Chaos Theory | Tina Mai
Appreciation
9
Importance
10
Date Added
8.14.25
TLDR
Getting lucky is about increasing your surface area of luck; luck being unpredictable does not make luck uncontrollable. Make yourself findable by saying yes more often and by sharing your work. Be relentlessly optimistic. Beautiful weaving of a personal narrative, being agentic through luck, and theory in one piece.
2 Cents
Since reading, I think about serendipity almost daily, and most of the good things that come to me in life in the last year can be partially attributed to this essay. I try to say yes to life more often (e.g., to take that coffee chat) and think about how to increase my surface area of luck (e.g., making my website). It perfectly articulates most of the good things in my life to this day. Impact aside, simply beautiful storytelling (ending gave me goosebumps).
Tags
In the aftermath of luck, we have agency. Chaos teaches us to expect the unexpected, but what happens after that is up to us. Proactive people don’t wait for life to happen to them; they make their own luck. Serendipity finds its way into your life when you are always learning, always building, always sharing your work. On my deathbed, I will spend time connecting all the dots in my life, but they will be dots I never could have predicted. The beauty of luck is its lawlessness; we can live in fear of this lawlessness, or we can minimize the impact of its external, uncontrollable factors and maximize how well we respond to them.
Loosely related: 
Searching for outliers