Terry Gilliam recently told Vulture about the struggles he has to get his films made:
It’s not so much a comedy of errors, how things come together, but coincidences, combinations of things. Like somebody’s doing well, their trajectory is there, yours is here, and sometimes you meet. Sometimes you crash. [Laughs.]
I guess that really represents two elusive elements: timing and luck. I'm not convinced that over the long run people have hugely different levels of luck, but I do think we vary in how alert we are to opportunity. I know I've blown quite a few in my time. I may already have mentioned this one on this blog, but my prime example is when I was working in Hollywood a director invited me to go to a basketball game with him. I said no, thanks, because I'm not much of a sports fan. But this director happened to be the son of a famous actor and they watched the game from the VIP section--where Jack Nicholson, Walter Matthau, and other stars sit. I could have met those people.
As Homer Simpson so eloquently says, "Doh!"
Sometimes we just aren't paying attention. That brings up another danger: I'm a big fan of setting goals but I always try to remember that getting too obsessed with a goal can blinker you to other opportunities that are standing there, waving in your face, trying to get your attention.
It's not the sort of thing we do consciously most of the time, but maybe it is a good idea to stop periodically, survey what's going on, and assess whether it represents an opportunity and, if so, the best way to take advantage of it.
(Want help being able to focus and get more done? Get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers. Why not join by (informal) campaign to buy at least half your books from your local independent bookshop? Let's help them survive--and even thrive!)
