Get a hobby. No really, get a hobby.

Do you recognize this situation? You just graduated from university, started your first job, and your are dedicating all of your time to the company.

Well, the same happened to me. Not that I was complaining. I worked (and still work) for a fantastic company (OMP), a company that encourages you to develop yourself, but also keep a healthy work-life balance.

When I started to work at OMP, in 1988, I was fascinated by technology, software, and how applications interacted with the hardware. The operating system at that time was MS/DOS, and there were no fancy libraries, no device drivers that shielded you from the hardware, just the OS. And so I got intrigued by those thin layers between applications, the operating system and hardware.

The effect was that I had no time left for hobbies. I spent every evening at my computer, finding out how you could use your knowledge of hardware to make applications better, how to manage memory in a better way than with the standard C library, how call stacks worked, and how application errors could be caught, in order to find easier ways to find application problems. The occasional free time in the weekend was spent by going to the movies, going to a fancy restaurant with my wife, and of course, playing with the kids.

But ... no time for hobbies.

At that time, both my brain hemispheres were busy with hardware and software. The left cerebral hemisphere of my brain (the analytical part) analyzed the complexity of hardware, and how software could interact with it. The right cerebral hemisphere of my brain (the creative part) came up with interesting new ideas on how software could make better use of hardware.

But things changed about 30 years later.

My left brain hemisphere was still analyzing application problems and was busy working out solutions for customer problems. But my right brain hemisphere was slowly getting out of work. The abstraction layer between applications and hardware became much bigger in the last 30 years. No need to worry on how memory should be organized: C/C++ libraries became very good at this. No need to worry on how application crashes should be handled: we have Windows Error Reporting to do this for you. No need to know how call stacks work: Windows has the right functions to dive into the call stack for you.

My work as a software architect still required a lot of creativity from me, but not enough to completely fill the void in my right brain hemisphere.

Since I was interested in music my whole life, I started making music myself.

Making music filled the void in my right brain hemisphere. It allows me to be more creative again. And with the current technology, you don't need to a 4-year education in a music school. Apple's Garageband gave me everything I needed. You just need your imagination, and some experimentation. So, I started making music. You can find my experimental music under the artist name Mel Sail'Eh, and my more industrial music side under the artist name MindStrike. Both can be found on Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes.

But, I didn't stop with music. I also started writing a book. Last week my first book was published on Amazon: Unexpected (under my pseudonym "Patrick Van"). Thirteen short stories, inspired by the master of short stories, Fredric Brown. Every story starts quite normal, but all of them have a twisted end.

Both music and writing put my right hemisphere to work, to fantasize, to come up with new melodies and beats for music, or to come up with ideas for new short stories. Who knows, I might even write a big novel next year.

As an ICT professional, it's easy to get stuck in your job. But don't forget both your brain hemispheres need to work. And of course, creativity outside work often helps creativity in your job.

So, do something besides your ICT job.

Get a hobby. No really, get a hobby.

#LifeatOMP #omp #innovation | OMP