your surface area for luck is proportional to your humanity
you're more than your data and reports
The ‘surface area for luck’ is one of my favourite, relatively recent concepts.
I like to think it was popularised by Cate Hall, which was, at least, where I heard it first:
I’ve only got four years of professional work experience, mostly in insurance companies. One of which is a large local name and the other one, while being massively international, has a relatively meagre presence in Australia.
Still, in a country not quite known for cutting-edge innovation and an industry characterised by terribly unsexy compliance, I’ve carved out my own deposits of luck.
I represented the organisation in Buenos Aires, Argentina as part of a leadership program for youths. I was headhunted into my current role by a previous manager who is now an executive. And to take a more confusing example, I got my very first corporate job by leaning on my extracurricular experience in running a video game club through the pandemic.
We’ve spoken the last few weeks talking about the tactical aspects of report writing and data storytelling. Today, we’re going to talk about how these two things, combined with the wonderfulness of you, increase your surface area of luck.
Journaling in Public is a newsletter sharing stories and strategies on career, creativity, and finding magic in the mundane — so that the parts you’re quietly figuring out don’t feel like yours alone to carry.
Take any opportunity to present
According to my exceedingly accurate and supremely difficult statistical analysis, the soccer players who score the most goals are:
Taking more shots on goal
Probably strikers/forwards
As a 20-something still figuring things out, and dare I say a little later than that, you’re expected to make mistakes. You’re expected to ask stupid questions. When you open your mouth to provide input after spending the last twenty minutes cowering at the back of the hallway, it’s much more appreciated.
I’m a shy and reserved person too, and even then, I’ve found that presenting is always, always, always scarier in my head than it is in person.
When you position yourself in an environment that encourages trial, error, and feedback (being the striker/forward) and make more dashing attempts at presenting (shots on goal), you can only get better at it.
Minimal cost to reputation. Maximum chance to win — because people don’t expect much, and you can try, try again.
Having a 2- in front of your age, possibly even 3-, gives you the unique proposition of being bursting with potential, and you’re more than welcome to jump over hurdles and hit them with your knees.
Collect these experiences like infinity stones.
Know how to say “I don’t know”
In our very first session, I mentioned that you should never overestimate the level of knowledge and understanding that senior leadership have. They’re human too, and in many cases, are actually so far removed from the operations that they have no idea what’s happening in the day-to-day.
The strongest senior leaders are the ones who are willing to stop the conversation; to ask something as stupid as what the acronym on the page meant, whether it was good or bad news, or to ask the presenter to repeat themselves while admitting they hadn’t done their research and due diligence.
And even greater sign of seniority, or perhaps even maturity towards life, is the ability to admit you don’t know about something or may be incorrect about something.
The next time an executive challenges what you’ve said, enough to punch a hole in your confidence and make you unsure about your data — here’s your permission to say: “That’s a great question. I’m unsure of the answer. I’ll take an action to look into this and come back to you by the end of the week.”
Half of business is problem-solving. The other half is expectation management. You don’t have to be the wiz who knows everything at first contact — just the wiz who, when assigned something, gets shit done. Consistency over speed.
Your manager is your most important relationship
It’s not what you know, it’s not who you know, it’s what you know in conjunction with who you know that duplicates your surface area for luck.
And there’s nobody more integral to this than your direct line manager.
Some managers require data. Some managers just need a vibe. Some managers appreciate an opinion while some just want shit executed.
Keep them across what you’re doing. Include them in conversations. Speak to them about your progress — and when they ask for feedback on their leadership and the way you want to be led, be honest with them.
I’ve had leaders who provided slow and firm guidance, micro-managers who gave me specific instructions to micro-manage1 others, young leaders who were still figuring out the right way to set up their team, and even distant blokes who asked me how I was doing, hit a strawberry shortcake vape, and then gushed about cool mopeds.
Funnily enough, I appreciated all of them, even and especially the micro-manager and vaped-up motorcyclist, because I got the insight that leadership was not a one-size fits all model; one man’s cake can be another man’s broccoli, and that what works for current me might not actually have worked for junior me.
Your manager is involved in conversations at a higher level than yourself. If an interesting project comes up and you’re the first name that comes mind, they can raise their hand on your behalf and stuff the ballot in your favour.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” — Steve Jobs (Stanford Commencement Address, 2005)
Put effort in your emails
Far greater than Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and the Persona series, Microsoft Outlook is my most played turn-based RPG.
Email is 80% of corporate conversation, and fortunately for the lot of us —EVERYTHING is recorded, referenceable, and recoverable for audit purposes.
Write them as if you’ll one day be held accountable for them.
Everything we’ve talked through in our first two sections, namely writing with your audience at front of mind and presenting your numbers in an easy and digestible manner, are just as relevant in your email responses. You don’t need to respond at unreal hours2 — just ensure everything coming out of your inbox is well-researched, managed, and of quality.
