1102: How to be “Lucky” by Hacking Hidden Markets to Get More What You Want with Judd Kessler

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How to be Awesome at Your Job

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4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Judd Kessler discusses how to navigate the hidden markets that decide how scarce resources—like time and attention—get distributed.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) Why some people seem to score more coveted resources

2) The counterintuitive advantages of settling

3) An easy way to become the more appealing candidate

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1102 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT JUDD —

Judd B. Kessler is the author of LUCKY BY DESIGN: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want and the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. For his work on the hidden market of organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes. He is an award-winning teacher as well as a sought-after speaker.

• Book: Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want

• Book site: GetLuckyByDesign.com

• LinkedIn: Judd Kessler

• Website: JuddBKessler.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Study: “Propose with a rose? Signaling in internet dating markets” by Soohyung Lee and Muriel Niederle

• Book: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

• Book: Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin Roth

• Past episode: 015: David Allen, The World’s Leading Authority on Productivity

• Past episode: 482: David Allen Returns with the 10 Moves to Stress-Free Productivity

• Past episode: 1090: How to Get Recruiters to Compete for You with Madeline Mann

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If you start to think about what a hidden market is, it's when there's a scarce resource,
0:14.4	we're not going to just raise the price, decide who gets it. We're going to have some other set of rules.
0:18.8	Well, that describes our time and attention
0:21.2	very well. We have a limited amount of it. We are deciding how to allocate our scarce resources
0:27.4	to the projects and the people and the activities that matter most to us. And so thinking about
0:32.8	the same principles of what is this market trying to achieve and is it doing it and is it doing
0:37.3	it in a way that we kind of value.
0:50.7	That's Judd Kessler.
0:51.8	He's an award-winning professor, market designer, and economist at Wharton.
0:55.3	He's also the author of the new book, Lucky By Design, the hidden economics you need to get more of what you want.
1:01.3	So you'll learn one, why some people seem to score more coveted resources, two, the counterintuitive advantages of settling, and three, an easy way to become the more appealing candidate. And if you want
1:11.7	a quick summary write-up of some of these actual takeaways, I recommend you sign up for the free
1:14.9	Golden Nugget email newsletter, which you can find at awesome at your job.com. I'm Pete McItis. This is
1:19.5	How to Be Awesome at Your Job. And now here's Judd.
1:26.2	Judd, welcome. Thanks for having me.
1:28.6	Well, I'm so excited to talk about this stuff.
1:30.9	This is a concept I don't think people even know exists.
1:35.1	Can you share with us what is a hidden market and why should professionals care about them?
1:41.2	Great question.
1:42.2	My favorite question because I've been thinking about
1:44.4	hidden markets for a long time. So let me tell you what I think of as a visible market, the kind
1:50.3	of markets we're used to, and that'll help us think about what a hidden market is. So visible
	...

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