Posts tagged work
Offline
Offline

Last Tuesday, I had five consecutive Teams meetings booked. I landed with the early morning flight, and connected to the first meeting while in the car on the way to my ordinary office around 30 minutes from the airport. My plan was to transfer the call to my workstation upon arrival. Instead, as I parked my car, I got disconnected. Before long, I realized that I had no reception on my phone. Unfortunately, my office isn’t connected to fibre, and thus I am running a 5G broadband service. The problem is that when the phone tower dies, I am completely cut off from the world.

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Computer, Engineering, HabitsRikard Öqvistredundancy, backup, work, internet, failureComment
Contrast keeps you sane
Contrast keeps you sane

While talking to a colleague last week, I went on a rant regarding cognitive work. I sometimes have a strong urge to work with something where I can just turn on the autopilot and cruise for a while. But it seems like that day never comes to me. I am a specialist consultant, and I find my work very difficult most of the time. And every time a palette drops, and I finally figure out how to solve a specific problem, you might think that life should get a little easier. But no… the only thing that happens is that the difficulty setting increases even more. It feels like mental tractor pulling.

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Engineering, HabitsRikard Öqvistwork, job, engineering, health, musicComment
Dreams and stress
Dreams and stress

I just exited a streak of around ~100 work hours in nine days. It has been quite high stress level in general and intense periods of focus. It is fascinating how the body enters a high alert state and how I have been able to function in a state of sleep depravation with sometimes down to 4 hours per night. But today, when I finally lowered my guard and rest mode activates, I was unable to stay awake at all. The mental realisation that the crunch is over for now, takes a bit of time to process into a physical realisation. It is a damn nice feeling though when it happens.

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DiaryRikard Öqviststress, burnout, work, healthComment
It’s not over till the fat lady sings
It’s not over till the fat lady sings

For weeks on end, our home and office has been like a construction site. But today, our last (planned) renovation project – a brand new office air heat pump – was installed. This calls for celebration indeed, however, I don’t think we have earned it just yet. There are still plenty of extremely small things that I think needs to be taken care of before we can claim “mission accomplished”. Things like scanning the lawn for leftover screws and nails, small chunks of insulation, packaging materials, leftover wood etc. And finally, a proper house-cleaning. One should be careful to claim a project is over prematurely.

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Acoustics, DiaryRikard Öqvistnoise, heating, health, workComment
Tools and knowledge
Tools and knowledge

Last week we tore down our old ghastly kitchen FTX unit, which left a gaping hole in our kitchen above the stove. And today I had the pleasure of observing a kitchen carpenter working his magic. I had sent him a couple of phone pics and an outline of the idea a couple of days in advance. This morning he turned up with his van and portable workshop and before long we had a brand-new kitchen cabinet instead. The thing that impressed me the most was the speed of his progress. It is a beautiful thing to observe a professional doing what they do best, when knowledge and tools harmonize perfectly.

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Acoustics, DiaryRikard Öqvistwork, knowledge, incremental improvementComment
Scheduling accidents
Scheduling accidents

About two weeks ago, my three-year-old son broke his left index finger in an accident at kindergarten. The little guy went to the hospital and got patched up with a plaster. Two weeks, and then re-check was the verdict. Usually, he is like the Duracell bunny, which I solve with physical activity, especially biking. Now, however, he is temporarily disabled from our usual energy burning activities, and that means excess energy. A lot of excess energy. We could perhaps put him on a treadmill connected to the power grid and let him single-handedly solve Europe´s energy crisis. That’s why I realized quickly after he came home with the plaster, that this thing will not last two weeks. I’d be impressed if it would last the day. This, in combination with teaching an intensive university course, is a recipe for disaster. It’s very difficult to change the course schedule on short notice. My past self however, has been taking good care of us. When I scheduled the course, I added not one, but two reserve bookings in the end just in case. Tomorrow I am heading to the hospital for the second time to re-make the plaster which came off again. I would be beyond stressed right now if it weren’t for those reserve slots. Now I feel inner peace instead.

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Parenting, Habits, EngineeringRikard Öqvistscheduling, parenting, work, consulting, planning, pessimism Comments
A lesson from physical labor
A lesson from physical labor

Last Saturday I spent digging around 15 meters of network cable in the ground. The only thing that remains now is to make a wall pass-through and install some wall outlets in the houses and then finally, all our houses are hard-wired with cat6 cables. It’s something that I have been waiting to do since we moved here, to get rid of the shaky Wi-Fi connection. But you must always rank-order your work and it took me four years to execute more important priorities before I could start solving this simple but highly annoying problem. And it felt so good to put it all back together. When I was done, it really struck me that there are few things that feels more satisfying than to complete some proper physical labor, to the degree that you can raise the “mission accomplished” sign.

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Diary, Parenting, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistparenting, work, exercise, scheduling, planning, productivityComment
There is no place like home
There is no place like home

The most frustrating thing about being an acoustician (for me) is the delay between you giving a recommendation to a client and the final result. This process typically takes several years. I have had many sleepless nights (metaphorically speaking) where I have thought about specific technical solutions like floor structures or junctions. And when I finally send my documents to be used for the construction of a building, that’s typically it. I never hear about it again, except for some control measurements at the building site in the best-case scenario. But I want to know how the final product turned out! Last week, I decided to do something about it and went on a road trip visiting eight of our dwelling projects.

