I often have thoughts forming in my head about how we can actively encourage serendipity to happen more often. Then I had an opportunity to learn more about how others do it.

At Agile Open Northwest recently, I was practicing mob programming. Conference participants had gathered in a nearby hotel in the evening next to a cozy fireplace and a commandeered TV screen. In my sketchy notes from that evening, I found a book title, The Luck Factor, mentioned by the facilitator, Llewellyn Falco. The title piqued my interest. It might have been related to a discussion about having a bias toward action while mobbing, which makes sense to me now, but perhaps not for the reason Llewellyn had in mind.

I found several different books titled “The Luck Factor.” Llewellyn later told me that he was thinking of the one by Dr. Richard Wiseman. So I bought it. But I couldn’t help also getting one by Max Gunther, which was written much earlier. I read the Gunther version first, and here are my impressions of it. The full title, by the way, is The Luck Factor: Why Some People Are Luckier Than Others and How You Can Become One of Them. It was published in 1977.

More than half of the book is spent setting up a number of different things that good luck is mistakenly attributed to, such as paranormal effects and numerology, along with some amusing stories. But it doesn’t really start to deliver on its promises until part IV–”The Luck Adjustment.” Here are the essential parts of the solution, with my paraphrasing:

• The Spiderweb Structure – being gregarious and building a broad social network
• The Hunching Skill – recognizing when your subconscious is acting on real data and making educated guesses that you should pay attention to (vs. when it’s just wishful thinking)
• Fortune Favors the Bold – basically, carpe diem, and make sure to answer the door when opportunity knocks
• The Ratchet Effect – when that opportunity turns sour, be just as bold in cutting your losses
• The Pessimism Paradox – plan for the worst, because you’ll sometimes need to act on those plans

These are all things I’m pretty familiar with, except the one I could stand to improve the most is my “hunching” skill. There are some especially useful ideas in that chapter.

I have Wiseman’s Luck Factor in my to-read pile now. Looking at the table of contents, it seems there may be a good deal of overlap with Gunther’s book. I’ll let you know how it goes (see Dr. Wiseman’s Luck Factor).