You are applying for an opportunity. Would you still apply if there were any of these numbers of applicants:
- 1,000 applicants
- 10,000 applicants
- 100,000 applicants
Some would say yes but often it’s no. I was speaking to my friends who went through the traditional route of school, university and are now looking for a job.
I’ve applied and attended conferences, events, and so forth. But when I asked “how many did you apply for” they all collectively applied for zero and attended zero, the opportunity cost of nothing.
Why didn’t they apply? “I’m not smart enough”, “I didn’t know”, the list goes on but it’s simple. You make your own luck.
Become lucky
Luck is a chance of a good outcome, but people fail to realize that you have more control on your luck than you think. The odds can stay the same, but the more you try, the more likely you are to succeed. If you prepare to fail, you will.
Most people won’t try, will try once, or won’t put much effort or thought into it.
A study by Wiseman found that lucky people were “skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”
If every application has a 1 in 10 chance, iteratively apply 100 times. If you get rejected, reach out for feedback and look what’s missing. Ultimately the goal is to be better than the next person, what can you do to be better?
People fear rejection instead of embracing it. If you fail a test, you look to see where you went wrong, and that applies to most things.
Embrace rejection and fear
The first event I attended was because I won a capture the flag, I was the top 500 out of 50,000 in a field where I had no prior work. This was my second attempt; I worked relentlessly to win the first year but missed it by a small margin.
I wanted to do better so I did. I kept the same focus, same goals. The second year I did it and the third year again. This led to me working on other events and meeting some incredibly talented people.
It’s since that moment I’ve learned to embrace rejection and soon fear. Initially, I was fairly introverted and had known most of my friends since I was 11 years old.
This changed on a client trip when the rain was heavy, meaning the trains were delayed. I sat next to someone, and we didn’t say anything until I offered them some biscuits. From the biscuits, we talked about the trains, work, and values.
It was my conversation starter until I grew more and more confident. Now I can speak to strangers. But what if I didn’t? What was the cost? I wouldn’t have met managers from Deloitte, senior security staff at MasterCard, international students from China, and a stranger I met hundreds of miles away from home yet they lived five minutes from my home.
I started small, but now I’m able to strike up a conversation with anyone.
The opportunity cost of nothing is exactly as it says, nothing. If you don’t ask you don’t get, if you don’t try you don’t know. Is the five minutes of rejection enough to keep you on the same path, or will you try again?