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Engineering, AcousticsRikard Öqvistphotography, engineering, travelling, work, family Comments
Changing habits, changing focus
Changing habits, changing focus

A month ago, I passed a thousand published videos on YouTube with at least one daily upload for about 2,5 years. It was not only the video publishing that got put on hold, but also work. I am now on parental leave for the first time, and it has been very relaxing to combine it with a “social media de-tox”. The mind is a fascinating machine, and habit formation is basically how to rewire your brain into certain patterns, depending on what you want to achieve. The things you do every day become insanely powerful, no matter how small they are. It all adds up exponentially in the long run. It is a good thing that the video production gets some rest for now. I am way too busy creating new habits with my boys.

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Habits, ParentingRikard Öqvistfocus, parenting, work, aimComment
Elon Musk was right
Elon Musk was right

Elon musk recently told Tesla Employees to get back to the office for at least 40 hours per week, or “pretend to work somewhere else”. I noted that there was a significant backlash to this statement in the comments sections on LinkedIn for example. Clearly, many people do not agree with Musk and appreciate the choice to work from home or the office and where you consider yourself most productive. It is a question that evoke a lot of emotions. Personally, I think Musk is correct. I also think it is useful to evaluate this question and compare it to education.

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Acoustics, Education, EngineeringRikard Öqvistworkfromhome, work, elon muskComment
Take a walk
Take a walk

Last Saturday, I was going to take my dog out for a short night walk before we all went to bed. It was the last task of the day and everyone else had already gone to bed. Me and my dog were the only ones awake. We started walking towards the forest and everything was illuminated by a full moon, and the temperature was around zero degrees – very comfortable. Once my eyes got used to the moonlight, I didn’t really need my headlamp to see so I turned it off. We kept walking and after a short while we had entered a forest road with no houses or civilization in sight. The short walk ended up being the longest walk I’ve had in a long time. We just kept walking and I loved every minute of it.

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Parenting, HabitsRikard Öqvistwork, family, health, rest, mindfulnessComment
Tread your steps carefully
Tread your steps carefully

I will never forget the final couple of months when I was finalizing my PhD thesis for the print. Several years of extremely focused work was reaching its conclusion. And the thing I remember best is that feeling of “I understand this topic now!”, that you can only get when you are close to the finish line. Everything kind of snaps into place and it feels like you can write the perfect thesis. However, when you finally reach that stage, the time is almost up, so you will only be able to write a fraction of all your ideas. It’s a wonderful and frustrating paradox.

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EngineeringRikard Öqvistwork, health, burnout, iceland, growth, wisdom, learningComment
Prioritize and Execute
Prioritize and Execute

Life as a consultant can often feel overwhelming, and I have certainly felt just like that for a couple of months now. However, when things feel rough, I think about the books I’ve read by Jocko Willinck, where he lays out the concept of Prioritize and Execute. He tells stories from his war deployment where one of his teammates falls and is badly injured, while they come under assault and must deploy their machine gun instantly. At the same time, a thousand other things happen and there is only time to do a couple of them… I think you see where this is going. There is no way on earth that consultancy work can come even close to that pressure (even though it can feel like it). And still, Jocko and his team survived using the only method available. Rank-order the list of tasks that needs to be done and start to tick them off in order of importance. What else can you do?

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Engineering, ParentingRikard Öqvistconsulting, work, family, stress, focusComment
Career or Kids?
Career or Kids?

Tonight, when I was reading our daily bed-time story to my three-year-old son, my eyes teared up with joy. It is without a doubt the best part of my whole day and I am so grateful and blessed to have this daily routine. You have little kids for four years and then it’s GONE, never to return. And you miss it at your own peril because it is the literal definition of “peak life”.

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ParentingRikard Öqvistfamily, career, work, passion, loveComment
Peak life
Peak life

One of the things I enjoy about being a civil engineer is that there is a custom in Sweden that everyone in the business goes on vacation during the three weeks 29-31. In practice, this means that the email and the telephone is completely quiet for three whole weeks. I don’t even have to turn off my work phone or put it into flight mode. And the best part is that my second son arrived precisely two weeks before the building vacation, which meant I could grab my ten days of parental leave and connect five whole weeks with my family. Peak life. However, there was a couple of dark clouds on the horizon which I couldn’t get rid of until this last Friday.

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Engineering, ParentingRikard Öqvistparenting, work, civil engineering, planning, scheduling, mindfulnessComment
A well defined problem
A well defined problem

Have you ever felt the urge to mow your lawn? That’s precisely what happened to me this weekend. The month of May 2021 has been one of the most intense ever, work-wise. I have been developing a university course in Building physics with eleven lectures in the course of four weeks. On top of that I have my regular work as an acoustician. I do love my work, both of them, but there is a problem. They are both extremely cognitively demanding. I am always on the edge, slightly – or even a lot – outside of my comfort zone. That’s why I felt the urge to spend my time on a well defined problem. Like moving the lawn.

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Engineering, HabitsRikard Öqvistwork, relaxation, meditation, stress, focus, productivityComment