How Doers Do

While I agree with your point, I do feel the need to point out that "finally doing some house cleaning" is not a manic episode. A manic episode is something that last a week and usually includes refactorings of more grandeur proportions

Are you recommending "firing on all cylinders all the time?"

Not many people can do this that I know. I do know a few.

We need more advice for the average in this world.

Good leaders have always been doers. That's how they became leaders. Leading has never been about being good at speeches. It's about doing the work and making sure the work is done right.

Well, obnoxious may be too strong, but it is definitely ironic and self-unaware (or should that be un-self-aware?)

Not ashamed to say I'm still working towards that ideal. My project is a start for me. It was too good of an example of doing that I couldn't point it out. It could have been anyone in my feed.

"but writing replacements for existing tools/libraries because they're flawed, while fun, can be an incredible distraction"

I think that's an excellent point and more or less goes along with my comment on this. I think what TPW was doing was actually trying to get out of the rut of completing the real work by trying to have some success and pleasure which would spur him on to finishing what he needed to do (as evidenced by the tweets) (reminds me a little of not getting into real work but spending time "organizing" first under you get the energy up to tackle the real task). Sometimes simply writing shell scripts gets me in the mood to do the "real work" that I have to do (programming or non programming).

Once again, nothing wrong with this approach I just don't think it's an example as stated of a "doer" which is not the same as saying that the behavior doesn't have any value.

Just work with her to find time to do what you want. If you lay out some things that are important to you, ask her to give up some weeknights (or whatever it takes for you) with you in the code cave to help you get there, and are prepared to sacrifice the occasional inspired time when stuff that's super important to her comes up, you'll be fine. I mean, she's your wife. She wants to see you accomplish stuff that's important to you, right? Make her a partner in doing that. Like lots of stuff in marriage, its about communication and compromise. Congratulations on the marriage, by the way!

Realize you can't have everything...

Does your wife work? Do you have kids? Over the years my wife and I have gone back and forth on time splits. It doesn't help that I happen to be more of a night owl and she is more of an early riser, which means our natural tendencies tend to cut both ends of the day off from interaction.

The best thing that has worked for us is to communicate goals, so if I'm trying to get "X" done we'll work schedules to get time to work on it, and then if she is trying to get "Y" done we'll do the same for her. When we're doing "Z" which is high priority for both of us we we're just splitting up things to work on and doing them and time issues don't seem to pop up.

The key for us is that we're very supportive of each others goals, and when planned together we are both committed to making things successful. Problems arise when one of us goes heads down in some project and shuts the other out, leaving them to keep things going while the other gets their project done. That doesn't feel good to the person shut out. Things get dicey and we've got to recognize that something that should have been 'short and sweet' is taking way more time.