I write articles every week, but I have no idea which one will be successful. Usually, my intuition is wrong. My best articles are not popular, and not-so-great ones are popular. But I try to publish everything anyway, to increase the surface area of good luck for the newsletter.
Surface area is the measure of the outside area an object occupies. The surface area of a football is everything you can touch — not the volume inside. But how can we use this concept in life?
Surface area as a mental model serves as a helper to understand our exposure. To opportunities, luck, but also risks and dangers.
Opportunities
How to measure one’s career potential, or if we can help with luck?
We can’t calculate a specific number with physical surface area. But we can perform a thought experiment on the surface area:
Which actions increase your surface area?
Which actions decrease your surface area?
Positioning inside an organisation:
Increase: Ask questions in meetings outside your team. Offer help on cross-departmental projects.
Decrease: Stay isolated.
Career:
Increase: Learn new skills and gain certifications.
Decrease: Reject new technologies or dismiss tools like AI.
Risks
Surface area, as with career and opportunities, when increased, can serve us well, but similarly, it can help us with the perception of dangers:
For Software: The more dependencies in your software, the higher the risk of issues with compatibility or future updates. Think of each added dependency as an increase in the surface area of potential issues.
For Security Risks: Each point where your system connects to the Internet increases the surface area for potential attacks.
The Paradox
It’s not about increasing your surface area everywhere. It’s about choosing where and how. Send 1,000 cold emails and you’re spread too thin. Focus on ten good ones and you’re strategic.
Action
“You can increase your surface area for good luck by taking action.
The forager who explores widely will find lots of useless terrain, but is also more likely to stumble across a bountiful berry patch than the person who stays home.
Similarly, the person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits.
— James Clear
Summary
The smartest people I’ve known are selective and fully aware of how they work with their surface areas.
They’re not at every party, but the right ones.
They don’t know everyone, but they know people in different circles.
They don’t say yes to everything, but where they can increase their luck.
Understanding surface area is a guideline for thinking about our exposure to different aspects of reality.
Thanks for reading!
— Michał
Post Notes
Discover Weekly — Shoutouts
Great articles which I’ve read recently, prefixed with “The”:
The worst volume control UI in the world by Fabricio Teixeira
The Hardest Part of Engineering Isn’t the Code by
The EM’s guide to AI adoption (without your engineers hating it) by
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