I've just been thinking about all of the projects that I've been working on in the past two years and I'm realizing that it's actually better to be ambitious on a longer-time horizon (closer to decades) and conservative on shorter-term time horizons (<6-8 weeks).

Nowadays you'll get bombarded with tweets and posts (and I've been falling for this trap too) that celebrate "I built this in an afternoon!". Huz-ah!

While the outcomes of these efforts are usually cool and worth celebrating, it's important to remember that the durability of project is usually at least somewhat proportional to the amount of energy that has been put in to sustain.

Just think of the whole graveyard of projects that were built in a weekend that never flourished into anything more because no further energy was invested.

With this in mind, it makes sense to pick a general area, problem space, or direction that you enjoy be in and just make sure that you show up every day.

It's great to keep ambitious visions on longer-term time scales, but just focus on getting a little bit better every day in the short-term.