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Since the summary relies so heavily on a Steve Jobs anecdote for the "don't follow your passion" advice: Steve Jobs was not passionate about Zen buddhism, what
by aedron 8y ago
Since the summary relies so heavily on a Steve Jobs anecdote for the "don't follow your passion" advice:
Steve Jobs was not passionate about Zen buddhism, whatever he may have said at some point in time. It was a passing interest of his. He was very obviously passionate, even obsessed, about developing great computing products for consumers.
The example is horribly chosen.
- rchaud 8y agoIt's a good example for the audience he is speaking to. Everyone thinks of Jobs as a "creative", cut from a different cloth compared to tech CEOs of the time. It's easy to see his success as stemming from his refusal to do things the normal way. His barefoot hippy days at Reed and HP are also recognizable touch points of his early history, and covered extensively in the official biography, which no doubt was used as a source for this passage (of Newport's book). Of course the reality was more complicated; he was a deadbeat dad and needlessly perfectionist at times. But given the public image he created for himself, the Buddhism story is a good fit for the point the author is making.