Good or lucky

One of the questions I've never been able to resolve is how much of success is based on being good vs being lucky. Let's start off by agreeing that a lot of people eliminate themselves from this question by simply not even really trying. If the only way you pursue success is by entering lotteries, or hoping you are the one that has already won whatever, you are counting on pure luck. I'm not talking about that because clearly you are not even really trying.

There is another criteria, and that is talent.It is pretty obvious that some folks have certain specific talents that others just don't have. This is most obvious in some fields such as entertainment and sports but it actually permeates all fields. I've had a good number of people work for me over the years and some of them simply were not good at some aspects of the business. You could counsel them to work on public speaking or send them to certain courses, but ultimately you needed to give them a chance to excel by focusing on the talents they did have, and not set them up for failure.

However, if you take a group of people who all have the requisite talent and all of whom work hard, some will be much more successful than others. What is the factor that determines this? There have been quite a few books over the years trying to determine the qualities for success and mostly they end up talking about working harder than everyone else. believing in yourself, and persistence. But I, at least, think you still need at least a little bit of luck.