I see it a bit differently. Some people get on a cycle of taking action, reviewing the results, and learning to improve the results of their next action. All three of those I cited have that in their DNA (or so it seems to me). Learning from others is a key aspect of that approach. In reviewing the results, and even before taking the action, search for how others have approached the same problem. Not necessarily to copy them, but to identify what worked and adopt it, what didn't work and avoid it, then, synthesize and move forward to the next challenge.

A Musk quote that stuck with me came in the midst of one of his Twitter escapades wherein he was regularly attacked for seemingly erratic, likely sleep-deprived statements. He came across as very defensive to a reporter who asked him if he felt he could accept criticism. He responded, "How do you think rockets get into space?" He may not be so concerned about how Wall Street perceives his character, but when it comes to SpaceX, and likely all of his serious endeavors, he's relentlessly critical of solutions.

Hacker News is just one source to get ideas, learn new things and practice rational thinking. Folks around here are more than happy to help hone your skills. If you can carry that into daily life, you'll catch a rabbit or two.

I agree with what you say and perhaps what I am trying to say ineloquently is they have focus on what they want to do first and when they need a solution they go searching for it leveraging what others have done and reviewing it etc. I can’t speak for you but I am a regular visitor to hn and the content it shows and in that sense I am here first looking for ways to improve and then hoping to apply what I have learned to something when it’s needed and may be it will never be needed. Former is focused to unfocus as needed and latter is unfocused to focus someday. If that makes sense.

I tend to believe people have some sort of predisposed propensity to succeed, for whether definition of succeed we like to use, for whatever type of endeavour we’re pursuing.

Combine that with the genetic lotto—born in the right place at the right time in to the right family—and a fairly random dose of luck—right idea at the right time.

And there’s a statistical side to it too: only about one in one hundred people can be in to top 1%, and the Musks / Buffets / Grahams of the day world are more rare still.

The internet barely existed when they were growing up. Why would they be lurking on forums?

They did what they had to do for the realities of their time.

Ha! That’s a great observation!

One could write numerous contentless blog posts about how they did or didn’t contribute to their success.