In the LifeHacker post, "How To Design A Lucky Life" member stainless_rat left an awesome comment in response to the article, reproduced in full below:

"I've lived lucky by simply trimming the odds, which conflicts with recommendations here. Small changes that give things a chance to happen. Such as having met an attractive woman on a group hike...and arranging to attend the next hike with that group instead of another: if she was there, great, if not, I still end up with a fun hike. End result? Happily married for 7 years now.

Unlike the recommendation here, I say DO go for low cost gambles, just don't go overboard. One small investment nets an infinite increase in your odds of winning while an additional investment might increase them negligibly. So going for the 'infinite' bump, I've had enough wins for others to consider me 'lucky'.

Small changes in just paying attention, trimming your odds a hair here and there...it all adds up over time." (Emphasis added)


Low-cost gambles can make for small wins. And more importantly, small wins keep you going.

Planning ahead is extremely powerful, but you’ll often find that the better you get at realizing your plans, the more you realize that much of the plans you make get discarded. So what’s the point?

The planning prepares you for whatever may come. The process of preparation lets you be prepared -- putting you in a state of readiness. Process is doing, state is being. You plan, you execute, and in the execution you adjust on the fly, moving with what happens in real-time --which is where most paper theories fly out the window. Planning isn't doing. Doing is doing.

As an offhand example, let's say you do regular cardio (running) to get and stay healthier. Short-term and mid-term benefits: as long as you keep at it, you're acting to preserve your health, strengthen your heart, bones and joints, and feel in charge of this part your life.

The possibility that you may have to run to save someone from getting hit by a card, or run to save your own life, is a remote one --it's rare to find anyone who seriously trains for that-- but the slim chance is still there, and if it does happen... well, won't you be glad you were ready and fit enough to do so?

You got there.

• You managed to find your place on-line. All the hard work of setting things up, working through the bugs and the paperwork needed to register a business, the taxes, the outsourcing, the pricing....and here you are.
• And hey! Your own life is going pretty sweet. It could be stand to improve in a few small areas, but for the most part, it seems things have come together for you. Congratulations!

When we speak of you finding your niche, it goes to mean one or more of the following things:

• You found the place where you fit. You, with all your quirks and interests and strengths, found a place somewhere where all that works to your favor.
  
• You found the place where you can best meet and form relationships with individuals that will contribute to your continued survival and eventual stability.
• You found the place where you are most likely to prosper, and you can stay in it.
  

Finding your niche presupposes you've done the work necessary to finding out and getting what you need to thrive. It also means you commit to the following:

After taking a look at the list of the top 5 regrets of the dying, I got to thinking about living and dying, and how I want to live my life. How would I feel if I looked back and saw the life I could have lived if I'd been a little braver, or a little bit more daring, and a little less uptight? I didn't want to have more regrets than memories, and see all the things I turned down because I was afraid, or careless, or simply wasn't paying attention.

I also remember reading something about how in the next world, all of us will also be called to answer not just for what we did, but also:


This is just a quite little conversation. It won't take that much time, so why not lean back, put your shoulders down, and just stay a little bit? Couldn't hurt, yeah?


Life can be thought of a one big road trip, yes? And from the accounts of people who have shared their experiences about the really good road trips they had, there's a consensus about the commonalities that made their journeys memorable:

Inventory can refer to:

• The list of merchandise or material held in readiness (storage) for delivery or distribution, as well as the actual units themselves.
  
• It can also refer to the ongoing record of any units held in stock.

When approaching inventory as a business tool, you'll see it's a numbers puzzle: you need the context, the data and the experience to make sense of the pictures that come out from those numbers and columns, and accurate, timely inventory-keeping gives you the following advantages:

You know when you're running low, or running high.
With a record you get historical data. You can compare and contrast the figures from year-To-Date, or week-to-date, for example, so you can discern trends emerging or reappearing, and start thinking things out when the numbers seems to be showing you a different picture from what you reasonably expect this time around. You have an idea about what's been going on, and how much has changed or not compared to a week, a month or a year ago.

• Why are you running low, and will this be likely to happen in other areas, or is it happening already? Why? What caused it? If you're running low here, does this mean that the item in question is a hit with customers -- and you can pre-order more --- or were you not able to stock up properly the last time?
• What are the reasons for these changes? A delay in shipping? Switching to a new supplier?

The answers to the questions that come up help you do better next time. Any information you can use to make your business better, use it.

By tracking your inventory, you keep on top of the situation.
Knowledge is power. Accurate, timely information in the form of inventory tells you how much you have to work with at any given time.

• You don't run out at a critical point. You have an advance warning system to tell you what needs attention when.
• You can batch orders and in the process save money on delivery costs, as well as have some reassurance that you'll get what you need when you need it.
• Just-in-time production helps on shipping and storage costs -- you skate on the edge of overstock, you pay for the storage and the shipping costs to get it in, but it's not making money for you sitting idle. What if you have only what you need, only when you need it? (Building in acceptable leeway, of course.)
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When it comes to brick and mortar stores, every business owner, prospective or otherwise, has a lot of expenses to consider. For the store itself, you can take rental costs -- if you're not buying outright -- and the utilities. Factor in any renovations needed, plus there's also stuff like property and fire insurance, applicable health permits, local government permits and the corresponding taxes, etc.

