I'm not diminishing them, I am in awe of their work, I'm just pointing out that sometimes people (including myself) focus on esoteric projects that might have some learning opportunities, but don't directly solve a real problem (and might just be psychological mechanisms).

hi! author here! it's taken me many years to be able to self reflect enough to produce these next few words, but the answer is I have learned about myself that I perform better under pressure. I'm more consistent, reliable, and make better decisions when it's go-time. so I guess the answer to your question _should_ be yes.

although.. I've noticed I have other flaws that have burned me many times in responding to incidents. Oh well. The one I've been working on for years is "when the system is down, check the status page of the upstream provider first because it might not be your fault". I always assume it's my fault for way longer than I should.

I totally understand. When I have a project with a months timeline that I know can be done more quickly, I spend a lot of up front time exploring areas that might be helpful, or might just be interesting on their own. A friend called this process "annealing." It does bring more creative and sometimes breakthrough solutions, but I find we are in a world where development creativity is subjugated to more top down controlled ideas (which can often lead to a 'race to the bottom' for the users in a startup culture focused on exits)