Murphy’s Law: How to Cope When Everything Goes Wrong

This article was published in 2020 and updated in October 2026.

Some days, everything goes wrong. Not just a small mishap or two — everything. It feels as if fate, or some malevolent higher power, is out to get you. Streaks of bad luck like this are summed up in Murphy’s law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Picture this: you oversleep because you missed your alarm. Rushing to the bathroom, you stub your toe. There’s no toothpaste left, and your electric toothbrush is flat. On the way to breakfast you catch your sleeve on the door handle and tear it. In the kitchen you burn yourself on the coffee machine, cut your finger on the bread knife — and your toast lands butter side down.

Greetings from Murphy. To help you cope better with days like this, here’s what’s behind Murphy’s law, how it shows up in student life, and what you can do about it.

Murphy’s law: origin and meaning

The law is named after Edward A. Murphy Jr., an American engineer who worked on a US Air Force research project in 1949. The project tested how much acceleration the human body can withstand, using rocket sleds and sensors attached to a test subject. According to the popular story, one test failed because every one of the 16 sensors had been wired the wrong way.

Murphy’s original observation was roughly this: if there is more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will lead to disaster, someone will do it that way. Over the years, this was shortened to the famous version: anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Murphy’s law in student life

Besides the breakfast disaster above, Murphy loves to show up at the worst possible moments. Three familiar examples:

Exam day

Just as you’re about to leave for an important exam, your landlord rings: a pipe has burst, and you need to let the plumber in. You set off later than planned, your train is 20 minutes late, and it starts pouring as you get off. You run, slip and drop your phone. You arrive soaked and two minutes late — and realize you’ve left your calculator at home.

The presentation

A few minutes before an important presentation, you spill coffee down your white shirt, and trying to clean it only makes the stain bigger. Then you notice your presentation clicker is at home, some slides don’t display correctly on the room’s computer, your laptop battery is almost empty and your charger is nowhere to be found.

The deadline

Your assignment is due today. During a final check, the page numbers and margins suddenly shift; you accidentally drag an image over the text and the layout falls apart. You go back to an older version and fix the bibliography — then the printer runs out of paper, then out of ink, and finally prints single-sided instead of double-sided.

5 ways to deal with Murphy’s law

Almost everyone has had their own run-in with Murphy’s law, yet some people cope with bad luck much better than others. These five strategies help you stay calm when things go wrong.

1. Accept it — it’s statistics, not personal

Murphy’s law isn’t about negative thinking; it’s about probability. If something can go wrong, it eventually will, provided you try often enough — just as you’ll eventually roll a six if you keep throwing the dice. When you’re in the middle of a losing streak, feeling sorry for yourself won’t help. Accept that bad luck happens to everyone and that it isn’t aimed at you. That alone makes the situation feel lighter.

2. Look at the real probabilities

When bad luck piles up, it helps to think about the actual odds. Mathematics is neutral — it has nothing against you. Take Murphy’s experiment: if each of the 16 sensors had a 50:50 chance of being installed correctly, the probability of getting all of them wrong would be about 0.0015 percent. Very unlikely, but not impossible. Remembering how rare such chains of events really are helps you keep a realistic view.

3. Notice your selective perception

Our brains pay far more attention to things that go wrong than to the many things that go right. We take it for granted that the laptop starts, the train is on time or the document saves properly — and we quickly forget those moments. Mishaps and crises, on the other hand, stick in our memory. Once you’re aware of this bias, Murphy’s law loses much of its power.

4. Plan flexibly

Murphy’s law can ruin the best plan. As the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt put it: the more methodically people proceed, the more effectively chance can strike them. That’s why one plan is rarely enough. Have a plan B — and a plan C. If your first approach fails, adapt and improvise. Or, in the words of former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

5. Prepare for the worst case

You don’t have time to plan every part of your day, but for important events — exams, presentations, deadlines — it pays to think through a worst-case scenario. Ask yourself: What could go wrong? Then find an answer for each risk:

Leave early and check your train or bus before you go.
Pack your bag, calculator, ID and charger the evening before.
Save your presentation on a USB stick and in the cloud, and export a PDF version.
Finish and print assignments a day before the deadline — and keep backups of every version.

Thinking about the worst case in advance gives you a sense of control, and most of these disasters will never happen.

Conclusion

Some days, Murphy’s law feels frighteningly real. Luckily, these streaks are rare — and they always end. Often our own perception makes things seem worse than they are. When you hit a losing streak, take a deep breath, use the strategies above and regain control.

It also helps to remember what is going well in your life and what you have already achieved despite setbacks. You can’t avoid every bad day, but a little perspective is often enough to leave it behind and start again tomorrow.