Two Flavors of Avoidance

These two posts describe opposite sides of the same failure mode. The dopamine trap is about chasing the high of starting — the rush of watching an idea manifest, then abandoning it when the grind sets in. Researching instead of building is about never even getting to the starting line — staying in preparation mode so long that the tools become the project.

One is avoidance through motion. The other is avoidance through preparation. Both feel productive. Neither ships anything. And both are amplified by the current AI moment, where tools are powerful enough to make starting feel magical and plentiful enough to make researching feel necessary. The common thread is that the work — the real, unglamorous, last-mile work — is the thing that keeps getting deferred.