Work as hard as you can on one thing and see what happens

Yesterday me and my wife listened to Dr Jordan Peterson’s lecture in Stockholm, with the same topic as the title of this blog post. As a person who is extremely high in openness, I find this especially interesting. People with this personality trait, creative people, can often have a problem that they keep shifting from one thing to the next without ever finishing anything. I can recognize myself in this to a certain degree. But I also know that I am not too extreme in this regard either. Raphael, a friend of mine might very well be the most creative person I have met. And he told me something that is probably only is visible to someone in the 99,9th percentile in creativity (i.e. way higher than me, even if I should be in the 99th percentile…). “Rikard, you are an artist, but you are also very practical.”

Education, Acoustics, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistJune 6, 2022teaching, focus, career, art, music, universityComment

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.

EngineeringRikard ÖqvistApril 11, 2022work, health, burnout, iceland, growth, wisdom, learningComment

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?

Engineering, ParentingRikard ÖqvistMarch 28, 2022consulting, work, family, stress, focusComment

Most of the things you worry about never happen

I have been working with the acoustic design of timber buildings my whole career, but it isn’t until this past year that actual buildings are inaugurated, and people move in. The building process is slow, and it takes several years from the start to the end user getting a new home. And even then, it’ll probably take another six months until you know whether you did a good job. If you hear nothing, that is. If something goes wrong and the tenants perceive annoyance, you will probably learn about it much sooner.

Engineering, PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistNovember 23, 2021CLT, timber, buildings, civil engineeringComment

Pre-internet memories

When I was a kid, I had a Lego semi-trailer truck that must have been one of my very first sets (I was too young to remember). It was released in 1984 when I was two years old. I cannot ever remember this set ever being built. It had some special pieces with stickers, so I knew it was there. Here’s the catch: The instruction manual was shredded (probably by yours truly), and I only had some fragments but not enough to build the set. This has frustrated me sub-consciously for about 37 years. Until now.

Philosophy, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistSeptember 13, 2021lego, memory lane, progress, grotwth, ai, futureComment

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.

Engineering, ParentingRikard ÖqvistAugust 16, 2021parenting, work, civil engineering, planning, scheduling, mindfulnessComment

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.

Engineering, HabitsRikard ÖqvistMay 31, 2021work, relaxation, meditation, stress, focus, productivityComment

Never stop learning

Throughout May, I have been teaching Building Physics in the course at Umeå University with the same name. The three topics included in the course are acoustics, heat transfer and moisture transfer. I know acoustics by heart and can teach it on autopilot by now. Heat transfer and Moisture transfer on the other hand, is a completely different story. I did not know anything about those topics before this course. And here I am now, teaching the topics that were as new to me as to the students. Can this actually work? Teaching and lecturing in a topic that you are not familiar with is about as scary as it gets.

Education, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistMay 24, 2021building physics, teaching, education, growth, studyComment

The definition of insanity

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expect different results, a wise man once said. However, there is an exception to that rule: Computers. From my experience, trying the same thing and expecting a different result is usually the first thing I try when my IT gives up. And the success rate is high enough to keep doing it. Technology is wonderful when it works. I love technology. It might also be the thing that most effectively can send my pulse to 300 bpm while I am screaming on the top of my lungs (my kind of anger management). I suppose my family is grateful that I am often in another building when the glitch gremlin strikes.

Engineering, Habits, PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistApril 19, 2021technology, it, glitch gremlin, linux, tools, writing, bloggingComment

Resurrecting the Behemoth

I am writing this blog on a laptop from 2006, running an operating system that was released in 2021: Linux Mint 20.1. I have been using PC:s since 1995 and I remember the “good old days” in the second half of the 1990’s. You bought a high-end PC for a small fortune and it would last a year or two until it became an unusable brick, at least with regards to gaming. The performance increases with each generation was extreme back then. But in the late noughties, things began to change with the release of multi-core processors, hyperthreading and 64 bit support. The growth has continued for sure, and Moore’s law implies the growth is exponential. But with regards to the user experience, to me it seems like the computers got fast enough to run most important software, even when they got old. It’s as if the hardware improvements grew much faster than the system requirements of software. I mean the kind of software that you need to have a basic computing experience and not the latest games or special applications.

