Author: Kyle Austin Young
_Kyle Austin Young_
Reading time: 24 minutes
Synopsis
The book Success is a Numbers Game (2025) shares a big secret. For every goal, there are hidden chances of success and failure. But most people never look at these chances. They also don’t try to change them. This book gives you a useful plan called “probability hacking.” It helps you understand your goals. It helps you find important choices and risks. You can then purposefully change the things that lead to success. This makes your chances of success higher every time you make a choice.
What’s in it for me? Learn to use chances.
Think about someone who got a “lucky break.” Maybe they got their dream job. Maybe they met the right investor. Or they were discovered at the right moment. We often think these things are like winning the lottery. We think they are just random good luck. But what if luck is not random? What if successful people understand how chances work? And what if people who fail often do not?
Every goal you have now has hidden numbers. There is a chance you will succeed. There is also a chance you will fail. These numbers change all the time. They change based on your choices. They change based on new things you try. And they change based on problems you fix. Most people never look at these chances. They don’t try to change them either. But there is a plan to do just that. It can turn luck into a smart way to win. It can turn big dreams into sure results. Success becomes less about hoping. It becomes more about creating the right situation to win.
Are you ready to learn how?
Blink 1 – There is no such thing as a miracle
It was February 1980, in Lake Placid. The US hockey team played against the Soviet Union. The US team had college players. The Soviet Union was a very strong team. They had won most games for 30 years. When the US team won, people called it the “Miracle on Ice.” But if you look closely, this win was not as unlikely as it seemed.
Every goal you want has two hidden numbers. One is the chance of success. The other is the chance of failure. Most people never think about failure. Why not? First, it is not fun to think about. Second, we usually only think about chances in sports or elections. But everything in life has chances.
Look at college graduation rates. For children whose parents earn over $108,000 a year, 990 out of 1,000 will likely finish college. For children whose parents earn under $63,000, only 290 out of 1,000 will likely finish. Why is there a difference? Children from rich families have fewer problems. They will not miss tuition payments. They will not need to work a very hard job. Children from rich families have better chances. So, one way to succeed is to choose goals where the chances are already on your side.
What about the 290 out of 1,000 poorer children who do graduate? They got lucky. That is another way to succeed: ignore the chances and hope for luck.
But good chances and luck are not the only ways to succeed. There are two more ways. One of them is to play the chances.
NBA player Kobe Bryant played the chances. He scored 5,000 more points than Shaquille O’Neal in their careers. But Kobe was not a better shooter. Shaq scored 582 shots out of 1,000 tries. Kobe only scored 447 shots out of 1,000 tries. So why did Kobe score more points? He simply tried to shoot 6,743 more times.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who started Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, also played the chances. Outside their factory, they have a “cemetery.” It celebrates all the ice cream flavors that did not sell well. They became famous for special flavors like Cherry Garcia. But their success was about numbers. Failing was an important part of their plan. They kept making many new flavors to see which ones people would like.
Let’s go back to the 1980 hockey game. The US team played the chances too. For 30 years, the Soviet team was the best. They played against 17 national teams. Only five teams ever beat them: USA, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Canada, and Sweden. The Soviets played most opponents less than four times. But they played these five countries much more often. They had at least seven games with each country in the Olympics. And these five countries were – you guessed it – the only ones who ever beat them. This was not a miracle.
It is a simple truth: if you play the chances often enough, you will win.
Blink 2 – Don’t settle for playing the odds
Imagine a writer sending short stories to magazines. Each story has about a 2 percent chance of being accepted. Do you want to get published? It’s simple – send your story to 50 magazines instead of 5. That’s playing the odds.
But playing the odds is not the smartest way. It just means you try more and more times to succeed. There is a fourth, better way: probability hacking. This means you smartly change the things that decide your chances.
Before you can start probability hacking, you need to understand some key things about chances.
First, chances are often based on guesses, not science. People often say your chance of being hit by lightning is one in a million. This is wrong. It is actually more like 1 in 15,300. This is still not very likely, but it is 65 times more likely than one in a million.
Second, even correct chances assume you are average. An average US man has a 1 in 1.2 million chance of playing in the NBA. He is more likely to be hit by lightning. But the average US man is 5 feet 9 inches tall. If you are between 6 feet and 6 feet 3 inches, your chances quickly become 1 in 100,000. If you are between 6 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 7 inches? Then it’s 1 in 8,000.
Third, chances are tied to how each person tries. Job seekers usually get an interview 2 to 3 percent of the time. But you are four times more likely to get an interview and the job itself if someone from the company recommends you.
