Why You Can't Write That Book
Apr 27, 2026 5:16 pm
New Post from BiteofanApple
Why You Can't Write That Book
I could do that, I just need more time.
In life we are constantly wishing we had more of something: time, money, friends, energy, etc., and we develop plans to try and meet these goals. We alter our diets, our schedules, we start exercising or reading more. Often times these changes result in significant improvements to our lives. Yet, we never have the energy, the time, or the money that we want. Even when we do succeed in making changes, something else comes up and blocks further progress.
Let's say you want to write a book. You change your schedule to allow for dedicated writing time. However during that time, you're unmotivated. You diet and exercise and read interesting books, trying to kindle the enthusiasm you know you have, but now you have no energy left to write. You have the time, but only to spend staring at a blank page.
Life is a constant balance of particular factors and it takes considerable skill to strike any balance at all for any length of time.
Permit me, if you will, to remind you of your high-school Chemistry class. You probably learned about the concept of a limiting reagent.
The limiting reagent (or limiting reactant or limiting agent) in a chemical reaction is a reactant that is totally consumed when the chemical reaction is completed.
- Wikipedia
Let's say you have a reaction between two compounds (for simplicity let's call them A and B). It takes 2 units of A + 3 units of B to make 1 unit of C.
2A + 3B = 1C
Now let's say you have 10lbs. of A and 12lbs. of B. How much C can you make and what ingredient will you run out of first? That ingredient is your limiting reagent (answer: it's B).
However, this formulation assumes that the amounts of A and B are constant over time. For example, let's say that we know that we need more of B and want to increase the amount of it we have. We go to the store and get 20lbs. of it! However we now find that, flush with one ingredient, we quickly run out of another. We get less of C than we planned.
Perhaps a cooking example would have been better here (cups of flour vs number of eggs), but I digress.
