I first came across this idea while watching an introductory lecture on macroeconomics. After some preliminaries and an explanation of modeling using the familiar equation y = mx + b, the professor quoted the statistician George Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” That line struck me so much that I had to pause the video and think about it for a while. “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” It made perfect sense. After all, modeling is simply our attempt to create a function that fits the points on a graph, a way to make sense of scattered observations. To those who dislike math, think of it like this: You’re sitting in a restaurant and notice a couple, a neatly dressed man and a stunning woman in an eye-catching dress. Time passes, and suddenly you hear loud voices coming from their table. A girl’s name is mentioned, the woman stands up, slaps the man, and storms out. These are your data points, aka your observations. As humans, we naturally try to explain what we see, to connect the dots. So your brain forms a model: “She must have found out that he’s cheating on her, got angry, slapped him and left.” That explanation ( that story ) is your model. It’s the line that connects the dots and makes everything coherent. But remember: all models are wrong, though some are useful. Your model might be completely wrong. You only observed a small part of the situation. For instance, maybe the couple has a baby girl, and they were out for the first time in months. The father called his sister to babysit, but the mother dislikes her and disapproves of her influence on their daughter. When she found out the sister was babysitting, she got upset, slapped the man, and left. This second model also fits your observations, just like the first one, but it’s also wrong. You might say, “But surely one of them must be right?” Well, that depends on what you mean by right. We build models to explain the world around us, to make sense of things and, most importantly, to predict the future. But with your limited observations, you can’t really predict what will happen next. Even if you don’t care about prediction, your model is still uncertain, because you don’t truly know why she slapped him. There could be dozens of unseen causes, like work-stress or maybe hormonal problems, perhaps previouse fights that piled and lead to this .

A lot of people struggle with the notion of comparing. They suffer as their brain compares their lives, bodies, careers, bank accounts, possessions, and spouses with others all the time, which leads almost always to either recognizing that what they possess is better—and therefore they either get a fast, short rush of adrenaline from doing better than others or repress feeling better because they don't want to be that arrogant, egotistical person who thinks they are better than others. However, on the downside awaits an unending spiral of ungratefulness, depression, and doubt: Why don't I have it better? Did I not work hard enough? Am I dumber? Do I sleep too much? Maybe I'm too nice and give too much? Or maybe God just hates me? Or is it that I didn't use the opportunities that were presented to me in my life well enough? Is it too late? Do people think low of me? What did I work this hard for if this guy who is younger just has it better? Why does this happen so often? And perhaps most frustratingly, even highly successful people can fall into similar patterns—though the intensity and frequency vary widely depending on the individual. Let's imagine this: you are Tom Cruise. You look amazing for your age, make millions, are fit, and do crazy shit in movies. Your latest movie has been out for a week and is making bank. Everyone on social media is talking about your movie, praising you and your performance, and happy for your success. You are really high and happy—you did it, all your hard work paid off, you are living good and deserve some relax time to enjoy your money. You pick up your phone and open Instagram because you want to see what the world is up to. And here starts the cycle. You see The Rock posting about his new movie that made even more in its opening weekend. Suddenly, a small voice whispers: "His movie did better." You keep scrolling. You see a tech billionaire half your age buying another company. "He's younger and worth more." A fitness influencer with perfect abs and millions of followers. "Maybe I should look like that." An Oscar winner posting their Academy Award. "I've never won one for acting."

I've been thinking about network theory and how it might explain something that's always bothered me: the relationship between luck and hard work in success. In network theory, there's a striking principle: social networks need only a small degree of randomness to function dramatically differently. You don't just know people in your immediate surroundings (your Umgebung) - you also know some random person in America, for instance. This tiny amount of randomness creates a massive effect: it's why you can reach anyone in the world through only six people. Without any randomness, that same connection would take 40 million people. This resolves a question I've struggled with: does randomness play the biggest role in success, or is it hard work? And if it's really randomness - just luck - then why isn't everything random? Why do we see such remarkable accomplishments? The answer lies in understanding that the system needs only a tiny bit of randomness, yet that small amount makes the biggest difference. So it's not all luck - in fact, it's mainly not luck. But luck does play the biggest role, in the sense that it has a disproportionate impact. What's particularly interesting is the concept of weak ties - people you know casually, not close friends. These weak ties are what make it possible to know everyone in the world through only six connections. And here's the empowering part: it's in your hands to create these ties. It's in my hands to let luck play a role in my life and make great success possible. However, there's an important nuance: in network theory, those random connections work because they connect already well-connected clusters. The randomness is powerful because there's underlying structure. Similarly, being open to serendipity works best when you've built skills, relationships, and put yourself in environments where lucky breaks can happen. The randomness multiplies what's already there - it doesn't create something from nothing. This realization hit me hard because I haven't been allowing this in my life at all. I don't do anything that isn't on the calendar. I hate when things deviate from the plan. But in reality, leaving room for randomness makes the biggest difference.