Had a minor epiphany while reading this post from John Cutler. Emphasis mine:
Ten years later, and I’m tired of all the ____ vs. ____. Outcomes vs. outputs. Projects vs. products. [...] Maybe these things were useful bugworms in executives’ ears, but I’ll always remember sitting around with a team from a company frequently touted as being product-forward and someone saying, “This is weird. We use projects. We have products. We care about outputs AND we care about outcomes. Sometimes we just ship things; other times we do a lot of exploration.” The whole idea that the rest of the world was wrapped around an axle with these false tensions was really funny to them.
This is exactly right. Who the fuck cares about all these concepts and dichotomies? They're made up! Why are you filling your head with this goofiness? Look at the real world.
Maps are for people who never truly go anywhere. Concepts are for people who never really do anything. The real world laughs at your simplifications and your attempts to define it. It's out there doing its own thing. You can't comprehend it, you can only play with it on its own terms.
The price for creating anything of lasting value is the death of ego and intellect.
I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, "the duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up through the soles of the feet." Meaning this: It is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.