Daily Fantasy, Daily Life: Volume XXXV - Crazy Week 3
How do you know when press your luck?And while I phrased that question solely for the purpose of dropping the “no whammy!” video clip below, it is a valid question, both in daily fantasy and daily life.
https://youtube.com/shorts/BVNo85b-GsE?feature=share
For instance: I came tantalizing close in the first two weeks of the NFL DFS season to winning a lot of money. Not life-changing money, but certainly enough to keep me in the black for the rest of the year. So. Should I have pressed my luck in week three? Did I trust my process?
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “process over results” in your DFS days, and the concept is simple enough: If the process, over time, is correct, then the results should (eventually) follow. And if your process is right, then sure, pressing your luck seems like a reasonable strategy, both in DFS and life.
So let’s look at daily life for a moment. You probably “pressed your luck” with your significant other due to the fact they are your significant other at this point. You undoubtedly “made the play” that got you there. But how many times did you press your luck and fail with people who turned out to not be so significant?
I distinctly remember being at Barnes & Noble one day. I was single, 23 or 24. Now granted: Any woman in a bookstore was already on my radar, because I’m a nerd, but she was a knockout. And for just a moment, we caught eyes. Might’ve been because I was staring at her, but whatever. There was a moment.
After some internal debate with my nerdy self, I worked up the courage to go up to the woman and say something to the effect of, “I would never forgive myself if I didn’t ask for your phone number.”
Process.
And as a result of that, we began a relationship that lasted for … two seconds, as she said something to the effect of, “Thank you, that’s sweet, but I have a boyfriend.”
Results.
Moral of the story? I pressed my luck and failed. But if I didn’t press my luck, I would’ve had zero chance of success. And the “process” that led me to this – asking someone for their phone number – was not something that came naturally to me.
But for real: The process was right, and it eventually led to me asking another woman out (and another, and another) before success came. Some 23 years later, we’re still together. Of course, it’s not just relationships. Work as well. For instance, I wanted to work at Rotogrinders forever. Wanted to break into this world. So I cold-emailed Cal Spears, the founder of Rotogrinders.
My subject header? I forget exactly, but it roughly, “Thank you so much for your generous offer of employment …” and then when he opened it it read, “ … is how I plan to start my second email to you.”
I had tried similar gambits previously to little-to-no avail. But I was confident in the process. The results came.
I’ll say it again: I kept pressing my luck when I thought I had the process down, and it paid off. And really: In these examples, and in life in general, we know to keep plugging away, to keep doing the right things, and eventually, things will break in our favor.
This is not some Oprah Winfrey “secret,” not this “manifesting into the universe” nonsense.
This is just plain, old-fashioned, common sense. If you do the right things, right things will follow.
Sure, you can get dumb lucky on occasion, but think back to most of the “luck” in your life: Wasn’t most of it predicated on you making the right decisions to get there? Process over results. It’s not just a DFS mantra; it’s how we tend to live our lives, whether we realize it or not.
This was a long way to say I had my worst NFL DFS tournament week ever in week three. I mean, like, ever. Put in the most money I ever did, lost the money I ever did.
I got blasted, financially-speaking. Not only did I not sniff first place, but I only min-cashed 5% of all my DraftKings lineups, and 8% at FanDuel. Oh, and zero percent at Yahoo and Underdog. But you know what? I’m not unhappy about it in the big picture sense. I’m confident in my process, I’ll keep pressing my luck and wait for the results to follow.
Let’s just not tell my wife about the loss, OK?
Let’s also not tell her I even remember asking some rando out at Barnes & Noble. But boy, she was a knockout. I mean, if I knew her name I’d definitely check her out on Facebook.