For me, amphetamines actually allow me to productively switch my focus. 8+ hours of hyperfocus, while making me seem like a ninja unicorn rockstar, is just not sustainable and burnout is a real problem.
http://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-... This segues to the pure celebrity version, best epitomized by Lady Gaga. Born This Way is her recent hit album and song. On one level, the whole thing is obviously completely fictional. It’s probably safe to say that she was not, in fact, born like this. The big piece must be nurture. But on another level, maybe it is nature. What sort of people would actually do this to themselves?
Yes, it's the choices people make and the drive they have that produces the talent. But isn't John Carmack's ability to push himself to that degree an outlier statistic in itself? Maybe he really was born that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura
John Carmack doesn't constantly tweet/complain about how many hours he puts in and how hard he's working, so people think it comes easily to him. When you're talking to a non-technical person, the most important thing is projecting a casual air of competence, not trying to impress them by how much you suffered for your craft.
Isn't that what people mean when they talk about a natural? I always thought it meant that given the same drive/effort, they are able to go far beyond the average.