In an earlier blog post, I was talking about the importance of jobs that may not seem, at first, to be important.

As I write blog posts, I am frequently fraught with paralysis at coming up with ideas and publishing. One of the root causes is that I want every post to be some groundbreaking, game-changing article that a business leader will read and fundamentally change their entire strategic mindset. This cannot always be the case, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t author and publish a post at a regular interval. Not every task you do will be something that changes the world, but the importance of discipline in performing that task anyways is important in itself.

Repetition Builds Discipline

If I have a desire for this blog site to become a fountain of content and knowledge, then I have to take the time to follow through on the task of writing individual blog posts. For many jobs, quality and polish come with the discipline of performing your tasks correctly, even if it takes more time and is a little boring. This is especially true with software engineering, or almost any engineering for that matter.

The Spark That Lights the Fire

Although a specific blog post may be “just average” on its own, you never know when reading that post kicks off a chain of thoughts and ideas that leads to something greater. Someone reading the post might be inspired to a greater idea that does lead to something amazing. The same with your software module. It may seem like just some glue module or some random set of unit tests, but you never know who might still reuse or read that code and it helps them achieve or realize something important to them.

Momentum Feeds Momentum

Progress can be like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up speed and size. For me, frequently the hardest part is just getting started, but once I get started the momentum can quickly grow. Writing that first “average” blog post might not be some groundbreaking achievement on its own, but it can get the momentum going for me to write other posts, or even get momentum and motivation to work on other tasks.

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Sometimes just getting started can be hard, especially if the task seems small or unimportant. But as you can see there are plenty of positive reasons to press forward with those tasks.