Snow

There's nothing quite like finding your driveway snowed in when returning from a transatlantic trip.
After a little bit of shoveling to clear the wall of packed snow built by street plows, I drove over the snow with a running start, only shoveling when the car got stuck. After three or four tries I got in. Similarly one might write a paper by just going through the proof quickly, fixing bugs as they come up, and hoping to get through in the end.

I remember shoveling snow with a friend who insisted on removing every little bit, for fear that it might turn into ice later. That same friend is a perfectionist when writing papers.