Get A Life

Engineering is a profession, not a lifestyle. It might do a great job at exercising the rational/analytical part of your brain, but it's unlikely to do much for the emotional/creative parts. Unless you do something to redress this imbalance, you'll eventually wind up burned out and no use to anybody.

Being a great Engineer means being a balanced human being too. You need some creative pursuits outside Engineering, and there are no shortage to choose from. Here are some of my suggestions:

Spend Time With Your Family

Those screaming bundles of sleep-deprivation that popped out of your partner 9 months after you actually spent some quality time together for a change, are your children. Try spending some time with them now, while they are still interested in spending time with you. It won't last forever. Practise saying “I love you” to your children, and feeling your heart melt as they reciprocate. Repeat as often as necessary until it does so, and then some. You will never regret spending “too much” time with your children; the same cannot be said for your office PC.

Spend some time with your partner, if you have one. Take them out to dinner and actually listen to what they say. If you are single, take a random friend instead; even better if they're someone you find attractive. Do it just for the heck of it. I'd also be willing to bet you have siblings or parents who are wondering what you're up to while you're too engrossed in detailed design to notice them ageing, and wouldn't mind a phone call. And then there are all your friends, who will happily stick by you through thick and thin, provided they can remember who you are. Spend quality time with the people who are important to you.

Read A Best-Seller

Unless you've married another Engineer, or are planning to, and all your friends and family are also Engineers, you will need something non-technical to discuss at dinner parties. This can actually be great fun provided you have something witty, insightful, poignant and relevant to say; and one way to get yourself primed is to read a recent best-seller. Unfortunately your favourite books on XHTML, CSS and Web content management systems do not qualify; nor do any of the other books in your technical library, or your old university Engineering texts.

So where to start? Anywhere on the best-seller list will do. Harry Potter is not as poor a choice as you might first expect, and if you know Dumbledore's first name you're off to a great head-start. Not only will knowledge of the finer points of the Potter world endear you to many adults, it will also give you something in common to talk about during the fast-approaching awkward moments of silence in time spent with the children who you've been neglecting.

Learn To Dance

Learning to dance will give you a creative outlet which not only helps shift your focus from your overly analytical Engineering mind to your body, it's also great for your physical fitness and a lot more fun than plodding along on a gym treadmill or footpath. If you have a partner, take them along and learn together. I guarantee that you're sex life will improve too, or I'll give you your money back. And if you don't have a partner, there's a smorgasbord of sexy singles out there just waiting for you to start strutting your stuff on the dance floor.

Play Music

There's nothing quite like playing music; and I don't just mean putting a CD or MP3 on to listen to – I mean picking up a musical instrument and creating it yourself. Again, this will help you get in touch with your long-lost emotions more powerfully. If you learned to play a musical instrument as a child, you should be able to pick it back up relatively quickly. And if you didn't, you'll be surprised just how satisfying it is to be able to sit down and belt out one of your favourite tunes on the keyboard, drums, guitar, flute, or whatever else is your instrument of choice. Just be patient with yourself as it will take quite a while to start from scratch. But hey, you've got the rest of your life ahead of you, right? Fill it with music while your waiting for that software build, ASIC place-and-route, or finite element analysis to finish.

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