Keywords: similar work day, feel bored, boring, creative, area, change, jobs, ant, top, version, experience, year. Powered by TextRank.
Most people around me, across various fields of work, often complain about how boring or mundane their jobs are. They feel demotivated and probably dread getting up in the morning to go to work. Then, there are the "lucky" ones who, despite doing the same thing year after year, either don't feel bored or are bored but don’t seem to mind it. If they truly aren't bored—something I find hard to understand—that’s fine. However, if they are bored but lack the willpower to change their situation, there isn’t much I could recommend.
There’s also a group of people who want to change but don’t know how. I probably fall into this category. At its core, what we do as software engineers is read, write, and process data—whether it’s database manipulations, video/image processing, or something else entirely. Different domains require different optimizations in the way we manipulate data. For example, some may demand efficient memory usage, while others prioritize fault tolerance or speed. For most of us, though, no one is reinventing the wheel; we’re simply implementing predefined solutions to our problems. This can become boring extremely fast.
Although I don’t have experience as a professional in other disciplines, I believe it’s not unreasonable to assume that the same applies to other jobs. The rinse-and-repeat cycle day after day can be torturous for people with creative minds. This is one of the main reasons I believe the turnover rate in the IT industry is above average.
So, what can be done to make your job challenging and enjoyable? What drives those who are creative yet still manage to do amazing things without getting bored? These are the people everyone envies, the ones with the jobs everyone wishes they had. What I’ve realized is that people who consistently seek new challenges either change their position or progress into a different area. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve outgrown the task at hand; it just means they are no longer satisfied with doing similar work day after day.
For example, a database programmer might explore the field of 3D graphics and gaming. There are new, unexplored problems in that domain that can be exciting to solve. The process of researching or tackling these challenges broadens your perspective. When you adapt methods used in one field to your area of expertise, you’ve hit the jackpot. This can lead to a truly unique discovery or simply a satisfying "aha" moment. Either way, it floods your brain with endorphins and makes you feel good.
Many inventions, from machinery to algorithms, were inspired by mimicking nature—an area seemingly unrelated to computer science or engineering. It’s likely that a keen observer, someone creative, might have had an ant farm and eventually thought of adapting the techniques ants use to optimize their food search for solving general CS problems—thus, ant swarm optimization was born.
Yngwie Malmsteen is a great electric guitar virtuoso, but if he’s the kind of person I’m talking about, I bet he would be bored sick with all his songs and albums because they’re very similar. On the other hand, Pink Floyd, infamous for their experimentation with drugs, brought a whole new experience to their music by incorporating different elements from different experiences, ensuring they never became boring.
Similarly, the 1970s version of Top Gear was just like any other car show, which is why it was boring and eventually went off-air. The newer version of Top Gear , however, incorporates various themes ranging from comedy to challenges and other ridiculous elements. That’s what made the show a huge success and kept it interesting. By adapting aspects from entirely different areas into your own domain, you can make things exciting and worthwhile.
631 words
First published on 2014-06-17
Generated on Oct 9, 2024, 4:10 AM
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