I disagree. While sometimes you might not be willing to get into the good stuff, other times you're absolutely in that mood and get into it without breaking a sweat. I see nothing wrong in going with the flow most of the time.

For the last while, I've been going at things at my own pace. I try, hard as possible, not to let myself get into anything I don't want to do. The result, I find, is that while I'm not as überproductive as I was last year, when I was in a bad place and trying hard to get out, I still generate a lot of work without seeming to have to make an effort. What's more, I'm growing in a lot of ways at once because I don't have the slight resentment against the work I used to force myself to do.

I find as I look at great works of art, regardless of the genre, that with the greatest masterpieces there comes a sense of relaxation. The people who made them weren't obsessing over them any more than they wanted to. They'd just taken themselves down a path in which what they were making was exactly what they wanted to make, and they made it. I find the same thing about Internet startups, actually: My favorite start-ups tend to defy a lot of the conventional rules, work at a relaxed pace, and then explode and grow huge.