Manufacturing Serendipity
How this magical force plays out in our lives and how it played out in the writing of my book
Serendipity refers to the occurrence of fortunate discoveries or events by chance, often leading to unexpected and delightful outcomes.
Serendipity also means finding something good without actually looking for it.
For some, it may take decades to play out; for others, it may take days.
However, it presents itself to those who are passionately pursuing something they love without constantly expecting something in return, purely for the love of the process.
Stevie Wonder was scheduled to perform at the Nelson Mandela Tribute concert in 1988 but couldn't due to not having his recording disk, which was a part of his equipment. He left in tears.
This opened up a slot for Tracy Chapman to perform, as she was the only available singer for immediate replacement.
Chapman, though not widely known at the time, had already put in 10,000 hours of work before honing her skills by writing and playing her music.
She performed 'Fast Car' at that concert along with her album, and the rest is history.
Tracy Chapman sold 200,000 copies of her album overall before that iconic concert and right after that concert, she sold 2 Million copies of the album!
The point of this brief story is that Chapman was doing what she loved doing with such dedication and passion that serendipity had to submit at some point and present her with an opportunity to showcase her talent in the form of that concert.
I picked up this wonderful story from a discussion between Ajay Shah and Amit Varma on their podcast and also picked up an interesting equation from their discussion that made so much sense.
The Surface Area Of Luck = The chance you take on your passion x The number of people you communicate your passionate activities to
OR
Luck = Passionate doing × Effective Telling
Most of the beautiful discoveries in life have come from people pursuing something with a burning desire to ensure that what they desire comes to fruition; they are not focused on the glory that may result from it.
The beauty of the operating system Linux- which is one of the greatest innovations in programming, came out of Linus Torvald’s passion for just doing something for the sake of doing it. His employers at the time didn’t find much fruit in the software but he continued making it because he liked the applicability of it.
Today institutions like the New York Stock Exchange and The Pentagon run on Linux Software.
His example follows the positive cycle that the happiness of doing something fuels productivity and that productivity eventually fuels more happiness and the cycle goes on.
But there is no blueprint formula for this process, you have to just enjoy the process and trust it completely then you are less focused on what comes out of it.
Enough with the philosophy and outsider examples.
All of this is easy to say but harder to do and I am someone who is lucky enough to enjoy their job and my hobbies outside of it and this snowballed into serendipity playing out its hand in my life.
Most people may take time to find the balance between these two and it is subjective for each person based on a whole host of factors in life.
Let me tell you how serendipity beautifully played its hand in me writing a book.
That is the best word that can be used to describe how the book I am writing, came into being.
I had written an article on long-term investing and fitness back in 2020 when I started putting out full-time blogs on my WordPress, I then recreated the same blog on my Substack in 2021.
I would never have imagined this article would connect me with a co-author today, and writing a book on health and wealth.
The purpose of the blog post was to simply get the fleeting thoughts out of my head, where I saw so many similarities between the principles of long-term investing and fitness over the years. In turn, this led to a writing practice and habit that I will be carrying on for life.
As serendipity would have it, I stumbled across Mihir’s tweet on Twitter in 2021 when he was super active while promoting his startup, Multipie.
https://x.com/MultipieSocial/status/1418091004515688449?s=20
July 22,2021
The tweet announced a workshop on nutrition and investing conducted by him. Once I read the workshop name, you damn well know that I registered for it on the spot and probably was one of the few attending the workshop live on a Saturday afternoon because I felt this topic would be in my alley and I would be able to engage in a meaningful way.
Sadly I was not able to attend the live session due to a family event that came up.
But he tweeted the entire video of the workshop after, I saw the full workshop video and commented on the tweet with my blog post in the comments section.
https://x.com/ankushd14/status/1418899582243704832?s=20
July 24,2021
He read, and we were connected on Twitter as strangers with similar views on the internet who had never met.
We interacted here and there on Twitter, mainly engaging in nonsensical banter or some stoic gyaan, given the very thin line between the two topics on the platform.
We were only ever acquaintances on Twitter.
In 2022, the equity markets were in correction mode after a stellar run from 2020-2022. This is the time when investors usually get a little jittery, wondering whether it's a good time to pull out money from the markets or not. My friend Abhijeet Salelkar was in that same dilemma and called me one evening post a bloodbath correction in the equity markets to discuss what the next step should be.
He told me a 'market expert' was sitting with him and suggested I come down to discuss the markets and the portfolio. Hoping it wouldn’t be another doomsday naysayer, to my surprise, it was Mihir. We met in person for the first time and exchanged numbers.
Within a few months, he messaged me asking if I wanted to write a book with him. I replied that I would be open to the idea and suggested that we meet to discuss it because there was no harm in a casual discussion.
As you can see it took me just 5 minutes to give my response as the idea of writing a book was somewhere in my subconscious but not something that I had even thought of actively pursuing at the time.
We met at his office, and there was an instant connection regarding the ideas and chapters of the book. It took us just one meeting to conclude that this idea deserved a book.
Serendipity played its role again, this time in the form of Shreya Punj, for whom I am extremely grateful for. I had previously interacted with Shreya when she was a part-time editor with Truth Be Told (The Health and Fitness Newsletter), to which I have contributed numerous articles. We became friends during that process.
Shreya had been working as a consultant for upcoming writers, helping them approach publishing houses and preparing a structured way to pitch book ideas. She played a crucial role in helping us prepare the pitch deck to communicate the idea to publishers, she never takes enough credit for the help she provided.
Through her, we connected with Sachin Sharma, a senior publisher at Harper Collins. Fortunately, Sachin believed in the concept of health and wealth saw the glaring similarities between the two topics, and had a sense of the idea that was presented to him.
Fast forward a year from that conversation.
The first manuscript of the book was submitted last week after a year-long process.
Serendipity has played its beautiful hand.
Enjoying the journey is the destination itself !!! Kudos to you and Mihir and looking forward to the launch.. Bravo !!!