In the end, this isn’t a book about luck at all. It is a book about living a good and fulfilling life. The author is not a luck freak; he is a guy who obviously gives a lot of thought to issues that the rest of us tend to set aside due to hardened pre-existing assumptions and judgments.
This is one case where I don’t hesitate to offer the punch line in a review because it might just get you to read a book you might not otherwise read. It is: You can’t conjure up luck, but you can engineer your life to enjoy the fruits of what we otherwise might call luck.
And it’s pretty simple. Anyone can do it. And once you understand the “four factors” it makes sense. These are four factors that we should all consider in our lives even if we’ve never quite believed in the rainbowic pot of gold called luck. (I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t, deep down, at least wonder.)
The book did start a little slow for me but it’s impossible to say after one reading if that is a function of the prose or my mood at the time. It definitely picks up once the author gets going. Having said that, it could be that the author expects a fairly high level of resistance to his basic premise. As a result he approached it cautiously. Maybe.
It doesn’t matter. Stick with it and you will have a very enjoyable and rewarding read.
There were two money lines for me, but each reader, I think, will have their own. Luck is both universal and very personal.
The first was, “Extremely improbable events are commonplace.” And the second was, “Mostly, we stink at calculating probabilities.”
And he’s right. When you actually sit down with a reliable book on statistics, a pencil, and paper, the serendipitous things that happen to us in life shouldn’t be quite so unexpected. For example, “Given a sample size of 23 people, there is a 50-50 chance that two people will have the same birthday.” Hollins will show you why.
For the scientifically minded there are plenty of references to relevant scientific studies. He steps beyond the science, however, and adapts it to the lessons of life. I, myself, was pleased to see that humility and a reasonable amount of skepticism are objectively justified.
I read the book through Kindle Unlimited and I applaud the author and publisher for including this book. Many of the big names don’t, but they might if they took the time to read this book. If you want to be lucky and sell a gazillion copies, you’ve got to put yourself out there; a morsel of wisdom I picked up while reading this book. Well done, Peter Hollins. I look forward to more.