Rule 9 of 22 · Chapter II — On Work
Keep one project that is only yours
Why this rule exists
When everything I make is for someone else — a client, a boss, an audience — the work slowly stops feeling like mine. A project with no purpose but my own curiosity is where I remember why I liked doing this in the first place. It has no deadline and no one to please. That freedom is not indulgence; it is the thing that keeps the rest of the work alive.
In practice
I keep one thing going that answers to no one. A notebook, a small experiment, a habit of making with no plan to show it. I protect a little time for it even when the useful work is loud and demanding. I try not to let it become another thing to optimize or finish; its whole point is that it stays mine.
When it doesn't apply
The private project can become a place to hide from work that actually needs doing. And if you find yourself with no time for it at all, that is information about your life, not a failure of discipline.