Image by @mmcgregor from Unsplash
There's a line that gets repeated so often it stops being examined: "It has always been done that way, and it shall be, again." You've heard it. Maybe you've said it. Irks you a little, doesn't it? Not because it's wrong, exactly, but because it's unexamined.
Heraclitus put it better, over two thousand years ago: no man ever steps into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man. The water has moved on. So has he. For what it's worth, the "definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over" line, so often pinned on Einstein, almost certainly isn't his either. He gets credited with a lot of things he never said. Worth remembering, next time someone drops it into a meeting as though it settles the argument.
The idea still stands: the conditions change, even when you don't notice them changing, and repeating the exact same move stops producing the exact same result.
Here's where it gets personal, not philosophical.
Do you run the same route every time you go for a run? Drive the same road home from work, even when the traffic app is quietly begging you not to? Handle every project the same way you handled the one that worked three roles ago, because it worked once, and once was enough proof for you?
There's comfort in repetition. It's efficient. It's low-risk. It's also, if you're not careful, how you stop noticing that the room has changed shape around you.
None of this is an argument against structure. Standard operating procedures exist for good reason. They're the guardrails, not the ceiling. The trouble starts when the SOP quietly becomes a substitute for judgement, when "how we've always done it" becomes the answer to a question nobody actually asked. Following the process and thinking for yourself are not opposites. You can follow the recipe and still taste as you go.
I wrote about this, without quite meaning to, in a book - "If Humans Were Spaghetti”. There's a moment where I bring my own pan to a friend's kitchen, certain that the same ingredients and the same method would produce the same dish. Her stove ran differently. The space wasn't mine. The result was good, everyone enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite the dish I'd expected. Not worse. Just different. The lesson took a while to land: what worked well once, however faithfully you repeat it, is not a guarantee for next time. The context has already moved on without asking your permission.
That's the quiet trap of expertise, really. The more something has worked for you, the harder it is to notice when it's stopped fitting. Success calcifies into habit, and habit, left unchecked, becomes a script you're not really reading any more, just performing.
So here's the thought to sit with this Tuesday: where, this week, are you following a script instead of reading the room? This isn't a call to throw out every process you have, your compliance team will not thank me for that. It's smaller than that. It's just: where has "it's always worked" quietly replaced "does it still work"?
A small experiment, low stakes: change the route home once this week. See what you notice. It's rarely about the route.
