In my experience, there are three types of people who are successful in life.
The first type is the Rule Follower. The Rule Follower is the person who has the neat handwriting, the teacher's pet, the perfect A student. That person gets to the top by working very hard and being smart. They decide at an early age that they want to be a surgeon or a lawyer or a musician. They take the right classes, attend the right schools, and follow the well trod path towards those goals. I bear no ill will towards those people. They worked hard and deserve their success, even if they are a little <stage whisper> boring </stage whisper>.
The second type is the Packager. The Packager is smart in a different way than the Rule Follower. They may not do well on the SATs or attend the right schools, but they package themselves up a successful person and other people buy it. They wear the right clothes, make the right statements, schmooze at the right parties. They know how to snow people with jargon. Not all careers as suitable for the Packager. Some careers simply do not allow bullshit, but there are plenty of careers that enable the Packager to weasel his/her way in. Motivational business speakers are often Packagers. Clearly, I do not like these individuals.
The third person is the Tenacious Bull. TB types didn't attend Harvard or received top scores on the SATs. Maybe they have ADD or they lived in the wrong part of the country. Maybe their parents didn't know about enrichment camps and SAT classes. Maybe they couldn't afford them. But the TB has a passion of some sort. An Asperger–ish fascination with a particular topic – trains, heavy-metal bands, beets. They spend most of their waking moments studying that topic.
In the past, the TB types worked on their passions in private. The Rule Followers and the Packagers closed ranks and prevented others from entering their fold. However, the Internet has become an avenue for the TB types to showcase their passions and to create their own roads towards success.
The New York Times Magazine's article on YouTube celebrities showcased some of the people who have found their own success on YouTube. I especially loved the kid from Nebraska who has amassed a huge following by interviewing Heavy Metal bands.
I must not be a TB type, because now I've gotten distracted from finishing this blog post by a video of Patti Smith singing "You Light Up My Life" on the show "Kids Are People, Too."
Apt. 11d 
I was sort of a rules follower when I was younger, but the following the well-trod path was a problem for me. I couldn’t focus for long enough.
LikeLike
Many of the successful people I know (some extremely successful) don’t really fall into any of these categories, at least not well. It’s true that there are lost of ways to be successful and lots of ways to be smart, but this seems much too narrow, and I don’t see the advantage of trying to make these into categories (especially to make them into physical categories in some real sense, as you do in the last one), as opposed to, say, examples of the much more fluid reality.
LikeLike
I suppose. But I think that I’m most interested in the type of people who don’t follow the rules — either they can’t or they won’t — and they still remained doggedly in pursuit of an interest or a goal. I like how the Internet gives them new opportunities.
LikeLike
I spent a few moments classifying our president’s into your categories. It was fun, but I stopped when I realized the reality of Matt’s point (though not before imagining plotting the Prez on a 3-d graph on the 11d scale of R T and P scale).
(also I thought there were two kinds of people)
LikeLike
I feel like I’ve seen that Patti Smith video. Maybe my dad showed it to me once. I’m by no means a Patti Smith expert, but I’ve been listening to her music for a long time, introduced to Easter by my dad. Have you read Just Kids? I started reading it when I was in Pennsylvania.
LikeLike
Your theory is underspecified. I’ve been in Pennsylvania for more than 95% of the time for ten years and I haven’t started reading it.
LikeLike