I second this enthusiastically. If the workload is not taxing for you, instead of finding things to fill your spare time, just do the things you have to do as "

I second this enthusiastically. If the workload is not taxing for you, instead of finding things to fill your spare time, just do the things you have to do as "inefficiently" as possible. One of the barriers to trying new things is the drop in efficiency (like switching to a new editor, as per the suggestion before). If you can take the productivity hit, this can be a great opportunity. Frustrated by a lack of feature in the editor? Rather than work around it, fix it and submit a patch. Keep using KDE (or whatever) but switch your locale to French. If you don't already and you are allowed to do so, switch your version control to git - that should mess with your mind for a good while :-) Basically if you genuinely can't leave, just try and make it interesting for yourself and make a habit of stepping outside your comfort zone - otherwise your brain will rot. The other issue is your actual project. If you have scope, overspec it. Only you will know, but that should give you back some pride in your work. If you are taking shortcuts, don't. If you are not commenting and documenting properly, do. If you can make the code faster, speed it up. If you can deliver knobs and whistles, go for it.