This weekend we spent a lot of time in traffic.
We were driving through New York City, and like most cities, there are places to definitely avoid. Also, like most cities, there are places you normally don’t avoid, that randomly become places to avoid, when you least expect it.
So, we did a lot of rerouting and took quite the circuitous path in order to reach our destination.
At one point, my wife asked me, “Do you think we’re saving much time versus if we would have gone the most direct route?”
And while I couldn’t answer for sure, I at least liked the thought that we had avoided what we knew was going to be slow going, opting instead for the unknown, and the possibility of reducing time on the road, or at least reducing stopped time.
In our professional roles too, we have to work to find new ways to accomplish the same (or different goals). Too often, we take the pathways most tread, and while we end up arriving, it can feel static, or dull, and can make our work less interesting overall. So, different pathways can serve as methods to help us see the world from a slightly different angle (for instance, our path yesterday took us past a view of the Statue of Liberty that I had never seen before), and since there is so much for us to see and know, it makes tremendous sense for us to explore those pathways when we can.