Productivity | Artful Balance

When does discipline become nothing more than fidgeting, tweaking? When it lacks productivity.

I could spend forever tweaking. It's actually quite fun and enjoyable. It's what a lot of my hobbies are and essentially have been.

Fitness, for example, has been for me more about tweaking my physique and allaying nervous energy than surmounting an objective challenge.

My intellectual interests, too. Most of it is endless note-taking with little real evidence to show for my dedication to the subject over time.

And even in writing, I can endlessly editing.

Timing is important in the relationship between discipline and production. The good thing about discipline is that it's effective at breeding ideas, which need to be tested and possibly implemented decisively and promptly. Otherwise, other new ideas will crop up and absorb my attention before the original ones can bear any fruit.

If hesitation to act becomes habitual, I could get stuck in a cycle of generating ideas. I could generate thousands of the best ideas ever to bless mankind, but they are only visible to me in my private world. Over time, I'll have nothing to show for my knowledge. This is dissatisfying.

Constant activity, while healthier than boredom and listlessness, becomes not much more than fidgeting without effortfully applying order and trajectory to it.