The Prospector's Loop

You're not bad at finding ideas. You're good at it. Maybe too good.

You find a vein. You get excited. You start digging. And then—another vein, over there. Shinier. More interesting. Unexplored.

So you wander over. Start digging there. And then—another one.

You're a prospector who never stops prospecting. You've found more gold than most people will in their lifetimes. You've mined almost none of it.

Your trail is littered with half-dug claims. Started projects. Abandoned threads. "I should get back to that someday."

Someday never comes because there's always a new someday somewhere else.

Why the Loop Continues

The Prospector's Loop is driven by a specific emotional pattern: the hit of discovery is stronger than the satisfaction of completion.

Finding a new idea is exciting. The possibility is infinite. The problems haven't surfaced yet. It's all potential.

Mining an existing idea is tedious. The problems emerge. The limits become clear. The infinite possibility collapses into finite reality.

So you chase the hit. New idea, new excitement, new possibility. The loop feels productive—you're always finding things—but nothing accumulates.

This is particularly dangerous because idea-finding is a real skill. You are good at it. The prospector's instinct is valuable. It just needs to be paired with something else.

What Breaking the Loop Looks Like

The Prospector's Loop breaks when you commit to depth over breadth.

Not forever. Not on everything. But on something.

The discipline: when you find a new vein, you don't have to ignore it. You note it. You mark it on the map. But you don't follow it until you've finished mining where you are.

Finished doesn't mean exhausted. It means extracted enough value that the claim has produced something real. A completed project. A published piece. A working implementation. Something that exists outside your notes.

The prospector becomes valuable not by finding more veins, but by developing the ones they've found. The person who fully mines one claim creates more wealth than the person who discovers a hundred and digs on none.

Your instinct is an asset. Your discipline is the bottleneck.