Bonus · How Lucky Are You?

How the count works

Pen and paper, twenty questions, and one point for each honest yes. Answer for the life you have today, not for your best day. Add it up at the end.

Each question sits beside a world figure. The picture is Earth as a grid of a hundred people. With about 8.2 billion people alive, each of the hundred stands for about 82 million. When the deck says 26 of 100, it means about a quarter of everybody alive.

The session opens with the prayer every hand in the room had made: O Allah, make me rich. Then the Qur'an, 14:34: try to count the favours of Allah and you will never reach the end. The count is that verse turned into an exercise.

The date shown for this session is the date printed on every slide of its deck.

The house and the table

The house. Safe drinking water is missing for about 2.1 billion people, and a safe toilet for about 3.4 billion (WHO and UNICEF). About 730 million live without electricity, and about 2 billion still cook over wood, dung or charcoal (IEA). About 2.8 billion live in inadequate housing (UN-Habitat).

The table. About 645 million people faced hunger, and about 2.1 billion had to cut the size or quality of their meals (UN SOFI). A healthy diet of fruit, milk and vegetables is beyond the budget of about 2.6 billion.

One figure scores no point. Around 13,000 children under five die every day, and nearly half of those deaths are linked to undernutrition (UN IGME and WHO). The deck puts it in the middle of the count on purpose.

These are the session's figures, with the sources the deck names. They are carried here as given, not checked by this app.

The wallet, the desk and the road

About 808 million people live on less than 3 US dollars a day (World Bank). About 1.3 billion adults have no bank account or mobile wallet (World Bank Findex). About 2.2 billion people are not online (ITU).

About 750 million adults cannot read (UNESCO). Roughly one adult in ten worldwide finished university, and fewer than one in a hundred holds a doctorate. The deck marks both of those as estimates.

Across 44 countries, barely a third of households own a car (Pew Research). Only about 11% of people took a flight in 2018, and only 2 to 4% fly abroad in a year (Gossling and Humpe). About 4.5 billion lack full cover for basic health services (WHO), and about 118 million have been forced from their homes (UNHCR).

The line the deck puts under it: luck is not a feeling, it is arithmetic.

The score, and net worth beside it

17 to 20: you are the answer to the prayers of most people alive. 11 to 16: past the world's midpoint, and still complaining. 0 to 10: you know this list better than any slide does, so keep it, and one day show your children where everything started.

Income is only part of the picture. Net worth, everything you own minus every loan, is the rest. On the session's figures, from the UBS Global Wealth Report, about 8,700 US dollars puts an adult above half the adults in the world, about 175,000 puts them in the top 10%, and about 1.1 million in the top 1%. Four adults in ten hold under 10,000.

Count the house, the plot, the car, the gold, the savings and the business. Then subtract every loan. It is the same arithmetic as Science of Money, pointed at a different question.

The deck also points to an online calculator that ranks a household's income after tax against the world. Its example: a person in Britain taking home 50,000 pounds a year is in the richest 1%.

Nobody in the room is poor

Poor means walking two hours to fill a bucket. Poor is a boy who cannot write his own name. That is the session's definition, and it is deliberately hard.

This month, somebody in the room may be unpaid, underpriced or unemployed. Those three are real, and all three can be fixed. The first kind of poverty is not something a course fixes.

The effect the session names: inherited scarcity, the rules you were handed about never having enough, shrinks once you count what you hold instead of what you lack.

A hadith reported by Tirmidhi gives the whole list in three items. Whoever wakes up safe among his people, healthy in body, with food for the day, has been given the whole world.

Three things to change

Retire one sentence. 'When I become rich' puts your life on hold for a day that, by the count, has mostly arrived. Say instead: 'With what I already have, I will…', and finish the sentence.

Work the asset. A phone, a connection, a degree. On the deck's figures, 27 of every 100 people alive are not online at all. Make one paid attempt every week using something you own today.

Pay rent on your luck. Give something every month: money, an hour, or a skill. The reason given is the Qur'an, 14:7: gratitude is answered with more.

The written work. Post your score out of 20 with one line on why you are already rich. List twenty things you own that money could not quickly buy, and read the list to somebody outside the course. And give something away before Friday, with no screenshot. In the session's words, that one stays between you and Allah.

Your note

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