If you do something for a living every day (i.e., you have a job) you have two choices:
- Learn and become better: this is the default path for most people (it’s hard to do something over and over without getting better at it).
- Stagnate and regress: this is actually harder than progress, and may require some subconscious proactive self-sabotage.
So everything is better if we automatically make progress, right? Not quite, because when we make progress, other people (including bosses) start to notice, and they then give/bring/order more of the same work—not a new type of work. Usually it’s the same stuff you’ve been doing already (and for the same money), because management doesn’t want to lose a good producer. I call this punishment for becoming better.