Most people only see surface-level for only many things and fail to dig deeper and reflect on how things came to be what they are today. The only key point missing from Sylvia Duckworth’s interesting infographic above of “success” are the elements of 1. time and 2. luck. Many ideas prevail because they were right ideas at the perfect time. A little too early (e.g. AskJeeves, Yahoo!) or a little too late (e.g. latest fad) and the idea/concept won’t take hold. The element of luck often gets downplayed by successful companies and people themselves after the fact. As one of a zillion examples, consider Facebook going viral after MySpace paved the road for social networks in the first place (the same applies to Google following AskJeeves and Yahoo! laying the foundation for internet search).

In the Hollywood world, consider Hollywood actors and actresses as talented as Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslett. Take away the runaway success of Titanic and they likely would not be the household names they are today. The same applies for Al Pacino in the Godfather, Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games and countless other Hollywood stars. For other life thoughts or principles, feel free to visit us at GoCheezy.