EngineeringRikard ÖqvistApril 12, 2021linux, windows 10, operating system, hardware, dell, retro computers, linux mint, open sourceComment

VR Motion sickness

Many years ago, I tried Virtual Reality (VR) for the first time. It was the Oculus Rift developers kit, one of the very first Head Mounted Displays (HMD) that was the result of a KickStarter campaign in 2012. It looked like a pair of ski goggles superglued to an iPad. I remember that I went for a ride on a rollercoaster that was extreme, even with some jumps. I played around for about 15 minutes and then suffered from severe motion sickness for about three hours. The concept was extremely cool, but clearly the technology had a long way to go. Last week I pulled the trigger and got my first VR HMD (HP Reverb G2). My gut feeling is that the technology is now mature enough to provide a lot of value. In the coming months, I will evaluate how VR can be used in civil engineering and acoustics.

Acoustics, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistApril 5, 2021vr, virtual reality, acoustics, engineering, civil engineering, ifcComment

The Catch-22 of drumming

I started playing the drums in July 2019 and am in my second year now of daily practice. First and foremost, I would consider myself a guitar player because I have played for more hours on the axe than on any other instrument. If you already know one instrument, it will be easier for you to learn a second, even easier to learn your third and so on. Mastery on multiple instruments is comparable to polyglots who speak several languages. It gets easier and easier to acquire a new one, the more you already know. In this post, I will focus on how some important lessons I have learned in my drumming. Some techniques translate well from the guitar, and others do not translate at all.

Acoustics, Engineering, MusicRikard ÖqvistFebruary 27, 2021drums, guitar, practice, consistency, growth, analogyComment

Upgrading my live streaming setup with a system camera and a studio microphone

My YouTube channel has seen some serious growth lately and I realized that it is time to up the ante regarding the production value. Up until now I have been using a Logitech BRIO webcam, and a Jabra Speak conference phone. They get the job done fine, but the camera struggles with White balance and focus and the microphone picks up a ton of room reverberation. So, I pulled the trigger and invested in a proper mirrorless camera with real optics and a spring-loaded studio arm to mount a large membrane microphone. This gave a huge boost in production quality and my online meetings have never looked and sounded this good. I am also proud that I kept going with basic equipment for almost 1½ years before upgrading. My past self had a tendency to get stuck in gear acquisition syndrome instead of producing content. You should always let the content come first, and then invest.

Acoustics, Engineering, EducationRikard ÖqvistFebruary 13, 2021livestreaming, online education, camera, audio, recording, video, DSLR, studioComment

The perfect work week

After Covid, many of us have realized how much time we save by not travelling to various meetings. However, is it possible that we are now having more meetings instead? And perhaps they aren’t as disciplined? Yesterday I had a conversation with an architect and we both felt that some weeks there are so many meetings that it is difficult to clock in any productive work at all. In our conversation we did some brainstorming and came up with an idea that might work. What if there was an industry standard within civil engineering that looked something like this: Mondays – Internal meetings, Tuesdays – Client meetings, Wednesdays – Productive work, Thursdays – Client meetings and Fridays – Productive work again. Imagine how much easier it would be to focus and to optimize scheduling.

Engineering, HabitsRikard ÖqvistFebruary 6, 2021civil engineering, productivity, focus, meetings, scheduling, planningComment

When the tables are turned for a recording engineer

Yesterday I spent a day in a recording studio for the first time – As a client. I have been working in studio environments probably for thousands of hours and have recorded hundreds of songs. But I have always been the one in control of the recording process. A sound engineer recording himself as a musician is a completely different thing than a sound engineer being recorded as a musician, by another sound engineer. By entering the role of a client for just one day, I learned some lessons that aren’t apparent from the perspective of the sound engineer. This is an invaluable experience which can be applied in any domain, not just music.

