People have called me lucky.
I don’t think they’re wrong. I’ve had good breaks. But every break I can name arrived after I did something to make it possible.
Luck is not random. It is manufactured. Here is how.
Take more shots
You cannot score if you don’t shoot.
Most people wait for the perfect opening. They research. They plan. They hesitate. Meanwhile someone with half their talent takes ten shots and scores twice.
When I decided to get my MBA, there was no good time. I was a Senior Tax Analyst working full-time. Night classes at Cleveland State meant long days stacked on long days, then homework.
I did it anyway. Not because the timing was right. The timing was terrible. I did it because waiting for perfect conditions is how you stay exactly where you are.
That degree changed my trajectory. People later called it a smart move. At the time it just looked like exhaustion.
Shots on goal. That is the whole strategy. The people you call lucky are usually just the people still shooting.
Prepare like the ant
Aesop had it right. The ant survives winter because it works in summer. The grasshopper hopes.
Hope is not a strategy.
In tax technology, I have watched teams call themselves unlucky when their real problem was a bad system. Manual data entry. No documentation. A process held together by one person’s memory. Then something breaks and everyone calls it bad luck.
It was not bad luck. It was an unprepared system meeting reality.
High-agency people audit their systems before reality does it for them. They automate the repetitive task. They document the process. They build the thing before they need it.
Boring work. It is also the entire game.
Pick one draining, repetitive task in your week. Automate it, delegate it, or delete it. That is not productivity advice. That is luck insurance.
Put yourself where luck can land
Preparation alone is not enough. You also have to be positioned where good breaks can find you.
I have gotten opportunities in rooms I chose to be in. A nonprofit board meeting. A Knights of Columbus dinner. A conversation after a tax conference session. None of those were accidents. I went. I asked questions. I offered help before I needed anything back.
Invest in relationships before you need them. That is not networking. Networking is transactional. This is showing up consistently for people, over years, until trust compounds.
Then one day someone mentions an opening. Or makes an introduction. Or shares an idea. And it looks like luck from the outside.
Miss, then shoot again
Setbacks are part of the formula. I have hit the wall in marathons. I have watched projects stall. The difference between the lucky and the unlucky is rarely the setback. It is what happens next.
High-agency people treat a miss as data. What broke? What do I change? Then they shoot again. Every iteration makes the next shot more likely to land.
Resilience is not a trait. It is a rep count.
The formula
Take more shots than feels comfortable. Prepare when nothing is forcing you to. Put yourself in rooms where good things happen. When you miss, adjust and shoot again.
None of this is mysterious. It is work most people skip, compounded over time.
So no, I don’t think I’m lucky.
I think I’m still shooting.
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