The Pain of Convergence
Any finite creation*, even the very best imaginable, is a process of continuously waving goodbye to possibility.
The path from imagined to real is an ever-shrinking sink of possibilities. Whittled down until only one possibility remains.
That long goodbye is a battle with friction, with distraction.
Charles Eames famously focused only 1% of his energy conceiving a design. The rest? Holding onto that design as the project ran its course.
More, that final moment of completion is a moment of loss. The loss of all the other forms this imagined creation may have taken.
No wonder we procrastinate and start new things.
Notes
*This is true of all creativity. From the meta (futures, product vision) to the minute (features, lines of code).
Sources & Inspiration
Four Thousand Hours, Oliver Burkeman
Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland