When I was a working accountant, there was one comment which I heard time after time, not only in the business world, but in other settings as well, e.g., church councils, civic organizations, etc., and it irritated me every time I heard it: “We never did it that way before.” I always thought that if we had some system going for, say, five years, it may not need to be upgraded, but we should certainly consider that possibility. Even before discussing any changes, the person who made that remark usually came up with several reasons why a new system would not work. Today we often hear the catchphrase “think outside the box,” meaning to be creative. If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, et. al. had not heeded that advice, I would not be writing this because no one would ever have heard of a blog. Of course, I also need to give credit to the inventor of the internet, Al Gore(?) ...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.