The Joy In Doing...

For a couple of years in my (early) corporate career I wrote computer programs. The programs did what they were supposed to do, they did it pretty well, and I loved writing them, but I was really slow, so my boss told me to concentrate on the specifications, and he contracted an experienced programmer to write the actual programs.

The guy was fast, really fast, and everything got done in a fraction of the time, but the process changed from something I really enjoyed into something that gave me no joy at all. It turned out that it was the programming I loved - finding flow in the solving of problems as I wrote the code - rather than the end result of the program.

There might be a faster/better/more-efficient way to do that thing that you’re doing - but maybe the joy comes from the doing, not from the thing that gets done…