Do you feel lucky?

According to the personal career stories of most people, including those with a PhD, luck and chance play a major role in career success.

Books have been written about the value of luck, such as the ‘Luck Factor’ and ‘Build your own Rainbow’, in which so-called ‘accidents’ (events over which we have no control) can determine our career paths.

In his TEDx talk, Bruce Walker talks about creating your own luck: “There’s no-one stopping you but you”, he concludes. On the other hand, Ritchie Etawu professes that you can bring bad luck upon yourself by taking the easy route, which requires minimum or no effort. He believes that to encourage good luck into your life, you need to put in some hard work!

So, how does ‘luck’ figure in your life and how can you enhance its effect on your own career? According to the theory of ‘Planned Happenstance’ proposed by Mitchell, Levin and Krumboltz, chance (otherwise known as unexpected career opportunities) can be harnessed via the following behaviours:

  1. Flexibility – if you’re able to adapt to technological developments, changing work cultures, helping others with their challenges, and generally flexing your own working practices to ever-changing global priorities, then you’re likely to remain employable in a range of disciplines, roles and industries.
  2. Curiosity – being interested in areas beyond your own sphere of interests can lead you into new environments and cultures, exposing you to new people, ideas and opportunities. This aids collaboration and cooperation, novel and innovative thinking, resulting in new perspectives.
  3. Taking a risk – not necessarily in the sense of ‘jumping into the unknown’, but a calculated risk which takes you out of your comfort zone and into the realms of new possibilities. It can feel scarey, but this is good as it means you’re learning new things and experiencing opportunities, which may take you along a new course or career path leading towards ‘success’.
  4. Being proactive – that is, not being passive. It’s easy to let others make decisions on your behalf or to wait for something to happen to you. Being proactive means taking a leadership role in your own life. Set yourself goals, even if they are everyday small achievements, make things happen for you, put in effort and energy – it all helps to make you more self-motivated and driven.
  5. Networking – taking advantage of the network of people you already know, as well as getting to know new people, who could assist you in your research or career is not cynical or opportunistic. Rather, it is a two-way mutually beneficial relationship between people who wish to build a relationship and cooperate with each other. Networking can be done face-to-face, for example at conferences, via email, phone or social media. Operating on your own is not encouraged by funding bodies or businesses nowadays, as they perceive that ‘two (or more) heads are better than one’.

If this makes sense to you, why not give it a try by putting one or more of these suggestions into action.

Related post: Feel the fear and do it anyway

Careers – the planned and the downright unplanned!

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