Adrenaline is Cheap. Depth Takes Time.

How to Build Roots When You’d Rather Run

When I was a kid, I had this obsession with rearranging our sitting room. Every two weeks, sometimes even less, I’d push the TV stand to a different corner, drag the cushions around, switch up the plastic flowers on the side table. If I was feeling extra creative, I’d swap out the curtains and hang up a different family photo, just to make it feel new. It drove my parents (and my older brother) a bit mad, but they let me have my fun. And every time I finished, I’d sit there beaming, proud of how I’d transformed the same old room into something fresh

But deep down, I think I knew I wasn’t really changing anything. The cracks in the walls were still there. The old rug was still worn. All I’d done was shuffle the pieces around.

It’s funny how that same impulse follows us into adulthood.

I see it in the way we build companies. We call it a pivot. You feel stuck, so you move the furniture, you switch the market, the pitch deck, the logo. Sometimes it’s needed, but sometimes it’s just your fear of doing the hard, repetitive work of fixing the cracks in the walls.

I see it in myself as an engineer too.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve flirted with a shiny new programming language or framework. Maybe we should rewrite this in Rust. Maybe we’d scale better with Go. Let’s rebuild the whole front end in the newest JavaScript flavour of the month. The dopamine hit is real, the promise that if you just change stacks, you’ll feel alive again.

But underneath, you know the truth: switching stacks doesn’t fix your fundamentals. You can rearrange the chairs all you want your messy architecture, your leaky abstractions, your team’s lack of trust, they don’t disappear just because you’ve slapped a new coat of paint on your repo.

When I look back at the work I’m proudest of, it’s never the stuff that gave me that instant rush. It’s the things that forced me to stay. The codebases I refactored bit by bit instead of burning down. The conversations with co-founders that felt like pulling teeth but built real trust. The product vision that didn’t pivot five times in six months just because the metrics were slow to come.

We love to chase the spark. It’s human. But spark alone won’t keep you warm.

I think about my grandma’s mango trees - the way she’d fence them off so goats wouldn’t eat the leaves before they could root. She’d usually say, “Anybody can plant. But who’s patient enough to water?” The sweet fruit comes only after you’ve tended the same soil, season after season.

And yet, we keep wanting to move the garden every time we get bored.

When I talk to friends in tech, whether in Lagos or London - the pattern’s the same. Jump jobs every six months, switch titles, build half-finished products, collect new shiny skills. But the ones who really build leverage are the ones who stick around. Who keep showing up when it’s boring. Who master the same tools so well they can bend them to their will.

Rearrangement is easy. Depth is costly.

Rearrangement looks productive. Depth looks repetitive.

But only one will outlast your adrenaline.

So here’s what I’m still learning: when the itch for something new comes, thank it. Let it remind you you’re alive, that you still crave growth. But don’t confuse the rush for the reward. The reward is the fire, and the fire needs tending, time, and the discipline to stay when every part of you wants to run.

Adrenaline will get you started. Depth will get you home.

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Practical Takeaways

When you feel that itch to move the furniture again, ask yourself:

• Is this a real need for change, or is it just boredom masquerading as strategy?

• What cracks in my foundation am I avoiding?

• If I stayed and tended the same soil for one more season, what fruit could come?

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