#098 - Motion vs. Progress
The micro-decisions, unexamined habits, and interaction patterns that silently drain an engineer's day
I very rarely miss deadlines but I miss minutes every day that I canāt really explain. Death by a thousand cuts, as it were. Micro-decisions that leak out of a day, the unexamined habits that might feel productive or sensible in the moment and quietly erode judgment over time.
Iāve been paying closer attention to where these minutes go. Patterns have emerged that have started to feel familiar: moments when I mistake motion for progress, conversation for collaboration, novelty for improvement. When I trace them back, they cluster into three categories:
The technical work itself
The interactions required to move work forward
The tools we choose and how we use them
The most corrosive are often the interactions with people, for better or for worse.
I was reminded of this recently after a call with a colleague. I had a complex problem, and as I talked through it, as I tend to, the solution began to crystallize. He didnāt say much. I hung up, problem solved, and realized I had used him as a pro-bono therapist.
I am regularly guilty of this, yet itās one of the very things that drives me insane when Iām on the receiving end of it.
This newsletter sometimes serves a similar purpose. The act of describing an issue clarifies it and you often end up solving your own problem.
The call made me reconsider how often I externalize my thinking at someone elseās expense and gave me the idea for this article.
These are some of the silent killers of an engineerās effectiveness. They arenāt dramatic failures; they are subtle, corrosive habits and mindsets. Here are a few concepts that I grapple with as diligently as possible.
Premature Complexity
Iām a firm believer in first principles, in all things. The process is always to start with the essence of the problem, and once that is broadly understood, to expand into detail. The trap we fall into is introducing complexity too early in the design process, which has an exponential impact on the inevitable iterations that follow.
Engineers are rewarded for detail. That incentive runs deep. But sometimes it is a curse.
When I began working with large structural models I fell into the same trap I now recognize in others: mesh refinement as reflex. If the run time doubled, I read that as āweāre gaining accuracy in stress concentrations.ā What it usually means is āIām delaying understanding.ā The model would slow down. Iterations become more scarce. By then, you are no longer exploring the problem; you start defending the mesh and chasing your tail.