Acoustics, Music, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistJanuary 23, 2021studio, recording, music, guitar, growth, acoustics, musician

Acoustics and Men’s style

Earlier this year, my wife introduced me to Bailey Sarian’s Youtube channel. She produces a program called “Mystery and Makeup”, where she talks about True crime and Makeup. She is insanely popular with 3,4 million subscribers and I can understand why, even if I have only watched one episode. Her passion is apparent and shines through like a bright light. She is indeed a great storyteller. The episodes start out with Bailey completely without makeup and then she tells a story about some famous true crime while putting on a professional makeup. About 30 minutes later she finishes the story and by then the makeup is finished. Bailey Sarian is perhaps one of the strangest combinations I have come across and it works. She is the perfect example of when two seemingly unrelated ideas are synthesized and produce something new and greater than the sum of the parts. She planted a seed in me. If I were to do something similar on Youtube, what would it look like?

Acoustics, Education, Engineering, Habits, StyleRikard ÖqvistDecember 19, 2020acoustics, elearning, education, synthesis, ideas, youtube, style Comments

Embrace your weakness

Last week I bought a secondhand computer monitor for the home studio that I am creating. It is a huge Philips 43-inch 4k monster display, one of the very best on the market. I had been looking for a computer monitor for a long time when this behemoth showed up in my feed, close to where I live, for a fraction of the sticker price. However, the ad stated that the previous owner had damaged it by dropping a tool when installing it, which resulted in a big bright dead pixel with white light in the middle of the screen. Here’s the catch: I find dead pixels extremely annoying! My eyes are drawn to that sucker constantly. Even though the price was a bargain, the dead pixel disturbed me so much that it was a no-brainer to walk away. And that is precisely the reason that I bought it.

Engineering, PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistOctober 17, 2020perfection, focus, productivity, it, growth, mindset, engineer, 4kComment

A change of tool changes your perspective

One of the things that I HATE is to solve a task using an incorrect tool. The perfect example is to use a Phillips screwdriver bit on a Pozidriv screw. Or when you don’t have the bit of the right size. It makes my blood boil! But what if there is a smarter way to complete the task using a different tool? Certain tasks are more inclined to have a “right” and a “wrong” way of doing them, but if we get locked in our minds that there is only one way to solve a problem, we risk stagnation. However, it makes a lot more sense to try out different guitars to play the same song, than to use different screwdriver bits for a given type of screw. The latter would be the equivalent to play death metal on a Harp. If your desire is to play the harp, you are probably better off choosing a different musical genre than death metal.

Art, Engineering, Philosophy, MusicRikard ÖqvistSeptember 5, 2020tools, productivity, wacom, drawing, speedsketching, screws, drawing tabletComment

Epic video gaming moments

What Microsoft has done with Flight Simulator 2020 is nothing but mind blowing. They have digitalized the entire world for us to fly around in. They have used map data with height geometry and flight and satellite photos from Bing and combined it with AI magic that have generated buildings and trees with image recognition technology. The weather is rendered in real time, so if you look outside and it’s a rainy sunset in Umeå, that is precisely what you will experience if you fire up the simulator and take off from Umeå Airport. If you go low enough, you can even see cars driving on the roads. The graphics are nothing short of stunning. It is by far the most beautiful video game I have seen. However, that last sentence will probably age poorly, because I have said the same thing about Super Mario on the NES.

The best of two worlds

I have always stood with one foot in the private sector and the other foot in academia. These two worlds are like Yin and Yang. When working as an acoustic consultant, efficiency and rapid progress is the name of the game. Solve the problems as using the fastest and simplest solution, send an invoice and move on. In academia (especially with research), you thoroughly investigate all possible paths and strive for perfection. Quality over Quantity is the name of the game here. I have never felt comfortable living in just one of these worlds. My gut feeling has always told me to keep one foot in each camp, even though it typically involves more work. Well, until now, that is. It is a long-term strategy that is starting to pay off in a beautiful way. The marriage of two diametrically opposite worlds has the potential to create a lot of value.