When did I notice the kitchen fan?
When it stopped, of course.
I find it interesting how our brain seems to shut off its attention to something that is there consistently but presents no immediate threat. Like our kitchen fan. It was providing useful exhaust during our dinner preparation last night, but it wasn’t until after dinner, when the stove had cooled and my wife turned the fan off, that I realized it had even been on. And there was a new level of quiet for me.
Have you ever had any of those sounds in your environment stop and only then realize it had been “on” before then? And discover a new level of quiet?
I suppose that’s a good thing our brain does. Stops paying attention to what doesn’t really need our attention, moment to moment, so we can focus on what is immediately functional, like not burning the onions or slicing a finger
Until those consistent things stop. And we experience something different with them gone.
But what if we stop paying attention to something we should notice, or even want to? What if we get so used to things going on all the time, the way they’re going on, that do not support us optimally, that we don’t even notice their potentially negative effects? Like your stress level. Or your boredom with your work. Or behaviors of your partners or your kids? Or how about your not-so-great life in general?
Being in your comfort zone is not always the best place to be. I know this from having experienced it myself, as well as with thousands of people who have been introduced to the methodology of stress-free productivity I teach and they don’t fully implement it for themselves. Why not? Because they are used to their ambient anxiety. Which can as easily creep back in as the noise of the fan. People get a taste of GTD, glimpse the quiet that comes with less ambient noise – and then slip back into what they know.
So the key is to make that quiet the new comfort zone. How? Get used to it. Then you’ll notice when the quiet is disturbed—and fix it.
O.K. Let me come clean. I am simply stunned by the depth of the ruts that I find myself in. I think I am fresh. I am not. - Tom Peters
Best to you all,
David
Stephen, nice reply, too. Existential angst, I guess, could be prevalent. I suggest a great historian and thinker's new book (and now friend)--Moral Ambition. He's one of the brightest I've come across, about how to deal with that.
"𝘖.𝘒. 𝘓𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘪𝘯. 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘩. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵." — Tom Peters
That one hit me. I keep telling myself I'm iterating—new project, new market, new codebase, new draft—yet the fingerprints are the same. Same default settings, same guardrails I stopped questioning, same comforting logic loops. When did "experience" become a synonym for "auto‑pilot"? How many "best practices" are just the prettiest ruts? What have I optimized so thoroughly that I no longer notice the walls?
I'm not dragging out a grand confession, just admitting a quieter truth: momentum isn't movement, and productivity isn't progress. The work right now is to spot the grooves while I'm still in them, not after I've paved them in concrete. Maybe freshness isn’t a brainstorm or a rebrand or another backtest—it’s the willingness to make one unnervingly small change to a pattern that used to feel sacred.
The rut isn't the road; it's the plaster cast of an old stride. Fresh starts when you feel the cast and step anyway.