Do You Feel Lucky?

Some people think that creativity is a matter of luck. You’re lucky enough to have good ideas. You were lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time. That guy has all the luck…

Is it luck? Or is luck what happens to you when you do the things that increase your chances of seeing new opportunities?

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire has spent a number of years researching the impact of chance and luck on people’s lives. In one of his studies, he invited participants to described themselves as lucky or unlucky. He gave each participant a newspaper and asked them to count the number of photographs inside. The unlucky people took several minutes to count all the images. The lucky people were finished in seconds. Both groups were reading the same newspaper.

Here’s why: on the second page of the paper there was a large advertisement with this message: Stop Counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper. Wiseman writes, “It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.” He also put a large advertisement in the paper that read: Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you’ve seen this and you’ll win 250₤. The “lucky” readers found it, the “unlucky” ones didn’t.

Wiseman attributes this to the fact that people who consider themselves unlucky are usually anxious and tense, which keeps them from noticing the unexpected. Lucky people, on the other hand, are more relaxed and open – happier. This mood keeps them primed to notice synchronicity and to see new patterns and opportunities not yet explored.

This might have something to do with paying attention. The unlucky newspaper browsers were so focused in the immediate task at hand, counting the photographs, that they didn’t see the other words and images in the paper. They didn’t notice what else was there. People who are continually successful at creative endeavors are open to other stimulus and to the wider world. They notice more oddities. They see the opportunities that others don’t see.

Wiseman notes that lucky people deliberately choose to make their life diverse and different. Unlucky ones tend to stick to routines. So one way to instantly improve your luck, and your creativity, is to change things up. Do it differently. Eat lunch at a different place. Shop at a new store. Walk home a different route. And while you’re doing it differently, pay attention – not just to the task at hand, but the layers of life around it, the environment, the weather, the light, the sounds, the other things happening on the periphery.

It might be a way of reframing what it means to pay attention. Attention is often thought of as singular, or even narrow; honing in your focus and your regard to understand something comprehensively or to master it. But what about when you widen your view and see a larger range of cues that are available to you? If you could do that, would you be more innovative? Or just lucky?
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Know futher: Look for Wisemans’ book, The Luck Factor. Also, watch this video about paying attention. And then, after you’ve viewed the video (not before), visit here.