when to quit ..

argh. the contents of the thesis are almost done. i'm only including extra and interesting results now.

what really kills me is the constant line of inquiry:

"wait. i think i can prove something better .."

then i work a little, and a little while later,

"wait. is that really true?"
it would be really cool if i could add it to the draft."
"okay: let's see if it's true .."

but, of course, it's too hard to resolve immediately. i forget that it took months of careful thought before many of the results that i've written down took their current form.

so don't be fooled, when you're near the finish line:

when it's typed and when you can mechanically type more,
everything will look easy, so beware.