On the luck scale, where do the lottery, the axe murderer, and bagel bites rank?

?On LinkedIn, I follow “The Daily Sales.” https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/the-daily-sales . The other day, they took a survey on whether people believed that success was a function of luck:

I was unsurprisingly surprised (or is that surprisingly unsurprised?) that 85% of respondents believed that luck influences some success in some way. Without examining every comment, I thought about what people might call lucky.

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Most truly lucky outcomes are often not indicative of success, but a hindsight observation of an averted disaster that otherwise might have befallen them. Some examples:

?-????????? Had the brick that flew off the back of the truck been one foot to the right, it would have killed me!

-????????? Had I been walking under that window one minute earlier, the safe would have fallen on me!

-????????? Had I gone to the store 30 minutes later, the last pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream would have been gone!

-????????? Had I not gotten stuck in traffic, I’d have not missed dinner with the lady who was charged three months later with murdering her date with an axe!

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What makes these items lucky are that no forethought, vision, reaction to an event, or sequence of events, caused the outcome to be in your favor. ?Most of these are simply random, unplanned, avoidances of disaster.? While butterflies batting their eyelashes in Malaysia can cause Mount Haleakala to spew lava, this is not an exploration of chaos theory as it relates to luck. These situation of pure luck are very low probability, and should not be counted by 85% of people.

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Some circumstances involve some luck, but not as much as people would attribute to it. Outcomes in your favor that involve some luck include:

-????????? I did the lotto quick-pick and got the winning lottery numbers!

-????????? I won big on the slot machine!

-????????? If the police officer hadn’t pulled over the guy in front of me, I’d have gotten a ticket!

-????????? If that snowstorm didn’t shut down school, I’d have lacked time to study and would have failed the exam!

-????????? The traffic caused me to miss the date with the axe murderer, but when I arrived, I met the perfect person at the bar; we got married and lived happily ever after!

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Luck is not as fully applicable to these apparent miracles as it is a function of choice, and often result from poor training, preparation, and execution, or simply hope. ?You chose to play the lottery with 1:1,000,000 odds, play the slots where the house wins far more than 50% of the time, exceed the speed limit (likely habitually), not study earlier in the semester, and not allow enough time for traffic, not to mention depending on bars to find soulmates - but that's a different story.

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Despite the odds, the probability of success was not purely luck because a measurable chance was involved, and choice influenced the probability of the outcome.? Like buying a lottery ticket vs not buying one increases your own probability of winning, it still has low-probability, unrepeatable outcomes. 85% of the people should resist claims of this as a strategy for success

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Now what do people call luck, that is actually no such thing?

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When I was a young engineer, my boss used a famous line of scripture that had been modified to focus on leadership: “Without Vision, People Perish.”? Aside from the person who planned poorly and missed their date with the axe murderer, nobody ever said, “Without Luck, People Perish.” ?A comparable saying is attributed to Winston Churchill. “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

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The truth didn’t care if you stumbled upon it or not, and certainly didn’t change.? Luck works exactly the same way.? All probability exists completely independently of your ability to recognize it.? A tree falling in the woods exists independently of somebody hearing it, but the tree falling was not luck.?

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If you needed a canoe, that would be another story.? Recognizing (or even searching for) a fallen tree as a great option from which to fashion a canoe represents an ability to capitalize on situations. The tree still didn’t care whether you were Woody Woodpecker or Robinson Crusoe.?

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Having the mindset and foresight to capitalize on opportunities that others might not see is not luck.? Two people can look at the same exact thing and have vastly different perceptions. Unlike falling safes, axe murderers, and bricks falling off of trucks, in the professional world, being in the right place at the right time is largely influenced by hard work, experience, and preparation.? There’s a reason why “beginner’s luck” is often followed by “sophomore slump.”? It’s because the beginner was blissfully unaware of the opportunities, and as a result, could not recognize them and replicate success.

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Here is how you can tell that it’s not luck:

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Did you know what you were looking at?? ?We’ve all heard stories about the person who went to the yard sale and found the rare vase worth $10,000.? How many people had no idea what they were looking at?? Preparation, education, and intention are differentiators. The vase did not jump into the arms of the shopper.

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Did you come up with a solution that was “outside of the box?” The ability to see creative solutions that others can’t requires an understanding of the mechanisms involved. Exceeding limitations is not luck. Taking a calculated risk to achieve success makes your probability of success infinitely greater than someone who takes no action. i.e. You miss all the shots you don't take.

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Professionals don’t just do the things they do to get a paycheck; they have a purpose, an understanding of their craft, and how to apply these things in different situations.?

Here is an innocuous, yet unprofessional, example of having a knowledge of how math works, why to use it, and when to apply it, vs needing a calculator, taking somebody else’s word, or just not paying attention. ?My trip to the grocery store. Without a list from my wife, I would be drawn to an advertised “special” on something I didn’t need, like bagel bites.? There was a 48-count box listed for $9.99.? My lucky stars! The person in the cart in front me thought how lucky they were to capitalize on this bonanza of late-night carbs, threw the box into the cart, and went about their day.

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Then I looked through the glass and saw the 9-count box was $1.79. Quickly, I calculated that eleven of the 9-count box would give me 99 bagel bites and would be around $19.70.? Two 48-count boxes, yielding 96 bagel bites would be two cents short of a $20.? Of course, I bought two smaller boxes and bragged to my wife how I saved 5% on bagel bites and didn’t hog the entire freezer. Luck was no greater factor in my positive outcome than to the less favorable outcome for the guy who believed the hype and grabbed the 48-count box.?

Optimizing freezer space and saving one cent on bagel bites are insignificant victories in the game of life. But as the mechanism is the same regardless of the size of the opportunity, significant major decisions are made every day with a comparable lack of awareness, succumbing to misdirection, and reliance on advertisements, hope, and luck. When confronted with the outcome of a bad decision, these people will blame false prophets, circumstances, or some cosmic force for their misfortune, i.e. bad luck.

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Vision is necessary to recognize situations in which you find yourself, in order to leverage pure luck, some luck, or no luck at all, to your advantage. The corollary of vision is gratitude.? A lack of gratitude, a.k.a. entitlement, obscures the ability to see all things considered lucky, and most that have nothing to do with luck, causing people to squander opportunities. We all know someone who was provided with great opportunities, took them for granted and failed spectacularly.? We also know many who’ve been provided with arguably miniscule opportunities, yet they had gratitude to nurture and optimize them, and became massively successful.? You know who would be more likely to attribute luck to the result? The one who failed.

By looking for luck to support success, when true luck is unknowable, low probability events are unrepeatable, and everything else can be achieved by hard work, preparation, education, vision, and gratitude, I fear that 85% of people are all either playing the lottery, eating overpriced bagel bites, or hoping that they don't run into an axe murderer.

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