Not 5. Not 10. Twenty.

That's how many folders I counted in my Projects directory last month. Each one with a README, a few commits, sometimes a deployed demo. All of them dead somewhere between "this is the best idea I've ever had" and "I should really get back to this."

For a long time I blamed discipline. Then I blamed my job being too draining. Then I blamed context-switching. Then I read four books about habits and built elaborate productivity systems that I also abandoned.

None of it touched the actual problem.

The actual problem was that I had never identified which specific psychological mechanism was generating the abandonment. And without knowing that, I was treating symptoms.

Here's what I found after going pretty deep into behavioral psychology research.

The pattern I was actually running

I'm what the research calls a "Paralyzed Visionary." High idea-generation rate. Genuine excitement at the start of projects.…