TL;DR: There is an ancient Chinese proverb that lists the ten variables determining human success: "1. Destiny, 2. Luck, 3. Feng Shui, 4. Karma, 5. Education, 6. Name, 7. Appearance, 8. Revering the Gods, 9. Noble Benefactors, 10. Health." To the modern ear, this sounds like superstitious folklore. But as a systems architect, when I analyze this through the lens of data science, behavioral economics, and network theory, I realize the ancients weren't talking about magic. They were describing a highly accurate, 10-variable algorithm for compounding leverage in the game of life.
James here, CEO of Mercury Technology Solutions. Hong Kong - March 8, 2026
Whenever I look at the trajectories of successful tech founders, executives, or even political figures, people always want to reduce their success to a single metric: "They worked hard" or "They were smart."
That is a mathematically flawed way to view human outcomes. Success is a multivariate equation.
Thousands of years ago, Chinese philosophers codified this equation into ten variables: 一命二運三風水，四積陰德五讀書，六名七相八敬神，九交貴人十養生 (1. Destiny, 2. Luck, 3. Feng Shui, 4. Karma, 5. Education, 6. Name, 7. Appearance, 8. Gods, 9. Benefactors, 10. Health).
Let’s strip away the mysticism and translate this ancient proverb into modern Systems Engineering. Here is the actual operating system of human success.
The Hardware & The Network (Variables 1-3)
1. "Destiny" (Initial Hardware Parameters)
Your "Destiny" is simply your biological and socioeconomic base code—the hardware your parents installed. It dictates 80% of your operational ceiling. High processing power (IQ), high battery life (physical stamina), and a low defect rate (absence of ADHD or chronic illness) are pure genetic lotteries. Even "grit" and the capacity to sustain deep work are largely biological.
Add to this the socioeconomic starting point (62% of Silicon Valley founders come from the top 10% of wealthy families). "Destiny" is not a cosmic plan; it is your starting parameter in the simulation.
2. "Luck" (Asymmetric Timing)
Sir Isaac Newton was a genius, but if his hardware had booted up in 14th-century Ming Dynasty China instead of 17th-century England, he would have died an obscure, eccentric peasant staring at the sun.
Your hardware is only valuable if it matches the current software paradigm of the market. Luck is simply the intersection of your specific capabilities with macroeconomic timing. You cannot control luck, but you can increase your "surface area" for luck by constantly launching products, taking meetings, and making asymmetric bets.
3. "Feng Shui" (Geographic Leverage)
"Feng Shui" is not about arranging furniture; it is about cluster economics and geographic leverage. If Elon Musk is born in South Sudan, he dies in poverty. Because he moved to Canada and then Silicon Valley, he became the richest man on earth. Your geographic location dictates your cultural risk tolerance, your access to capital, and the quality of your peer network.
The Software & The User Interface (Variables 4-7)
4. "Karma" (Social Capital & Trust Metrics)
In the business world, we don't call it Karma; we call it Social Capital. You can acquire wealth through creation or extraction (stealing/scamming). Extraction yields fast short-term gains, but it destroys your trust metrics. In a hyper-connected economy, your reputation precedes you. If you screw over a partner, the network routes around you. "Accumulating Karma" simply means playing positive-sum games. It is the mathematical optimization of long-term compound interest.
5. "Education" (OS Updates)
In the ancient world, studying for the imperial exams was a massive capital expenditure (requiring the modern equivalent of buying a house in Beijing just to fund the tutors). Today, education is cheaper, but its function remains the same: It is the only way to manually overwrite the flawed behavioral loops installed by your parents. Reading is how you download patches to your operating system.
6 & 7. "Name and Appearance" (UI/UX and Brand Marketing)
Do not underestimate the User Interface. If your name is difficult to pronounce, or your brand is confusing, people will not adopt your product. (Would Hitler have taken over Germany if he used his obscure, complicated family name, Schicklgruber? Historians doubt it). Similarly, physical attractiveness is a documented economic multiplier. The "Halo Effect" means people subconsciously attribute higher intelligence and competence to attractive people. It is the ultimate UX hack.
The Maintenance Protocols (Variables 8-10)
8. "Revering the Gods" (Psychological Anchoring)
I have a highly successful colleague who flies to the Lama Temple in Beijing every year to pray. Does he believe a deity is manually altering his stock portfolio? No. He calls it "Goal Solidification."
Whether you worship a traditional God, or you worship "The Algorithm," or you worship "Data," humans need an external psychological anchor. Submitting to a higher ideal creates extreme mental resilience during the inevitable "Trough of Sorrow" in any business cycle.
9. "Noble Benefactors" (Network Nodes)
This variable should arguably be in the top three. The timeline for a human career is brutally short. In tech, you graduate at 24 and age out of peak employability by 35. You have 11 years to establish your financial fortress. You cannot do this through linear, trial-and-error progression. You need a "Super-Node" (a mentor, a VP, a primary investor) to bypass the gatekeepers and instantly grant you access to high-tier resources.
10. "Health" (Server Uptime)
By age 40, you finally have the network, the capital, and the emotional intelligence to dominate your industry. But if your physical server crashes because you neglected your health, all that accumulated software is useless. Health is the final multiplier. Zero times anything is zero.
Conclusion: Hacking the RPG
When you look at this 10-point list, you realize that the game of life is a massive, open-world RPG.
You spawn with a random set of base stats (Destiny, Feng Shui). You cannot control them. But you can control the patches you download (Education), the positive-sum games you play (Karma), the alliances you forge (Benefactors), and the server maintenance you perform (Health).
Stop looking for the one magic bullet of success. Audit your 10 parameters, find the bottlenecks in your algorithm, and start optimizing the code.
Mercury Technology Solutions: Accelerate Digitality.
