I saw a TV version of this article quite a while ago, and like JacobAldridge I have used it a number of times in conversations about luck.<p>It certainly makes sense to me. You make your own luck by being more aware of things going on around you, so that you can spot opportunities that others might miss. Observing my own life, I feel that a lot of my "luck" has come from an ability to leap onto opportunities that others might have hesitated about for months - this despite the fact that I have a natural tendency to delay and be extremely conservative.<p>So my view is, if I can overcome this risk-averseness and take on opportunities that I'd normally be scared of, surely others can too. It's extremely hard to convince self-styled unlucky people of this, though. Perhaps I'm just bad at persuading them.
This reminds me of a recent study in bird personalities. It turns out there are very big differences from bird to bird in terms of curiosity and risk taking and other things.<p>And there is a huge body of scientific work about bird behavior EXCEPT that now it turns out the birds studied, trapped, tagged, etc, would have been a self selecting group of atypical super curious risk takers.<p>And all of this science is now suspected to be skewed.<p>And the fact that there are BOTH lucky and unlucky birds and people tells us that there's more than one way to optimize fitness.<p>Curiosity, optimism, luck work some times, and other times get you killed.<p>Now in the modern industrialized world, you're probably better of being open and optimistic and all the rest. But then again we've had an unprecedented multi-decade period of peace stability and economic growth.<p>If we are heading into a new great depression this might change.<p>Or imagine you're in some kind of accident or disaster, perhaps a building fire, and being a pessimist and super focused you bail at the first hint of smoke and single mindedly make it down the stairs as fast as possible and you're out and alive. Still a worried unlucky pessimist but alive. The lucky optimist on the other hand might have tried the elevator, when the heat expended both the elevator and the shaft, it got stuck, and the lucky optimists got cooked.<p>Just saying.
Unlucky people tend to be more focused on whatever they happen to be doing because they're worried about making a mistake. But there's quite a bit of evidence that this sort of conscious, focused thought uses up so many mental resources that it can actually become a hindrance. Professional athletes perform significantly worse when they actively contemplate their behavior, and focusing on something prevents the mindwandering that's necessary for creative, insightful solutions. Your subconscious is a HUGE part of your brain, but focusing too hard on something makes it harder to use it.
I've always thought of myself as being very lucky. When I was younger, I attributed this to the fact that my parents were Christians and that 'God was watching over us.' But in truth, my mind seems overwhelmingly to ignore the bad and remember the good. This is partly due to my narcissism. I'm special!<p>Now as an atheist, I've come to accept and indeed appreciate the role of pure, random chance in our lives. What happens to is is not determined solely by us, but but rather by our response to our situations, over which we have not control.<p>Thought experiment: Let's say that there is someone with whom you would be a perfect romantic match-your values align, etc. But let's say that on the day you meet them, they happened not to eat breakfast. They were so hungry, that just a minute before you saw them, they had to eat a biscuit, leaving residue in their teeth. "Ewww!", you say, in ignorance.<p>Thing like this happen Every.Single.Day. There are probably thousands of Einsteins who will die in poverty and obscurity. That's life. Failure to realize this is part of what causes Fundamental Attribution Error.
I remember this article from when it first came out - in 2003 - and have used the newspaper / picture story as an example countless times.<p>If you don't believe you create the reality you experience, think again. Blaming external factors, like luck, just absolves us of our own responsibility to ourselves.
He has convolved luck with happiness.<p>If someone believes he is happy, he is happy.<p>If someone believes he is the lucky, he is not necessarily lucky.<p>Seeing the world rose colored glasses does not make you any luckier, it makes you happier. By only asking for those that self-identified as lucky or unlucky, he has failed to isolate the variable of happiness.<p>Here is an excerpt from the book which points out the author's faulty reasoning.<p>"On average both `lucky' and `unlucky' participants lost about £2.50. Wiseman's conclusion: `The results indicated that luck wasn't due to psychic ability'."<p>In this quote it is revealed that the people who "felt" lucky really weren't lucky. In fact, they were about as lucky as the people who felt unlucky. The people who were "lucky" also expected to win twice as much as people who felt "unlucky". So his whole experiment is flawed.<p>This is the type of optimism hawked by many self-help gurus. But then again, it doesn't really matter if your situation really has improved with these "tips" as the Romans found out with church and bread and circuses. Keep the plebs amused and fearful and they will willfully ignore everything else.
Tunnel vision is caused by stress. It also represents the worldview that all-you-see is all-there-is. It's a kind of solipsism. What makes what <i>you</i> see so significant? Literally, it is true that you can only observe from your point of view; and that you are always at the center of your horizons. So it's an understandable mistake to make.<p>But to appreciate the unknown requires humility - it's not just that you don't know the answers, but that you do not know the question; cannot even conceive of the question. It's a door being unlocked, where you didn't even know there was a doorway.<p>When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. It's not that the teacher arrives, but that we are surrounded by teachers at all times, and we can only see them when we are ready. That's when they appear.
