[rnprince]

I've been told that opportunities are easier to spot in areas where you don't spend a lot of time.

I'm guessing that this is because you haven't already accepted the status quo in those areas, and because people with your skillset who would beat you to it may not have spent a lot of time there yet.

[superplussed]

I think opportunities are easiest to spot in places where you are newly spending alot of time. You are quickly coming up to speed on the status quo, but haven't been inured to it yet.

You also still have this sparkling energy at all of the possibilities that can only fade with time, whether you tackle a problem in the space or not.

[indigochill]

I feel like the opposite's true for me (sample size: 1). I spent a bunch of time in tech support, then built a bunch of tools to speed up stupid manual time-consuming stuff. That got me a promotion into programming, and now I'm out of direct contact with the day-to-day issues in support so I generally rely on support staff to make additional feature requests now.

But then, I don't tend to accept the status quo. I think there are certain personalities that never do. There's always something else to challenge/improve.