How to Be Lucky in Business and Life: 4 Science-Backed Principles
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Nir Eyal explores scientific research showing that luck is not something people are born with but rather a learnable skill that can be developed through specific behaviors and mindsets. Drawing on psychologist Richard Wiseman’s 10-year study of 400 volunteers and research by Johns Hopkins professor Joël Le Bon, the article reveals that successful people create what researchers call “provoked luck”—unexpected positive events that result from strategic behaviors that maximize opportunities.
Wiseman identified four core principles that lucky people follow: creating and noticing chance opportunities, making decisions by trusting intuition, forming self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations, and adopting resilient attitudes that transform setbacks into advantages. His “luck school” experiment demonstrated these principles work—after just one month of practicing luck-building techniques like varying daily routines and reframing negative experiences, 80 percent of participants reported feeling happier and luckier. The article provides practical applications for entrepreneurs and business professionals, showing how belief in luck motivates increased activity and better performance.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Luck Is a Learnable Skill
Research proves luck isn’t innate—it’s primarily shaped by thoughts and behaviors that can be deliberately modified to create better outcomes.
Provoked Luck Drives Sales Success
Salespeople attribute two-thirds of their revenue to “provoked luck”—strategic behaviors that maximize opportunities, not random chance or inherent fortune.
Four Principles Create Fortune
Wiseman’s research identified creating opportunities, trusting intuition, maintaining positive expectations, and showing resilience as the keys to generating good luck.
Variety Breaks Routine Patterns
Lucky people intentionally introduce variation—taking different routes, talking to diverse people—to create chance encounters and expand their opportunity networks.
Belief Motivates Action
Salespeople who believe in luck pursue more activities like phone calls and meetings, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of increased opportunities and success.
Luck School Works Fast
In Wiseman’s experiment, 80 percent of participants felt happier and luckier after practicing luck-building techniques for just one month.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Demystifying Luck Through Science
The article’s core argument is that luck is not a mysterious, innate quality but rather a set of learnable behaviors and mental habits backed by scientific research. By presenting Wiseman’s decade-long study and Le Bon’s sales research, Eyal challenges the common assumption that some people are simply “born lucky” while others are doomed to misfortune. The practical implication is empowering: business professionals can actively cultivate luck through specific techniques like varying routines, trusting intuition, maintaining positive expectations, and reframing setbacks, transforming what seems like an uncontrollable factor into a manageable competitive advantage.
Purpose
Instructive Empowerment
Eyal writes to inform business professionals that they have agency over their success by teaching them how to systematically improve their luck. The article serves dual purposes: first, to legitimize the concept of luck in business contexts through academic research, making it acceptable for serious professionals to consider; and second, to provide actionable techniques readers can immediately implement. By framing luck as controllable and offering concrete steps like “chat with someone in line at the grocery store” or “set failure goals,” the article aims to shift readers’ mindset from passive acceptance of circumstances to active creation of opportunities.
Structure
Research Foundation → Principles → Application
The article opens by establishing credibility through academic research from Wiseman and Le Bon, presenting their studies’ methodologies and key findings about luck being manageable. It then details Wiseman’s four principles that lucky people follow, illustrated with concrete examples like participants choosing different work routes or talking to people wearing specific colors. The structure shifts to practical application with the “luck school” section, explaining how readers can implement these principles themselves through specific exercises and techniques. This progression from theoretical validation to actionable steps makes abstract concepts tangible and encourages immediate implementation.
Tone
Accessible, Encouraging & Evidence-Based
Eyal maintains an upbeat, motivational tone while grounding claims in rigorous research, making the content both credible and inspiring. Phrases like “quite literally, make your own luck” and “you can turn it around” convey optimism without veering into empty positivity, as they’re backed by Wiseman’s 10-year study and Le Bon’s sales data. The writing style is conversational and practical—using relatable examples like grocery store conversations and spontaneous chess games—making sophisticated psychological concepts accessible to readers without academic backgrounds. This balance between scientific authority and friendly encouragement creates a tone that feels both trustworthy and actionable.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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Impossible or extremely difficult to perceive, detect, or distinguish; not able to be seen, heard, or understood clearly.
