I meet with hundreds of college students each year who want advice on how to leapfrog their peers and do in the next 5 years what it takes others a lifetime to achieve.
I tell everyone the exact same thing: Create the biggest surface area for luck.
Create the Biggest Surface Area for Luck
I meet with hundreds of college students each year who want advice on how to…
The Playbook
Here's what that looks like:
- Live in the expensive city (SF, NYC, Miami).
- Take the job that puts you around exceptional people (they seldom pay the best).
- Go to the dinner where you barely know anyone.
- Say yes to the last-minute trip.
- Move somewhere you know nobody (and spend outsized energy building a network).
- Spend the extra money to live near the people you want to become (the cheapest apartment in the more expensive building).
Your Window
Your 20s are one of the few periods in life where you can make these decisions with relatively little responsibility but asymmetric upside.
- No kids (most of the time)
- No mortgage.
- No decades of roots.
- No expectation that you have everything figured out.
Geography Matters
And geography still matters. The internet made information global. It did not make relationships global.
The person who changes your career probably won't be someone you randomly DM (but it does happen). It'll be the friend of a friend you meet at dinner. The person sitting next to you at an event. The founder you keep running into at the same coffee shop. The investor someone introduces you to because you happened to be in town.
You can't predict which interaction will change your life. That's the point.
People Over Plans
When I think about the biggest opportunities in my own life, very few were the result of some perfectly executed 10-year plan. They came from people. And being in the right rooms, cities and situations to meet those people.
This is how careers actually accelerate. Not through credentials or perfect resumes, but through the relationships you build along the way.
The Tradeoff
There will be plenty of time later to optimize for comfort, weather, space and cost of living.
But in your 20s? Optimize for the number of possible lives available to you.
Bottom Line
Your 20s are your best window to create luck. Move to where the action is, take jobs that put you around exceptional people, and say yes to opportunities that expand your world. The relationships you build now will shape everything that comes next.
Comfort can wait. The lessons you learn by putting yourself in the right rooms, cities, and situations will compound for decades.
Stop optimizing for safety. Start optimizing for possibility.