I rarely have to force myself to step outside of my comfort zone, because it's not all that comforting to begin with. For many things I do, I keep thinking the

I rarely have to force myself to step outside of my comfort zone, because it's not all that comforting to begin with. For many things I do, I keep thinking there must be a better way to do things -- sometimes a better way comes along and I'm satisfied for a year or so, but eventually you'll get to a point again where you get the feeling you've just written the same thing over and over, or where your project is slowly turning into an unmaintainable mess and you're looking for better ways to structure your application. If the thing you're working on is modular enough, you should be able to use new technologies in new modules if it significantly improves any aspect of how you write code (maintainability, performance, time-to-market, etc..). You'll have to convince your team-members that using a new technology is worth it, but that's a good thing because you'll be more inclined to actually research the benefits of a new technology instead of just going with the latest fashion.