How the “4 Types of Luck” can enrich your work-life
- “Luck” is often assumed to be a thing of random chance.
- In the 1970s, the neurologist James H. Austin suggested that we could actually reframe luck in four different ways.
- Here we look at Austin’s “Four Types of Luck” and see how they can change our attitude to life.
When I was growing up, I would spend hours playing role-playing computer games. And while I could spend a happy evening discussing my Top Five (my email is open…), one of my all-time favorites was the Fallout franchise. At the start of every Fallout game, you had to create your character using the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system — these were seven fundamental personality traits your character would be bound to. There was Intelligence to determine your skills, Perception to determine your conversation choices, and Agility to determine how many mutants you could kill. All of these made sense. But then, snuck on at the end, was Luck. How lucky was your character? How good would the odds be of finding some really cool loot or picking the lock on that door?
Back then, I thought Fallout‘s Luck was a rubbish attribute. I thought that luck was something you were neither born with nor could develop. Luck wasn’t about me, but about the world around me. If you are of the spiritual sort, luck might be tied to karma or fate. If you’re more epicurean about matters, luck is the vast cause-and-effect of the universe. Either way, we can’t control luck.
It turns out I hadn’t read Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty by the neurologist Dr. James H. Austin. If I had, then I’d understand much more about the different types of luck.
The four types of luck
In his book, Austin explores the psychological and circumstantial factors that influence “luck.” Austin’s interpretation of luck is different from what my boyhood self thought it was. Austin argues that luck is only partly the mysterious serendipity that happens to you. Most kinds of luck, though, can be cultivated through openness to new experiences and active engagement with the world. Yes, there’s random chance, but you can position yourself to be more receptive to that random chance. Austin identifies four different kinds of luck:
First, Blind Luck which is what we’d call the uncontrollable randomness of the universe — fate, an act of God, or the unpredictable entropy of the universe. In our day-to-day lives, this might be when a large truck rattles past your office and breaks a water pipe. There’s nothing you could have done about it. No toilet or coffee breaks for 24 hours. Hard luck.
Second, Luck from Motion. This is when you are proactively looking for opportunities. You invite luck through energy and hustle. It might be lucky that you met Mr. V. Rich, who gave you a new job, but you were the one who decided to attend the course where you met him.
Third, Luck from Awareness. This is where being attentive to events and being able to recognize opportunities come in. Let’s say your boss buys an expensive, company-wide subscription for AI. That’s lucky for you. That’s lucky for you, but Luck from Awareness comes from recognizing how you can make the most of the moment and utilize the opportunity. You use it to rationalize your spreadsheets, proofread your emails, or analyze sales data.
Fourth, Luck from Uniqueness. You will possess certain distinctive qualities, experiences, or perspectives that attract unique opportunities. Let’s say you and your family grew up in Poland before moving to the USA. One day, a prospective client walks into the office, and you notice the accent. You open a conversation and swap travel stories. It turns out your cousin knows her brother. A prospective client signs up, and your unique background turns a non-event into a lucky one.
Learning to be lucky
In many ways, Austin’s work is reframing existing ideas. Luck from Motion is about proactivity, and Luck from Awareness is about recognizing opportunities for what they are. But there are broader lessons we can learn from Austin’s “Four Types of Luck.” Here are three examples.
Learn to see. One of the key takeaways from Austin’s work is that we can be better at “luck.” But it’s about seeing the lucky moments for what they are. So, how are we to develop our “Luck from Awareness”? How can we hone our opportunity perception? Well, in 2010, a team from the University of Cadiz conducted a meta-study into this question and identified four major factors, divided into two pairs. The first pair — called “social capital” — were “contact with other entrepreneurs” and “having supported other entrepreneurs’ projects through business angel funding.” The second pair was “intellectual capital,” which was “the personal conviction of having the knowledge and skills needed to start a business” and “university education.” In other words, work with others, back yourself, and go to school.
Bring yourself. So much of your luck is about how you position yourself in the world. It’s about being open, but also recognizing that you will be presented with opportunities that others don’t get (as well as being excluded from opportunities taken by others). A large part of this is learning what you are good at. Few people pause long enough to ask, “What are my talents?” Over on Big Think+, Sir Ken Robinson, the author of Finding Your Element, teaches us about how to do just that.
Fortune favors the proactive. Sometimes life isn’t fair, and sometimes Blind Luck plays you a bum hand. But, if Austin is right, this kind of luck only makes up 25 percent of what can happen. Most of the time, we have to put ourselves in luck-inviting situations. See your work-life as a kind of casino, and your time as chips to spend. Invest a day in a course. Spend an evening at a networking event. Make an extra phone call. Not all bets will win, but some will. The game might be hard, with low odds and poor payouts. But you have to play the game to win. Try to do more things.
