What do you take out of a story such as this?

In many ways, I'd love to be that guy. It'd mean I'd never be unhappy because I'm in place A doing thing X instead of in place B doing thing Y-- I'd be doing the thing I most wanted to do 100% of the time. No complicated issues with people and obligations and such. Simple, and exactly right.

My only problem with it would be meaning-- I'd have trouble doing something that would probably have no trace when I was gone, aside perhaps from whatever philanthropy resulted.

Excellent article, by the way; reminds me of the old Reddit.

However, speaking of Reddit, this is pretty tangential to startups-- beware of community drift!

I love what he says about Steve Jobs:

"By the way," says Charan, "the last time I talked about Steve Jobs, remember? I've now verified from two directors of Apple, and they say it's right on the button." Gomber and Bartridge perk up their ears. "I asked, Well, tell me his three God's gifts. And they think about it, and they say first thing, this human being has a talent to figure out what the consumer really wants. This is a very valuable thing! No. 2, he has the will and the talent to find - no matter where it is! - the right technology that will deliver what they want. Nobody said he invented one! And third, he has the talent to create demand at the right time. I say, Where do you find those human beings? But he is one."

Reminds me a little of Paul Erdős, although Erdős maybe wasn't quite so extreme. According to Wikipedia, he voluntarily spent most of his life as a vagabond, showing up at people's houses to collaborate on Math papers. (csci type stuff: Combinatorics, Graph Theory, approximation, etc)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

It's a strange portrait. The way he's described, I picture a character from an Ayn Rand novel.

Couldn't you have given this article a more descriptive title? This was an interesting read, almost skipped it because of the title.

You can focus on externals or on internals. He seems to focus completely on internals. He worries about the quality of the work he does at any given moment rather than about where his work will lead him or what he will get for it. It is as though he has given up fear.

Truly inspiring. I thank you for posting this link. Wonderful way to start a morning.

It is a caricature of failure despite epic success; his life is a dire warning.

Fascinating. My basic take is that he has both a unique philosophy of business/life and a unique way of thinking/problem_solving, and he gets his enjoyment out of applying this to other people's problems. It would be interesting to make a meta-cognitive model of his problem solving process.

He gets marketing.