There are a couple of books that stick with me from my youth. The first is Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece ‘The Sun Also Rises’. Not to be confused with the fictional soap opera ‘The Sun Also Sets’ from the grossly underrated 1991 comedy Soapdish and its all star cast including Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg and Sally Field.

Hemingway breathes life into the wandering (and drinking) of expats around the world, most famously, and vividly, in Pamplona, Spain for the Festival of San Fermin and the iconic ‘running of the bulls’.

Adam’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

(Foreshadowing: I participated in a mild ‘walking of the cows’ in Rajasthan, India)

The second, a little known novel called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, the English version of a 1557 story published in Venice, Italy by Michele Tramezzino. Tramezzino claims to have heard the story from Cristoforo Armeno who translated a Persian fairy tale into Italian. Got it? Hemingway needs a drink.

Note: Serendip is the classical Persian name for the country of Sri Lanka.

Amazingly, this unknown story has become known in the English-speaking world as the the source of the word serendipity. Love that, who knew? This can be attributed to the recounting of this "silly fairy tale" in which the three princes by "accidents and sagacity" discern the nature of a lost camel. In fact, the story most famously influenced Voltaire and his genre of detective fiction and the scientific method.

While reading this book as a young man, as you can imagine, I pictured myself as a young prince running around the Middle East with my fictional brothers solving mysteries, exploring far away kingdoms and cultures. Tangentially, and around the same time, I first watched ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’. A bit deeper now. I’m still exploring the Middle East and Asia but now my detective and exploration skills have improved. I’m super cool. I have a hat, a whip and I’m good looking. I have a sidekick named Short Round, a girlfriend in entertainment, and the serendipitous ‘happy accidents’ that appear are saving children and villages from the evil forces of Mola Ram. (cover your heart Indy!!!)

Do you remember reading books or seeing movies when you were younger and something just clicked? For whatever reason, at that moment in your life you just needed that book. And still to this day, the books/movies that influenced you before you were 18 often stay with you and, at their best, bring you closer to some sort of relevant magic that you remember.

This is the setting for what I call ‘Engineering Serendipity’. Let’s define serendipity so we are all on the same page.

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. (Remember the ‘development’ aspect for later)

Think ‘happy accidents’ in a Shakespearean way. More commonly, we’ve all had these. That time you made a wrong turn while walking in New York City only to run into a long lost friend you have been meaning to spend time with. When you mention someones name in a conversation and they call you up right at that moment!? You’re texting someone the word ‘amazing’ and that same word is spoken on the TV at that exact moment. I mean come on. How cool is that? They’re also little pattern breaks for our brains that make us question the very fabric of life around us. Heck, they even connect us to whatever our definition of the divine is.

Yes you did do that! Orrrrrr, maybe we are pattern seeking mammals that notice when these happy accidents occur and don’t notice all the other moments where there are no happy accidents? Not my question to answer but based on the title of this article you can see which way I lean and what I practice.

Engineering Serendipity

I remember watching an interview with Will Smith some years ago.

Pre Oscars, Post Independence Day, Smith was FIRE

He proceeded to share that these ‘happy accidents’ in his are life akin to lightning striking. They felt like a bolt to the system, a reminder that he was connected to something deeper within himself and he was, for lack of a better term, in alignment with himself.

Smith then proceeds to say something along the lines of the following:

Similar to a lightning strike, I don’t know exactly when or where these moments are going to happen. But what I can tell you, is how to put yourself in a better position to have them happen. For instance, if you want to get struck by lightning you have better odds when there’s a storm outside. Then, while there’s a storm, you’ll have better odds if instead of sitting inside, you go outside into the storm. Next? Go high of course. Your odds increase again if you go to the highest point you can find while being outside in a storm. Guess what, your odds increase again if you’re outside, in a storm, at the highest point you can find, and you hold a metal rod in the air. And so on, and so on.