“Something as vague and indiscernible as ‘luck’ has no place in the business world, right?”
A prediction or expectation that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true because one’s belief influences their behaviors in ways that make it happen.
“Form ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ through positive expectations.”
Able to recover quickly from difficulties, setbacks, or changes; possessing mental or physical toughness that enables bouncing back from adversity.
“Adopt a resilient attitude to turn bad luck into good.”
To make more varied or different; to expand variety by introducing a range of different types, elements, or people into something.
“…make an effort to talk to people wearing that color to diversify the type of people he tended to talk to.”
In sales, the process of determining whether a potential customer meets the criteria to be a viable buyer; assessing if someone is worth pursuing.
“The more sales activities they pursued, such as making phone calls, taking meetings, and qualifying prospects.”
Changing the way you think about or interpret a situation; looking at something from a different perspective to alter its meaning or emotional impact.
“Try Wiseman’s positive-reframing technique and imagine how the situation could have been worse.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to the article, sales students in Le Bon’s study attributed two-thirds of their revenue to provoked luck.
2What was the result of Wiseman’s “luck school” experiment after participants practiced luck-building techniques for one month?
3Which sentence best captures the relationship between belief in luck and sales performance?
4Based on the article, determine whether each statement about Wiseman’s four principles of luck is true or false.
One of Wiseman’s principles involves creating and noticing chance opportunities through actions like varying daily routines.
Wiseman recommends ignoring intuition in favor of purely rational, data-driven decision-making.
According to the article, dealing effectively with bad luck includes imagining how situations could have been worse.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5What can be inferred about why the article emphasizes that luck is “learnable” rather than innate?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Provoked luck refers to unexpected positive events that occur because someone’s strategic behaviors have maximized opportunities. Unlike random chance, provoked luck is self-made—it results from deliberate actions like networking broadly, varying routines, and staying open to possibilities. Le Bon’s research showed experienced salespeople understand this distinction, recognizing that while outcomes may feel fortunate, they’re actually the result of consistently putting themselves in positions where good things can happen through increased activity and strategic positioning.
Wiseman argues that intuition isn’t actually irrational—it’s pattern recognition based on accumulated experience. Our brains are exceptionally good at detecting patterns and synthesizing vast amounts of information unconsciously. When something “feels right,” it often means your brain has recognized patterns from past experiences that suggest a good outcome. The article encourages building self-trust by reviewing past successes that resulted from intuitive decisions, demonstrating that gut instincts often lead to good outcomes when they’re informed by genuine experience rather than random guesses.
The article provides several concrete techniques: take different routes to work to encounter new people and situations, use arbitrary rules like talking to people wearing specific colors at parties to diversify your social interactions beyond your comfort zone, chat with strangers in everyday situations like grocery store lines or parks, and deliberately step outside established routines. These actions work because they increase the surface area of your life where interesting connections and opportunities can occur, breaking the limiting patterns that come from always doing things the same way.
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This article is rated as Beginner level. It uses accessible vocabulary and straightforward sentence structures while presenting research findings in an easy-to-understand way. The concepts are explained through relatable examples like grocery store conversations and party interactions rather than abstract academic language. The practical, actionable focus and encouraging tone make it appropriate for readers building reading comprehension skills for standardized tests like CAT, GRE, or GMAT who want to practice understanding research-based arguments presented in an engaging, non-technical format.
Le Bon’s failure goals technique helps salespeople become more comfortable with rejection and maintain resilience, which is essential for creating provoked luck. By setting targets for a specific number of monthly pitches that fall flat, companies normalize failure as part of the process rather than something to avoid. This reduces fear of rejection, encourages more activity and risk-taking, and helps salespeople maintain the high volume of interactions necessary to create opportunities. The approach recognizes that luck requires putting yourself out there repeatedly, which inevitably includes experiencing setbacks along the way.
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