Investigating how a great scientist thought is interesting, but should come with a YMMV warning. We see the same thing in the business press that focuses on "the characteristics of successful CEOs" and the like.
The interesting question is not "How many successful people in field X have characteristics Y?" but "How many unsuccessful people in field X also have characteristics Y?" If we don't have an answer to that--and we generally don't, because unsuccessful people are relatively hard to identify compared to the successful ones, and are generally considered a less interesting subject to study--then we can't say much about the degree to which characteristics Y contribute to success in field X.
There is no doubt Einstein's doggedness, patience, willingness to learn new methods, physical intuition and deep study of the physics of his time all contributed to his success, but there were likely quite a few people who had similar characteristics. That Einstein succeeded where they did not may be due to various factors, including various forms of luck.
As the article suggests, Einstein's strengths were well-suited to the problems he focused on in his early career, and less well-suited to the problems he focused on in his later career. That is a form of luck, albeit a more subtle and powerful one than "his guesses just happened to be right."
The interesting question is not "How many successful people in field X have characteristics Y?" but "How many unsuccessful people in field X also have characteristics Y?" If we don't have an answer to that--and we generally don't, because unsuccessful people are relatively hard to identify compared to the successful ones, and are generally considered a less interesting subject to study--then we can't say much about the degree to which characteristics Y contribute to success in field X.
There is no doubt Einstein's doggedness, patience, willingness to learn new methods, physical intuition and deep study of the physics of his time all contributed to his success, but there were likely quite a few people who had similar characteristics. That Einstein succeeded where they did not may be due to various factors, including various forms of luck.
As the article suggests, Einstein's strengths were well-suited to the problems he focused on in his early career, and less well-suited to the problems he focused on in his later career. That is a form of luck, albeit a more subtle and powerful one than "his guesses just happened to be right."