The Luck Factor Part I

I've never been particularly superstitious.  Even when I was younger, I never really had what some people would call a "good luck charm".  Don't get me wrong, I've read a number of studies suggesting that "good luck charms" or common sayings like "Break a leg" or actions such as crossing one's fingers do occasionally positively impact performance (see, for example, a study by Lysann Damisch and colleagues, "Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance").  I guess that I've always felt that you create your own luck, and by "create" I don't mean using a superstitious charm, saying, or action.  

I've talked about "creating your own luck" in the past (see my posts, "It's better to be lucky than good", "Good luck is the twin of hard work", and "Lucky Breaks").  However, in today's post I wanted to focus on two books that I recently came across that talk about luck.  The first one is Max Gunther's book from 1977, The Luck Factor: Why some people are luckier than others and how you can become one of them.  The second is a little more recent and was written in 2003 by Richard Wiseman, which is also called The Luck Factor.  Both books are very similar.

Gunther suggests that there are five characteristics that distinguish people that we would call lucky from people that we would call unlucky.  All five characteristics involve an attitude toward life and the people that we encounter.  In his research, Gunther consistently finds that the lucky individuals possess all five characteristics, while those who are unlucky do not.  Here are the five characteristics:

1. The Spiderweb Structure

Gunther says, "The luckiest men and women are those who have taken the trouble to form a great many friendly contacts with other people."  "Lucky" individuals go out of their way to be friendly and talk with strangers.  They form connections with other people that create opportunities.  I am reminded of Mark Granovetter's study, "The Strength of Weak Ties".  Granovetter found that our infrequent, casual relationships ("weak ties") are often the ones that are more beneficial to us than our close, frequent relationships ("strong ties"), at least in regards to accessing new information or opportunities.  It follows then that the more acquaintances we have, the greater our opportunities!  The so-called "lucky" individuals are simply taking the most advantage of the connections that they have made to put themselves in the position to be lucky.

2. The Hunching Skill

Gunther says, "A hunch is a piece of mind stuff that feels something like knowledge but doesn't feel perfectly trustworthy...a capacity to generate accurate hunches, and then to trust them and act on them would go a long way towards producing luck."  Gunther further suggests that "lucky people...are often people who have discovered intuitively how to plumb that well of subsurface knowledge inside themselves."

3.  "Audentes Fortunate Juvat"

Gunther suggests that the common cliche, "Fortune favors the bold" is exactly right.  Lucky people know when to act on their hunches, even if it requires taking risks.  He writes, "As a group, lucky people tend to be bold people.  The most timid men and women I've met in my travels have also been...the least lucky...Boldness helps create good luck."  He adds a cautionary note that boldness isn't the same as rashness.  Lucky individuals aren't afraid to take risks, but they are careful about the risks that they do take.

4. The Ratchet Effect

Gunther says, "A ratchet is a device that preserves gains."  Lucky individuals seem to have organized their lives so that they preserve their gains and limit their losses.  Perhaps the most important aspect of Gunther's "ratchet effect" is knowing when to admit that you are making a mistake and change course.  Lucky individuals have that knack to be able to think beyond sunk costs and move forward.

5.  The Pessimism Paradox

Gunther suggests that lucky people are not generally optimistic in nature.  Instead, they lean towards the pessimistic side of the spectrum by constantly trying to prepare for the unexpected and always thinking about what can go wrong (Murphy's Law).  The lucky people expect and prepare for the worst, that way they are never surprised.  Gunther suggests, "Never enter a situation without knowing what you will do when it goes wrong."

Next time, I will cover what Richard Wiseman has to say about "creating your own luck."