Taking A Different Approach

Have you ever asked yourself why you do the things you do?  Why do you design the way you do? Why do code the way you do?  I've been asking this question off and on over my career, but lately this question has really come back to me in a big way.

I've been reading Getting Real by 37signals and although this is my second reading of it, it's really hit home this time.  The entire book is basically about your approach.  How do you get up every morning and step up to the plate?  For a long time, my basic approach has been, how can I code this as fast as possible so that I can get on to my next project and keep at my ever growing list of tasks.  Ultimately, this very unsatisfying because the quality of work is low, and low quality leads to a ton of other problems.

So if you're stuck in a rut like this how do you get out and take a different approach?  How do you slow down while keeping up with high demands.  That's my problem: I can't see past the pile of work to know.  So while I would love to "Get Real" now, I'm not to sure that I can all at once.  I do think it all starts with changing my approach and taking a lot of the advice in the book to heart.  It's not going to happen over night, but I've already started to try some of the things they advocate in my symfony development and for the first time it doesn't feel like I'm fighting with symfony.  So for a little while on the blog here I'm going to be wrestling with a few of these questions and tell you about some of the small successes I've had in becoming more real.