On BBC’s The One Show, presenter Michael Mosley tests a theory of Professor Richard Wiseman that part of being lucky is simply being more aware of incidental information in your surroundings, information seemingly unrelated to the task at hand but which may ultimately help you achieve your goal.

(Professor Wiseman has many interesting videos on YouTube. I particularly like the colour-changing card trick. (Spoiler: I noticed only one of the changes myself. What I found fascinating was that he made no effort to hide the sound of the backdrop changing, because he knew nobody would notice.)

We’ve seen manifestations of this phenomenon earlier, such as learning about what is ordinary so you can recognize things that are out of the ordinary, or people who ignore the answer that’s right in front of them even after it’s pointed out to them.