Prolificacy

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley" — Robert Burns, "To a Mouse

What you choose to do with your time matters. All ventures come with opportunity cost: the projects never started, the paths unexplored, the conversations never had. And yet worrying too much about this fact leaves you stuck. Not doing much of anything, refining imagined realities.

Fear of the sub-optimal is the curse of the gifted. When circumstance and talent whisper that you can do anything, an internal voice reminds you there's a penalty for doing the wrong thing. So you sit, not idly, but not in motion. Reasoning ahead. Weighing pros and cons. Calculating the return on the investment of your precious time.

Planning is prudent and sensible, but incomplete. It produces information, but only the secondhand kind. Information which was useful to someone else, in some other setting. Worth knowing, but not fully trusting. Planning is also a volatile partner for motivation. It stamps out as many ideas as it sparks, and you should always be gentle when handling ideas. They are fragile when they’re young. Especially the good ones.

Action produces bespoke information - directly relevant and frequently differentiated. Action is a wellspring of motivation. Where planning is static, action is in motion. It carries you upwards, to a vantage point where you can see more of the future, and draw upon inspiration from the past.

Theorising can only transport you within the confines of your imagination. Action allows your imagination to press against the surface of reality and feel what pushes back. Better theories and better plans are necessarily preceded by action, provided you remain open to refining both.

History is replete with examples showing that greatness cannot be planned. The world is too complex, interconnected, and path-dependent for great plans. What then is the point of vision? That which we're told the great among us possess, that which is quite literally a plan for greatness.

There is certainly a place for vision. Standing back to observe the landscape of opportunity and picking, decisively, a point upon it. But the map is not the territory, even for the most visionary. And, even if it were, you cannot chart a course zoomed all the way out. The landscape is too fractal, too complex. To do so would be to miss resources, and overlook danger. So there is a place for vision and plans, just not ones you are enamoured of. Instead default to action and sail westward, toward your vision. Embrace curiosity and follow it swiftly with action. Your curiosity is informed by firsthand information, your plans are not.

So treat everything as a draft - something to get done, because done is the engine of more. Be receptive to feedback, and welcome failure. Above all, be prolific in your creation.