Those of us not at MIX08 are likely jealous of those who are. Certainly Twitter has been aflutter with MIX08 tweets, letting the rest of us feel left out in near-real-time. Oh well. That's not the point. Just wanted to get that in there.

The point, as you're wondering, is that while I was watching the keynote stream from MIX08, I found it very easy to succumb to Grass-is-Greener Syndrome (GIGS?). It's super easy to watch something like the IE8 demo, or the Silverlight stuff done by the Vertigo and Hard Rock people, or the just astonishing end-to-end magical technosex that Aston Martin put together using Silverlight, WPF, and the rest of the .net stack, and think about your job and go "what the hell am I doing?" Even looking at AOL's mail demo and being amazed at the speed and usability (in spite of it being AOL of all things) gives you that pause that makes you say "why am I not out there doing these cool things?"

GIGS seems to really rear its ugly head, at least for me (and I imagine a lot of you) anytime something cool happens.  A conference with new shiny things announced (PDC is guilty of this a lot), or another Web 2.0 company (using that term loosely) gets bought for a stupid amount of money despite being simple enough that every developer in the world says "well, I could have done that" (you didn't though, did you?) and wonders why he's toiling away in the salt mines writing the same CRUD-centric line-of-business applications for peanuts and free coffee.

This happens to me. I will freely admit that GIGS takes hold of me from time to time. I was beside myself when Microsoft dumped that cash into Facebook, and further so when I saw Zuckerberg's keynote at the Facebook F8 conference and decidedly couldn't stand the guy ("Today, together, we're gonna start a movement" come on dude you aren't Jobs). Watching the MIX keynote demos I thought to myself "man I really need to get into this cool stuff".  I know I wasn't alone.

At one point yesterday I said on Twitter

I have to stop watching this. it's making me feel really lame as I continue to develop reports

To which Steve Wright replied:

@scottcreynolds yeah, the boring real world, building applications that help make decisions that make $$$

And that kind of brought me back from the ledge and made me take a more honest look at the situation. The situation is that I provide value. Real, tangible, ROI-measurable value. I haven't talked about it much (but I will be in the future) but just over a year ago I released a major piece of software for my employer. We're a pathology laboratory with pretty high volume and I created, from scratch, a system that manages nearly the entire business from specimen processing, diagnosis, billing, logistics, customer service, inventory and supply management, and an obscenely robust and flexible results delivery system. In the first year of service this software has processed 75% of the total case load as the previous system had in its entire lifetime of 3+ years and did so nearly without flaw. Contrasted to the previous system that required external support almost daily, couldn't handle volume, didn't allow us to customize to our client's needs, and in effect cost us business, the new system is, by all accounts from the board of directors down to the lab employees, a huge success for the company. Now I would be remiss if I didn't say that I certainly couldn't have done this without the team around me, but I played no small part, and can take some credit with a clear conscience ;)

So there it is. I took a step back and I found my value. I am providing real value to my employer. My software helps us make more money, and therefore helps all of my users by virtue of the "all boats rise with the tide" theory.  My software also helps in some way to save lives. We diagnose cancer. We have amazing pathologists, such that if I ever have to have a biopsy, I'm getting it sent here. My software allows them to manage a large case load and makes sure that everything is accurate, that patient data is secure, and that mistakes don't happen. I am providing value. Suddenly my own grass is looking pretty green, because my work is important, and I've allowed myself to realize it.

So thinking about all of that got my head in the right direction. It's not about "how come I'm not doing cool new things and making billions of dollars?" it's about "how can I responsibly push technology in my organization to provide real value?"

Now saying all that, I must say that I am not in favor of just accepting that you aren't the one doing the cool new thing, and that you aren't the one making the billions. This is the second half of the title of this post.  Put nicely, inertia should not be allowed to run your life. Put more bluntly, and with all due respect, fuck Isaac Newton.

Inertia is NOT your friend. It's the most evil (and most powerful) of the natural forces. It keeps people in bad jobs, bad relationships, it keeps you from losing weight and eating better, it keeps you from talking to that girl at the coffee shop, it keeps you from innovating, from trying new things, from growing. Inertia is the devil you know.  Stop choosing it. It is a choice, even if a subconscious one. Stop allowing it to sedate you.

If you catch yourself thinking things about how "I could have done x" or "I wish I could do y" then you are succumbing to inertia. Stop wishing and do. If you could have done x...do x++.  Put up or shut up right? If you are unhappy with where you are, if you haven't found your value, or that value doesn't add up to what you think it should be, if you have all these "big ideas", then for your own sake, and possibly that of the rest of us, break those inertial shackles and get going. Wishes are goals that you lack the testicular fortitude to meet. Don't be that guy anymore.

Maybe you don't have some great idea to make some web2 property that will get bought for millions. Want to use some cutting edge tech? Use it to solve a problem not related to your day job. Join or start an OSS project. Just write some interesting code. Want to increase your visibility in your field or community? Blog. Join communities. Speak. Help. Be heard. Want to just learn something new? Do it. Take 30 minutes away from TV time every night and do something new with it.  Got a billion and one half-formed ideas in your head collected over the years? Take one and run with it. Start it up and see where it takes you. Just do something.

Now let me just say I'm lecturing myself more than any of you out there, but I know good and well that it applies to some people that aren't currently sitting in my chair. But for my part, I'm very guilty of allowing inertia to get the best of me.  Sometimes you don't even know it's happening, but trust me, it is, and once you allow inertia to creep in and take hold, it's harder to quit than smoking (more inertia). The old wisdom about habits (what are habits other than inertia?) is true. Good habits are as hard to break as bad ones. Start some new good habits.

So, TLDR summation version: Find your value. If you can't, then maybe the grass really is greener. However, regardless of where you are and what you are doing, beat that bastard inertia into submission and turn it in your favor. Stop wishing you were out there doing something cool, and get out there and do it.