I used to attend meetings of a Lisp / FP users' group. Man, what a lineup of the brilliant unaccomplished. There were maybe one or two guys who were using Common Lisp at their jobs (one was at Amazon) and getting amazing stuff done with it. You could spot these guys immediately by their energy and social comfort. But the rest were always working on something cool and never finishing it. They were so far gone nodding in their opium parlor of thought there seemed little hope. I couldn't interest them in any practical project. They were only interested in the next high.

I used to think 'publish or perish' was a bad thing for academia. Now I don't. Everyone needs external social pressure.