I just read an obituary for Tom West, the computer engineer, who was found dead earlier this month at his home in Westport, Mass. He was 71 and died of either a stroke or heart attack.
Some of the things in the New York Times obit resonate with me. To wit:
His daughter Jessamyn West said he was driven “to understand everything.”
“He knew a million things — it didn’t matter: worms, plumbing, literature. He could give you a discourse. It seemed like he could never rest until he had a sense of control over the things around him.”
And...
“My dad loved routine. He rolled his sleeves up exactly the same way every morning. He went to work at exactly the same time every day. It was what gave him the freedom to think.”
I think that's a key motivator for me in how I structure anything I do. I crave the freedom to think, and anything that takes away from that is a negative. So that's why, I think, I go crazy when software gets updated and you have to learn a whole new interface, etc. It's not that I don't want to learn new things. Rather, I'd rather stick with a routine so that my mind can get the running room to take off.
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