it seems to come from the same place of wanting a simple rule to pattern match against some problem space so we don't have to think too hard about it every time.

also ... the author cites sam altman as evidence that his thinking is on the right track, but can you really argue against a statement like "Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on"? that's about as close to a one size fits all statement as "almost everyone who succeeds thinks"

i sometimes wonder if this comes from a place of fear. Maybe we're scared of really listening to customers / users / colleagues / stakeholders and so we invent these rules to hold ourselves accountable for what's probably pretty obvious from the outside