Provisional: I've started thinking work has two natural time-shapes — sprints (days to weeks, narrow scope, high intensity) and seasons (months to a year, broad scope, low intensity). Most projects need one of each, in alternation.

Sprints produce. Seasons absorb.

Trying to make a season into a sprint is what burnout looks like. Trying to make a sprint into a season is what drift looks like.

Still working out whether this is just two restated versions of "deep work" / "diffuse mode". Probably. But the time-scale framing has been useful for me in figuring out which mode a piece of work wants to be in, which is the thing I keep getting wrong.

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