Annie Duke

Like it was bad.

And I thought at the time, like, this is such bad luck.

Like this has really derailed my life.

I'm experiencing very bad luck.

And I was very sad about it.

Then, you know, now I have to take time off from graduate school and I have to delay going out on the job market.

And during that time was when I started playing poker and poker was pretty good to me.

And I would actually argue that had I not done what I did in poker, I wouldn't have the platform to talk about this thing that I'm so passionate about, which is like, how do we become better decision makers, right?

And this amazing conversation I'm having with you about luck, which is so fun.

And I wouldn't be able to do that had I not gotten sick in the first place.

So I now look back at that and say, whoa, that was kind of a rush to judgment at the time, right?

I really thought that I was experiencing bad luck, but it turns out that was actually kind of good luck.

Because where my life ended up, I think, on average, it ended up in a better place because that thing happened to me.

And so I think that what you said is actually incredibly insightful, is that we ought to be

pretty neutral about luck.

Like luck is occurring, but that rush to judgment about is that good luck or bad luck, I think, is misguided.

And not only is it misguided and oughtn't we wait to actually sort of take a look back and make the judgment about whether it was good or bad, as you said, but when we judge it so quickly, I think that it can distort decisions that we're making going forward, particularly on the bad luck side.

Because when we experience that bad luck, we get emotional.

It's very difficult for us.

It actually reduces the quality of our decisions going forward if we really live in the idea.