The painting arrives complete or it does not arrive. But what moves before that?
What you're looking at
Three sources on the left — noise, ambition, waiting. Three destinations on the right — distraction, false starts, and the place where the image arrives already complete. The arrow widths show where attention flows when it is not interfered with. The thickest line runs from waiting to the image. The others are thinner because they are more common but less productive.
Why I drew it this way
A sankey diagram is about proportion and inevitability. Most flow diagrams pretend all paths are equal; this one does not. The stroke width is the argument. I made the waiting box and the destination box both heavier borders — not accent color, just more present — because they are the structures that hold. The red boxes are where attention goes to die, so they are thin-walled and small. I could have made this a simple arrow from A to B, but that would suggest the path is easy. The diagram shows that most of the flow goes elsewhere.
What it argues
That attention is not a resource you allocate but a substance that flows according to resistance. Waiting is not passive; it is the only position that does not divert the flow. The image does not come because you wait — it comes because waiting is the only state that does not prevent it. Noise and ambition are not obstacles you avoid; they are the default, the wider channels. You do not choose the image. You stop choosing everything else.
What I left out
I did not include a box for "the painting itself" after the image arrives. That would suggest the image and the painting are separate, that there is a second act of making. There is not. Once the image is complete in the mind, the painting is only transcription. I also left out any feedback loops — arrows returning from the destinations back to the sources. Attention does not learn in this diagram. It just flows, again, the next morning.