
What do you take out of a story such as this? - zaidf
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/30/8405482/index.htm
======
ecuzzillo
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!

~~~
dfranke
_Excellent article, by the way; reminds me of the old Reddit._

Not terribly surprising, considering how many of the people on the leaderboard
are refugees from it.

------
zaidf
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."

------
Goladus
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>

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

~~~
gibsonf1
He is extreme in a sense that is really hard to imagine.

He clearly makes a great deal of money, but according to the article, he
doesn't use it at all. His life is his work - no romance, no home. Does he
ever take a vacation?

He focuses on purpose to explain his lifestyle, and has clearly achieved
incredible success at his business. But what about forging intimate personal
relationships, both romantic and with friends?

I get such great value from having close relationships, a "home", an "office"
that to imagine life without them is almost impossible. Of course he has 30+
year relationships with his clients, so maybe he has developed close
friendships with some of them.

If Rand had created him as a character, maybe the purpose would be to show the
downside of total focus on only business. Life without romance - never!

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

------
dhbradshaw
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.

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

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

~~~
zaidf
For you and I, we may never be able to accept such a life. But this guy seems
totally content with what he has. That is the more shocking part. You don't
really sense much of wishing it wasn't like this from the tone of the story -
but then again, I don't know him personally.

------
Alex3917
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.

------
JMiao
He gets marketing.

