Missing what is missing: A healthy relationship with chaos and the psychology of luck Modern psychology has given us a much better understanding of luck. Often seen as serendipity, magic, and fanciful thinking, there's actually a lot of science behind it. Just as laypeople have an understanding of a coiled spring—seemingly simple, but governed by complex physical laws and interactions—so we can understand the deceptively simple notion of luck as the output of a set of behaviors. Best of all, we can now use that understanding to predict who is, and is not, likely to be lucky over time. In this talk, journalist and author David McRaney takes us on a tour of survivorship bias—the human tendency to associate success with traits of geniuses, entrepreneurs, superstars, blockbusters, etc., but to discount the role of luck in such outcomes. He'll explain what luck really is; and what we're truly noticing when we use that word to describe particular outcomes. Finally, he'll share what scientists say we ought to be doing if we'd like to experience more of that phenomenon in our lives and projects.

1. David McRaney
Lecture sources and links at:
youarenotsosmart.com/lectures
davidmcraney@gmail.com
youarenotsosmart.com
@davidmcraney
@notsmartblog

3. Innovators Early Adopters Majority Saturation

17. Survivorship Bias
The tendency to focus on survivors
instead of whatever you would call a non-survivor
depending on the situation
Living / Dead Successes / Failures Winners / Losers
After any process that leaves behind survivors, the non-survivors
are often destroyed, muted, or removed from view.
If failures become invisible, then naturally you will pay more
attention to successes.
Not only do you fail to recognize that what is missing might have
held important information, you fail to recognize there is any missing
information at all.

18. Mike Johnston
theonlinephotographer.com
Billy HathornDan Smith

20. “A stupid decision that works
out well becomes a brilliant
decision in hindsight.”
Daniel Kahneman
“Thinking Fast and Slow”
“If you group successes
together and look for what
makes them similar, the only
real answer will be luck.”

21. Richard Wiseman

22. “The harder they looked, the less they saw. And
so it is with luck - unlucky people miss chance
opportunities because they are too focused on
looking for something else.”
Unlucky People
• Narrowly Focused
• Crave Security
• Fixated on Control
• Prefer Routines
Lucky People
• Abandon Routines
• Willing to Fail
• Expose themselves to Chance
• Shrug off Failure, Try Again

24. Successful people tend to make it more
probable that unlikely events will happen to
them.

25. David McRaney
Lecture sources and links at:
youarenotsosmart.com/lectures
davidmcraney@gmail.com
youarenotsosmart.com
@davidmcraney
@notsmartblog