Fine line Any wellness trend that threatens to increase your ‘surface area' is likely to be met with resistance, unless the enlarged asset in question is your serendipity. Yes, it is a weird word. Yes, it does sound like a noughties romcom. Yes, it is, in fact, a noughties romcom. So just substitute ‘serendipity' for ‘luck' and the concept may feel a little more relatable.

Baseline ‘Doesn't matter what you call it,' you protest. ‘It's random. You can't court good fortune.' And that, my (as yet) unserendipitous friends, is where you are wrong. Luck, as the old cliché goes, is made not stumbled upon, and now the boffins have a formula to prove it.

Online There's a buzz on X/Twitter about increasing your serendipity (S) surface area, which essentially boils down to the relationship between two main components: ‘doing' (D) and ‘telling' (T). That relationship can be expressed in the mathematical formula (stay with me): S = D x T.

Plotline Now make D and T the two axes on a graph and the more you have of each, the bigger the surface area between the two points becomes. That shaded area, right there, is what more serendipity looks like.




Who needs a lucky cat when there's a formula forfortune

Outline ‘OK, you can plot good intentions on a graph,' you concede. ‘But what happens in the real world?' The graph is supposed to demonstrate that having expertise or realising an idea (the ‘doing' of a thing) has a certain value, but that the value is very significantly enhanced by the number of people who know about it (the ‘telling'). 

Once people are aware of your idea or expertise, they may want to capture it in ways you couldn't have foreseen. That is serendipitous. Think of it as ‘smart luck'.

Underline You can also maximise the ‘telling' of your message by upping your levels of enthusiasm while telling it. People are drawn towards an enthusiastic delivery.

Guideline This, of course, all relies on you having that big idea in the first place and for this, too, a serendipitous mindset is crucial. Sadly, for 비닉스 지속시간 the planners, this particular mental state involves letting go of timetabling and instead staying curious; working with what fate sees fit to cast in your path. If life gives you lemons, would you know what to make? (If your answer is ‘tea' then go back and work some more on that serendipitous mindset.)

Sideline The obvious question is: did anyone ever make a killing out of serendipity? Well, yes, in fact, they did. Without a healthy dollop of smart luck, we would have been forced to cope without Post-it notes, X-rays, Velcro, rubber, microwave ovens… and Viagra. In fact, some reports go as far as to suggest that 50 per cent of major scientific discoveries are the result of accidents or coincidences.

Starline Both Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey, meanwhile, have cited luck in the furtherance of their careers. We can probably all agree that there has been no lack of doing or telling in either of those camps.

Timeline Where might a more serendipitous mindset lead us? Well, that, of course, is unknowable. While we may be able to increase our serendipity surface area, this is no guarantee that the big idea will ever cross our paths or that, if it does, we will be savvy enough to recognise it. This is a probability game (remember the graph?), not a prescription.

Lifeline The real key here is to look for breaks even in the midst of life's most annoying roadblocks and mishaps. After all, just imagine what would have happened if Alexander Fleming had thrown his spoiled Petri dish in the bin and stalked off home muttering darkly about ‘bad luck'.


 


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