Successful people are keen on telling their success story while people who did not win are busy trying agian or have depression in quiet corner, hopefully short term. Any characteristics derived from self-reported or externally observed data that successful group shares is always askewed due to selection or surviorship bias because of this.<p>The only true thing here is: people who analyze the data more and reason based on this, can draw better outcome. It is not luck, but yes, might look like one.<p>Cheers!
Robert Greene explains in a video his 48th law of power.<p>The rule is there is no rule. Life is fluid he says. You've got to pickup the little clues, use your intuition and your gut feelings.<p>This perfectly matches my experience of life. When you arrives in a situation with a premade plan and execute blindly, it often fails dramatically, even if on paper you did exactly what you were supposed to. Especially with people of course. You've got to go with the "flow", read the room, feel the air. Sometimes it almost feels magical. Even the light a particular day will be different and somehow, things are different - the people in the street, the mood of your boss, everything.<p>The great leaders are masters at that. I often think about the current China leader for example. It's just an example.<p>Do you picture what a person must pull off to get that seat? It's unimaginable. You've got to smell the "bullets" coming miles away before they're even shot, from a shooter you dont even know. Just on a hunch because that day, the light was different.
I remember someone telling me that they thought of luck as being as one of four kinds:<p>- blind luck (which is what people usually mean by "luck")<p>- stirring the pot (if you apply to 100 jobs you might get more "luck" than if you applied for just 10)<p>- domain expertise (the more knowledge you have, the more opportunities you can spot that others might miss)<p>- reputation (if you're the world's best painter then when people want a painting they'll immediately think of you)
My personal experience is that quite often "luck" is just someone winning via statistics.<p>After all, when you try something that has a 1% probability of success seventy times, it becomes a coin toss whether you succeed at least once.<p>I was "lucky" with the apartment I bought because I've become obsessed with checking listings and at one point was doing it several times a day.<p>Took eight months to find the right property and now when I talk with people looking for a place everyone swears that there's nothing for sale in my area.<p>The truth is that there is - 3-4 times a year and you have to call the same day, because it gets bought immediately.
My mum just finds 4-leaf clovers everywhere. It’s not serendipity, she looks for them, but she has the uncanniest ability to find them. Similarly my wife can spot animals in the wild like a drone, it’s insane. She’d be the woman on the boat saying “look! Dolphins!”. We go diving together and she sees 10 times the amount of stuff I can see.<p>I dont think this has anything to do with focusing or not, and letting things happen, or what not. Both my wife and my mom are extremely focused. This is something else entirely that’s hard-wired in the brain.
Reminds me of the old phrase, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity". The strategies discussed in this article seem to maximize the "opportunity" side of that equation.
Luck has been associated with "happiness" in many cultures across the last few thousand years. There is a concept of management accounting of "rewarding for b while hoping for a". I think the soft focus that allows for creativity helps "luck", but everyone who "knows better than you" wants to proud out good behavior by rewarding for b.
Luck favors the prepared and all that.<p>But leaving aside starting points, etc. I can still think of two specific points in my career that had a pretty much seamless transition that could have gone very badly (and did for a number of co-workers). Yes, I had the network, but they were generally fairly precarious times and things came together very quickly.
I find luck very strange. On one hand, I try to be rational and interpret it as just statistics. On the other, I sometimes get creeped out at seemingly “too good to be true” luck. As in sometimes money just falls from the sky among other seemingly impossible things.
I think of Charlie Munger's "good investment is knowing when it's wise to not diversify". The luckiest people I know tend to have a soft, scattered approach as advocated in the article, followed by striking hard and quadrupling down when they find something that works. Arnold Schwarzenegger is very lucky and he uses that strategy. "My genetics and frame are perfect for body building? Guess I'll quadruple down on it."
Great article and I very much agree with the message, but I feel the need to point out that you are misspelling the name of Richard Wiseman as "Wiesemen" throughout!
Imagine a group of people on vacation in Spain. They decide to take a tour bus to visit a new town a few hours away.<p>About halfway into the journey the bus engine dies and the bus comes to a halt and can no longer continue.<p>Half the people storm off the bus complaining. “How could this happen??” “Our vacation is ruined!” “Worst vacation ever!!”<p>The other half gets off the bus and says, “Let’s explore this area today!”<p>I consider myself a very lucky person. Being lucky doesn’t mean nothing bad happens. It means when things go wrong, we are like water and easily adjust to the new circumstances.<p>The way to be lucky is to built these three essential ingredients: Resilience, Optimism and Gratitude.<p>I would go further and say the key to a great life is Resilience, Optimism and Gratitude.
I think my focus is hardening as I get older. This might also be why I find myself in situations now where I just can’t make sense of whatever hot garbage UI that tool X rearranged for no apparent reason. I have a lot of pattern recognition from using computers so much but my focus is sometimes so narrow that I will not see something that I might have if I softened my focus.