“…if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery…” - sounds like bunk to me - you won’t be surprised to hear I

“…if Steve Jobs focused on what he was passionate about, he would be a Zen monk in some monastery…” - sounds like bunk to me - you won’t be surprised to hear I didn’t know the guy personally, but everything I’ve read about him and heard him say in interviews etc. suggests he was deeply passionate about both design and technology? Zen might have informed aspects of his aesthetic sensibilities (is that really Zen though?) and maybe his spiritual life, who knows, but I wouldn’t have thought becoming a monk was exactly his ‘thing’? I also have an instinctive loathing of the self-help industry (and ‘personal brand’-ers even more) and I agree that you need skills and hard work to back up your passions and dreams - when you get a chance, or create one, you need to be able to capitalise on it (a mistake I definitely made in my life when self-promotion outclassed capacity to deliver), but why not have a ‘dream’ and allow yourself to think differently some of the time? Especially if you can visualise some sort of tangible path to achieving your goals and break them into doable steps… Much good in the world has been created by people with a bit of imagination, a dream if you like, of how the world might be made better (and arguably much ill also)… People are blessed with the capacity to experiment - to try things out and do something different if they fail... I’d like to see a world were people were more able to do that and survive to fight another day - without worrying about being deported, or made homeless, or getting into debt, or needing food aid, or even not being able to afford a family… Maybe there’s some sort of balance to be aimed at that lies between long term dreams and goals and short term pragmatic compromise, between experimentation and practicality… Life might be better with some art alongside the accountancy you know?/pure theoretical and sometimes unproductive scientific research alongside hard-nosed capitalisation andy marketing makes both stronger and gives both the ability to continue to flourish in the long term?