Thank you for this article.
This seems to me that it applies so much to other aspects of life as well, not only for being "a genius". Perhaps this applies more to a particular subset of people who will think on this line.
For example, take the obsession and dial it down a little bit so it becomes a passion instead. Or even further so it becomes ordinary motivation. It becomes almost a linear scale that should match motivation with the effort you may need to achieve anything towards a particular direction. One may say, "that's common sense", but let's consider it anyway. Combine this with the fact that with any field, the further you go outwards, the more effort you will need to take another step. This is similar to the energy you will need to accelerate further, once you reach a particular speed. The faster you go, the more energy you need to go even faster.
In order to start anything that may have enough of a struggle, we need to have enough of a motivation to have started it. Otherwise, when the times get tough and we face a brick wall, we can remind ourselves of that initial motivation to be brave enough to even consider running through that wall head-first even if it may hurt us in the short term. Ideally we should have tools or other people to help us in this task but when it comes to many unexplored areas of science, or even starting our own company, these tools or other people are not so available to us, therefore it is likely we will need that determination to allow us to do that sacrifice. Luckily, these tools/people problems are being resolved more and more every day. But, the further we go, the more we will need, so the thought still applies with the same effect, forever.
There should also be an expanding curiosity aspect to it, too. You have touched on this with being interested in different things. However, we need to actively keep in mind how these different things may be related to each other, perhaps literally, perhaps at a more abstract level. This way, we can continue our exploration of both by using these overlaps as foundations for new land between those landmasses. So that we will not need a complete context switch to consider the different subjects, but we keep building more bridges between them. I like to consider the metaphors of the steam engine to help describe the mind. I am unsure if Freud came up with these connections but they helped expand our minds about what it thinks about itself anyway.
So, does it mean, we are excused to say "follow your dreams"? I believe so. There may be a lot of other people who will say "that is foolish, you will struggle to live". If you look at the bigger picture and say, let's take that seriously: if 100 people try to follow their dreams and only 1 make it while the rest of the 99 suffer. The more you encourage, the more you make that 100 a 1000, and the 1 a 10. The 99 becomes 990. Now, the question becomes, is it worth it? You can guess my answer to this but I will leave it unanswered with the hopes to further discussion.