End-game strategy

As I get older I'm becoming much more conscious of the dwindling amount of productive time that I have left and it's becoming clearer to me how I ideally don't want to spend this time. I'd like to think that over the years I have acquired a reasonable degree of competence in my chosen field and have accumulated a good set of skills and knowledge about how to achieve concrete things within it. I'm finding that the challenge is that when you reach any significant point of competence in any field then it becomes as much a curse as an opportunity. This may sound strange, but, once the people around you in your particular field, who lack this competence, but who don't lack ambition or opportunity, realise what you can do, then the pressure to start new projects with them to achieve some desirable outcome becomes ever more numerous and superficially attractive. It's an obvious fact that building value from scratch is often more lucrative than piggy-backing on something that's already established, albeit much more risky.

The realisation is that new projects are more expensive (and risky) for the people who have the competence because they end up being the ones who have to create and deliver stuff first, as opposed to the ones who manage, sell, market or administer that stuff. This is particularly so because at the start of any project (i.e. when nothing exists) those early days are all about precisely that, i.e. inventing, creating and delivering new stuff! Once the project starts to mature (i.e. there's something to sell) then the roles kind of reverse and the pressure becomes greater on those charged with the selling, promoting, managing and administering of the things that have been delivered. Of course this is somewhat of a simplification since the job of delivering never really ends, it more usually simply changes into one of maintenance and evolution, but in general I do think that "new projects" are harder and more risky for the creators and builders among us and mature projects more onerous for the administrators and sellers/promoters. 

My conclusion is that as I get older and the sand starts to run out, I think I will reflect more skeptically about starting new projects and creating value from scratch, perhaps focus more energy on evolving and maturing value that already exists. As a new years resolution, develop and perfect a less onerous and less stressful "end-game" strategy perhaps.