My Lucky Day

Joe Carlson's 4-Leaf Clover Pendants can be found at Art on the Planet

So, I'm checking my mail, and guess what? Everyone is giving me money.

First I got this notice.
We wanted to remind you of the settlement payment that may have came in for you from a class action lawsuit. Hit your link below to recover what is reserved in your name.

Then I got this one:
Member, this is our second attempt to reach out to you! We think that you may be the WINNER of $50,000! Please click below to discover if you've won.

Then I got this big break:
Congratulations! After careful consideration, you’ve been hired to work part-time, online. This opening pays $5,700/month, so rush to your link to verify your new salary.
Sincerely, Your Employment Specialist | Lonna

This was next:
We've done all the work to hook you up with this $1,000 BANK OF AMERICA Visa Card. It's now up to you to VERIFY IT using the requests attached!

Followed by this:
I've been attempting to contact you. I think you are going to LOVE the Amazon Order that's been ready for you! Please use your link to finalize the details to have it headed your way.

Finally, one more:
Member, this is our 2nd attempt to reach out to you. A large relief payout from 2016 may still be OWED to YOU. Hit your link to discover just how much you have coming your way and claim your check!

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To be honest, if things come together regarding the Nigerian matter (Someone important is dropping 53 million dollars into my account.  I sent him my bank account numbers and it will be discreetly deposited $100K a week.) then I will probably not follow up on these other offers. I'll have more than I know what to do with right soon, I believe.

How's your day going? Nothing like a windfall to put a little spring in your step.

Related Links
Oh Lucky Man! 4-Leaf Clovers Galore
In Plain Sight

Spotlight on Artist Designer Victoria Lehman

During this past Friday's Downtown Arts Walk here in Duluth I stopped in at Joellyn Rock's Rockinghorse Studio where a half dozen or more paintings by Victoria Lehman were being displayed. An assistant professor, Ms. Lehman has been teaching art and design at the U of MN-Duluth for 20 years or so. As it turns out, two of the most talented designers I have ever worked with were once students of hers.

The visit wasn't long enough, but a good introduction and the interview that follows will take you further.

EN: When did you first take an interest in art? Were there any catalyst events the propelled you to a teaching career in the arts?

Victoria Lehman: My early influences were the artists in my family and I jumped in early into creating art using many different medias. There were also teachers in my family and their appreciation for art and teaching also headed me toward an art teaching career.

EN: What has been your career path since growing up in Luck?

VL: My undergraduate degree was in studio art and art education. I taught K-6 elementary art in our local school for eight years before teaching at Brown Institute and The College of St. Catherine. I liked graphics and bought a small graphic design business for two years before coming to UMD and returning to teaching design. Along the way I've painted for many galleries such as the Long Beach Arts, CA and joined collections.

EN: Are there any influential designers that have especially influenced you? You’ve taught some very talented designers. Why is design important and what are some of the applications of design?

VL: Switching from teaching studio to design mid-career wasn't very difficult. I've been influenced by the designers I've worked with in business or teaching, and when first designing, I liked the New York designers such as Paula Scher.

Design is one of those things we take for granted being surrounded by design messages every day. Designers want to interact with people by coaching them to look at this world differently or in a better light. Most of us only stop to look at design when it strikes a personal cord. That's a designers job to find that personal note in as many people as possible.

EN: You’re also a painter. What is it that you most enjoy about painting as a medium of expression?

VL: What I most enjoy about painting is the fact I can express abstraction in large format and it's on a wall giving it texture and structure that you can't get with digital work or almost any other format.

EN: Where can people see more of your work?

VL: www.victorialehman.com and Instagram.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it. 

A Rewarding Visit with Influential Writer/Entrepreneur Charles Chu, Including 4 Tips for Bloggers

I discovered the blog of Charles Chu by coming across an article he wrote about mental resilience and the techniques Navy SEALs use to develop it. The article struck me as not only useful, but engaging enough to make me want to explore more about the author. Its home was a blog with the intriguing title Market Meditations.  

EN: Where did you grow up and how has your family influenced who you are?

Charles Chu: I was born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents. My parents were extremely poor and came to the US in search of a better life. It's the classic immigrant story. I grew up with a Chinese cultural environment at home but a very American one everywhere else. There was always a sense of not belonging and not fitting in. That made me ask a lot of questions about human nature, how the world works, etc.

EN: How long have you been writing your Market Meditations blog? What was its original purpose and how has it evolved?

CC: Funny story. The original blog was meant to be about finance, particularly global macro trading. That's why the word "Market" is in the title. That was one of the dozens of failed experiments I've had.

