The Luck Factor by Max Gunther
In his 1977 book “The Luck Factor, Why Some People Are Luckier Than Others and How You Can Become One of Them,” the author studies luck from a scientific point of view in the last part of his book. He makes some correlations based on observations of people both objectively and subjectively thought of as lucky and unlucky. His central question is “What do lucky people do that unlucky people don’t do?”
“It turns out that there are five outstanding characteristics that distinguish the lucky form the unlucky. These five characteristics – attitudes toward life and other people, internal psychological manipulations, ways of talking to oneself – turn up again and again in the stories of men and women who seem to enjoy consistent good luck. They are conspicuously absent in the stories of the unlucky. These are the five components of the Luck Adjustment.” The author lists them as 1) the Spiderweb Structure, 2) The Hunching Skill, 3) “Audentes Fortuna Juvat”, 4) the Ratchet Effect, 5) the Pessimism Paradox.
The Spiderweb Structure
“[T]he luckiest men and women are those who have taken the trouble to form a great many friendly contacts with other people.” The author presents several case studies showing people who started off almost identically and differentiated themselves by being lucky or unlucky relative to their counterpart. “A lot of [the lucky ones] are simply people who have somehow made themselves known to many other people, usually without thinking about it. It’s their style. They’re gregarious. They go out of their way to be friendly. They talk to strangers. They’re joiners, meeters, greeters.” Much of what is considered a lucky break, happens through other people therefore the author suggests that those with the most connections to other people are putting themselves in positions that will maximize their probability of having a lucky break float by.
A second aspect of the Spiderweb structure is a certain likeability that attracts people to you. “[L]ucky people as a breed not only have the knack and habit of initiating friendly contacts often. They also have a certain magnetism that makes them the targets of other people’s friendly approaches.” This magnetism or likeability factor is the whole range of mannerisms that a person puts out, such as voice, facial expressions, body language etc. Most are beyond our conscious control but are automatically performed if we actually enjoy meeting people. “If you don’t genuinely like strangers, no fakery will hide the fact”. One way to learn to enjoy meeting people is to ask for a trivial help request. What is the time? how do you get to …? What do you like/recommend? “One of the quickest ways to bring a smile to a stranger’s face is to ask for help, even trivial help.” The more you do it the better you get and the luckier you will be.
The Hunching Skill
“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.’ Lucky people as a breed do, indeed, have this capacity to a notable degree.” We as human beings take in massive amounts more information than we can consciously consider. Think about how you know a familiar voice over the phone there is innumerable number of factors that your conscious mind cannot count that go into that recognition. A hunch relies on that kind of data. Data that is collected but is below the level of consciousness. “A hunch is a conclusion that is based on perfectly real data – on objective facts that have been accurately observed, efficiently stored, logically processed in your mind.” But which you do not consciously know. “Lucky people…are often people who have discovered intuitively how to plumb that well of subsurface knowledge inside themselves.”
We can learn this skill with three rules: 1) Learn to assess the database: can we possibly know what we are hunching? If you have a hunch that an earthquake is coming you are not hunching. If you have a hunch that someone you have met twice likes or hates you, you are probably right. Check to see if you could have amassed a database of subconscious facts. A warning: never fall back on hunching to avoid work. A hunch needs to be worked. 2) never confuse a hunch with a hope: “If a hunch tells you something is true, and you badly want it to be true, regard the hunch with suspicion. A lot of bad hunches are just strong wishes in disguise.” 3) Make room for hunches to grow. “Hunches are made of facts, but they come as feelings…To hunch soundly you must listen to your feelings, respect them, give them a full hearing.” Do not try to figure it out because the hunch has too much data to be figured out intellectually. Ask yourself about the feelings to find deeper or more precise feelings. Collect impressions as well as facts. “People who are instinctive hunchers go through some such process at every decision-making pint of their lives.”
“Audentes Fortuna Juvat”
Fortune favors the bold. “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.” However, boldness cannot be rashness. To be bold without rashness: 1) always “be eternally ready to inspect lucky opportunities when they drift into view.” And “be ready to jump off in a new direction when you see something good” 2) know the difference between boldness and rashness: boldness is scary; rashness is dangerous. Boldness can hurt; rashness can kill. Boldness is well thought out; rashness is not. On the other side, Boldness is the opposite of passivity, the desire for risk free anything, and the fear of change. 3) Don’t insist on having total advance knowledge of any situation you are about to enter. Decision paralysis is a real thing that can be overcome with a treasured superstition. “Spectacularly lucky people are superstitious”.
“Think of a superstition simply as a neat psychological device that can come to your aid in moments of worry, confusion, and indecision. In a situation where you must make a choice but are intimidated by the shortage of facts, a good friendly superstition helps you avoid paralysis. When you have done all your homework, when you have diligently gathered all the essential facts of the situation, and when you still don’t know what course to take because the available facts aren’t enough, then a superstition is something to fall back on. It can relieve you from worrying and fussing over a choice that can’t be improved by worrying and fussing. It helps make you bold.” A superstition becomes bad when you use it instead of doing research.
The Ratchet Effect
“A ratchet is a device that preserves gains.” Lucky people organize their lives in a way that preserves gains by limiting losses. This sounds easy, but it is hard. It first requires the person be able to quickly say “I was wrong” and change course early and decisively. The biggest problem with being able to say “I was wrong” comes from the innate human desire to be right. Lucky people statistically have an easier time admitting to themselves and the world that they were wrong and then doing something about it to limit their losses. To use the ratchet effect most naturally you have to give up the delusion of control: you cannot ever really know the future. This understanding, and it goes against every fiber of our being, is critical to the ratchet effects effectiveness. It secondly requires the willingness to abandon investments. Sunk costs justifying staying the course is difficult to overcome for all of us. The lucky tend to dodge more harmful bullets this way. This is true for relationships, jobs, businesses, and life plans.
The Pessimism Paradox
Lucky people are generally not optimistic. They are constantly pessimistic but not critical, cynical, or nihilistic. Optimism is expecting good things to happen – this is actually very dangerous. A pessimistic person is often thinking about what can go wrong (Murphy’s law) and that life is slippery (Mitchel’s law). A pessimistic person is often a happier, healthier, and luckier person than an optimist. A pessimistic person is much more likely to be pleasantly surprised when whatever negative they expected to happen did not happen. The mental state of preparing for the worst and not getting it is more uplifting and gratitude inspiring than expecting the best and getting the worst. And finally, expecting the worst gives you a head start in preparing to avert the worst – generating better results. “Never enter a situation without knowing what you will do when it goes wrong.”