Run towards the pain

Started my new role this month.

Feels kinda strange not being the most junior on the team. Interacting with them made me realise a lesson a learnt from being in a startup.

We were talking about the work we need to do. It's not particularly interesting, and the problems were mostly solved problems. There wasn't much "innovative" work to be done, at least on the surface. Some of them were worried that they might lose their skills since the work wasn't challenging and was pretty monotonous.

As they were commiserating, they briefly complained about certain situations that were less than ideal about the work. This surprised me. Doesn't that mean that there were still areas to innovate? To improve upon?

Run towards the pain, not away from it

Where pain resides, lies opportunities to build solutions that actually solve that pain. It doesn't matter if its only you feeling that pain. The best part about being in software is that you can actually build things that relieves the pain.

Its perfectly human to avoid pain. The mind just wants to do anything to stop the pain, and the best way is to just avoid it if you can, or pass it off to the next person as quickly as possible.

My take: in order to be better, fight the human instinct to avoid pain, run towards it, and build things that solve it.

In preventing others from feeling that pain, you become more valuable.