I think this blog falls into a common issue of conflating natural talent/skills with what the person does to cultivate that talent.
In other words, Simon is an anomaly and it's not clear that what he does makes him exceptional so much as he is exceptional AND he does all that stuff. You don't end up principal infrastructure engineer at Shopify at 26 years old after immigrating at 18 years old without being something special. He's probably fun to be around, but take the average human and put him through what he described and I'm pretty sure you just get an exhausted person without the amazing part.
I called this "survivorship bias" in my comment but I think you are right, and it's probably more of a fundamental attribution error [1]. Just like how media fetishizes the weird habits of billionaires, ignoring that a) each billionaire will have their own weird habits, and b) tons of people have weird habits without being substantially wealthy.
I'm tired just by reading what those super productive people do. I can't imagine having the energy and motivation to just sit down and do all those stuff.
Must be a nice brain to live in, though. I'd give an arm and a kidney for that.
I agree. But, I think your comment about energy might be the key - that he might like doing it, and so it requires less energy. I have a lot of energy for some strange tasks that could easily be considered tiediuos by others (gardening for example). I think maybe the key is to figure out what you have so much energy for that it doesn't feel like work, instead of chasing somebody else's happy.
In other words, Simon is an anomaly and it's not clear that what he does makes him exceptional so much as he is exceptional AND he does all that stuff. You don't end up principal infrastructure engineer at Shopify at 26 years old after immigrating at 18 years old without being something special. He's probably fun to be around, but take the average human and put him through what he described and I'm pretty sure you just get an exhausted person without the amazing part.