Here's a two-month old article from Rob Fitzpatrick which just resurfaced on HN and makes great reading to start the year.
I've talked before about doing things that create opportunities - for me, for example, blogging is a great opportunity creator. I meet many people via email that end up becoming real-life contacts. Rob explains that this can apply to any kind of serendipitous event you're trying to make happen:
I found a conference with unusually smart attendees and began hanging around the events and being helpful to the organiser until he started including me in things. Similarly, when I'm single, I work out of cafes instead of my office. If I was single and wanted to date a banker, I would work out of cafes in the financial district.
When I wanted to understand how the earliest stage companies got started, I hung out at universities and got involved with their entrepreneurship programs. When I needed contract work, I started giving talks on how business guys could most effectively manage the time & costs of hiring techies. If I wanted to scale an agency business, I would find a way to hang out every day with struggling freelancers.
In other words, multiply the "deal flow" of possible serendipitous events, and you'll find that even unlikely events become much more likely.
So what are you going to do this year to multiply the opportunities you want?
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