The first half of the essay aligns with your takeaway. But the second half does start to delve into how to identify useful obsessions, starting with "But there are some heuristics you can use to guess whether an obsession might be one that matters." Which sounds like an optimization, and which seems at least somewhat at odds with a major starting premise that you mentioned ("They're not doing it to impress us or to make themselves rich, but for its own sake.").I agree with OP, the thesis makes sense assuming the primary goal of one's life is discovering world-changing ideas (what he's calling "genius"). That's understandable from a VC perspective since that's basically what VCs do. But most of us here aren't VCs, and while idea discovery is a great goal to have even if you're not a VC, it doesn't have to be the primary one.
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