To be fair I don't think it's fair to compare yourself to him in terms of being burned out. I'm sure he's wealthy and famous enough to get to work on whatever he wants to, whereas most people have to work for a living. I imagine if you got to program anything you wanted and only when you wanted, you wouldn't feel as burned out either.
Carmack is definitely awesome, but I really don't think his awesomeness is what stops him from getting burned out, and more importantly I seriously doubt your getting burned out implies your lack of awesomeness.
You don't need wealth and fame to work on what you want. John Carmack started out with neither but he's always had one thing to go along with his above average smarts and focus/productivity: an unwillingness to compromise on what matters. There were plenty of times in his early career where he challenged management and won (because management realized how valuable he was) but he was fully prepared to take the loss. Better to work as a pizza cook while furiously coding interesting graphics problems and games at night than bow to management's demands to patent something like side-scrolling technology on a PC.
If you don't think it's some dimension of his awesomeness that keeps him from getting burned out, what do you think it is? 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.
Edit: I do agree with your underlying idea though that you don't need to be as awesome as Carmack to get the same benefits in terms of being highly productive without burning out. Your output will be scaled down accordingly to how much less awesome you are than he is, but it should be possible, even if very difficult, to transform oneself into a focused, disciplined, productive, and happy worker, even if it's very mysterious and individual-specific how to actually do that.
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.
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/s...
Fair enough. Now that you mention it, if I got to work on whatever I wanted, I absolutely would be happy. Just gotta make time after work to reacquaint myself with projects that I find interesting :)
Carmack is definitely awesome, but I really don't think his awesomeness is what stops him from getting burned out, and more importantly I seriously doubt your getting burned out implies your lack of awesomeness.