And yes, this includes cleaning up your formatting. For the love of God, use bullet points, use colours tastefully, and never copy-paste a pivot table with default Excel settings. It’s lazy.
The way you do one thing is the way you do everything and email is a strong lever in building and chipping your reputation.
Pick up the phone
This is something I’m still learning because like all Gen Z, I fucking hate picking up the phone.
Everything ever should be able to be resolved via text (unless I’m lazy) or an app (unless I need to log in to make an account) or by imagining it being completed and having the AI agent hooked to my brain work on said task (@Anthropic get on this please).
Unfortunately, this is not the way in practice.
The vast majority of problems, instead, can be solved with a single real-time conversation.
The fifteen rounds up follow-up, cc-ing managers for assists, and stall tactics with pleasantries can be skipped with a single Teams invite3. No more calculated ChatGPT ass responses. Put a face to the emails and a voice to the query. It’s so much more human.
And if your matter doesn’t get resolved, take a previous tip and say: “Let’s take an action”. Write an email and document these actions. Keep that shit warm and toasty at the top of their inbox, stinky and discoverable and wholly accountable.
Somewhat related reading: The problem with Gen-Z in the workplace, by Buzz Kantwrite
Have a damn life
And for my final trick that I’m very much a work-in-progress for too: have a goddamn life outside of work.
Most millennials have this written for them. They’re married. They’ve got kids. They’re out balling on the house they purchased a couple years ago that had somehow quadrupled in value and yet are struggling to pay the bills because it be like that. It’s a life of white picket fences, home maintenance, picking kids up from school and dropping them off to the sports game, and negotiating better rates off the electricity.
I was asked recently whether I had any kids to which I said, I am the kid.
It’s our first time navigating such a fragmented economy and cultural landscape so distant and apart to previous generations, with rampant scams masquerading as online courses, every influencer ever tell us that if we don’t have $500k in the bank, a two bed-room flat in a major city, and a plane ticket to Europe in the next six months; you are supremely behind in life and are not living up to your potential.
![r/dataisbeautiful - [OC] Who Americans spend their time with, by age](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!o7ID!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcdc4e5eb-21cc-4c1f-8cc8-a2b62f949633_3400x2400.png "r/dataisbeautiful - [OC] Who Americans spend their time with, by age")
Yes, with 40+ hours of corporate work shoved down your throat, it’s easy to strangle out the heart, personality, and light within you; to let productive time spent with coworkers thoroughly outpace meaningful time with friends, family, and partners.
And so, if there’s one thing you take away from this essay — it’s the importance of touching grass.
Meet with your friends. Play some badminton. Go on date nights. Cook great food that needs more planning than minced meat atop rice. Plan road trips that you can wholeheartedly look forward to. Watch familiar shows, play familiar games, listen to the same artist several hundred times and perhaps when you’re ready give something new a go whether it’s an instrument or a sport or a car you can’t actually afford being taken out for a test driven.
Hobbies and perspectives and reflections and relationships — they make you a more wonderful person, a better colleague, a better friend, a better lover, a better daughter and son and mother and father; not necessarily a ‘better person’ in the way that you are of higher moral ground or moral value, but better in that, your soul is more complete in all definitions of your own.
With everybody being more proficient and educated than ever before and the playing field of technical skill levelled out by technologies we don’t yet understand, with everybody’s social abilities so awkwardly stinted by the pandemic and social media and the global adoption of large language models — the greatest advantage you can have as a young person in the workplace, and dare I say throughout every aspect of your life, is to be a goddamn human.
Spend your time. Spend your money. Be human and present and real.
People vouch for people.
Substacks I’ve enjoyed recently:
is there a correct way to capture your life? - by emily north 🍰
Writing for an AI astrology app to pay the bills - by Melanie Ehrenkranz 🌙
what the fuck is a cool hobby - by jaz 🧶
I spent $126.91 on beverages in one week - by Olivia Weiss 🍵
Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! Journaling in Public is a newsletter sharing stories and strategies on career, creativity, and finding magic in the mundane. All posts will be free in the foreseeable future but any forms of support — likes, comments, messages, free/paid subscriptions, coffee donations — are so tremendously appreciated. Yours truly, Sav.
This manager gave me specific instructions to make the developer share his screen with me as he uploaded my code into production, insisting that he would make a mistake if he wasn’t monitored. I said to myself that it was probably fine, sat with the developer, asked him to share his screen, and watched him make a crucial mistake right in front of my face.
There are exceptions to this comment. Sometimes, you do need to respond during unreal hours. Additionally, there are some mindgames you can play with intentionally hopping on at 7pm to do a few highly visible emails to show you’re a hard worker but between you and me, unless you’ve promised something by close of business, this is seldom worth the effort.
Disclaimer: There are scenarios where this works the other way i.e. when you sit in a meeting and think this meeting could have been an email. You know which is which. You might not be able to avoid unnecessary meetings imposed on you, but you are able to avoid imposing this on others. End the cycle of suffering!