I’ve been reading Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh - and one of the ideas that really stuck with me is the idea of so-called “lucky” and “unlucky” people. At Zappos one of their interview questions is, (paraphrasing) “On a scale from 1 to 10, how lucky you do you feel you are?”

It sound ludicrous, but it is actually based on a well known psychological study. Self professed “lucky” people perceive things differently than “unlucky” people, and it is centered on how open they are to the unexpected. In the study … well, let me quote Hsieh’s book:

At Zappos, we try to hire the luckier job candidates. In fact, one of our interview questions is “On a scale from 1 to 10, how lucky are you in life?”

Many years ago, I read about a study in which researchers posed that same question to a random group of people. Each participant was then handed a newspaper and asked to count the number of photos inside. What the participants didn’t know was that it was actually a fake newspaper. Sprinkled throughout were headlines such as, “If You’re Reading This, the Answer is 37. Collect $100.”

Researchers found that the participants who considered themselves unlucky in life generally never noticed the headlines. They diligently completed the assigned task and eventually came up with the answer. But the people who considered themselves lucky in life? They generally stopped early and made an extra $100.

This openness to the unexpected is a particular mindset, and its not hard to see why it is connected to “luckiness”. I suspect this “luckiness” through an open mindset, iterated over a lifetime, is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a self reinforcing behavioural trait. It is attitude as destiny.

How many opportunities for learning and growth do we neglect and overlook when we “work hard” and focus myopically on what our particular vision of success looks like? Are you feeling lucky? Would you open your mind?

[Update: Apparently business school folks calls this being open to “emergent strategies”.]