I don't disagree with you; you certainly don't need wealth and fame to work on what you want, but it sure does enable you to do so. From what I know about him,

I don't disagree with you; you certainly don't need wealth and fame to work on what you want, but it sure does enable you to do so. From what I know about him, he was fortunate to land in a position where he could thrive. That's not to say he was fortunate in that it was all luck as he was very intelligent, but fortunate in the sense that the opportunity was there for him to take it. > After I took the job at Softdisk, I was happy. I was programming, or reading about programming, or talking about programming, almost every waking hour. It turned out that a $27k salary was enough that I could buy all the books and pizza that I wanted, and I had nice enough computers at work that I didn't feel the need to own more myself (4mb 386-20!). > I learned a huge amount in a short period of time, and that was probably a turning point for my personality. I could still clearly remember my state of mind when I viewed other people as being ignorant about various things, but after basically doubling my programming skills in the space of six months, I realized how relative it all was. That has been reinforced several additional times over the seven years since then. taken from http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers http://games.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmac... I will agree with you that one's mentality definitely has a very strong effect on one's own happiness. On the other hand, I really think that people can do so much more when they are put in an environment which supports their growth and personal goals than when they are doing something because it's what's required of them. As for "The environment of getting to work on what he wants? Lots of people have that but still burn out, that can't be the only thing.", there's been previous research into causes of burnout already which you can read here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pressure-proof/201308/six-sources-burnout-work https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pressure-proof/201308/s...