While on my way to somewhere I really didn't want to go yesterday and, to drown out the noise of my car, I listened to a recent episode of Cal Newport's DEEP QUESTIONS pod, first in awhile, in which he talked about his "Friction / Flow / Finalization" project pathway. (+/-17:41 in the episode)

Basic idea: the first phase, Friction, is the project's nascency , rife with requisite growing pains and the onerous, ponderous getting of nowhere until, at some point or another, you hit a groove and slip into the Flow stage, that wondrous place where the project takes on a life of its own and you get somewhere with it, working its way until its Finalization stage, which is, in many ways, a mirror of the Friction stage, full of similar ponderousness and onerousness – rinse, wash, repeat, for a lifetime.

He also advocates setting different schedules for the different phases, an idea not at all without merit – something I should have considered long ago. Perhaps I have been doing this, in my own way, when I get frustrated and end up only doing half days without knowing why.

But something else this pathway points out: if you're in the habit of continually starting new projects, you end up in the Friction phase far more often than you need to, often never reaching that Flow stage – and certainly not Finalization.

I’m way too deep into too much Friction at the moment; will continue to examine processes through this lens until it – or I – exhausts itself.