To frame it with someone I know much better, what about Nikola Tesla? Profoundly accomplished, objectively made enormous contributions to engineering that made huge improvements to the quality of life for a large chunk of humanity. He was utterly obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge and nothing else. On his death bed he regretted his work ethic and wished only to have ever known the touch of a woman.
We may be benefiting from their obsessions, but they aren't.
Of course it’s possible to make smaller strides while living a more or less healthy life but I think for some (Tesla, Erdős) it just tips. But then again Erdős was maybe happy with his life...
Sticking with the scientists for a moment, maybe Feinman is exemplary. But are a bunch of Feinmanns enough?
Even a genius may not be immune to FOMO.
Which is why you're not Mark Hurd or Vincent Van Gogh.
Your family will (presumably) remember you fondly, and that's your reward. It will have to be enough. If it is, then good for you.
It's not what everybody else wants out of life, and that's OK.
Funny though I bet nobody who didn’t know him personally will remember Hurd in 50 years. Maybe a case study in B-school, but they don’t build monuments to folks who ran other people’s companies. Not that it isn’t crazy hard work, just that I don’t think a Hurd or a Cook is much concerned with their place in history.
And certainly, nobody who worked at Oracle will be remembered as one of the all-time best-loved business figures.
No, but I never heard anyone say "again, why" about Van Gogh. The why is self-evident in retrospect.
I wouldn't put my art before everything else in life, and I'm not saying Mark Hurd did, but I get that some people do and once in a while that results in an incredible gift to humanity.
Most of the time it doesn't, but I don't see how you get a Van Gogh without a lot of people giving an unhealthy amount of themselves to potentially boring, mediocre shit.