Continuing on my quest to better learn how to be lucky, I’m following up on my mini-review of Max Gunther’s book, The Luck Factor (Creating Luck: The Luck Factor). This time I’m discussing the book I set out to read in the first place: The Luck Factor: Change your luck – and change your life, by Dr. Richard Wiseman. It was published in 2003 and doesn’t contain any mention of Gunther’s book of the same name from 1977. They do have several things in common. However, Wiseman conducted research to back his claims, and also presents more elements of luck overall than Gunther. I’ll compare the five main points from Gunther’s book to Wiseman’s four principles and some of their 12 sub-principles. I’m really only paying attention to part four of Gunther, as I did with my earlier review.

Wiseman starts right in to the useful stuff after two chapters of introduction. In “Principle One: Maximise Your Chance Opportunities” he starts the same way Gunther did, talking about how a strong social network increases our luck. Wiseman goes on to tie in having a relaxed attitude, saying that luck is inversely proportional to neuroticism (one of the “Big Five” personality traits). The next sub-principle is about being open to new experiences, similar to Gunther’s “Fortune Favors the Bold” concept. “Openness” is another of the big five personality traits.

Principle two, “Listen to Your Lucky Hunches” matches with Gunther’s “Hunching Skill” concept. I felt that Gunther gave some more actionable advice here, despite not having research backing his ideas, and I especially like how he distinguishes between wishful thinking and informed hunches. In any case, for those of us who aren’t attuned to our own intuition, it’s worth studying.

Principle three in Wiseman’s book is “Expect Good Fortune”. I don’t see a close analog from Gunther, in fact, his “Pessimism Paradox” is basically the opposite. Both actually work well together. Wiseman’s principle is basically the power of positive thinking, and he gives several helpful angles on it. Gunther focuses on being prepared when Murphy’s Law strikes, and to expect that it always will. I believe we can benefit from both of these principles, as long as we don’t try to peg ourselves as entirely optimists or pessimists.

Wiseman’s principle four, “Turn Your Bad Luck Into Good” is hard to characterize. It overlaps a lot with the positive thinking in principle 3. One sub-principle, “Lucky people take constructive steps to prevent more bad luck in the future” hits some of the same points as Gunther’s “The Ratchet Effect”.

Overall, Wiseman comes across as more credible because of the research behind his book, and he devotes much of the book to the analysis of specific things that make some people much luckier than others. In addition, he includes several exercises to help you analyze how to improve your own luck, and the last section of the book further discusses how to learn to be lucky. However, I should note that Gunther’s book was an easier read, and it covers enough unique ground that it’s worthwhile as well. Both books have numerous interesting anecdotes of real people who either have unusually bad or good luck.

Some people respond to this topic with a big “duh, I know all that stuff.” In fact, the people who stand the most to gain are those with the worst luck. I hope they find these books. For me, I have more to learn about how to listen to my hunches, and though I think my attitude toward the things that contribute to my luck is already pretty relaxed, there are a few improvements I can make here as well.

Have you done anything to learn about what to do about your bad luck, or how to have even better luck? I’m curious to hear about it.

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).