Variety by Way of Repetition

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It continually surprises me how much day-to-day variety arises from focusing single-mindedly on one big mission.

I guess that’s obvious if you have kids and they pull you into all sorts of things you never would have anticipated.

But my less obvious point is that this can happen professionally too.

And counterintuitively, in hierarchical domains, this transition to day-to-day variety is preceded by a lengthy upskilling ramp where you grind through repetitive exercises.

High school me would have never anticipated that the repetitive nature of spending most of my day doing math problems, and the rest of the day tutoring math, would have led to such day-to-day variety right now.

It took a while for this to happen, and after years of math problems/tutoring there were also years of pure coding and classroom teaching, which were similarly repetitive.

It’s weird how non-repetitive life feels now. Like I paradoxically stumbled into variety by way of repetition.

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