5 Ways to Put Serendipity in Your Life

I'm currently reading a book called The Beak of the Finch. I'm quite enjoying it, even though it deals with a subject I don't normally read about (evolutionary biology). It also came out in 1994, meaning few book stores would display it near the front. So how did I come to have a copy?
I found it in my local library.

I had a few minutes to kill the other day, and was perusing the stacks when I came across this tale of Peter and Rosemary Grant's epic adventures in the Galapagos tracking Darwin's finches. I've now spent several pleasant late night hours reading the book on my back porch while listening to the insects and birds all around me. This is the definition of serendipity -- happy results that happen by chance.

It's also an unfortunately rare element of our lives these days. Online recommendation algorithms have gotten very good in the last few years. Based on our past habits, companies like Amazon have a great sense of what we're 90% sure to like. It's less clear what we're 10% likely to love. But these chance encounters are often a great source of ideas -- helping you boost creativity by suggesting situations and scenarios you may not have considered before.

So how do you put more serendipity in your life? Here are a few ideas.

1. Read a newspaper. Online, you go to the articles you want to go to, and the similar articles people like me put in the "Related” sections of our posts. In a physical paper, you wind up flipping past other stories. You never know when a haunting photo or intriguing headline will catch your eye.

2. Visit the library. One of my favorite approaches. Book stores are great too, but since you have to buy the books you might not be so inclined to take a risk. If you really enjoy a library book, then you can buy all the other books by that author (and hence support his or her livelihood).

3. Buy a magazine you'd never subscribe to. If you're a BusinessWeek kind of person, you may think you wouldn't like Vogue. And you'd probably be right. But after 30 minutes spent flipping through the pages, you might still find yourself pondering, say, the locavore movement among high-end restaurants in Scandinavia, and what (if anything) that says about the world.

4. Take a tour of a local attraction. You're willing to visit random places on vacation. Why not take a mini-vacation this weekend? Even the gift shop may help you view your surroundings in a new light.

5. Say yes to random social invitations. People are a great source of serendipity. One February night back in 2003 I was out with some friends for dinner when, as we were paying, I got a message from another friend seeing if I wanted to come meet her at a bar. She was there because her new boyfriend's colleagues had hosted a get-together. Hmm... an office event on Saturday night? But I went, and by the end of the evening, had met my husband.

How do you put more serendipity in your life?

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