clarity
About a month ago I wrote about the internal tension I feel between learning, doing, and experimentation. Yesterday Jennifer pointed me to a new essay by Paul Graham that hits the nail on the head. I had posited that my tension was between figuring out what is possible and working on things that I know to be possible, but I may have been lying to myself a bit. As I reflect on it, the tension is between things that I know to be easily tractable and relatively unimportant (chores) and difficult but terribly important (real work).
It's useful, but also a bit weird, to have someone lay out what you're struggling with in such clear terms.