What Are You Permitting That's Preventing Your Progress?

I’ve often thought there are really two ways to improve your career as a network engineer:

• Add a Positive: Learn a new protocol, get a certification, build a new system.
• Remove a Negative: Stop tolerating outdated processes, toxic coworkers, or inefficient workflows.

Most of us automatically default to the former and ignore the latter.

We’re conditioned to believe that career growth means doing more. More tools. More scripts. More certifications. More projects.

But here’s the truth: the simplest, fastest path to progress isn’t addition. It’s subtraction.

Here’s a simple, but uncomfortable question:

What are you currently permitting that you shouldn’t?

This question forces you to confront the inefficient workflows, self-defeating habits, draining relationships, and quiet compromises that have slowly crept into your work life.

These don’t appear overnight. They sneak in quietly.

It is called Creeping Normality in psychology which is the gradual acceptance of negative change, because it happens in such small increments that you hardly notice it at all.

One day you realize:

• You’re stuck maintaining legacy systems nobody wants to touch
• Your automation scripts are brittle or broken
• Your team culture is draining your energy
• Your environment isn’t set up to scale or innovate

None of it happened in a single moment. It built up slowly. Step by step, day by day, until it negatively impacted your career trajectory.

The good thing is you can fight back.

So ask yourself again:

What am I currently permitting that I shouldn’t?

Identify it. Address it. Remove it.

Because the fastest path to leveling up your career as a network engineer isn’t adding more.

It’s subtracting what holds you back.