One of my more impressive abilities is discovering the exact project I should be working on immediately after beginning another project.
It happens with remarkable consistency. I’ll have something important in front of me. Maybe it’s going well. Then another idea appears.
Not merely an idea. A revelation. Clearly this is the thing. It has cleaner architecture. More potential. Better timing. Possibly a name already.
My brain can produce a surprisingly convincing pitch deck for abandoning yesterday.
The annoying thing is that the ideas aren’t necessarily bad. Quite often they’re good. That’s what makes the problem harder. If every distraction were obviously stupid, prioritization would be easy.
Instead, the real skill I need is learning that something can be a good idea and still not deserve to become my life today.
I’m trying to get better at keeping ideas without immediately obeying them. Write them down. Give them somewhere safe to exist. Come back later. If they’re still interesting after the emotional weather has changed, maybe they deserve something.
I don’t want to become less curious. Curiosity is probably responsible for most of the things I like about myself.
I just need to stop letting every new curiosity become a coup.