Life is a gamble

The game of life is not lived by chance, rather it is lived by mix of wins and losses accumulated over the 1440 minutes of each day. At any moment our time could be up, and some folks choose to end the game early. I for one choose to play, and I play hard and fast.

I bet you can’t _______ . I was likely very young when I first took this bet. In many ways it is a right of passage for all of us, some of us thrive in this environment, others not so much. I don’t think of myself as a gambler in the literal interpretation of the word. For instance, I have never been to Las Vegas and I only play the lottery 1x per year.

But, if I stop to think about my day to day business, I am a gambler through and through. If there is one thing I have learned is that you can’t win by observing others playing the game. I have come up with two ways of classifying my gambling in business; a coin and a pair of dice.

The coin represents pure chance, 50/50. I like to think of this gambling as not being able to make a decision but having all of the information. Flipping a coin when making these decision essentially means there is no wrong answer. Granted, there are some decisions that could be catastrophic even with all of the information, in those scenarios I prefer to seek the council of a trusted advisor versus flipping a coin.

The pair of dice is my favorite form of gambling. I learned to shoot craps in the 5th grade. I used to shoot craps in the locker room at my middle school, dice were fun, so many ways to win. In business, the majority of my projects are a craps shoot, some times they hit right out of the gate, and others I have to take one roll at a time. The best part of this game is that I am playing against myself. With each passing year I get smarter, I learn to calculate the probabilities of certain events, with each passing year, I get more and more wins.

The truth is that every day is a gamble, the fact that I am able to get out of bed is my first win. As I make it through the 1440 minutes in each day, the balance of power in my mind is constantly shifting. Some moments up, others down, but the dice are in my hand, I am still rolling.