The Free Play of Ideas and the Disciplined Project

I enjoy the free play of thought, unconstrained by the discipline of a project that seems to narrow things down excessively. I also like the focus of a strong project that direct my attention at specific things. It is impossible to be interested in everything at the same time. What I really enjoy, then, is the free-play of ideas within a project, and the tension between developing an idea for its own sake and developing it within the framework of an argument. Many time I have developed an idea without any ulterior motive and it has ended up in a project. The disciplined project colonizes the rest of my ideas, cherry-picking the best ones and throwing away the others.