The real blog (as you know it) has only been around for two months. I was answering questions on Quora, and I was surprised to find that over one million people read my answers in a single month! That was the proof I needed that people like the way I think. I take a different approach to challenges (both philosophically and technically), and that reflects in the success the blog is seeing.

EN: Where did your belief that "success can be engineered" originate?

CC: Few people know this, but I come from a mathematical background. I used to do math competitions in grade school. I've also dabbled in poker and equity trading. If you look at successful performers in this field (or any field), they share common philosophies and attributes. And when you study the failures, they tend to lack these same qualities.

Success in investing or gambling is typically attributed to "luck", but the best know that it is engineered. You can create conditions to maximize the probability of profit (or success, in our case). Afterwards, all that is left is to survive long enough for results to start coming in.

EN: Who are some of the great thinkers whose ideas you deconstruct and share?

CC: Anyone who inspires me. The blog hasn't been around that long, but I've looked at statesmen (like Ben Franklin), writers (like Isaac Asimov), marketers (like Seth Godin), and even Hedge Fund managers (like Stanley Druckenmiller).

EN: What was your method for generating blog traffic?

CC: I can't cover this in detail without several dozen pages, but let me outline the general concepts.

• I borrow traffic. I write 90%+ of my stuff off the blog. Why? Because posting things on a blog shows it to nobody (except for your existing readership). You have to find places where people gather, show your work to them and give them a way to come to your site.

• I don't use SEO. For new bloggers, SEO is like picking pennies in front of a steamroller. You can do hours and hours of research to target keywords that bring 100-200 readers a month. I could spend that time engineering a hit on Reddit, Quora or another social sharing site and bring in 10-20 thousand readers instead.

• I find the right audience for my work. If I write something about minimalism or frugality, I'm not going to promote it to an advertising channel. It's not my right audience. I write about what interests me. This tends to fall into several core categories. The rest is just about finding where those people gather and showing them your work.

• I don't network. One of my posts was recently featured on the NY Observer. The editor emailed ME to ask to republish it. All I have to do is focus on putting my work out in public and making it top 1% in quality. Why spend hours pitching editors and other bloggers with mediocre writing when I can put that time into making amazing writing that other people beg me to share?

EN: Excellent advice. What are your favorite topics to write about?

CC: I scratch my own itch. I have a long laundry list of exciting ideas, but here are some—entrepreneurship, human nature, cognitive science, philosophy, biohacking, movement, productivity, world travel, risk-taking, guerrilla marketing, learning languages... I could go on forever.

My advice to other writers: if you want interest, you need to be interesting. And if you want to be interesting, be interested first. There are millions of other wannabe writers out there. What makes you the best in the world at what you do?

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Want more? Join 5000+ readers of The Open Circle, a free weekly newsletter where Charles deconstructs great minds and shares actionable insights from his own crazy experiments. 

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A lot of good suggestions here. Don't just read it. Ingest it and make it your own.

Luck

"I'd rather be lucky than good." ~ Lefty Gomez

"The race is not always to the swift or the battle to the strong... but time and chance happen to them all." ~ Ecclesiastes 9:11

Today is Friday the 13th, so I thought a few observations about luck were in order, since for many thirteen is an unlucky number. In fact, in 1911, psychologists came up with a name for this fear of thirteen: Triskaidekaphobia. Friday the 13th has been considered unlucky since the 1800s and many buildings have no thirteenth floor because of this irrational anxiety.

It is interesting that the central theme of Woody Allen's 2005 film Match Point centers on the theme of luck, so much so that for the lead character Chris Wilton it is his life theme. Ironically, when Wilton says in the film, "I'd rather be lucky than good," I assumed it was a line written by Mr. Allen, the screenwriter/director. But while doing a search, I see that this quote's source was the Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Gomez. Allen made it fit so well into the fabric of this film, however. Does this mean no attribution was necessary in that context? Or was Mr. Allen lucky no one noticed?

Thirteen has a positive place in history as well. There were thirteen original colonies and thus the first U.S. flag had thirteen stars and stripes.

Well, getting back to the "lucky or good" notion... Is it really better to be lucky? When we give too much power to luck, are we not saying that we have no power in ourselves? It is realistic to make the acknowledgement to forces outside one's control, as Napoleon did, but even the greatest generals recognize that their troops must be ready for combat and sufficiently armed, and that a strategic plan is required, as opposed to haphazard chaos.

I have often heard the saying that we need to make our own luck. Or as Abe Lincoln put it, "I will prepare myself and the opportunity will come."

How do you feel about luck? Do you feel lucky? And while you're waiting for your ship to come in, what are you doing in the meantime? Are you preparing yourself so as to be worthy when you see the sails approaching your little piece of shoreline? I hope so.

For what it's worth, don't break a mirror today.