3 common routes to the success of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and the Cancer

Having read the three biographies of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and the Cancer simultaneously, I couldn't help but realize the commonalities that each biography shared. It's not the first thing that comes to mind, considering the diversity of the three: A hippie entrepreneural icon; a famous investor who was the richest man on earth; a disease of age and irony. Nonetheless, all 3 were extremely successful in what they each set out to be. What made them so? What is common and shared amongst the three, that we could possibly learn and adopt in our lives, no matter what we do?

1. Focus. 
• Buffett was a very focused man. Although he worshiped and respected his idol, Ben Graham, he insisted on a starkly different investing outlook from Graham. While Graham liked to diversify his investments, Buffett was all about being focused. Know what you want, and go all in. As such, whenever Buffett won, he won it big. Furthermore, putting all eggs into a single basket, Buffett was 'forced' to do extremely thorough analyses and homework on what he wanted to invest in, before he put any of his money in. Because the stakes were high, he made sure he understood the business well enough, minimized risks and ensured a good margin of safety in his investments. This, in turn, resulted in a much greater success rate as compared to any half-hearted analyses of many more investments. 
• Jobs also believed in being focused. When he took over Apple in 1997, he dramatically axed most of the products the company had in progress. Instead, he simply went up to the whiteboard, and drew two lines to form 4 quadrants -- Pro/Customer/Desktop/Portable. He decided that Apple would only make 4 products, but make them extremely well. We eventually saw that he was right.
• Cancers don't spark off at multiple locations at the same time. Solid tumors originate from a single primary site, from a single cell that had attained initiating mutations. Everything develops from that single cell. 
2. Opportunities are right in front of your eyes.
• Buffett started his business career at a very young age. He was aware of his surroundings, and grabbed any opportunity that came his way. Be it pinball machines or selling cars, his eyes were always open and looking out for opportunities. Nothing unique, nothing special, but from his daily life. 
• Jobs led Apple to create the best products simply from his displeasure in then available technology. He hated the walkman, and wanted a device that could store more digital music than just a few songs. He disliked having to press buttons on mp3s to go through songs one by one. Thus, the iPod with a wheel. He wanted to be able to make calls without the bulkiness of a keypad and excess buttons. Thus, the iPhone with a touchscreen. 
• Cancer arises from nothing other than twisted, altered pathways that already exist in the normal cell. Cancer is not 'created'. Rather, it modifies what has always been there. The well known tumor suppressor gene, TP53, exists to make sure normal, healthy cells do not divide unnecessarily. Over half of human cancers are known to inactivate TP53, thus resulting in uncontrolled cell division forming large tumor masses. The same goes for other cellular pathways that regulate cell division, cell motility and blood vessel formation. It is an unfortunate paradox, a deformed reflection of how our body created so many ways to 'protect' itself and ensure a regulated environment. 
3. Love what you do. No, I don't mean be okay with what you do.. nor to simply like some work on some days. I mean LOVE it to bits. 
• Buffett loved numbers, and he loved the revelation they always brought to him after collecting tonnes of data and analyzing them. He could spend hours forgetting his food and his sleep, just hovering over stacks of stocks or business plans. 
• Jobs was the same. He adored combining design with technology, and never gave up a single moment to work on that fusion. He was concerned about every single detail of design and technology of his products, even as a CEO or chairman of the company. When he was ousted from Apple, he never gave up, but instead started another company, NeXT, to work towards the same goal of fusing design with technology. His decision to take over Pixar was similar. His passion was unmistakable in every thing he did throughout his career.
• "Love" in cancer can be seen in its persistence to overcome. There are thousands of different checkpoints and regulators in each human cell that keeps everything in order. But the cancer cell overcomes each of these. A cancer cell needs to grow and multiply rapidly, thus it mutated/silenced/deleted/overcame cell division and cell growth regulators. After growing rapidly and forming large cell masses, these tumor masses are far from the nearest blood capillary, thus face a lack of access to oxygen and other nutrients needed for growth. Cancer cells thus develop a way to attract blood vessel formation within the tumor masses, a process called angiogenesis. To spread from the primary tumor site to the rest of the body (metastasize), cancer cells need to learn to move. They thus had to overcome cell motility restrictions, squeeze into the blood stream, and adapt to a new environment. The persistence to overcome all these seemingly seemless checkpoints, is what made cancer 'successful' (and scary). 

Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer; Warren Buffett lost his first wife, Susie Buffett, to lung cancer; Cancer, having known to exist for hundreds of years, is rightfully crowned the emperor of all maladies.