I wish I'd learnt at engineering school
It is always tempting to use the tools you know and have to hand. I once saw an engineer write an entire 2-d finite-element structural model in Excel, which was strangely impressive but incredibly slow and vulnerable to bugs. Most engineers these days spend at least some of their time writing software models or analysing …
Continue reading “Don’t use Excel for everything. Learn Python.”
Several times per day, check that you are actually working on the right task by asking yourself this question: If the only thing I complete today is the task I am currently working on, would I be satisfied with my day’s work? I read this somewhere and it really does help me to prioritise. It …
Yes, actually time yourself with a stopwatch. We constantly estimate how long things will take, mostly subconsciously, and it can be eye-opening to measure how bad our estimates are. Start by estimating how long a particular task will take. Ideally choose a task in the 0.5 to 2 hours ballpark. Then start your stopwatch and …
Most jobs nowadays are in an open plan office, which is terrible for getting any actual (“deep”) work done. So you need some headphones. Headphones help to block out all the irrelevant telephone conversations and other distracting noise, but I also use them as a sign for “piss off, I’m busy”. You may need to gently …
Continue reading “Wear headphones, even if they aren’t plugged in”