things small and often, and keep what the results tell you. Spend time where chances tend to turn up, near the busy road, in the right conversations, in front of the right customers. Get through the bad year so that you are still open for the good one.

That is a strategy. Luck is one of the things it leaves room for.

What is not a strategy is setting your alarm for the same hour as a lucky man and waiting.