The major relocation from the U.S. to Germany and the travel I’ve made here since returning has reminded me of the importance of physically relocating oneself in order to refresh the mind.
Too often I see fellow engineers and project managers burned out by the job and their life. It’s bound to happen when you get into a single mode of operation and set routines that are never broken or adjusted.
Nothing can sap the energy from one’s career, or life, than getting set into a routine that has no end. To break the routine, you have to relocate yourself physically.
Physical Movement Reboots the Brain
Much has been written about the benefits of exercise and physical movement, such as walks, to reboot the brain. As knowledge workers, engineers are prone to mental fatigue. This leads to mistakes in designs and reports, poor decision making skills, and reductions in communications skills and other cognitive functions.
None of this is good.
My recommendation is to find a movement scheme that works for you. For me this is an early morning run or visit to the gym, as well as short 5 minute walks later in the day if I feel my mental faculties slipping. This also includes taking care of random errands that require me to get off my seat and physically relocate myself from wherever I’m working.
Each of us has different work schedules and different thoughts about physical training. So go after the type of movement that works best for your situation.
Note: This can also include “managing by walking around”, something I’ve used in various engineering leadership positions as a way to both reboot my brain and spend time talking with my employees. It might be cliche, but it is effective.
Creating Some Perspective
Sometimes the challenge isn’t rebooting the thinking computer in our head, it’s the need to gain perspective on an issue that is causing us problems. The issue might be personnel related or a technical challenge we’re having on a design.
New perspectives are difficult to create when you’re in the cycle of daily routine. They can also be a challenge to obtain when you’re seeing the same four walls, desktop, and people.
The reason it’s so difficult to get perspective is that the mind likes to operate within familiar parameters. It does this because it’s far easier and requires less energy to operate off heuristics, or routines, than it is to contend with new stimuli.
This is why a physical relocation of our body from a familiar routine to a new routine can result in new ideas and blasts of new perspective. Given the new stimuli, the conscious mind is engaged in taking in the new surroundings allowing the subconscious mind to churn out the elusive perspective we’ve been seeking.
Absence Makes the Mind Grow
I’ve found physical relocation to be one of the best ways of getting my mental engine operating at optimal levels. Definitely this happens for me through travel. Over a summer of moving and traveling, my mind developed a lot of new ideas for articles to share with you.
A trip to the U.K. recently gave me the distance from my familiar surroundings necessary to reboot my mind and generate new ideas. Most people find this to be true for them as well. It’s why we feel re-energized when we return from a vacation.
If you have decisions to make or new ideas you need to generate to solve a technical design challenge and you find yourself stuck in developing the answers, there’s one thing you can try: separate yourself physically from the location you normally work and think about it there.
Christian Knutson, P.E., PMP is an engineer, infrastructure program manager, coach and author. He has extensive experience in leadership, management, and engineering earned from a career as a civil engineering officer in the U.S. Air Force. He now coaches engineers enabling them to create an engineering career and life of fulfillment at The Engineering Career Coach.
Image courtesy of MR LIGHTMAN at FreeDigitalPhotos.net