Want to be luckier?

It's actually possible, and easier than you think.

In his book The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor talks about a study done by Richard Wiseman on how luck affects our lives. Wiseman conducted a study that went something like this.

He determined if participants considered themselves to be lucky or unlucky. Then, he asked them to look through a newspaper and count the number of images in the paper. Simple right? And you would expect the results to be similar, but they weren’t. The people who had already deemed themselves "unlucky" took around 2 minutes to complete the task. But, the people that had deemed themselves as "lucky" took only a few seconds.

In the paper where the participants counted the images, there was a big red notice on the second page that said: "Stop counting, there are 43 images in this paper." Then, on the next page, another notice read the same and even offered to give the participants money if they stopped right then and told the host of the experiment.

The "lucky" people tended to see the notices and stop counting, completing the task early, while the "unlucky" people missed the notices altogether and laboriously finished counting the images manually. So, it stands to reason that luck is less about random chance and more about the ability of a person to notice an opportunity that someone else has missed and act on it.

If you want to be luckier, simply adopting the mindset that you are "lucky" may have more of an impact than you think.

HT: Here is an article in Inc. about the research.

This post originated on my blog adamjwalker.com

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Great leadership reading from this week

• You’d be a lot happier if you stop saying you’re so busy
  Leaders love to be busy, but it’s not good for you. Instead of thinking of your life as busy, think of it as full.

• He Built a $3 Billion Business to Solve Calendar Headaches. Here's His Vision for the Future of Meetings
  Meetings can continue to get better, and I love this vision of where they can go.

• Six Ways to Make Your Meetings More Productive
  My favorite point here is, “Think of the meeting as the ‘front stage,’ and prepare for them by working hard on the ‘backstage.’” Too often, we show up to a meeting and just run it on the fly, which is about as effective as jumping on a stand-up comedy stage without preparation. Sure, a few people can do that well (Robin Williams), and most everyone else will bomb.

• The Heavy Costs Of Sleep Deprivation: Dementia, Obesity, and Death
  You need more sleep. Don’t neglect it. It’s not worth it.

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Other interesting reading from this week

• Meta-analysis finds that perseverance of effort, or grit, is strongly tied to better subjective well-being
  I’ve been a fan of Angela Duckworth’s work on grit for a long time, so this doesn’t surprise me.

• How Automaker Logos Have Evolved Over the Past Century
  I love to see how logos change and how some don’t. I had no idea that some famous car logos have changed so much over time.

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Great podcasts from this week

• 498. In the 1890s, the Best-Selling Car Was … Electric - Freakonomics
  I had no idea that electric cars even existed pre-1900! I also had no idea that they were competing with gas cars. How crazy is that??

• Mind Reading 2.0: Why Conversations Go Wrong - Hidden Brain
  Have you ever been in a conversation where the other person expected you to read their mind? This episode describes why that happens and how conversation styles impact our communication.

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My Podcasts to check out

• Tech Talk Y'all - My tech/comedy news podcast.

• Real Pink - I host the national podcast for Susan G. Komen. If you want some inspiration or information about breast cancer, give it a listen.

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