Someone wished me luck at the pub the other night before heading off. Normal thing to say. Except I'm socially awkward enough that instead of leaving too, I sat there with my pint and started overthinking "luck."

Are lucky people actually lucky? Can you manufacture it? Is there actual physics behind this, or is it just something we say when we can't explain an outcome?

Trying to make sense of serendipity feels like playing Jenga with oven mitts. But as inexplicable as it is, it's also weirdly tangible.

The Coin Toss Problem

Scientifically, luck is just probability wearing a costume.

Toss a fair coin. 50/50. Get heads and people say "oh, lucky!" Get tails and you're "unlucky." But from a physics standpoint, neither outcome had anything to do with luck. It was a probabilistic outcome determined by the physical properties of the coin, the force of the toss, air resistance, landing surface.

The outcome was always deterministic. We just didn't have enough information to predict it.

So maybe the question isn't "am I lucky?" but "am I positioning myself where the favourable outcomes are more probable?"

Quantum Mechanics Enters the Chat

In the quantum world, probability and chance are fundamental. Particles don't have definite states until they're observed. Randomness is baked into the fabric of reality.

But here's the thing about chaos and complex systems. Even within apparent randomness, there are patterns. Repetitions. Interconnections. Feedback loops. And most of them are deterministic from the initial conditions.

📚 Geek Corner

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions: In chaos theory, tiny differences in starting conditions lead to vastly different outcomes (the butterfly effect). Luck works similarly. Small changes in your preparation, your positioning, your network can dramatically shift the probability distribution of outcomes in your favour. You can't control the randomness, but you can control the initial conditions.

Luck is random within the chaotic complex world. But if you prepare, if you position yourself to create the right initial conditions, you increase the probability of favourable randomness finding you.

Are Successful People Just Luckier?

Or do they create the conditions for random lucky events to occur?

I reckon it's the second one.

Preparation is like reducing uncertainty. Think of it as measuring the position and momentum of a quantum particle before it interacts with its environment. The more information you have, the better you plan, the larger your surface area of probability becomes. You're not guaranteeing the outcome. You're skewing the distribution.

Mental and physical well-being is about reducing noise. In quantum mechanics, external interference disrupts particle behaviour. Stress, lack of sleep, burnout, these are noise in your system. They decrease signal quality. Reducing the noise doesn't guarantee success, but it stops you from missing the opportunities that do show up.

Relationships work like entanglement. When quantum particles interact and become entangled, they influence each other's behaviour across distances. Building genuine connections does the same thing. Someone you helped three years ago introduces you to the person who changes your career. That's not luck. That's entanglement paying dividends.

Putting yourself out there increases surface area. The more footprint you have, the more probable it is that your trajectory coincides with the randomness of opportunity. You can't control where lightning strikes, but you can stand in more open fields.

Go Seize That Coin

Luck isn't binary. You don't either have it or not.

It's a complex interplay of preparation, well-being, and the network you build around yourself. Small changes in your environment lead to large changes in outcomes. That's not motivational poster rubbish, that's literally how chaotic systems work.

So go get yourself some of that good fortune. The physics is on your side. You just have to set the initial conditions.

If you're in the mood for more probability thinking, I wrote about the 2-2 factor and why the maths of independent review is one of the most underrated reliability principles going. And if entropy is more your thing, there's a piece on why everything you build eventually rots.