Last night my mind was wandering (as it often does before bed). I was thinking about all the very cool and interesting projects and research being done in Ethereum. Some are really interesting to me. I started thinking about what does it mean when a subject is “interesting” to me.

One side is that the subject is interesting to me, because it’s knowledge. it’s new. it’s design. it’s fun. We all can relate to that. But does it mean that I’m interested to work on that particular subject? Well, no. I mean maybe, if I wasn’t already caught up with other stuff.

Then I started thinking about that last answer. Why would I not just drop the things I’m working on right now and start working on the “interesting” subject? (of course this does not mean that the current subjects are non-interesting.)

The first possible answer that came to my mind was that well, I have already invested time and energy into those subjects. But there has been many times where I have let go of something despite spending a considerable amount of time doing it. So time-invested couldn’t be a factor here. And then again, energy or money could not be a factor here either, disregarded with the same logic.

So what keeps me from dropping the current subjects in favor of the next ones? I guess the only thing that makes sense to me, is that I can’t stop thinking about them. It is like they take this long term space in my brain. I say long term because it’s not short term memory, cause of course there are times that I don’t think about them for hours. But they are persistently there in my head and I will definitely come back to them.

So maybe the defining factor here is BrainSpace. how much BrainSpace does X take up in your head? And thinking more about it, it kind of makes sense. Because it’s basically Attention, and Thought. And since this Space is of course limited, we should be highly selective of what we rent this space to. But what does it mean to be selective and to “Select”? I guess thats a subject for another sleepless night.