I believe there is a firm equation between work and results. Good work with persistence gets better results. I know this equation isn’t exact, but it holds true often enough. For example, the more I practice playing piano, the more I become a better pianist. Thankfully for everyone, I realized I wasn’t going to be a great pianist and quit practicing to focus on criticizing social media.
The more I work in social media though, the more I notice an additional factor to this success equation. It’s a strange, unpredictable factor that happens more when you work harder, but isn’t always there because you tried hard. You can’t predict when it happens, though you can sometimes give it a good guess.
I call this factor serendipity.
I love serendipity. When it happens, it is magical. Your post suddenly explodes in ways you couldn’t predict. In an instant, the words you sweated out in your home office spread across the entire globe to all sorts of people. It’s like Andy Warhol manifested and granted you your fifteen minutes of internet fame.
The trouble with serendipity though, is you never know exactly when it will happen. You want it to happen all the time, and when it does happen, you’ll think, “Really? People like that? I wrote that in a pinch to get something out the door!”
The only thing I can pin down about serendipity though is the more you work, the better your chances are for it. I can’t count on any post here making it big, but the more I work to make better posts, and the more better posts I make, the more serendipity I make for myself.
You can’t count on serendipity happening to you, but you can increase your chances of it happening. Get to work, and let fortune smile upon you.
Anti-Social Media