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Comfort. It's comfortable. And deadly.

Music and links from this episode

Mystery Mammal from their great new album, Risk Society

I featured the tracks: Ruin, Greenhorn, and All Your Organs Get a Laugh

Line-by-line notes

Today's episode was going to be an extended one

But at the last minute

I changed my mind

Something has been nagging at me the last few days

About comfort zones

And how nobody likes to step out of them

But really, the only way we get better as humans

Is to step outside our comfort zones

This is AADA, and I'm Craig Burgess

MUSIC

Design and the creative industries require very specific things from you that lots of other careers dont

You have to adaptable, changing to variables that can appear at the drop of the hat

You have to be consistently improving, because things move so fast 

And that is something that gets harder as time goes on

When you first start in any career, everything is new

Anything at all that you learn is an improvement 

Every small increment is an improvement

But when you've been doing the design game for a while

You feel like you've seen it all

Or done everything 

Worst of all, lots of people feel like they know it all

That there's nothing left to learn

That's comfort

And it's deadly in a fast moving industry 

You can't ever get comfortable 

Comfort breeds arrogsnce

And cockiness

And not only are those traits not nice to see in somebody

They're self limiting

When you think you know everything, you stop learning everything 

Ive spoken lots about lifting weights on this podcast 

And i don't just do it keep fit and get stronger

I do it for the mental strength that it gives me

Lifting heavy weights pushes you far out of your comfort zone

When you've got a massive weight crushing your whole body and the only way to escape is to push it away

You find mental strength you didn't know you possessed

And finding that mental strength breeds more mental strength

This is exactly the same reason why pushing yourself out of a realm of comfort is so important

Progression isn't made by doing the same thing over and over

The only way to progress with anything is to increase the chsllenge

And as a designer, as you get better and better, that challenge needs to get bigger and bigger

When you get past all the initial book learning 

And reading the magazines 

And doing all the design work over the years 

Then you have to start working really hard to get outside of your comfort zone

I'm lucky in some ways

I've always thought like this

And I know that the only way to get better is through insane amounts of hard work

I don't always do the hard work

Sometimes I'm lazy

And sometimes for a long time I'm lazy

But I know, and I've proved it to myself over the years 

That when you put in the work to push yourself far outside of comfort

You make huge improvements 

The clue is in the title

Comfort is... Comfortable 

Comfort is nice feeling

But comfort over a long period has diminishing returns

We should all strive to be comfortable 

But the only way to be permanently comfortable 

Is to keep getting better and better 

And the only way to do thst

Is to stop being comfortable 

MUSIC

This was AADA and I'm Craig Burgess 

Music featured in this episode was by

Mystery Mammal from their great new album, Risk Society

I featured the tracks: Ruin, Greenhorn, and All Your Organs Get a Laugh

For a line by line rundown... /ep130

If you want more updates about my podcast, follow me on Twitter at craigburgess

I'm back tomorrow 

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