Wow, its been a little while since I last posted here on Babbling Engineer.  For that, I really must apologise!  The reason for my silence has been down to a mixture of illness and being super busy both at work and home.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau

Earlier this year I got a promotion at work, to be Deputy Head of Stress for the Engineering firm I work for.  That, coupled with the project I am working on starting to get really busy has raised many challenges. So whilst it has meant a few months away from the site, it has also given me a whole load of new learning opportunities.  Some of the aspects I intend to write up as I am learning - on subjects such as:

• Managing outsourcing work
• Handling Stress in the workplace
• Learning to delegate work

To kick things back off, I have been talking recently with Mans Denton over at The Hacked Mind, who is writing a guest post on Handling Workplace Stress. That article will be published next week and following that I will try and get back into my writing habit.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Image Credit: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year To You by Mohammadali F.

The post Merry Christmas appeared first on Babbling Engineer.

We will be moving over our feed provider over the next 24 hours.  Hopefully there will be no disruption to the service, however, if you don't receive your regular Wednesday post (on Wednesday funnily enough!) then you may need to resubscribe.  If that does happen, then my sincere apologies.

Hopefully, I will see you all on the other side!

Best,

Matt

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I know, I know, its not Sunday!  I apologise for posting this late, but I've been away over the weekend with friends.  We've just got back today.  We went up to Centreparcs for a weekend of fun and frivolities.  Absolutely shattered now, but if I don't get this post out today then it won't happen!

The weekend has been brilliant.  Really relaxing, and I've also discovered what a difference yoga can make to your body.  Think we are going to look into finding classes around us.  It was like all my joints had been sprayed with WD40!  However, I am aching today, but I think that is down to following up the next day with a cycle ride, badminton and running after my Wife teaching her to ride a bike.  All good fun, but I'm suffering for it now.

I posted earlier this week about Parkinson's Law.  Ironically, the next day, I ended up putting it to good use.  We discovered that a piece of work hadn't been done.  As I was the only checker free to do the work, it anded on my desk.  This was a piece of work that would usually take about 2 days to do a thorough job.  I somehow managed to get it done in 2.5 hours.

The Weeks Reading

How Much Specialization? (Scott H Young)

An interesting article on balancing your development between being a specialist and being a jack-of-all-trades.  I came up against this quite recently in my career, so this article grabbed my attention straight away.  I started off specialising in Structural Dynamics, following my PhD.  I quickly got pigeon-holed into being "The Guy Who Does Dynamics and Acoustics".  I knew I needed to expand my experience to cover other branches of  Structures Engineering, such as statics and fatigue, before I reached the point of no return as far as my career went, so I moved jobs.  I've now shown that I am capable of static checking, fatigue checking and I've still got my dynamics specialism to fall back on.

Sleep Shall Never Be Sacrificed (The Hacked Mind)

One of my weaknesses is my sleep pattern.  This is quite an interesting article dealing with the benefits of sleep, and the physical reactions that occur in our bodies when we sleep (or don't sleep).  I always like to know the science behind problems such as this as I find it easier to work on a solution and understand the symptoms.

Yesterbox (Yesterbox.com)

This is an interesting method of dealing with your inbox.  Rather than dealing with your inbox as you go along, today's to-do list is yesterday's inbox.  So, each morning, you check your email and only deal with the emails sent to you yesterday. Check out hte link to read more.

How To Break Out of a Career Rut in a Month (The Daily Muse)

Following on from the previous specialisation issues, this article is an interesting way to deal with any issues you may be having at work.

Future Plans

I've also been giving some thought to one of my other Impossible List items.  I've been thinking about writing a non-fiction book for some time now.  I started fleshing this idea out over this last week.  I have a very rough outline for it, covering various productivity topics, geared a  bit towards Engineering.

I'd be really interested to hear any items you would like dealing with.  Please either email me, or add your thoughts to the comments below.  I'd really like this book to be useful to you, so tell me what you'd like to see and I shall address it.  Thank you.

The post Sunday Muse: Not Sunday Edition appeared first on Babbling Engineer.

Hi All,

Just a short post today.  I know things have been quiet on the website for the last few weeks.  The reason for that is that I took on my most life changing  project so far.  I got married!

Following a few weeks R&R up in the Scottish Highlands with my beautiful bride, I'll now be getting back to the normal schedule of posts - including some lessons learnt from the downtime!

Thank you for your patience.

Featured image by voyageAnatolia.blogspot.com

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