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Zusammenfassung von Can You Learn to be Lucky?

Name: Can You Learn to be Lucky?
Rating: 4.3 (118 reviews)
Author: Karla Starr

Karla Starr

Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others

4.3 (118 Bewertungen)

23 Min.

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Success Diversity & Inclusion

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Can You Learn to be Lucky?
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What’s in it for me? Learn how to be luckier.

Life is full of lucky happenstance. Maybe you attend a heavy metal concert, strike up a conversation with a fellow fan, discover he’s an entrepreneur and, months later, find yourself working for his start-up. Or perhaps you feel exceedingly lucky to have sat next to Todd in lectures because he’s turned out to be the man of your dreams.

But, in reality, a lot of these apparently lucky outcomes have totally predictable causes. For instance, sociability is a predictor of opportunity (you wouldn’t have landed that job had you been too shy to talk). Similarly, proximity is a predictor of acquaintanceship (you fell for Todd because you met him, not because he was the dreamiest guy in the lecture hall).

You can’t control everything in life. But luck is often more predictable than you might think, and we can all adapt our behavior, prepare for randomness and nudge the system so it works in our favor.

So let’s dive in and find out why lucky people are lucky, and how you can learn to be lucky yourself.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how looking the part and making a good first impression will increase your luck;
why figure skaters who perform last are more likely to win; and
how to overcome your natural inhibition and be more confident and curious.

Appearing last could help your chances of being lucky.

You’ve doubtless heard someone account for a serendipitous event – be it a job opportunity, a promotion or a romantic encounter – by saying, “I was just in the right place at the right time.” Well, it turns out there is a lot of truth to this cliché. At the very least, the “right time” part is crucial.

Counterintuitive as it might seem, luck often depends on coming last.

In any situation where a number of people, objects or performances are judged against each other, being among the last to be judged increases your chances of success.

For example, an analysis of European figure-skating championships between 1994 and 2004 found that the first skater to perform had a 3 percent chance of winning, whereas the final performer had a 14 percent chance. The same pattern has been found in everything from synchronized-swimming championships to the Eurovision Song Contest.

Why is this? Well, the human brain is wired to work this way. It relies on context, on the information and emotions that are currently available to it.

Just consider house hunting. The first properties you view will be judged against your ideals because your mind isn’t yet stocked with real-life examples of real estate to compare them to. But, over time, as you see more properties, your brain will receive information about what is actually out there. You’ll start to think, “Well, this house seems pretty good compared to the first nine I looked at.”

House hunters viewing their first property never say, “This house is perfect! We’ll take it!” They wait until they’ve seen a number of houses before settling on one they like.

In the same way, figure-skating judges are reluctant to award an early competitor a 5.9 or a 6 (the highest marks available) because this will make it impossible to give later competitors a higher mark. By the end, competitors are more likely to pick up those high marks, however, since the judges know there is no one else coming who could trump them.

So going last is lucky. If you can choose a job interview slot, go last. Want to pick up that hot guy at the bar? Make your attempt late in the evening.

Humans like familiar things, so looking the part and being in the right place will increase your luck.

A social psychologist named Robert Zajonc once ran an experiment in which he exposed Westerners to foreign characters – Chinese logograms, for example – and then asked them how much they liked each character. Overall, the participants favored those characters that they had seen most frequently.

This experiment is a demonstration of the exposure effect, which predicts that people will like things they’re familiar with. This effect has an obvious evolutionary explanation. As Zajonc put it, “If it’s familiar, it hasn’t eaten you yet.”

Humans are predisposed to favor attractive people, meaning beautiful people get lots of luck.

Most of us can think of people we know who are beautiful and seem to find success with ease. We all have that good-looking friend who was the college quarterback, always got the girls and is now raking in millions at Goldman Sachs. Beautiful people simply seem to have all the luck.

And, in truth, beautiful people do have a lot of luck because humans are predisposed to favor attractive people.

Confidence creates opportunities for lucky breaks, but it’s more dependent on social conditioning than we might think.

If you have the confidence to get up and talk to that cute guy across the bar, you’ll be more likely to get lucky than if you sit in the corner, nursing your mojito.

Confidence is about focusing more on reward than risk. Now, our brain has both an activation system, which encourages us to do things based on potential reward, and an inhibition system, which uses stress and anxiety to stop us from doing things based on potential risk. When we shift from activation to inhibition, we go from “go and talk to him – you might get a date out of it!” to “you’ll only embarrass yourself – it’s time to accept that you’ll die alone.”

To be truly successful, hard work isn’t enough. Rather, you need multiple pieces of luck to come together.

A Swedish psychologist named Karl Anders Ericsson once found that the world’s best musicians had, on average, practiced for 10,000 hours. This has led to a rather simplistic idea that’s been popularized by the writer Malcolm Gladwell – that you can become an expert in any field by practicing for 10,000 hours or more.

It’s a seductive theory. You, too, could have been a world-class performer, if you’d only stuck with those oboe lessons instead of drinking Pinot Grigio with your friends! But it’s not really true. Hard work and practice aren’t enough. You also need the right genes.

Self-control is an essential component to success.

How do you spend your downtime? Working tirelessly on a side project that, someday, may lead to major success? Or watching Netflix in your sweatpants?

Self-control, and investing time and effort in activities that are only rewarding in the long-term, is a great way to generate successful, apparently lucky outcomes.

Connecting with other people will help generate new opportunities.

Who you know is more important than what you know. Yes, it’s a cliché but for a good reason as it contains an element of truth. You may be the best in the world at what you do, but if you don’t make the right social connections, you won’t get any lucky breaks.

In 1989, sociologist Katherine Giuffre tried to get an idea of how social connections affected success by examining the people and relationships within the New York fine art photography scene.

Staying curious about new things will increase your chances of finding luck.

Tony Hsieh’s first business failure came when he was nine years old. His business plan was simple. Acquire a box of worms. Let them reproduce. Sell the new worms for a profit.

Sadly, his due diligence didn’t identify a risk: all the worms might escape, along with any prospect of profit (this happened). But Hsieh wasn’t deterred from an entrepreneurial life. He was relentlessly curious and loved to explore new opportunities. He started a newsletter as a child and sold advertising space. At Harvard, he learned about bartending and – less conventionally – how to milk cows. He turned a profit by buying McDonald’s burgers for $1 and reselling them in dorms for $3.

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Worum geht es in Can You Learn to be Lucky??

Can You Learn to Be Lucky (2018) explores how unseen biases dictate our personal behavior and world events in ways that are often quite predictable. By understanding the mechanisms behind seemingly lucky events, we can learn how to harness luck to our advantage.

Bestes Zitat aus Can You Learn to be Lucky?

When there is a fixed number of entries, go last.

—Karla Starr

Wer Can You Learn to be Lucky? lesen sollte

Unlucky people waiting for their big break
Students of behavioral science
Anyone who’s ever wondered why some people seem born to succeed

Über den Autor

Karla Starr is a journalist and writer focusing on popular science and the subject of luck. She has written for the Atlantic, Slate, the Guardian and the Los Angeles Times. Fifteen years ago, she almost died in a car accident. She was lucky enough to survive.

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Entrepreneurship Personal Development

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