“I don’t know when lightning will strike you, but I can tell you how to put yourself in a position to have it strike you more often”

It’s something so simply explained in words, but as we extrapolate to areas of our lives not always the easiest to put into action or behavior. A word on behavior. Nicely summed up in James Clear’s Atomic Habits when he says:

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

For me, Engineering Serendipity is the practice/development of connecting your identity to those things that make you smile/feel/love at points in your life and taking actions (votes) in those directions. That’s it. And they don’t have to, and candidly shouldn’t, make sense to you now.

1. Inquire within and be aware of what really lights you up. (Energizes you)

2. Take an action and gleefully share it with others.

3. Invite lightning (extra credit for playing ‘Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes” in the background during said invitation)

4. Watch the rearview mirror

“You can’t connect the dots moving forward, you can only connect them looking backwards” - Steve Jobs

Watching the rearview mirror might be one of the more underrated parts of this process. What does it look like actually to ‘watch the rearview mirror’?

So, what’s my life like today. I work for a global Web3 venture fund that’s the largest and oldest firm to come out of India. I get the opportunity to explore Asia and the Middle East and support awesome founders who are building super cool tools. I look great in hats and I love the movie Aladdin. (I definitely slept with an Aladdin stuffed doll in high school imagining I was him exploring those hot Arabian nights) I do enjoy detective movies and have even hosted a TV show called “Secrets Unlocked” on the Smithsonian Channel where I get to ponder the future by digging into the past. From Marty McFly to Nellie Bly (the real life Phileas Fogg) and Sherlock Bones (dog detective) to Indiana Jones, all of the things that I loved, books that I read, characters I saw myself as, identities I embodied, ended up manifesting themselves at varying points in my life. And I guarantee you can do the same. The moments I care about appear in my life. So, not only can I continue to engineer serendipity from those core memories, but also I can create new memories and meaning for my engineering mind (and heart) to hold onto, develop, and take action.

This is applicable in any area of our lives. Work, family, relationships, public speaking, writing, sports, health, relationships, literally any area. Engineering Serendipity is area agnostic. Rinse and repeat.

New beliefs become new behaviors, which when you take action, become new opportunities for you to become serendipitous. Notice when they happen, and don’t forget to check the rearview mirror from time to time.

Note: Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.

Adam’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

There are a couple of books that stick with me from my youth. The first is Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece ‘The Sun Also Rises’. Not to be confused with the fictional soap opera ‘The Sun Also Sets’ from the grossly underrated 1991 comedy Soapdish and its all star cast including Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg and Sally Field.

Hemingway breathes life into the wandering (and drinking) of expats around the world, most famously, and vividly, in Pamplona, Spain for the Festival of San Fermin and the iconic ‘running of the bulls’.

Adam’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

(Foreshadowing: I participated in a mild ‘walking of the cows’ in Rajasthan, India)

The second, a little known novel called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’, the English version of a 1557 story published in Venice, Italy by Michele Tramezzino. Tramezzino claims to have heard the story from Cristoforo Armeno who translated a Persian fairy tale into Italian. Got it? Hemingway needs a drink.

Note: Serendip is the classical Persian name for the country of Sri Lanka.

Amazingly, this unknown story has become known in the English-speaking world as the the source of the word serendipity. Love that, who knew? This can be attributed to the recounting of this "silly fairy tale" in which the three princes by "accidents and sagacity" discern the nature of a lost camel. In fact, the story most famously influenced Voltaire and his genre of detective fiction and the scientific method.

While reading this book as a young man, as you can imagine, I pictured myself as a young prince running around the Middle East with my fictional brothers solving mysteries, exploring far away kingdoms and cultures. Tangentially, and around the same time, I first watched ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’. A bit deeper now. I’m still exploring the Middle East and Asia but now my detective and exploration skills have improved. I’m super cool. I have a hat, a whip and I’m good looking. I have a sidekick named Short Round, a girlfriend in entertainment, and the serendipitous ‘happy accidents’ that appear are saving children and villages from the evil forces of Mola Ram. (cover your heart Indy!!!)

Do you remember reading books or seeing movies when you were younger and something just clicked? For whatever reason, at that moment in your life you just needed that book. And still to this day, the books/movies that influenced you before you were 18 often stay with you and, at their best, bring you closer to some sort of relevant magic that you remember.

