Most engineers I know are interested in achieving a relatively high level of productivity in their professional and work activities. Since most are working long hours, they aren’t interested in spending time on none-value added activities. Those who are successful in optimizing their productive time, do so through focusing on developing a plan of action.
Productivity is associated with creating value. While you can feel productive attending project meetings, reviewing designs, or obtaining closure on a long-standing issue, it may or may not result in value beyond making you feel productive. In my mind, productivity (a.k.a. creating value) comes only in achieving movement towards the accomplishment of a defined goal.
With this concept in mind, let’s unpack how to get from focus to productivity in your engineering career.
In this episode, I talk with Josh Haynam, co-founder of Interact, which is a quiz marketing tool used by more than 40,000 companies around the world. We talk about the benefits of building accountability into your engineering career. Josh gives an excellent analogy that he uses in terms of how a coach can help you to advance in your career and life.
Every professional engineer must treat his projects seriously by allocating enough time to planning and organizing future actions. A project plan is useful not just for improving the quality of the end product, but also for developing better team dynamics and better results for the company you’re working for.
Odds are if you’re like most engineers, you show up at work each day, solve problems, go home, and then come back the next day and repeat that process. Obviously, I am simplifying things here. Within that, ‘solve problems’ generalization, lie thousands of amazing projects, inventions, and solutions that move our world forward. Engineers create extraordinary things. But what career-related items do you partake in outside of your engineering projects, and how you do you decide when or why to execute them and move your engineering career forward?
In this episode, I talk with Belinda Gates, ACC an executive coach, author, and speaker as part of what I have been calling our Game Changing Career Moves series about creating opportunities in your engineering career. We also talk about actions that you can take to have a profound impact on your career advancement.
