How to develop luck as a skillset

Often, we talk about luck as a magical event we have no control over. But a recent conversation inspired me to dig deeper and ask whether luck can actually be traced back to specific actions.

I have just attended a networking event where I had a chance to observe a very accomplished young business owner. He had a calm, emotionally intelligent presence, he felt approachable before he even spoke. When he talked about his business, it was clear he treats his work as a craft and leads with integrity and genuine care for people. Yet somewhere in his speech he openly wondered how lucky he was:

customers appeared fast, orders kept flowing, and people kept coming back, he said.

But as he kept talking, I and everyone in the room already knew that it was not just luck, but more like a competence he hadn’t named yet.

Why is it so difficult to see our own competence?

Psychology has a simple explanation for this. When outcomes happen quickly and repeatedly, but we can’t clearly explain why, we often attribute them to external forces like “luck” (Weiner, 1985). That’s not because we’re dishonest. It’s because many of our actios are partly invisible to us. We can be objectivelly skilled and still not consciously track the micro-actions that create results.

This is where the idea of tacit knowledge matters:

“We know more than we can tell” (Polanyi, 1966).

People who are good at winning repeat customers often do a lot automatically: how they frame a problem, how they reduce a client’s uncertainty, how they follow up, how they make decisions feel safe. Because it feels effortless, it gets mislabeled as luck.

So how do you turn luck into a developable skillset?

1) Treat luck as a pattern you can audit

Think of 3–5 lucky professional moments: a referral, a returning customer, a sudden opportunity, a deal that came out of nowhere. Then write what happened in the 1–3 weeks before each event.

“Luck” often looks sudden only because we ignore the setup (Weiner, 1985).

Successful business is rarely magic. Relationship marketing research shows trust is a major driver of long-term customer commitment (Morgan & Hunt, 1994).

2) Pull the “unconscious competence” into the conscious

A classic learning model describes a stage called :

Unconscious competence: you can do the skill, but you can’t easily explain it because it has become automatic (Howell, 1982).

That’s exactly the territory where people say: “I’m just lucky.”

Your job is to convert tacit skill into explicit behaviors you can repeat and improve (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Take one “lucky” event and ask:

1. What did I do that made this easier for the other person?
2. What risk did I remove?
3. What did I clarify that others usually leave vague?

3) Use other people to reveal your blind spot

The Johari Window is a simple model of self-awareness with a “blind area” quadrant: things others see in you that you don’t see in yourself (Luft & Ingham, 1955). Ask five people:

1. “Why did you choose me?”
2. “Why did you come back?”

You’re looking for consistent phrases. Those phrases are often your luck translated into observable value.

4) Practice “planned luck” on purpose

Career researchers describe:

Planned Happenstance: chance events are inevitable, but people can build skills that help them benefit from them—curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism, and risk-taking (Mitchell et al., 1999).

In other words: you can train your ability to turn chance into outcomes.

5) Sharpen the competence with deliberate practice

Once you’ve named the competence, don’t just “use it more.” Improve it deliberately: pick one behavior (e.g., clarity, follow-up, framing), design a small practice routine, and measure outcomes (Ericsson et al., 1993). That’s how luck becomes a repeatable system.

Luck isn’t always random. Often, it’s unclaimed skill. When you identify it, name it, and practice it, you don’t just get luckier—you get more predictable.

Are we ever just lucky?

There’s a famous line of work by psychologist Richard Wiseman on “lucky” vs “unlucky” people. He recruited participants who were asked to self-identify as especially lucky or unlucky. Then they were tested on how they noticed and acted on opportunities.

In one experiment, a banknote was placed in a public spot; the “lucky” participants were more likely to notice it, while self-identified “unlucky” participants often walked past it.

The point wasn’t that the universe favors some people, it was that expectations, attention, and openness change what you see and act on (Wiseman, 2003).

This connects directly to competence:

when you (1) name your strengths and (2) you believe you tend to find opportunities – you cover more ground.

You notice more, you try more, you talk to more people, you follow up more confidently. Suddenly, luck becomes a predictable side effect (Wiseman, 2003).

References

Weiner, B. (1985). An Attributional Theory of Achievement Motivation and Emotion. Psychological Review.
(How people attribute outcomes to luck vs ability, effort, or skill.)

Polanyi, M. (1966). The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press.
(“We know more than we can tell” — tacit knowledge and invisible competence.)

Howell, W. S. (1982). The Empathic Communicator.
(Conscious–competence learning model, including unconscious competence.)

Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company. Oxford University Press.
(SECI model: converting tacit knowledge into explicit, repeatable practices.)

Wiseman, R. (2003). The Luck Factor.
(Studies showing that people who identify as “lucky” notice and act on opportunities more often than those who identify as unlucky.)

Wiseman, R. (2004). The Psychology of Luck. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
(Experimental work including opportunity noticing and attention differences.)

Mitchell, K. E., Levin, A. S., & Krumboltz, J. D. (1999). Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities. Journal of Counseling Psychology.
(Luck as something that can be increased through curiosity, flexibility, persistence, and optimism.)

Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology.
(Why broader networks increase access to unexpected opportunities.)

Morgan, R. M., & Hunt, S. D. (1994). The Commitment–Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing. Journal of Marketing.
(Why trust and integrity drive repeat business — often mistaken for luck.)

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review.
(Why skills improve through focused practice, not chance.)