Years of experience in just two days
Image by Georgi Dyulgerov from Pixabay
If I count the travel time, I finished my 40-h work week by Wednesday. Why bragging about prioritizing work over family? Hustle culture isn’t that cool honestly. When pushing >80 h work weeks, most normal people are just on their way to a burn-out. However, it is not that simple. In my case, I performed field measurements in a school I have designed the acoustics. I started that work in 2021 and now, over 4 years later the buildings are almost finished. Just think about it for a second, how frustrating it is to make recommendations to a client and then wait for almost half a decade until you get feedback and can finally own the consequences of your recommendations. Feedback should be rapid, but this is the reality of civil engineering. That’s why I pushed such an insane work week. My curiosity was like a fire I couldn’t put out. I had to know if my calculations worked in practice!
The first time I measured a building I had designed myself; I was so nervous that I puked. Literally. And after performing the measurements and concluding that it all worked, I gained some invaluable confidence. This time with the school, I was also nervous but nowhere in the same ballpark. I have learned to keep somewhat calm. But there is one common theme with my projects. I always worry about some things more than others. It can be a design choice to use some new type of wall studs or floor solution, where you don’t have enough data to validate it properly, so you must rely on theoretical calculations and gut feeling. And I have now seen several times, that the things I worry the most about are usually big nothing burgers. The inevitable problems I always discover, always flank me where I have my guard down. Things that I was not aware of or things that I was confident that they were not a problem at all. That’s where I have noted that things go sideways.
It is reasonable of course. If I find something during the design phase that can be a potential problem, I do my best to deal with it and take measures. If you knew exactly when and where your enemy will attack, you would obviously put your best troops in his way. The problem is when you do not know where you will be attack or by whom. The moral of the story is that you cannot worry too much. It is counterproductive and will steel your precious time that could have been used for something more productive. A little worry is always good, because it is a rudimentary form of quality control. Just don’t overdo it.
A typical project like a school, often requires hundreds of theoretical work hours., and zero (0) hours of practical experience, with some exceptions. Try to imagine how wonderful it feels to visit a finished building of your own design and evaluate it and measure it yourself. It might sound crazy, but I seriously think I might have learned more in two 16-hour workdays than a full year of consulting. And that is why it is totally worth it to crunch extreme hours every now and then.
Nothing beats knowledge gained from real-world experience.