Tue Sep 29 2026 16:48:57 GMT+0300 (Moscow Standard Time) · Strategy
Luck is a strategy
Luck only shows up in hindsight. You call the branch you're standing on lucky because you're the one still standing on it — the branches where it didn't work out have nobody left to tell the story. That's survivorship bias: you count the bullet holes on the planes that came back and never see the ones that didn't. So luck isn't a force that guides you; it's the residue of a strategy nobody noticed was one. And if it's a strategy, you can rebuild it. It starts with a thought.
A thought works as an attention filter. Flag a goal as important and your brain starts lifting it out of the background: the yellow car you "suddenly" see everywhere was on the road yesterday too — it just wasn't clearing the filter. This has a dull name — the frequency illusion: the world didn't hand you the car, your selective attention just stopped filtering it out. Same with a goal — name it, say it out loud, and the world seems to answer with tips and people. It isn't answering; you've simply started noticing what was already there. But a thought alone runs off without shape — it needs a plan.
A plan turns intent into action. A plan is not half the work already done, but “if X then Y” holds tighter than any amount of willpower: across 94 studies this one move produces a medium-to-large effect exactly where bare intentions fail. A good plan isn't a long list — it's a short line through the load-bearing points. Making one is cutting corners: drop the steps that hold nothing, keep the ones you stand on. But a plan is easy to abandon, and staying on the line takes a third thing.
The third thing is a rule in your head. Religion writes someone else's in by default: repeat that you're a servant, and believe it. But the slot is yours — you can write your own. A mantra here isn't a spell cast at reality; it's your attention retuned onto a goal you chose. It answers "what to cut and what to keep" — which leaves only the question of by what rule.
Here is the metaphor I use for risk, not a conclusion established by physics. Picture every choice splitting the world. You don't move down all the branches at once; you're the only observer on your own line. And the line is multiplicative: losses compound, one bad run zeroes you, and nothing grows back from zero. Which is why a bet can pay off on average across everyone playing and be near-certain death for you alone. The average over the crowd and the average over your life are two different numbers — and you live in the second.
My practical rule is: shave any corner you can come back from, and never the one you can't. Don't chase the lucky branch — remove the death branches. A choice of one isn't a choice, it's a wall; a real one is always two, and it's a bit you can't unwrite. You don't pick your hand and you don't pick the whole path — you pick the next bit, and the world is the string they spell.
Building in the open is that move, made on purpose. The published MIT code can be used and forked under its licence. That does not compel us to publish all future work under the same terms; continuing to do so is our commitment.
godcrm.ai/git/holetron-lab/godcrm
Correction · 29 September 2026: Labelled the branching-world argument as metaphor and removed the implication that MIT legally fixes the licence of all future versions.