Lewis Hyde distinguishes between work that you can force yourself to do and labor that won’t be scheduled
quote
He suggests “groundwork”
Jocelyn Glei suggests groundwork is…
It’s not a matter of having so much push that you force yourself to do the work. But it’s also not about having so much pull that you are compelled to do the work as if by some magical force.
It’s more that we need the push and the pull in equal measure, such that both contribute to the eventual getting things done.
Or as Adam Moss describes, we need to have “child and adult in pretty much equal balance.”
Flow argument