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Work Life Balance

The Challenges of Achieving Work-Life Balance as a Maintenance Engineer

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This is a guest blog by Bryan Christiansen

Finding an equilibrium between our professional and personal lives is a vital ingredient for boosting productivity and improving our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Behind the elegant facilities and seamless production processes are maintenance engineers who guarantee the reliable and safe operation of equipment. They perform their duties under strict regulations and deadlines.

I ask myself: Are maintenance engineers happy? How do they balance the high levels of stress, frequent burnouts, and personal satisfaction? Here are some of the things that affect the work-life equilibrium and practical solutions to them.

1.  Highly Demanding Responsibilities

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Your Life Is A Program, So Manage It Like One

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BalanceAfter a decade-plus of leading and managing programs, there’s one thing I don’t recall ever saying – or hearing someone else say: “gee, I need to find balance in my projects.”  I didn’t philosophically, or physically, sit down to figure out how to balance my time, my focus, and my energy between the various projects I was running.

Why?  Because that’s not how someone manages a program.  You collect key information components about the program’s elements, such as cost, schedule, and scope, and then you execute.  That might mean a lot of work in some periods of the year, a little less at other times.  You delegate less important tasks to others and look for efficiencies to optimize schedule and keep on budget.

If ever I did fret about balance between projects in my portfolio, it was because of one of them going off schedule or budget.  Or maybe because of the contractor executing the project or some other stakeholder that was creating friction.

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5 Ways to Protect Yourself from Other People’s Stress

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stress

It’s a fact for every engineer, in either an academic or professional setting, that stress will be present.  Because this is the case, you can either view it as a horrific pollutant or accept it as fact and design a way to mitigate or absorb it.  I suggest the later approach.  Remove any negative or positive connotation around stress and let’s develop a way to manage it effectively in our engineering career.

Designing and utilizing a system for how you will handle both self-inflicted and external stressors is essential.  It’s going to be a main determinant in your ability to advance professionally and it’s going to play a key component in how fulfilled and happy you are with life in general.

Professionally, advancement goes to those who have the ability to manage increasing levels and complexity of responsibility.  With responsibility comes stress:  finding new business opportunities, making payroll, handling personnel problems, fulfilling expectations of demanding clients.  If you do not have a means for effectively mitigating or absorbing stress, then the further you move along the professional advancement trajectory, the more likely it is that you’ll eventually hit a brick wall that will result in unintended consequences.  What do these look like?  Negative attitude; curt and unprofessional responses to colleagues and clients; and generally being cancerous in communicating and working with teams or subordinates.

TBStress

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This Year Has Taught Me to Be Thankful for One Thing: Time

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Anthony with Juree

Thanksgiving is a special day, and while I believe we should be thankful for what we have every day, I still like that this day really reinforces gratitude among us.

This for me was an especially gratifying year that taught me something very important.

My daughter and I wrote the first 2 books in a children’s book series, that we have created with a charitable component. [Read more…] about This Year Has Taught Me to Be Thankful for One Thing: Time

Keeping Your Body (and Mind) in Shape will contribute to Engineering Career Success – Engineer Your Own Success Book Excerpt

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9-1-14 Engineer Your Own Success Post Photo Final

My book Engineer Your Own Success has been picked up by IEEE-Wiley Press and we will be publishing an Updated and Expanded Edition in the Fall of 2014.  I have a lot of new information to this edition including an entirely new chapter entitled: Stay Focused, Organized, Productive, and Stress-Free.  The following is an excerpt from this chapter.  If you are on my mailing list, you will receive a heavy discount on the book once it is available.

Most people today have so much going on in their careers and lives, they often don’t have or make the time for exercise. Before I had kids, I used to go to the gym every morning before work. Now with three kids and my own business, the gym is a distant memory. However, I recently made a change in my life where I have incorporated practices to exercise both physically and mentally. This change has had a very positive impact on my life, especially with respect to stress reduction. I am in no way trying to push my practices upon you. In fact it’s imperative that you establish exercise routines that work for you. But I hope, at a minimum, this section provides you with inspiration to do so. [Read more…] about Keeping Your Body (and Mind) in Shape will contribute to Engineering Career Success – Engineer Your Own Success Book Excerpt

The Answer to Work-Life Balance: Don’t Try

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The issue of work-life balance is something relatively new to humanity.  Brought to light by British anthropologists in the late 1970’s, we now have libraries full of self-help books and courses in how best to solve this affliction of modern life.  I struggled with finding the best way to thread the needle myself as the responsibilities of my professional and personal lives increased.  New positions at work brought more commitments and growing a family brought an equal amount of commitments.  Add to this a wife who has had led an equally taxing professional/personal life and solution set for work-life balance seemed out of reach.  Then it dawned on me. 

The answer to work-life balance: don’t try. [Read more…] about The Answer to Work-Life Balance: Don’t Try