I recently reorganized my office space, and it reminded me how easily I can get stuck in a rut. I generally fall into the same routine to get ready each morning, take the same route to work, open the same three applications when I sit down at my computer, etc. While this may be an efficient way to do things, I’m convinced that these habitual processes hurt my ability to think creatively and undermine my problem-solving skills.

So, I try to make an intentional effort to introduce some freshness into my life. And to make sure I actually do it, I keep these changes really, really small. Like listening to a different radio station in the car, or using a pencil all day instead of a pen. Tiny little changes. They ensure that I’m always adapting, learning and exposed to new perspectives.

Ultimately, I hope these tiny changes establish a pattern of exploration in my life that lead to bigger and better things.

This great article from the New York Times suggests finding ways to leave our comfort zone and stretch ourselves:

It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases…No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general.

Routines can be comfortable, but can also place limits on our ability to think and behave. What are some ways you avoid getting stuck in a rut?

Here at Idea Works our primary development platform consists of Perl and MySQL on Linux. In addition to that, over time we’ve established specific tools we use in development. This leads to about ten software tools that are used daily which our developers must be comfortable with to be productive.

But, in our experience it’s always better to hire someone smart, not simply someone who is familiar or skilled with the tools used. Programming languages and environments are just syntax. Understanding computer science concepts is the hard part.

You can teach almost anything to someone who’s willing to learn, and companies should be wary of requiring candidates to know specific language sets or tools. If you hire the right people they’ll learn, and you’ll be better off in the end.

We practice what we preach: We’ve recently hired two interns for this summer. One has beginner Perl experience and the other has none. But, we have confidence that they’ll learn, and that they’ll learn fast enough that we won’t be impacted negatively.