http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/business/30know.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I found this article especially profound, having been away from my engineering job for a few weeks and working on things that have very little to do with engineering. The time away has given me a new perspective on some of the things that have perplexed me over the past year.
I'm surrounded by engineers by education, brilliant ones at that, but conversations are about more or less the same thing and they tend to flow in one direction. Fresh perspectives are tough to come by and even tougher to gain a foot hold if someone has one.
