The risky comfort zone

Some people focus their living on making it as predictable as possible. They don’t need or don’t want to change their lives. I think in most cases they are afraid that with every change there may come something worse. Rather pessimistic approach — so it is better to stick with what they have now — even if it is something they not necessarily like, but at least they know it.
People don’t like uncertainty, which is rather something so obvious and certain that shall be treated more like a natural feeling.

But it doesn’t count only into our lives. I am primarily programmer right now and as every programmer I dig into some sort of technology. I dig it deeper and longer so I feel very comfortable with it. I spend less and less time learning new stuff, simply because there is not much to learn in this area. I know exactly what I will do the next day at work. I exactly know what my company, our customer and coworkers expect from me.

It’s comfort zone. The risky one.

If I don’t feel I need to learn something new and move toward unknown business or technology area I am getting lazy. The longer such feeling sticks with me there is much more chance I will stay at this level of my personal and professional development. At the beginning of my career I worked at a kind of company where being proactive was less important than being there just as long as possible. After one year I was so bored and reluctant to change… I realised if I stay there longer I will stay there till the end of me or this place. I had to leave this place!

Since then, I am always afraid of the comfort zone. It gives you warm and nice feeling, but at the end it will just show that you are completely not prepared for the new situation. When comfort zone arrises, it’s time to change project, technology, approach to live, anything which force you to move into unknown. Don’t quit your job now :-) Just stay hungry, learn, be aware of change, adapt or be a positive change.