I first heard about the Luck Surface Area from Esteban Dalel during the Pioneer Summit in San Francisco. It is just a fancy way to say that you should expose yourself to situations that might positively impact you.
On the other side, you should also avoid situations with an expected value <=0 (i.e. a bar fight, where you might get very unlucky). However, this has already been discussed many times.
I think Location-Based Behavior is a far more exciting concept. Location-Based Behavior implies that geography affects your luck surface area, so you should decide how to maximize it differently depending on where you are.
Act accordingly if you're paying 10x to live in San Francisco or any other major US city. It's not efficient to be sitting in front of your laptop the whole day. Go out and talk to people. If you have to do that kind of focused-deep-work, move to a cheaper country with better living conditions—and enter monk mode.
This is not to say there's no value in being on a US tech hub for some months a year—if you use it to multiply your Surface Luck Area. How? By doing things that put you in situations where you can meet people that are relevant to what you're doing. This might be spending $330/mo at Equinox or $400/mo for a hot desk at WeWork. In principle, you're not getting the best value for your money, but you're paying to increase your Surface Luck Area.