Fourth, to understand your chances of reaching a goal, you need to multiply the chances of each step happening. For example, you want to be a New York firefighter. You need to pass a physical test with 8 parts. These include climbing stairs with weights and breaking open a door with a sledgehammer. Let’s say you are 90 percent sure you can do 7 of the 8 parts. But you are only 30 percent sure you can do the sledgehammer part. Your total chance of passing the test? Only 11.9 percent. Your chance of reaching a goal will never be higher than the chance of your hardest step. Without that sledgehammer step, your chances of passing the test would be more than three times higher.
The more steps that must go right for you to succeed, the lower your chance of success. But there is good news: every time you finish a step, your total chances go up. And the more you know about your own chances, the better you can smartly change them.
Blink 3 – What’s the worst that could happen?
You have a goal. Maybe it is getting a promotion. Maybe it is starting a small business. The usual advice is: Define your goal. Break it into small steps. Work hard. Learn from your failures. But probability hacking changes this idea completely. There is only one main piece of advice: make bad things less likely to happen.
Here is why. For any goal, the chance of all possible results always adds up to 100 percent. You cannot make success more likely without making failure less likely. They are two parts of the same thing. So, once you know your goal, the real work starts. You must plan every way things could go wrong. Then, you must remove those problems one by one.
The tool for this is a “success diagram.”
First, define your goal clearly. “Get promoted to senior analyst by December” is better than “advance my career.”
Next, find the important points. These are the moments where everything depends. For that promotion, maybe it is doing well on your Q4 project. It could be getting good marks in your performance review. Or having your manager speak up for you when decisions are made.
Now comes the most important part: think about possible bad results at each important point. Maybe the Q4 project fails. Your review is not very good. Budget cuts stop all promotions. Billy from accounting gets the promotion instead of you.
Most people stop here. They think these things are out of their control. Sometimes that is true. If a meteor hits the office before promotion time, you are out of luck. But think about Billy getting the promotion. It feels like you cannot change this. You are not the one choosing between yourself and Billy. But here is a trick that even a three-year-old knows: ask why. Then ask why again. And then ask why one more time.
Billy gets promoted. Why? Management likes him more. Why? His work seems more important. Why? He is better at showing what he does. Now you have found something you can change. The answer is not magic. Start writing down your wins. Share your progress in meetings. Make sure the right people see what you are doing.
Whether you succeed or fail, look at your success diagram afterwards. Which bad things happened? Which ones did you stop? What dangers did you miss? This is how you get better at changing the chances in your favor.
Blink 4 – Make every choice a smart choice
In blackjack, the rules are simple. Get as close to 21 as you can without going over. And beat the dealer’s cards. This is one of the few casino games where the casino has only a small advantage. If you play blackjack perfectly, always making the best choice, the casino’s advantage is only 0.5 percent. But in 2022, casinos in Nevada still earned $1.3 billion from blackjack. Why? Because playing perfectly means making the smartest choice every time. And most players do not.
Reaching difficult goals works in the same way. Whether you are starting a new business or getting healthier, you will make many decisions. Even one bad choice can stop everything. The average American makes 35,000 decisions every day. So, how can you make smart choices all the time?
First, before you look at your choices, ask yourself this: Am I really thinking about the best choices? Do not just pick between the first two ideas you see. There might be 98 other ideas. If you are unhappy at work, the choice is not just “stay or quit.” Maybe you can ask for better terms. Maybe you can move to a different department. You could work part-time while you try something new. Or you could take a break from work. Think more broadly.
Second, draw a success diagram for each serious choice. Map out the important turning points. And map out the possible bad results. If you are thinking about going to graduate school, what are the key steps? Getting accepted, getting money for it, passing exams, finishing your main paper. What could go wrong at each step? Now you can see which path has the fewest problems.
Third, compare each possible future with how things are now. This means a future where you do nothing different. Sometimes staying still is more risky than it seems. Sometimes the big change you are thinking about is not so big when you compare it to doing nothing.
Fourth, only choose an option if you are truly ready to accept what happens if it completely fails. Not just deal with it, but truly accept it. If you start that business and it fails, and you lose your savings, can you live with that? If not, you have not found the right path yet.
Finally, when you have many good choices, stop asking “Which one?” Instead, ask “Which one now?” You do not have to pick one path forever. You are choosing what to do first. This new way of thinking can show you chances you might have missed.
Blink 5 – Know when to quit
You know the old saying, Quit while you’re ahead? It means to stop if something looks like it will fail. You cut your losses and start again. But probability hacking does not agree with this idea. It says, Turn your failures into success.
