They say that habits are our second nature. Things which we do repeatedly are like pre-programmed functions which trigger specific time or action.
Morning coffee. I simply cannot start the day without a cup of a real coffee. That was the reason why I bought the actual bean to coffee machine, because of the taste and smell of real coffee. Prepared in the exact way I like it.
This week I’ve ran out of the time in the morning and couldn’t make my favourite coffee, so I used the instant one. Gosh, that was a terrible experience! No smoothness in taste at all, not the same smell, not the same kick in the morning.
But hey! I kept my routine, I’ve had my fix for the morning. In fact, it wasn’t that perfect routine, but at least I kept it.
Well, that was the trouble I believe, my routine wasn’t perfect as normally. Actually, it was fairly below expectations. It was like a cheap replacement. And the baseline was – I like to keep my standards. If I do something seriously, I can only improve my expectations, but never go below them. Maybe that’s why I always try to improve whatever I do? The beauty and curse of perfection is that the more time you spend on something, the more time and effort you need to make an improvement.
Even in IT, every serious IT department has its own routine. Check backups, review update and patching process or check status of servers. Even such a detail as naming convention is really important and must be consistent – otherwise finding certain rule or group of people might be extremely hard, as the name very can tell what exact thing is doing. And it’s really helpful when there are hundreds of rules, and you are after that specific one.
Habits, such unconscious things, yet so important.