Do ya feel lucky, punk?

At a recent Churchill Club function in our innovation thinking stream, we ran a fascinating event titled “Luck”. As part of the panel, we brought up a chap called Jason Bresnehan from Tasmania to talk. Jason is a corporate advisor who last year decided to start writing articles about becoming luckier.

Jason had started to wonder about phrases like “I was in the right place at the right time”. Specifically he was wondering whether he could increase his chances of “being in the right place at the right time” and so began his research on the pursuit of luck.

Jason feels you get lucky when four elements align themselves:

1. A random collision of life’s interactions presents an opportunity to you.
2. You are prepared to act upon the opportunity that has presented itself.
3. Your character is such that you are empowered and willing to act to exploit the opportunity.
4. Your systems and techniques are ready to enable you to exploit opportunities efficiently while mitigating risk.

But what does this mean on a day-to-day basis? Here are some of Jason’s suggestions.

1. Taking action to interact more with life and forcing more random collisions – such as trying crazy things, change your routines, do crazy stuff and just get out there. This will increase both the quantity and quality of opportunities in your life.

2. Act to change your brain, so you notice the opportunities in your life and change the way you think about them. Learning new skills opens up new neural pathways. Force change into your life so you have to cope with doing new things. Don’t accept the status quo, even if it’s simple routines such as where you park your car.

3. Be prepared to exploit the opportunities that random collisions throw your way. This may include conducting research without acting on it yet, creating a financial reserve or allocating time to explore lucky outcomes.

4. Build your character so that you willingly and fearlessly act to exploit opportunities. Try new things such as skydiving or acting to overcome your fear of failure and embarrassment.

5. Creating systems and techniques that create efficiency and risk mitigation when you explore opportunities, such as KISS – Keep in Simple Stupid, take a portfolio approach to risk, or locking yourself in to a break even/small win strategy rather than big win/big lose strategy.

Weirdly, I started feeling luckier just by writing this article.

To read more Brendan Lewis blogs, click here.

Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.