One of the most profound lessons I ever learnt was from Naval’s conversation on luck. He outlined four types of luck: Dumb luck, Luck from consistent activity, Spotted Luck, and Unique luck.
I am particularly interested in the second kind —luck from consistency. It is the kind of “luck” that ensures even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
I think of timing as the alignment of luck and opportunity. In most situations dependent on macro factors outside our influence, it can be impossible to time it.
I suspect that our confidence in our ability to time things is an illusion —like many other things we believe in. Because it helps boost our sense of control and reduces the helplessness of life.
In reality (the material world of very complex phenomenons and fragile network of systems prone to disruptions by even the smallest effects), time is a unique quantity that exceeds any measure we can try to subject it to.
What we can do is play our hands in certain ways that predisposes us to time’s patterns and reduces our odds of being proven wrong.
One of such is patience and waiting. Rather than try to time when something would happen, we know that we’re better off laying all the stakes and waiting, than holding off and waiting to jump in “at the right time”.
One who purports to know the “exact right time” (and we use time distinctively from period to denote specificity) does so because they are confident in their; control, influence, and dictation of the material world. An unlikely but not impossible claim.
Based on this, we realize that 99% of these people exaggerate their claims, as they soon find that they neither have sufficient enough control, influence nor the dictation over the material world that they believe they had.
Timing as an approach to anything is packed full of excellent arrogance propped up by the naïve assumption that patterns are not random, because we believe random must mean an even distribution of alternating phenomenons which is our primary lens for defining what is predictable and what is not.
Whereas, in the material world, what we consider timing, given sufficient alignment of random variables, is luck.
Luck is random, and if there is anything we know about random, it is that random is not always random or not random. Random defies pattern. We often expect random to mean unevenly scattered, or distributed in equal proportions of inconsistent reoccurrence. It is hardly ever the case.
Sometimes random involves exact successions of the highly improbable.
“Random” is a qualification for the unknown, the unpredictable. Not necessarily the distribution of said.
Random might involve the repeat of a highly improbable event in succession. Because random actually means “we cannot know”, as opposed to “it cannot be”.
Almost nothing, if at all, can be timed in the true sense of it. The best disposition to timing is waiting and patience. Time proves. Time unveils. Time reveals all eventually.
But you must be its servant —position and wait.
You never know what hand you’re dealt. But eventually, time unravels. But you can improve the odds that what time unravels is in your favor. Proper positioning. Of course, even that is almost a presumptuous attempt that supposes to know what position time will favor.
But we cannot altogether fold our arms and do almost nothing. Hence, it is clever to lay hold on the most favored factor in dealing with positioning, which in turn helps us court time —experience and knowledge.
Regardless, sometimes we are lucky, even without experience and knowledge, we are at right position when time unravels, and we strike a fortune.
We must be careful to tell the difference between a windfall from lucky positioning and a fortune from careful positioning and waiting.
If you have long term conviction in any opportunity, you will outperform most people by strategically taking a position and staying put.
Imagine a 10-minute progress bar that rewards you with 1 point for every minute you wait. But if you wait the entire 10 minutes, you get 100 points, and not 10 points. The secret is to wait it out. Exiting prematurely means you only accrue 1 point for each minute. Even waiting till 9 minutes would only earn 9 points.
Time compounds. Patience compounds. A lot of people miss that, and attempt to hop across as many opportunities as fast as possible. Only to end up accruing the absolute minimum amount of points possible.
You are unlikely to time every single opportunity. It is impossible to gainfully chase every tide. You are better off taking a position and waiting for the tide to turn.
Sometimes luck visits where we were supposed to be, but we already moved on to something else in a bid to catch a fortune just in time. Forgetting that some things cannot be successfully timed.