Then there are also the physical assets used in the business: aside from raw materials, there are the tools and any machinery used in production, which also come with their eventual depreciation. Adding employees means allotting money for compensation and benefits, plus health insurance and any government-mandated pension plans, which are also included in the cost of running the business (overhead). That's a lot of slices in the budget pie.

In an online business, you can bypass a majority of these bills. Because it's a virtual enterprise, you can run one out of your basement, your garage, even your living room or a closet. You'll need reliable equipment, but most everything else can be outsourced like data storage, website design, virtual assistance and even administration. There's no real need to buy the latest thing only to see it depreciate in value after only so much time.

In running an e-business, things get really different because of its very nature. The first and most basic requirement is a computer and a reliable (and fast) internet connection. Anything you want to do, whatever it is you want to build, is based on having these things -- whether you're selling something (being a merchant and an e-store proprietor), having someone else sell something for you (affiliate management), establish a presence or a brand (blogging and social media), again, your most basic tools are a reliable computer--with good backup, don't forget -- and a steady internet connection.

You know the 80/20 rule. You even know the formal designation for it: the Pareto principle. 80 percent of the best results, or most meaningful changes, come from 20 percent of your actions, and so on and so forth.

80/20. Eighty-twenty. 80/20. Eighty-twenty.80/20. 80/20. 80/20. 80/20. 80/20. Bored now?

You see 80/20, you get it instantly -- then you move on. Just flipping the deal to 20/80 made you stop, didn't it? So by now you know that there hasn't been any new discovery to the Pareto principle, only a restatement of the issue. In this case, restating a problem also re-frames it.

When you put the focus on the 20 percent, you put the weight on the actionable parts, not on their most probable outcomes. Yes, you also lay the groundwork towards getting "the most beneficial results," etc. etc, but putting the onus on the acting gets things in motion. You look at what you're going to do, the changes you're going to make, and the things you'll have to release to get the results you want. You don't get the results without the action. 20/80 shifts the focus to just that.

The first step into this discussion is thorny: Do you want a new computer, or do you need a new computer? The second step sets the limits to the discussion: How much money do you have for it?

Your answers define what comes next: 1) what are your options = wide range of possibilities 2) what are your needs = narrower range of options.

Maybe in the past there have been times when it was easier and faster for you to use money to solve an issue. That was your choice then and it still is now. Of course, it's still up to you to decide how to make the best use of your funds and get the best value out of your money. No one else will be as invested in the outcome as you, so if you don't want to make time to think about your purchase, whatever happens, you deal with the consequence.

If you've been debating with yourself for a while now on whether to get a new computer or stay with what you've got and just go for upgrades, the discussions in the comments section of the following articles (all from The Simple Dollar) are fertile ground, showing an in-depth decision process of getting a new computer, or exploring other options to improve the performance of the equipment you already have. Whether you need a laptop or a desktop, there's good advice on what factors to consider, and what you can do to make your computer future-resistant.

There are several flavors of KISS available, aside from the tartly traditional "Keep it simple, stupid!"

There's the sweeter "Keep it short and simple," for people who want less attitude, and the more eloquent "Keep it short and straightforward," for the more precise among us.

As an example, The KISS Principle as applied to coding embodies the very essence of the entire idea. It's short, straightforward and gets to the point: helping you apply KISS to your work.

In KISS, the fewer things and factors to consider, the fewer things can go wrong. When you factor out the non-essentials, you leave more focus on the vital 20% (of the 80/20 principle, a supportive, close cousin to KISS) and make more time for the essentials, so you have a leg up on what needs to be accomplished to actually getting it done.

Like the circles on a dart board which successively narrow down your focus to the bull's-eye, keeping things simple asks you to marrow down on the heart of the matter, what is essential to its success -- and then taking action to get to that point. If you know that this needs to happen so that that gets to become a reality -- you move to make this happen so that you can have that. Plain and simple.

When you're truly intent on making your site successful, you need to define your terms of success. There's nothing crazier than running after something when you're not sure you want it -- but since it's there anyway, why the heck not?-- and getting it, then not knowing what you want it for. What can be crazier is getting it and not knowing what you want to do with it, or where you want to go with it. Action for action's sake gets you nowhere. You want to be successful, fine. What is success to you?

To flesh out the big picture, first we need the broad strokes to outline the issues.

"Why do you have a website?"
The answer to this determines the intent. A website is a place on the internet, one that establishes your presence on the world-wide web. There are no geographical boundaries, and you are only limited by the language you use. In any case, English being a global medium, even that is a weak barrier to communication.

So, presence. Presence means communication. Presence says, "I AM HERE." Thus, a burning second question:

"Now that you're here, what do you have to say?"