Interesting article.
> (...) you must provide your own direction. You decide what to study, how to study it, and how to apply that new knowledge in some interesting way. (...) this is a stumbling block. (...) The good news is that for several reasons this is much easier for a Forever Project than for graduate school.
> When you craft something, much of the interest is in solving the puzzle of how to use the skills you've mastered to create the item you desire to produce.
> My Ph.D. topic was on creativity, but my adviser was very interested in the related topic of humor and that distraction caused me no end of pain.
> Another good source of ideas comes from reading about similar work and otherwise participating in a community of enthusiasts.
> Having rewards at different times scales lets you adapt your effort to your current level of motivation.
> tangible progress. As you work on your Forever Project, what will you have to show for your work?
> writing about your Forever Project forces you to think about your learning process.
Thanks OP.
The whole approach is nice if, for a start, you can afford enough free time for it after your work, family and choices in life.
"Graduate studies". As a Ph.D., too, I can somehow confirm what the article author writes about providing one's own direction.
All this rings a bell. Perhaps I have a good forever project in "writing stunning software that runs on limited resources", with journey through writing first-person immersive 3D games running on 8 (and even 4) bit processors and limited memory?
Not as varied as map-making, but still: mathematics, theory of computation, cognitive science, human visual system, signal processing, real-time systems, video game history and communities, music.
* (1991-1999, mostly 1996) 3D dungeon game on a 1MHz 4-bit processor http://amphi-gouri.org/hp48/dm48/#presentation (block-per-block motion à la Dungeon Master), runs on HP-48 handheld calculator.
* 2020, an award-winning puzzle game with falling blocks with a smooth 50Hz not-missing-a-frame animation driven by a Z80, running at 4MHz and feeding a huge-for-the-era 16kbytes framebuffer. You can play a beta on https://gourichon.org/cpcitor/justget9/beta/tutopic/
* next step: 3D immersive game with smooth motion on the same hardware. Few have tried. (It's easier when the framebuffer is only 1k like on the TI handheld calculators, I want to do it big.)