The Do-Nothing Effect
It occurred to me recently that on the days I spend most of my work day doing nothing (or at least nothing intellectually stimulating), I spend my night/weekend doing the same. I acclimate to doing nothing and that’s a hard cycle to break. Sure, I may force my way through my RSS feeds, I may “read” a few of the more interesting-looking articles, and I may even blog about one of them, but my apathetic attitude is clearly reflected in each activity.
Your job, where you likely spend the largest amount of your awake day, should be a place that encourages you to try new things. Your employer should be encouraging you to look at a problem in a new way, encouraging you to read about the new “it” thing in your field, encouraging you to try something new, and they should be rewarding those people who help themselves (and by extension, the company) this way.
If your employer isn’t encouraging you to grow intellectually, they’re encouraging you to stagnate, inside and outside of the office.
