Finding a job for the rest of my life
nostrademons: The job description you want is basically "tenured professor".  Unfortunately, getting there is tough, and requires that you "close" at least one major project (your Ph.D).I was like this all through school and college.  I hated writing.  I loved learning.  I absorbed all these textbooks, aced the tests, rarely finished a project (or my homework), and hated writing.But sometime in college, I'd made a commitment to redo the backend of a volunteer website I cared about very much.  And I felt like I'd be letting all my friends down if I just gave up on it.That first completed project was torture.  I never wanted to see the code I'd written again, and wanted nothing to do with the website after I'd worked out some of the worst bugs.  But the second completed project (a Netbeans plugin for my job) was easier, and third (Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours) was easier still.  The 4th got harder again, and I needed help to finish it, but then I did a bunch of other websites that were fairly easy.The part of the brain that "gets things done" seems to be different from the part that's "smart".  (I've heard the former called "executive function", and it often doesn't develop until your 20s.)  And it's like a muscle - it gets stronger by exercising it.  I've found it also gets tired like a muscle - I usually work in bursts of 1-2 weeks, and then I need a week or two where I have a light workload and am basically just learning new things.  But a whole bunch of these cycles, over several years, can add up to a decent number of accomplishments.The real hump is that first completed project.  And I don't really know a way around that other than to keep coming back to it and refuse to give up.