Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn (2003) | Hacker News Reader

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn (2003)

telegraph.co.uk

78 pointsbgray36 comments

So boiled down to its fundamentals, lucky people are really those who open more doors to opportunities, notice the opportunities, and then take advantage of the opportunities. By increasing the possibilities, the probability rises that you will find good opportunities. To increase your ability to recognize opportunities rather than doubt and ignore them, you must be willing to fail many times in order to succeed the really good times. This is where the optimism and self-confidence come into play.

We see this same philosophy preached in other threads here with regard to successful businesses.

Reminded me of the quote by Seneca: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity"

You should add a "2003" to the title - I was wondering why it looked familiar.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878039

I love seeing older articles on HN. There are plenty of places to find the latest and "greatest" breaking news (tputh, reddit, digg, slashdot, etc.) but really appreciate Hacker News members' perspective on stories that have been around for some time.

Strange that the HN duplicate-checker missed this one. The urls look the same to me.

otoh, I found it an interesting read and missed it the first time around so I'm glad it made it to the front page today.

The duplicate checker only checks for duplicates in the last x months (3 IIRC). I believe that this is deliberately so that "oldie but goody" posts can be reposted.

Added. Thanks!

"Chance favours the prepared mind." (Can't remember who said it, but it is the crux of this article in many ways.)

"Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés." - Pasteur

(Various versions of this are available in English at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur )

My best literal-ish interpretation "In the fields of observation (testing?) chance favors only the prepared spirits." It's interesting to me the explicit "only" construction, as opposed to the implied version in the typical English versions.

I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't "minds" more appropriate than "spirits"?

I'm not a native French speaker. It's quite possible that minds would be better here. I don't really know; I think the distinction can frequently be subtle, at least in my conception of the two. Depending on the situation, I might consider either to be a strict subset of the other, which means I'm sometimes equivocating.

Luck is essentially a common interpretation of the stochastic nature of the world. I agree with the author of the article in that people could increase their luck by exposing themselves to random events. I disagree that counting all pictures rather than stopping when the note is found implies a "lucky" personality-- that is more like a rational/logical personality. Luck would be that in fact, the number of pictures was different than the number in the note, and the person's curiosity helped them discover this fact by continuing to count regardless of having seen the note.

I tried to describe this in one of my blog posts, but I am still missing the second part, if interested, take a look at: http://bit.ly/b0SjZq

I don't think the author was implying that stopping when the note is found implies a "lucky" personality. I think Dr. Wiseman was looking for personality traits that are common amongst "unlucky" people. The newspaper test demonstrated that unlucky people are more tense and anxious than normal, and this could explain why they may not spot new opportunities.

I agree. But does this actually follow the definition of lucky? A person could deem herself lucky without that actually being the case-- it might just be that she has personality traits that make her successful. Luck, by definition is not dependent of one's actions. I guess the article is saying that we can make ourselves feel lucky by working on certain personality traits-- but does that make us actually lucky? I am just being philosophical here.

"unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else."

Or, those who are too focused looking for something else generally consider themselves to be unlucky.

Self-reporting on if you are "lucky" or not is a reflection on the positiveness, motivation and optimism of the person. Not if you are actually "lucky" or not.

This study for me draws conclusions about people's outlook on their lives and how it effects their ability to concentrate on given tasks. Involving 'luck' in this is just for the headlines.

Self reporting that you are lucky is probably positively correlated with optimism.

Optimism has a whole host of benefits that probably account for the "luck" that these individuals are enjoying.

I would hope so -- lucky is a magic property. Luck itself may be chance, but lucky is nonsense.

Well, you could define luck as "percieved luck" - after all, what else is there? It doesn't really make sense for me to state that someone else is lucky.

I agree. But that's exactly what the article says repeatedly.

The description of the unlucky person sounds more like me than the the lucky description. I try to avoid using intuition as much as possible and I always make the rational choice as best as I can judge it. Yet, I feel neither lucky nor unlucky.

Partly, of course, that's because I don't believe in a person being "lucky". And, to the extent that concept is meaningful, I've always believed in "making your own luck", which I seem to do just fine.

You don't need to be a superstitious person to gain all the benefits of "luck".

Take the poll. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1129321

I think it'd be interesting to see whether HNers consider themselves lucky or unlucky overall. I have a guess, but don't want to reveal it for fear of prejudicing the answers.

I like the end of the article where the author offer three easy techniques that can help to maximize good fortune which can be boiled down to:

1. Trust your intuition 2. Seek variety to invite chance and new opportunities 3. Look to the positive side of your situation

I don't see a case they describe where luck as a factor has been isolated.

Luck doesn't exist. It is essentially a magic enchantment that provides its recipient with an ability to gain a positive outcome of chance events at a frequency above those provided by normal probability. Sure, there are some people who will 'beat the odds' on a regular basis, probability provides for this, however more people report being lucky than the probability suggests as well. Further, luck has a social connotation roughly equivelent to fortunate, but when the term lucky is used there is a nod to vague supernatural forces controlling outcomes, a la the Fates.

As such luck really cannot be isolated as a factor. Instead tho, people who claim to be lucky can easily be isolated. They can be studied for what makes them "lucky". In this case it seems to be at least somewhat correlated with openness to unexpected outcomes.

I'm not sure I quite agree with that. As I see it, the term "luck" is regularly applied to two categories of events. As you've said, there are the chance events (such as winning the lottery or rolling a 6 on a die), and in that I quite agree with you.

The other case, which is what I thought the article was about, is more of an "opportunity" type of luck. For example, if you happened to find a £10 note while walking home. That would be called "lucky" but it is not simply the result of chance: it is the result of you being more observant than everyone who didn't notice the money before you. And in that sense, people can easily be "luckier" than others, as the article describes.

Good point. In fact, I suspect we are saying the same thing, but lack some common language/terminology.

This is one of the single most insightful and inspiring comments I've read on here. Thank you.

If you have any more to say, or can recommend any related resources - books, articles, or so on - that would be massively appreciated. But even if this is it, all I can say is - wow. And thanks. The gears are turning in my head, as you've cleared up something for me that I could never quite get down. Thank you, this was huge.

You don't have to learn to be lucky; billions of years of evolution have bred lucky right into you.

Teela Brown? So lucky that she got to go see and save the Ringworld as her first and last mission.

Actually 'unlucky' if I remember correctly.

The 'lucky' ones were unreachable.

Didn't Teela end up as the protector?

Based on the first book, lucky is probably right. She needed the experience of danger in order to broaden her horizons and to grow as a person.

Clearly, I haven't read enough of the series to comment on the last statement .... and they could easily alter the perception of the events in the first book.

"On one hand, every single one of my ancestors going back billions of years has managed to figure it out. On the other hand, that's the mother of all sampling biases." -- http://xkcd.com/674/ (hover text)

Lucky beats smart!

Amen!

"Luck favours the prepared." Edna Mode - The Incredibles - 2004

Reply on news.ycombinator.com