+ 1 Yes, things really changed for me once I started to ask why we implement things. Tried to understand the manager/customer/stakeholder what is their domain? What kind of issue they want to solve? What is the business case we are working on?

I know as a software developer you don't want to do that. More fun refactoring code than dealing with management. More fun writing that piece of SQL than sitting in a meeting. Easier to whine about missing specifications than to understand the big picture.

Once I stepped back from coding and looked at the software from a birds eye view, I had actually a much easier time programming features than before. More knowledge, less writing code.