<i>They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety</i><p>This may be tangential to the discussion at hand, but for many, like myself, who tend to be shy and hesitant to reach out to others, this seems like one good way to overcome that. If you make it into a game, it can become less stressful. Anyone else have any other ideas like this?<p>[Edit - Formatting]
Parcel this up as a message about making your own luck or being determined, taking advantage of opportunities or consciously priming your selection bias in your favour, and some kinds of people are all over it.<p>Parcel up the same message as positive thinking, cosmic ordering, the law of attraction or subjective reality, and the same types trip over themselves to be the first to ridicule it.<p>And it does seem to be the same core message.
<p><pre><code> > 'For fun, I placed a second large message
> halfway through the newspaper: "Stop
> counting. Tell the experimenter you have
> seen this and win £250." Again, the unlucky
> people missed the opportunity because they
> were still too busy...
</code></pre>
Uh huh. Was this 'study' financed to the tune of thousands of pounds? Or were the offers rescinded from all those light-hearted, open-minded, happy, lucky people who are good and deserving in every way, especially when compared to bad, sick-hearted unlucky people who probably molest their pets and deserve to be poor because they're actually inferior in deep spiritual ways when you think about it, especially when you think about the matter 'scientifically', with like, stats and everything?<p>Or, was the offer of £250 not actually ever made?<p>The article reaks of a kind of manufacturable 'luck' that it nevertheless did not mention.
For an alternate (and more rigorous) view on the feedback between positive outlook and positive experience, see Martin Seligman's <i>Learned Optimism</i>.<p>In it, he describes a number of experiments to show that how optimistic we are depends on how we choose to interpret past events. He also shows that increased optimism has measurable positive effects in many occupations and that a person's seemingly inherent level of optimism can usually be changed through a set of behavioral exercises. (However, he also points out that optimism can be a detriment in some circumstances.)
If you ever want an interesting look into the psyche of a person / have them reveal themselves, ask them to describe to you situations in which they were 'lucky' (from a book "On Flirting")
I am thinking of the words <i>opters</i> and <i>non-opters</i> to describe such people. Lucky/unlucky would mean they have better odds at games with random elements such as roulette, or better chance of walking over money on the street or so on.<p>[Edit] As jodrellblank replied that would mean a person for which the laws of probability/statistics do not apply. [/Edit]<p><i>opter</i> - n. A person(or agent) who is good at seeking opportunities and is able to take advantage of them.
luck, by its meaning of definition, cannot be determined or manupilated.You can either define the situation as your luck or your willingness, it just depends on how you see the context.
Luck, fate and willingness.How all those are related to each other is best examined in the Kieslowski's movie Blind Chance.<p>I was just thinking about this issue today because the house that i wanted to rent was just rented to someone else. It was depressing & important for several reasons. I keep asking myself: "what if i called the broker earlier, just a day before? Could i have the chance to rent the house?" Well, i might be act earlier but i didn't know about the house earlier, the reason that i didn't know, well i had to do something that day..and this goes and goes and goes...Its like the Feyman video that i watched from here, some very simple things can branches into very complicated and sophisticated manners.
This also partly mentioned in the funeral monologue from Synecdoche, NY <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0</a>
Don't take luck personally; there isn't enough luck out there for everyone to be as lucky as Bill Gates.<p>There are a lot of things out there that guarantee success. Low risk, and time consuming. Most people are too scared of high risk endeavors to attempt anything high risk more than a few times in their entire lives.
I am someone who seems to often have phenomenal "good luck". My subjective experience is that it also relates to how you treat other people. Just being consistently polite and having good boundaries opens up opportunities in a big way -- often to a degree that astonishes me.
Didn't the Pierson's Puppeteers breed for luck? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers#Foreign_policy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers#Foreign_...</a>
This article highlights a reason that 12-hour work days could be a bad idea for startups. Perhaps you'll be working so hard on your Odeo that you won't get "lucky" and find your Twitter.
I wish I could know how the luckies and unluckies would have done on the "marshmallow test" as 4-year-olds.<p>(Then I'd make the "luckies" be guards and the "unluckies" be prisoners...)
I read an article about this once. Here's the gist of it: if you want to be lucky, you should gamble, etc. only when the entropy levels are higher than usual.
Anybody else annoyed by what a blatant advertisement this is for a self-help program?<p>"My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. ... After graduating from "luck school", she has passed her driving test after three years of trying, was no longer accident-prone and became more confident. ... The Luck Factor (Century), is available for £9.99 + £1.99 p&p. To order, please call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222."<p>To me the news here is, "Publishing company uses newspaper it owns to promote one of its books."