This is the setting for what I call ‘Engineering Serendipity’. Let’s define serendipity so we are all on the same page.

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. (Remember the ‘development’ aspect for later)

Think ‘happy accidents’ in a Shakespearean way. More commonly, we’ve all had these. That time you made a wrong turn while walking in New York City only to run into a long lost friend you have been meaning to spend time with. When you mention someones name in a conversation and they call you up right at that moment!? You’re texting someone the word ‘amazing’ and that same word is spoken on the TV at that exact moment. I mean come on. How cool is that? They’re also little pattern breaks for our brains that make us question the very fabric of life around us. Heck, they even connect us to whatever our definition of the divine is.

Yes you did do that! Orrrrrr, maybe we are pattern seeking mammals that notice when these happy accidents occur and don’t notice all the other moments where there are no happy accidents? Not my question to answer but based on the title of this article you can see which way I lean and what I practice.

Engineering Serendipity

I remember watching an interview with Will Smith some years ago.

Pre Oscars, Post Independence Day, Smith was FIRE

He proceeded to share that these ‘happy accidents’ in his are life akin to lightning striking. They felt like a bolt to the system, a reminder that he was connected to something deeper within himself and he was, for lack of a better term, in alignment with himself.

Smith then proceeds to say something along the lines of the following:

Similar to a lightning strike, I don’t know exactly when or where these moments are going to happen. But what I can tell you, is how to put yourself in a better position to have them happen. For instance, if you want to get struck by lightning you have better odds when there’s a storm outside. Then, while there’s a storm, you’ll have better odds if instead of sitting inside, you go outside into the storm. Next? Go high of course. Your odds increase again if you go to the highest point you can find while being outside in a storm. Guess what, your odds increase again if you’re outside, in a storm, at the highest point you can find, and you hold a metal rod in the air. And so on, and so on.

“I don’t know when lightning will strike you, but I can tell you how to put yourself in a position to have it strike you more often”

It’s something so simply explained in words, but as we extrapolate to areas of our lives not always the easiest to put into action or behavior. A word on behavior. Nicely summed up in James Clear’s Atomic Habits when he says:

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

For me, Engineering Serendipity is the practice/development of connecting your identity to those things that make you smile/feel/love at points in your life and taking actions (votes) in those directions. That’s it. And they don’t have to, and candidly shouldn’t, make sense to you now.

1. Inquire within and be aware of what really lights you up. (Energizes you)

2. Take an action and gleefully share it with others.

3. Invite lightning (extra credit for playing ‘Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes” in the background during said invitation)

4. Watch the rearview mirror

“You can’t connect the dots moving forward, you can only connect them looking backwards” - Steve Jobs

Watching the rearview mirror might be one of the more underrated parts of this process. What does it look like actually to ‘watch the rearview mirror’?

So, what’s my life like today. I work for a global Web3 venture fund that’s the largest and oldest firm to come out of India. I get the opportunity to explore Asia and the Middle East and support awesome founders who are building super cool tools. I look great in hats and I love the movie Aladdin. (I definitely slept with an Aladdin stuffed doll in high school imagining I was him exploring those hot Arabian nights) I do enjoy detective movies and have even hosted a TV show called “Secrets Unlocked” on the Smithsonian Channel where I get to ponder the future by digging into the past. From Marty McFly to Nellie Bly (the real life Phileas Fogg) and Sherlock Bones (dog detective) to Indiana Jones, all of the things that I loved, books that I read, characters I saw myself as, identities I embodied, ended up manifesting themselves at varying points in my life. And I guarantee you can do the same. The moments I care about appear in my life. So, not only can I continue to engineer serendipity from those core memories, but also I can create new memories and meaning for my engineering mind (and heart) to hold onto, develop, and take action.

This is applicable in any area of our lives. Work, family, relationships, public speaking, writing, sports, health, relationships, literally any area. Engineering Serendipity is area agnostic. Rinse and repeat.

New beliefs become new behaviors, which when you take action, become new opportunities for you to become serendipitous. Notice when they happen, and don’t forget to check the rearview mirror from time to time.

Note: Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.

Adam’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.