In the past, I would often find myself in the following situation. I’d be walking to the office, thinking about the main thing that I needed to ship that day, when my mind would start wandering. I’d start thinking about some book I bought recently that I couldn’t wait to read, an idea for a project that had been brewing in the back of my mind but suddenly came to the fore, or some other similarly exciting curiosity. But I didn’t allow these thought trajectories to continue for long because, well, it didn’t feel right to be thinking such things when there was so much important work to do!

I would delay the gratification of letting my mind run wild with curiosity even after my highest-priority task was done. There was always a long tail of other things I had to do, like finishing other work, talking to someone about something, or filing my taxes. Only when everything was done and I reached a sort of “base reality” where the world wasn’t pulling me in different directions did it feel like “it was time” to be excited. Of course, this rarely happened.

I’m happy to say that I’m excited nearly all the time now, even when there are many high-priority things I’m working on. I let myself savor those moments where my mind starts daydreaming about some transhumanist future or when I begin pondering a most interesting concept I read about the night before. There’s no need to wait! In fact, being in an excited state where I feel optimistic about the future and my role in it makes me more motivated, and the work I do is more aligned with what I actually care about.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying “be distracted.” When doing your work, you should absolutely aim to be as focused as possible. The problem arises when you’re trying to “focus” on a more abstract level, where you’re constraining your imagination until your work is done, even if you’re not actively working, like during lunch or when talking to others.

Intuitively, this feels like a special cognitive case of Richard Hamming’s “work with your door open” concept where if you are so locked in that you’re neutralizing divergent thought trajectories, you’ll probably be more productive locally and get more work done in the short term, but maybe the ideas you come up with, and the future you imagine, will not be as exciting.

Note: this is something that I’ve decided to write about on a whim and is not well-researched or even well-developed. I just hope that the core idea of not waiting to “be done” to feel wholly and unapologetically excited about concepts you’re curious about, and to muse on the wonderful future you want to build, has come across.