How to digitally hack your way to serendipity

Copyright: alphaspirit / 123RF Stock Photo

Why is it that the events that matter most are often the ones we can least predict?

You take a trial yoga class that inspires you to quit your job and travel. You get a new job after a random chat with someone you meet at an airport cafe who refers you to a company you’d never heard of before. You come up with a product feature that occurs to you while you’re taking a shower, which then goes on to revolutionize your product’s business model.

So, what’s the deal?

We’re often taught to believe that opportunities come through very specific ways. To get a job, for instance, you either apply for them through career websites or use your network. Why? Because we are psychologically wired to stick to things that match our expectations and discount those that don’t.

There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but it does bring into mind tunnel vision. This brings us to the importance of serendipity, which is the ability to take a chance occurrence — a surprising idea, person or event — and make creative use of it.

It’s still something that can be rather complicated to pull off in the midst of our busy lives. To counter that, here are a few digital serendipity hacks I’ve used to land my first job along with a number of hackathons around the world.

Use them, abuse them, or be amused by them.

Set Google Alerts

When I was hunting for my first job, I knew two things: that I wanted to work for an internet startup, and that I wanted to be in Southeast Asia. That said, I found it overwhelming to keep tabs on all the different startups gaining traction and funding.

The conventional approach would have been to scour through all the startup websites that exist, which I did. But I felt it would be a lot more efficient if I received a daily digest that had exactly what I wanted to see, condensed into one email.

Enter Google Alerts.

Become an idea machine

Keep calm and scour on