Most people go their entire lives without ever finding a real opportunity.
A few years ago, I read a book called Notes on Complexity which explained the mechanism behind why people don’t get what they want.
This idea will change the way you think about opportunities in your life.
Strangely, it has to do with ants.
You likely have had the experience of dropping a crumb or something sweet in the kitchen only to have an army of ants appear out of nowhere.
Where did these things come from? How did they get here so quickly?
Well, it turns out that when ants discover food, they leave a trail of pheromones behind as they return to their nest. Other ants pick up on this irresistible aroma and follow it to the location of the food. Before you know it, your kitchen has been compromised.
In the ant kingdom, ants usually stay within a certain parameter when foraging for food. It’s like in those SCI-FI movies that have people living in different Zones with AI robots guarding the perimeter.
But a small percentage of ants leave this normal parameter and travel well into the unknown. These ant pioneers are the ones that find new lands of opportunity (your kitchen) before ushering in the great Exodus.
Quenched Randomness In Real Life
Those ants without a physics degree are taking advantage of something called quenched randomness.
Quenched randomness happens when the environment is fixed, and the opportunities are scattered for one to discover. For the ants, the opportunities are hidden on the playing field; they just need to discover them.
This type of randomness is different from what has been called ‘annealed randomness’. Annealed randomness is when things keep changing, as if the crumbs in the kitchen kept moving every couple of minutes. In this case the ants would have a harder time finding the gold.
Many of life’s biggest opportunities operate from a quenched model.
Why? Because change doesn’t happen that quickly. Often, the environment, just like the ant’s kitchen, stays the same for decades at a time.
Take the idea of building wealth from Real Estate; people have been doing this for thousands of years. The buildings have changed from being made out of dung to high-tech skyscrapers, but the principle has stayed the same. The real estate crumb is out there for the taking.
In today’s world, we hear a lot about AI, but AI is fundamentally an arbitrage opportunity. It’s a form of leverage that allows you to get more out of what you put in. 50 years ago, an entrepreneur would gain leverage from hiring 30 employees to help run his business. Today, an entrepreneur might use AI agents and 1-2 employees. The principle is the same; it’s just magnified through technology. It’s still the same crumb on the kitchen counter.
Creating Your Own Luck WIth Quanched Randomness
You increase your chances of success by learning to venture out like those explorer ants.
When you venture out you can find opportunities that radically change your life. The opportunities with asymmetric returns. These are situations where you put $1 into the machine and get $5 out.
You will never find these opportunities if you stay within the confines of the other ants.
This is the real reason why some people make it and others don’t. It all has to do with your ability to go against the ‘normal advice’. Normal advice through the principle of cause and effect will give you normal results.
I have noticed that my greatest business breakthroughs have come from playful exploration. They didn’t come from following someone’s tutorial on YouTube, but from following my intuitive hunches. The same ones that Richard Feynman used to win a Nobel Prize, as I have written in a previous email.
But how can you create your own luck? By scheduling your exploration and engineering randomness.
I suggest you set times every week to venture into the unknown. This could be:
- Listening to different genres of music
- Reading a random book
- Visiting a new area
- Watching YouTube videos you normally wouldn’t
Anything that takes you out of your typical routine will help you leverage quenched randomness.
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