Think about restaurants. It is a very hard business. Many restaurants fail. But during the pandemic, fewer people visited restaurants. Bloomin’ Brands, which owns Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s, did not just wait. They looked at what they already had. They had kitchens in hundreds of places. They had suppliers. They had trained staff. So they started Tender Shack. It was a chicken brand only for delivery. It used the same kitchens. They did not need new places. They did not need new money. They just used what they had in a new way. This new online brand grew fast across the country. It brought in new customers who had never ordered from their other restaurants.
So how can you make a similar change? A good way is to add new things to the plan. This completely changes your chances. The Red Hot Chili Peppers released three albums that were not very popular. Then they added a young guitarist, John Frusciante. Their next album sold millions of copies. The Killers played in small bars in Nevada. They were not getting anywhere. Then they signed with a British record company. This opened them up to a new world. Their song “Mr. Brightside” became famous everywhere. New things, new chances.
Sometimes the chances look truly bad. But walking away feels wrong. Here is an idea: stop the main goal for a while. Take a side trip. Learn new skills. Collect more resources. Build new relationships. Come back when you are stronger and have better options. Or use a “Hail Mary diagram.” It is like a success diagram. But instead of showing problems, it shows possible big breakthroughs. Frankenson’s Pizza was a small pizza shop. They took a huge chance. They emailed food critic Keith Lee. Lee made a great review video for his millions of followers. The shop became famous overnight. Was this likely? No, it was very unlikely. But trying for this big chance was better than giving up completely.
What if your goal seems too big? Make it smaller. People always tell us to aim high. But often, you just get lost and run out of energy. Amazon is the biggest shop in the world. Jeff Bezos did not start by trying to sell everything. He started with books. One type of product, one market, full focus. He became very good at selling books. Then he used that success to sell other things. Each win helped him move to the next step.
This plan is not about giving up when things get hard. It is about being smarter with the things you control. This means changing what you have. Adding new things. Planning your moves well. And making your goals fit what you can do now. Chances are not your destiny. They are things you can learn to change.
Blink 6 – Take the unfair advantage
Michael Phelps seemed perfect for swimming. His arms were longer than his height. His body was long. His legs were short. This helped him move faster in the water. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he won eight gold medals. This was very difficult to do. Then in 2009, something surprising happened. Phelps lost. He did not lose to his main rival, Ryan Lochte. He lost to a German teenager named Paul Biedermann. Why? Biedermann wore a special supersuit. It pressed his body. It made less water pull on him. It also held air for more floatation. The suit was so good that FINA banned it the next year. This special suit temporarily made the game equal for a short time, even against the best swimmer ever.
There is one last part of probability hacking to look at: competition. There will always be someone who seems to have a better chance to get what you want. First, remember this: you often compare your hidden struggles to someone else’s best moments. But as Biedermann showed, even if you are truly not as good as your competitor, one smart trick can change everything.
The “reverse probability hack” is a powerful tool. Draw a success diagram, but not for yourself. Draw it for your competitor. Map out their important points. And map out their possible bad results. Then, use those weaknesses. In the 2012 presidential race, the Obama team saw Mitt Romney’s wealth as a weakness. It could make him seem out of touch with normal Americans. They kept talking about this. This turned Romney’s financial success into a problem for him.
Another idea? Change the game completely. If you cannot win the game as it is, then change the game you are playing. Netflix could not beat Blockbuster in physical stores. So, they changed to sending DVDs by mail. Then they changed to streaming online videos. They did not beat Blockbuster in Blockbuster’s game. They made Blockbuster’s game not important anymore.
Or think about timing. Sometimes your competitor is weak at certain times. For example, during changes, growth, or when leaders change. A new restaurant opening nearby is busy with its launch. It is not focused on keeping its customers from you. That is when you should focus more on loyalty programs and connecting with the community.
The point is not to worry too much about competitors. It is to understand that chances are not just about what you do. They are also about how you compare to others. And you can actively plan your position.
Final summary
In this summary of Success Is a Numbers Game by Kyle Austin Young, you have learned something important. Success is not about miracles or luck. It is about knowing that every goal has chances of success and failure. And you can smartly change these chances.
Instead of just working harder or trying more times, “probability hacking” means this. You find the specific things that decide your chances. Then you smartly change them. This means looking at more choices before you pick one. It means planning for possible bad results at every important step. It means using what you already have in new ways. Or even looking at your competitor’s weak points to use them.
This plan teaches that chances are not fixed. They are like conditions you can learn to change for your benefit. You do this by making smarter choices, being in a better position, and making small changes as you go.
Okay, that’s it for this summary. We hope you enjoyed it. If you can, please take the time to leave us a rating – we always appreciate your feedback. See you soon.
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/success-is-a-numbers-game-en