Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Wabasso Beach Tuesday Afternoon. |
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Seagrape Trail Beach Tuesday Afternoon. |
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| Turtle Trail Tuesday Afternoon. |
Thanks DJ.
Good Luck!
We say it all the time. There is definitely an element of luck in metal detecting, but luck by definition isn't something you can do much about unless you believe in the power of your lucky coin, wear your lucky underwear or do good deeds to build up some positive karma, but I'm not so sure any of that will work, and even if it did, I couldn't give much good advice about it.
Two days ago I gave you my formula for success once again. It doesn't include the luck factor. It only refers to specific things you can do or control to increase the amount of success you will have over the long term.
Luck will even out over time. You can correctly call heads or tails a number of times in a row, but if do it long enough, you will tend towards getting it right about 50% of the time.
For me, skill is about numbers. A small number of finds, no matter how exceptional, does not indicate skill. Skill will win out over the long term, even thought there may be some remarkable exceptions due to what we call luck.
As I once defined skill for some graduate students at the University of Louisville, skill consists of specific deliberate actions that increase the probability of success.
One dictionary definition I found online defined luck as success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than one's own actions. And they defined chance as something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause.
Skill does not guarantee success on every attempt, but over time the skillful person will have more success than the unskilled person as luck tends to evens out.
A champion marksman, for example, will hit the bullseye a lot of the time, but sometimes he will not. Variation will be caused by wind other factors that are not entirely under his control, but the more skilled the marksman is, the smaller his scatter pattern will be. An unskilled shooter might hit the bullseye a few times, but his scatter will be all over the place when compared to the skilled marksman. The variance will be smaller when the marksman exercises greater control over those factors that can be controlled.
As Edward Gibbon said, The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Thomas Jefferson said, I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Einstein said, Luck comes from interest, focal point, perseverance, and self-criticism. That is a good one that is worth thinking about.
Self-criticism is important. People who do not take responsibility for their own actions will have difficulty improving their circumstances.
I won't dispute that there is such as thing as luck. We all experience those fortunate circumstances and events which we did not earn and suffer difficulties that we did not bring on ourselves. Luck can be seen as a factor, but a factor that we can not control - at least not with regularity or precision.
It seems that some people have more good luck than others. There is a reason. They do the things they need to do to provide the opportunity for good luck and when those opportunities do occur, make the best of it. If you are out there metal detecting a lot, you have a much better chance of a pleasant surprise than if you spend very little time detecting. That is obvious, but also a clear example.
I occasionally talk about being at the right place at the right time. That might sound like a matter or luck, but there are things that you can do to dramatically increase the chances that you will be in the right place at the right time. One is more a matter of effort than skill - being out there a lot, but if you know the beaches and can read a beach well, you dramatically increase your chances of being at the right place at the right time. Those who randomly wander around will have some rare good luck, but not as often as those that have learned something about being in the right place at the right time. By studying the history and dynamics of beaches and knowing your beaches and their current state, you will more often be in the right place at the right time. That is why I began this blog - to help you with that.
Some people depend upon luck more than others. While there will always be some level of what we call luck involved, skillful people depend more upon skill, while the less skillful depend more upon luck. By being out there, you increase the opportunity for a stroke of luck, and by exercising skill, you increase the probability of success.
It is a natural human tendency to attribute success to your own good actions and attribute failure to bad luck. People tend to take credit for success and seek other things to blame for failure. A more effective strategy would be to analyze both good luck and failure to see if anything can be learned from either.
For some people, the world is a chaotic place, and they are the victim. For others, what happens to them is seen as being determined to a large extent by their own actions. Those differences are at the root of differences between political parties.
Placing emphasis on luck is a less effective strategy than placing emphasis on those things you can control. Seeing the world as a place where things are determined largely by luck, is self-defeating. It prevents analysis, learning and improvement.
Monitoring success and progress is important. It is difficult to improve without doing that. People improve when they analyze, put two and two together and adjust their behavior. Feedback is important, and you only get that when you monitor progress. Keeping track and keeping data helps. Attributing success or failure to an amorphous thing like luck does not help.
To sum it up, I'll accept that the element of luck plays a roll in metal detecting, but by developing and employing skill, you diminish the roll of luck. Some people seem to have more luck than others. Some of that (not all) is actually the result of skill. Some very unskillful people have been very lucky. It happens. But over the long term, skill will tend to overcome the element of luck.
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There is a new area to watch, but nothing that will affect us much real soon.
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| Source; nhc.noaa.gov. |
The surf will be two to four feet for the next few days, maybe increasing to three or four feet after that.
The high tides are nice and high.
I'll end with the Serenity Prayer, which seems fitting today.
TreasureGuide@comcast.net