Herbs and Spices

You reach office early morning. Between multiple rounds of coffee and extended lunch, you attend meetings, debug some code, prepare for an upcoming presentation, review a test report, attend a meeting with stakeholder and finally head home in the evening. The cycle repeats next day and the day after. Sooner than later, the boredom sets in, and the urge to make a change keeps on growing stronger. In this fast-moving world, where change is the only constant, the feeling of monotonicity seems to arise in shorter cycles with passing time. The question is how often one should jump ship and how to balance breadth (aka general skills) with depth (aka expertise).

Compare this situation with your personal life. All of us follow a routine. We continue to live in the same house, eat similar food and spend time with the same set of friends (you can’t do much about the family anyways). In fact, we feel irritated, when something falls out of routine. Whether the deviation involves a delay in delivery of milk or the maid deciding not to show up, it translates into a bad hair day. Let’s accept that we like predictability. What do we do to avoid this predictability translating into monotonicity? One may head out for dinner and drinks with friends over the weekend or try to sneak in a late-night movie during the week, if possible. Annual pilgrimage to the beaches of Goa always energizes us. These deviations keep us going, despite the majority of time still spent on repetitive activities, just like adding different herbs and spices to the same set of base vegetables being completely different flavor to the dish.

Look for these herbs and spices at work as well. It could be an online training course or a side-project on upcoming technology or something else. Spending 10% of time on these deviations will make the rest of the repetitive routine much more interesting. Believe me, if you give your 110% focus during the remaining 90% of the time, the day wouldn’t seem so long anymore.