The most interesting things are usually produced by someone working, and leading a team, relentlessly for a long time. The best source of relentlessness is obsession. Many people “have that dog in them,” but it won’t come out until they’ve embraced their obsession. David Remnick reflected on the best New Yorker profiles: “One quality that runs through nearly all the best Profiles is a sense of obsession. So many of these pieces are about people who reveal an obsession with one corner of human experience or another…In every great Profile, too, the writer is equally obsessed. It's often the case that a writer will take months, even years, to get to know a subject and bring him or her to life in prose.” Mike Moritz found that underneath great leadership was obsession: “Great leadership has many different attributes, but it starts with knowledge of a particular pursuit, because without the knowledge and mastery of that particular pursuit, I don’t think you have the authority to convey it with conviction to others. It usually is associated with an obsession, because to be a great leader, you have to be obsessed by something, otherwise everything seems false and hollow. You have to then be able to convey your obsession to people in a manner that inspires and encourages and motivates them to perform at a level they didn’t think they were ever capable of performing at. All of those, when knitted together, help to define what separates a great leader from a very capable manager.” Sometimes I’ve had this feeling like someone is so much smarter than me and therefore I have no hope of competing. But usually what is really going on is that they are just more obsessed than me. Intelligence is good, and some amount is required, but the obsession is better. So of course the question becomes: what are you obsessed with?