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