I struggle with balancing the urge to putter like the author puts it, with doing "expansionistic" things like marketing or building features that are valuable to new customers rather than existing ones. The "correct" business analysis will say the business gets much more out of new acquisition channels than micro-optimizing the product further, that I shouldn't fall into the "build it and they will come" mentality. But my first instinct will always be to want to just create the best possible product for my existing customers - it's what brings me joy, and it's really hard for me to designate any suboptimal state of the product as "good enough for now" and focus on acquisition instead. For now I try to balance it by alternating doing one or the other in each sprint - that way I never neglect puttering completely, but I also force myself not to do it exclusively like I'd probably do if I just based the decision on personal motivation.
I agree with you and I will add my own tint to it: I do this to push myself to grow and move forward and then lie back and do what's comfortable and familiar. Rinse and repeat.
I'd say if you have existing customers, you're already past most companies with a "built it and they will come" mentality. Most of those fail to ever acquire real users.
