From The Guardian, March 29:
The latest research suggests there’s far more to good fortune than mere accident
When the founder of Panasonic, Kōnosuke Matsushita, was asked what quality he valued most in job candidates, his answer baffled everyone: whether they were lucky. Not their credentials, not their intelligence, not their experience. Luck. For years, this anecdote struck me as charmingly eccentric – the kind of thing a titan of industry gets away with saying because nobody around them dares to laugh. Then I began studying the neuroscience of fortunate people, and I stopped laughing, too.
What my research has revealed is that luck, far from being a roll of the cosmic dice, operates through identifiable patterns of brain chemistry and behaviour. The consistently lucky are not blessed by fate. They are running different neurological software – and the remarkable thing is that this software can be installed.
Consider what happens when someone simply declares: “I am a lucky person.” It sounds like wishful thinking. But brain imaging tells a different story. That declaration activates the prefrontal cortex in a way that shifts perception from threat-detection mode toward opportunity-recognition mode. The person begins to notice possibilities that a self-described unlucky individual, scanning the same environment, simply filters out. Over weeks and months, these perceptual micro-advantages compound. The lucky person encounters more openings, seizes more of them, and accumulates a track record that reinforces the original belief. Psychologists call this a self-fulfilling prophecy. I prefer to think of it as the brain taking your word for it, and reorganising reality accordingly.
This was the finding that first drew me deeper into the subject. If a mere shift in self-narrative could produce measurable differences in outcome, what other levers might the brain offer? The answer turned out to be surprisingly biological. Our emotional baseline depends heavily on serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, social confidence and resilience. And serotonin production follows a strict daily rhythm. It requires morning sunlight hitting the retina, the amino acid tryptophan from foods such as fish and eggs, and – critically – a regular sleep-wake cycle. People who rise early and spend their first waking minutes in natural light are, quite literally, manufacturing the chemical foundation of good fortune. Those who keep erratic hours, by contrast, suppress serotonin and elevate cortisol, the stress hormone. Chronic stress narrows attention to threats and closes down the peripheral awareness where serendipity lives. The perpetually unlucky are not cursed. They are, in many cases, chronically sleep-deprived.
Yet body chemistry is only half the picture....
....MUCH MORE
Some previous looks at luck:
How To Be Lucky
It pays to imagine your life is on a winning streak.
“Luck is believing you’re lucky.”
—Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
- "The Deceptions of Luck"
- How Luck Works
- "Luck vs. skill: What Bill Gross and Bill Miller have in common"
- Investing Tips From the Dalai Lama
- The Market Pays Luck as Well as Skill
- Oaktree's "Howard Marks on Luck and Skill in Investing"
- Remember When the Unluckiest Man in the World Won the Lottery?
- "5 things you didn't know about luck"
- How Big Data and Poker Playing Bots Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling
- Testing For Luck
- More on The Top Earning Hedge Fund Managers and The Metaphysics of Moolah
- Fama/French: "Luck versus Skill in Mutual Fund Performance" (LMVTX)
- A Glossary of Luck
- "Luckiest Woman on Earth" who Won Lottery Four Times Outed as Stanford University Statistics PhD
- Gaming the System: Are Hedge Fund Managers Talented, or Just Good at Fooling Investors?
And many, many more including:
You work with what you got.
