Originally published in May 2024 on my short-lived blog. I'm not sure I still fully agree with this. Probably what's better is to be willing to try new things but to make sure that they are timeboxed and that you re-evaluate whether they make sense periodically. One way or another our lives are definitely a steady state system that cannot accumulate endless in-progress junk.
article: Just Be Done With It · changes
diff --git a/src/just-be-done-with-it.md b/src/just-be-done-with-it.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa405ab --- /dev/null +++ b/src/just-be-done-with-it.md @@ -0,0 +1,115 @@ +--- +title: Just Be Done With It +--- + +Do you know a creative who starts a lot of projects but never finishes them. +Is it you? +I have been the embodiment of that archetype all my life. + +Today I am vowing to finish everything I start. + +Shocking, is it? +Let me tell you what I really mean; +but first allow me to sympathize with my fellow {procrastinators, dabblers, serial-starters, dilettantes, neophiles}. + +**compassion** + +Usually this shortcoming is not due to a lack of talent or capability – +arguably it may even be due to a surplus of the same. +Passion and enthusiasm amplifies the appeal of a myriad of possibilities +all the while the difficulty and mystery of a project fade as the final vision grows closer. + +A predilection for learning is the motive force driving people who plough new fields even as last season's harvest wastes on the vine. + +**clarity** + +As virtuous as a broad education may be there can certainly be too much of a good thing. + +Would you try meth?[^adult] + +Doing something new is to scholarship as juicing is to muscular hypertrophy. + +Okay, I am being hyperbolic. +The point is that doing something new feels really good to someone who loves learning because the learning curve is often relatively "steep" near the beginning of any endeavor.[^90-90] +What may be a deterrent for some *is* the reward for a philomath. +These people must be exceptionally careful when traveling near the [youtube-wikipedia singularity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JheGL6uSF-4). + +Like a person in the grips of addiction a [strong dilettante](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton) may forget to do things which are important or even vital to their wellbeing such as eating, drinking, or documenting their projects in a blog so that people will know that they've been hard at work. + +We have identified a cause of the manic creative's behaviour now let us take pains not to allow it as an excuse. +There is, in fact, quite a lot at stake. + +**consequences** + +> A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. +> +> – William Shakespeare + +Pursuing many projects has a lot of consequences. +Here are just a few: + +- Having no free time +- Cross-pollinating ideas from many fields +- Falling behind in a job market compared to others who specialize +- Enjoying what you do + +Yes, as Shakespeare so elegantly said, there are both good and bad sides to being a jack of all trades. +People who start many projects are likely, but not necessarily, talented in many disciplines. +I for one intend not to relinquish my place at that table; +however I do plan to make a social call among friends dining in the hall of masters.[^m-shaped] +Pursuing many projects is not the problem, rather the issue is with no finishing them. + +Here are some more consequences, this time for not finishing the projects which you start: + +- Mental burden +- Missed opportunities for constructive criticism +- Never learning to prioritize +- Atrophy of resilience[^resilience] +- Didn't get to brag about your cool work[^poopybutthole] + +My friend Luke and I were discussing this topic and he said that not finishing a project is a way to “hedge your bets," +meaning that it is a way to avoid judgement. +As long as a project is incomplete it can be perfect in the mind. +The creator can always defend the project with promises of what it will be like in the future. + +Ultimately all that matters is the result. + +**commitment** + +I solemnly swear, to nobody other than myself, that I will finish what I start. + +The magic of this is not that I will suddenly become a hyper-effective workaholic who is crushing out projects at a mind-bending inhuman pace, +nor is it that I will cower in paralysis afraid to take on the responsibility of doing anything. +More than anything this will act as a forcing function; +a buffer to slow me down before diving headlong into something. + +I will have to become damn good at determining what is and is not worth doing. + +<hr/> + +[^adult]: Partially in jest as I believe in responsible drug use by adults. + Dr. Carl Hart's [“Drug Use for Grown-Ups”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Use_for_Grown-Ups) is a good starting point if you want to know more. + +[^90-90]: Combining the [Pareto Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) with Tom Cargill's humorous [ninety-ninety rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety%E2%80%93ninety_rule) we can determine a philomath's enjoyment, E, throughout the course of a project. + E is steepest in the first 40 percent of Cargill's time (which corresponds to the first 20 percent of Pareto's effort), drops precipitously in the pareto-cargill transition, and plateaus from 90 percent to 180 percent of time (45 percent to 100 percent effort). + +[^m-shaped]: 3M once found that employees with [“T-shaped skills”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-shaped_skills) were over-represented in their top performers. + Besides being of the mildly obnoxious “big company discovers obvious thing” prototype there is something interesting to talk about here. + If one's state of learning can be represented in the form of a game of Tetris, where skills lie across the top and one's expertise in that skill is the number of blocks beneath it then what does a perfect game look like? + Let's assume that the perfect game is one with all the squares filled in. + (There are obvious reasons why this is not realistic, such as that people may actually wish to have a life, or that for all we know it may no longer be possible for a un-altered human mind to encompass the body of all human knowledge.) + What, then, is the best path to take to that goal? + The path which one takes when they project-hop is that of filling up all the squares at the lowest level first. + An academic specialist, such as a neurosurgeon or a theoretical physicist, would laugh at this approach. + Not only because (if the number of subjects is infinite) it will be impossible to move past the first level, + but also because there is tangible value in going depth-first. + After all, a pure mathematician's greatest accomplishment in their field can be to *extend* the body of human knowledge. + So, to wrap up this absurdly long footnote, let's say that I am a firm believer in the _balance_ of depth and breadth. + +[^resilience]: My friend Dilip related to me the concept of “persistence vs. resilience” from a particular study. + The concept is that some people exhibit a high tolerance for delayed satisfaction; they can persist at a task even when the end goal is far. + Some people exhibit resilience – they are able to get back up when they are knocked down. + The study made an inverse correlation between the two traits in a group of students, potentially attributable to very interesting socioeconomic factors. + For the purposes of this discussion it is enough to know that persistence and resilience are not mutually exclusive. + +[^poopybutthole]: People might think that you [just fucked around](https://youtu.be/noW3mCK1eqk?t=234).