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by
Gunther Max
He had learned this unproductive and dangerous attitude from his father, an athletic coach. The senior Hoffman liked to pep talk his teams with windy pronouncements derived from the Work Ethic. One of his favorites was: “If you’re good, you don’t need luck.” What nonsense. Of course you need luck. It doesn’t matter how good a football player you are. If you have the bad luck to trip on a loose stair runner and sprain your ankle the night before the big game, none of your hard-earned strengths and skills are going to do you the least bit of good.
Never confuse luck with planning. If you do that, you all but guarantee that your luck, in the long run, will be bad.
The commandment of the Second Technique is: Go where events flow fastest. Surround yourself with a churning mass of people and things happening.
This was perfect nonsense, of course. Assuming the kid had seventy more years to live, his total invested capital after a lifetime of following Rockefeller’s advice would be $2,555. If the kid was lucky, compounding interest at fluctuating rates might triple or quadruple the amount – to $10,000, let’s say. Rich? Rockefeller himself earned that much money in a single day.
This para shows that the author does not understand compound interest.
“A superstition won’t do you any harm as long as you don’t use it as a substitute for thinking,” said Charles Goren, the bridge master. He was talking to a group of reporters and was responding to a question about bridge superstitions, specifically the one about bathtubs. “In fact, a superstition can help you. If it makes you feel good to sit facing in a certain direction, then probably you’ll play better. You’ll get up from the table with the feeling that you improved your luck.”
Never go into a venture thinking it will come out right for you because you “deserve” it. That is a common expectation of the unlucky. The universe has no interest in what you deserve. Nor is the universe interested in the “my turn” expectation, also common among the unlucky. This, too, comes from the assumption that the universe is fair.
