Totally support the obsession-model of getting good at things. The downside is, it’s really hard to make yourself be obsessed with something (I have tried and failed to force it). The upside is, if you can find something that triggers your obsession and is also a productive, useful or lucrative sort of a thing to do, then you know that even once the early-obsessive phase passes, you’ll have (seemingly effortlessly, because it’s harder NOT to do the thing you are obsessed with than it is to do it) accrued a huge amount of skill at something that you enjoy. I mean, I haven’t stayed up all night coding the way I did in highschool for at least 12 years, but that period of obsession set up my career. My couple of years of gardening obsession has served me well in life, and every winter I appreciate that time I got so into knitting that I would skip sleep to knit socks.
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