2022-09-05

Getting out of the comfort zone favors creativity!

Disclaimer: This the sharing of a personal experience. I'm not demonizing any tool or technology.

TL;DR Forcing myself out of the comfort zone, and facing the fear of being unproductive with new techs, I've instead found myself invested with new creativity for software development and being way more productive than I thought.

Moreover I was also learning new technologies to add to my portfolio.

If you feel the same, try something completely new and different. The results may surprise you as they surprised me :)

Long speech following...

I'm a software engineer. I'm long-time #PHP developer. I'm experienced and proficient in it.

I've been choosing this language for almost every production/kata/side project for the above reasons.

However, while I'm always fast and proficient with production/work projects, I've been lately find myself quite unproductive with side projects.

There's a particular side project that I've stopped developing many times, with my "usual stack", because I got bored and frustrated. This led to even more frustration because I wasn't going towards my goal of completing it.

After examining myself I found that I was biased by my experience on PHP and its ecosystem. I was always trying to make the best possible choice ever (spoiler alert: this is not possibile) therefore not allowing my brain to be open to creativity or allowing mistakes to happen (which is where the learning happens).

This attitude slowed me down completely. I was being my worst enemy.

How did I manage to go out of this vicious circle? Since I've always wanted to try #TypeScript for backend development, one day I've said to myself: "You know what? I'm going to develop that very side project with a totally different ecosystem... and let's see what happens."

Results? I've developed more of that project in 1 month than I did in 1 year with my "usual stack".

The decision to go out of my comfort zone was the best I could do to refresh my potential.