FROM THE PUBLISHER
Last month was rough. A nice young fellow who kept my antique cars cleaned was killed in a New Year’s Eve altercation with a gun-wielding criminal. Several of my friends and acquaintances, including one former student, were diagnosed with bad cancers. A close friend lost his wife from a sudden heart attack. Another friend’s husband — six years younger than me — is on life support and may well not make it. Now that I have you cheered up—my point is that a lot of bad stuff happens to good people. And I don’t think any of them got up in the morning expecting whatever happened to them that day. You have to use your time wisely. When your time is up, it’s done. We all could probably do better living each day as if it were to be our last, although the truth is none of us often do. Here are some things to think about: Spend time with the people you care about — Besides the obvious family members and loved ones, this also includes who you spend time with at the office. Who inspires you?Who are you mentoring? Ditto for clients. Which ones do you really care about as people? Give the people who matter the benefit of your attention. Be willing to take some risk — You don’t have unlimited time to be successful in life or make your life what you want it to be. Engineers, by nature, are risk averse. You cannot keep putting off all risk, thinking that makes you smart. Real accomplishment is probably going to take real risks (and sacrifice). Stop wasting so much time —When you are really busy and have a million commitments it’s one thing to take some time to relax and recharge the batteries. This could be called “productive time-wasting” because there is a benefit that comes from it. I contrast this with non-productive time wasting. That includes things such as wasting hours every day on social media or playing repetitive computer games, versus face-to-face interaction with real people or doing something productive with your time. Too many people waste too much time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Increase your time (above ground) as much as you can — Better diet, exercise, not smoking, stress reduction—all of these are important. Go to the doctor for regular checkups. I cannot understand people who go five or 10 years without a check-up. Get your lab work done and ward off problems. Get on those long-term projects now — Time to start making headway on building that vacation house, restoring your Dad’s first car, writing your novel, or whatever else it is you have been talking about doing for a long time — now . Contrary to the Rolling Stones song, time is not on your side. Better start acting like you know that before it’s too late!
Time is not on your side
Use your time wisely before it’s too late.
MARK C. ZWEIG mzweig@zweiggroup.com
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csengineermag.com
February 2018
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