Reworking

We think much and scrutinize on details. We’re always poring over our work with such intense repetition, until we often get lost in it.

It’s satisfying – to turn over and look at your own work, with pride swelling within your chest. It’s gratifying — to know that your work is worthy of recognition.

But to get there, we need to peer at our work. Sometimes we ask others to look into it, all the while pondering on that word choice or the particular shade of blue. Something stronger? Bold, perhaps?

It’s natural. We’re engineered that way — to rework and to reconsider. To recycle, rewrite, to recommission. And recommend.

But that thirst for precision, that repetitive craving to improve could also become our downfall. Because the longer we work on something, the more accustomed to it we get. Repetition breeds expertise. At the expense of a mundane life.

Remember the thrill of learning crocheting? The details! The scrutiny, the absolution at every twist of the fingers — everything about it filled you with excitement and anticipation. It was the perfect summer course.

But then, imagine having to do that everyday for the rest of your life.

We’d still be looking for that precision, but now it’ll be pronounced. We’d be so used to redoing that we’d be redoing just for the sake of redoing and not for the thrill that it once was.

And therein lies the risk of repetition.