[swombat]

I haven't stated that spending 16 hours a day painting is the only way to produce great work. But it certainly has worked for some people. How many geniuses do you know who were not insane by someone's definition?

The reality of the universe we exist in is that genius and insanity are not very far apart (and sometimes hard to tell apart). There are no doubt exceptions, but for most geniuses, insanity is part of the deal.

Your bias in this is also enormous, whether or not you're aware of it. You're assuming that your chosen life goals (to have a healthy balanced life) is valid for everyone. Perhaps Ramanujan didn't give a toss about having a healthy balanced life, he wanted to solve mathematical problems, and fuck the rest.

Do you honestly have the arrogance to walk up to a five-year-old Mozart and tell him he needs to chill out and go play in the kindergarten rather than compose symphonies? That he'll produce better work if he takes it easy?

You say:

But being a great artist is more about persistence than intensity. It is actually far better for your development as a musician, for example, to practice a few hours a day for a long series of days than to try to pack more practice into each day.

But being a genius artist is not about "developing as a musician". It's about something else - music is just the medium via which you convey it. Developing as a musician is just one of the early steps along the way. And being a great artist is not about craft, it's about that other thing - the intensity, the passion, the flame burning bright. Craft is necessary like the wick of a candle, but it's not the wick you look at, it's the flame.

Now, of course, most entrepreneurs (and artists) are hardly geniuses, let alone world-changing geniuses, and I can only agree that working yourself to the bone doesn't lead to a healthy life, but to then turn around and tell those who choose to live their life in a certain way that they've missed the point is incredibly arrogant. Not that that's very surprising coming from 37-signals. People (especially driven, passionate people) choose how they live their own life, and they don't need a DHH on a soap-box to lecture them.

[GHFigs]

The problem being addressed is one of people choosing to do "insane" things in the expectation that they will be geniuses. It's mimicry. It's behavioral affectation. It's fashionable nonsense in every field, consumed and parroted not so much by the driven and the passionate as ambitious poseurs who don't yet have a strong sense of who they are.

It's just like our collective demand for "tips" and "hacks", except instead of focusing on the trivial details, we focus on glorifying vices and unusual habits as secrets of success rather than ways of coping with personality and mood disorders. Ways which were often not conscious or willful choices at all. Ways which were often sources of misery. Ways which were often ultimately failures. We forget these things and we forget that we are not so different from our fellow man that we are immune to the same fates.