During February I read two great blog posts from Anthony Fasano, PE, who founded “Powerful Purpose Associates,” a company dedicated to helping engineers improve their careers and lives. I wanted to share these with you in the hope that they will help you also.

Consistency

The first post is from Feb. 7th and is titled “Consistency is a Critical Component to a Successful Engineering Career and Overall Happiness.” I highly recommend you read the entire article, but I wanted to reiterate the 4 items he lists for introducing more consistency into your work routine:

1. Spend some time at the end of EACH day reviewing your to-do items for the following day and list them in the order of importance.
2. Pick a time of the day (the same time every day) to walk away from the computer and possibly even exercise for as long as you can.
3. Check e-mail at certain times during the day, NOT all day.
4. Wake up earlier each day and use the time to accomplish the same tasks each day. (Anthony discusses how he now gets up 1 hour earlier – at 5am, and is accomplishing a lot more. He also gets to bed earlier by eliminating some TV)

Goals

The second post is from Feb. 20th and is titled “Setting Big Picture Engineering Career Goals is the Most Important Thing You Can Do in Your Career and Life.” You can read the entire article by clicking on the title.

In the article Anthony describes “three steps for setting big picture goals that will ensure you stay engaged and fulfilled, both at your engineering job and at home.” These 3 steps are:

1. Describe Your Ultimate Engineering Career Goal
2. Describe Your Ultimate Personal Goal (Not Related to Your Engineering Career)
3. Describe Your Ultimate Goal

I hope you find both of these blogs helpful. Anthony has multiple other insightful articles from which you may also benefit. You will see a list of categories for topics in the upper right corner when you visit the site.