The luck factor
Is luck just fate, or can you change it? A groundbreaking new scientific study of the phenomenon of luckand the ways we can bring good luck into our lives. What is luck? A psychic gift or a question of intelligence? And what is it that lucky people have that unlucky people lack? Psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman put luck under a scientific microscope for the very first time, examining the different ways in which lucky and unlucky people think and behave. After three years of intensive interviews and experiments with over 400 volunteers, Wiseman arrived at an astonishing conclusion: Luck is something that can be learned. It is available to anyone willing to pay attention to the Four Essential Principles:. Creating Chance Opportunities. Thinking Lucky. Feeling Lucky. Denying Fate Readers can determine their capacity for luck as well as learn to change their luck through helpful exercises that appear throughout the book. Illustrated with anecdotes from the lives of the famous such as Harry Truman and Warren Buffett, The Luck Factor also richly portrays the lives of ordinary people who have been extraordinarily lucky or unlucky. Finally Dr. Wiseman gives us a look into "The Luck School" where he instructs unlucky people and also teaches lucky people how to further enhance their luck. Smart, enlightening, fun to read, and easy to follow, The Luck Factor will give you revolutionary insight into the lucky mind and could, quite simply, change your life.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
10mentions
9people
2009–2023years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- To me the advise given by Richard Wiseman in his book titled “The Luck Factor” from 2003 feels like the most generalized. TLDR is lucky people: (0) are social and intentionally seek out new connections; (1) maximize chance opportunities, they’re not fixated on a grand plan; (2) nurture and listen to their intuition; (3) expect good fortune; (4) find the good in bad situations.
Here are links to:
- https://www.amazon.com/Luck-Factor-Richard-Wiseman/dp/078686...
- TLDR: Pre-product-market fit (childhood) is not equal to post-product-market fit (adulthood) — and trying to clone an adult company without true product-market fit yourself significantly increases odds of never reaching product-market fit.
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While there likely endless list of advice on reaching product-market fit, to me, advise given by Richard Wiseman in his book titled “The Luck Factor” feels like the most generalized. TLDR is lucky people: (0) are social and intentionally seek out new connections; (1) maximize chance opportunities, they’re not fixated on a grand plan; (2) nurture and listen to their intuition; (3) expect good fortune; (4) find the good in bad situations.
Here are links to:
- http://richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf
- https://youtube.com/watch?v=WizT_VdtOYM
On a side note, never been able to live in Bay Area, but really enjoy startups. If anyone has any suggestions beyond HN for startup related online communities that are friendly to anonymous users, please comment below.
- I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard Wiseman.
I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get probability more on your side:
- Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others won't
- Only keep friends around you that actually support you. It's really hard to try to make life changes when people are constantly telling you you can't or shitting on your parade.
- Start making analytical choices. Certain fields pay more than others. Certain businesses treat their employees better than others. A lower position at a better company will increase your probability of "bumping" into those people who might be life changing.
- Learn about probability (Fooled by Randomness is a good start). If you constantly expose yourself to more chances of success, _odds are_, you'll start to find more of it.
- Ah, Jonathan Haidt haven't heard of him in a long while. I second this. If you like stuff like this, then you also might like:
- Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng-Tan
- The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman
I read the Happiness Hypothesis quite late in my development regarding "how to be come happier?" I already knew a lot of the ideas in there, but it presented its ideas a bit more clearly than whatever I read from Martin Seligman (many books) and Suzanne Segerstrom (Optimism).
This is why I'd still recommend that book.
I also recommend to read the concept on self-learned helplessness (Seligman researched it) if you haven't already.
One book that I actively disrecommend nowadays is Man's Search for Meaning. I didn't look too deep into it, but there's a lot of controversy on the truth of his claims (e.g. some claim he was in the concentration camps for a few days, not months or years like he implicitly depicts).
Disclaimer: it's these types of books that motivated me to do an entire undergraduate degree in psychology back 6 years ago. Only to realize most of it is nonsense. Yet, at the same time, not all of it is nonsense. Plus it gave me the skills to see what was and what wasn't nonsense.
- I really doubt you can get rich by not being lucky. I was like Naval and thought many of my achievements were due to sheer hard work. And then I read this article about luck:
http://nautil.us/blog/-the-key-to-good-luck-is-an-open-mind
And I got the book mentioned in the article - The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman.
One of the exercises in the book is to think over how things have unfolded in your life - what would have happened if you took left inside of right when you met your partner or got a great job? And when I thought it over, there has been some element of luck involved. At my first job I wasn't supposed to be there for an interview but went along with a roommate as I had nothing better to do.
Now I believe sure you can work hard and do most of the work in Naval's list but all of it will ensure you are lucky when you run into one of the long term people in a long term industry. And everything will fall in place.
- I came here to say this. It's important to realize the size of luck's effect on our lives, but the next step isn't just to shrug and say "oh well, I guess I wasn't lucky."
There are in fact scientifically proven ways to increase one's chance for getting lucky. I highly recommend Richard Wiseman's book "The Luck Factor" which goes into this research: http://www.richardwiseman.com/books/luckfactor.html
