Ridiculous hogwash. Springsteen didn't "paint a target around his arrow." He is just insanely talented in a way that resonates with millions of people.
> Is it possible that Springsteen could have benefited from painting more of a target around some of those arrows?
The premise of this article is that Bruce "doubled-down" on his strength: song-writing. The life-lesson being that we should focus on our individual strengths instead of chasing someone else's strengths.
But I think Bruce just did his thing, and it happens to be that he was really-really good at it. I don't think he chose to focus on lyrics vs guitar skills or vocal skills. He just wrote songs and played guitar and sang --all to the best of his ability-- and it turned out that the sum of three was phenomenal.
The author is correct in his lesson. But Bruce is not an example of it. Instead, find a person who failed repeatedly while chasing something they were not great at, then found success after consciously switching gears and being more true to their own strengths.
> But Bruce is not an example of it. Instead, find a person who failed repeatedly while chasing something they were not great at, then found success after consciously switching gears and being more true to their own strengths.
It's weird because GPT is telling me this is exactly how Born to Run happened. Especially if you equate "something they were not great at" with "not having full creative control".
Not to beat a dead horse here, but I don't think Bruce thought to himself "You know, writing lyrics is actually what I'm best at... lemme focus on that this next time instead of all that other stuff!"
Step 1: Be Springsteen
Step 2: