The idea I keep almost starting instead of finishing this.

There's a second idea. It's good. It might be better than this one.

I think about it on slow days, in the shower, when a feature request makes me tired. It's got none of this product's baggage — no legacy code, no grumpy customers, no decisions I've outgrown. It's clean, and it's mine, and nobody's disappointed in it yet.

And I know exactly what it is: an escape hatch. The moment this gets hard, the other idea gets shinier.

I've watched founders abandon a working product for a fantasy. I've also watched founders stay too long in something that was never going to work because quitting felt like failure.

How do you tell the difference between a genuine pivot and a fantasy you're using to avoid the hard part?