View The Annoyances In Your Life As Mutations Rather Than Bugs

In nature, mutations are a necessary part of evolution. In software, programmers call them bugs. The unexpected events in your life can be either, depending on your outlook.

Photo by Mark Rain

Wired explains how one attitude can differ quite a bit from the other:

Perhaps we can view software bugs the same way biological mutations are viewed. Taking a page from molecular genetics, some mutations don’t do anything (these are neutral mutations) while others are deleterious and are the ones that most easily map onto the software bugs we are familiar with. But other mutations provide the grist for natural selection, as beneficial mutations. And so too might be some software bugs. Bugs can end up being productive, whether for artistic, prestige, or scientific reasons.

The next time life doesn’t go your way, take a moment to view the annoyance from a new perspective. Maybe what you initially viewed as a bug in your life is a helpful mutation.

Productive Bugs [Wired]