Focusing on the One Thing that Will Make Your Engineering Career Extraordinary

Anthony Fasano posted 2014-10-30

The following is a summary of Session 32 of my podcast, The Engineering Career Coach (TECC) Podcast with Anthony Fasano, PE. I will summarize the main points in this post; however, you can also listen to the show through the player below or by subscribing on iTunes. I offer a career-changing tip at the end of each podcast session.

In this session of the TECC Podcast, I challenge you to work only four hours a day for one week. Try applying these steps in your career and life and see how focusing on just one thing can make that project super successful or extraordinary.

Here are the steps that can allow you to work only four hours a day:

  1. Review your tasks the night before. Take a good look each evening at the things you need to accomplish the following day. Come up with your Most Important Tasks or MITs and try to identify the key things you want to accomplish.
  2. Review your MITs and try to delegate what you can first thing in the morning. Take a good look at your to-do list or your MITs and identify the things that are not as important or that you can delegate to others. Assign these tasks out before you jump into your own tasks for the day. Spend half an hour on this process.
  3. Take a glance at your e-mail. Answer anything that is super burning. Spend 15 minutes on this, NO LONGER.
  4. Work on MIT #1. Work intensely on your most important task. Focus on this task for 45 minutes straight.
  5. Take a five-minute break.
  6. Repeat this process for MITs #2 & #3, with a five-minute break in between. Dive into your MIT #2 or continue working on your MIT #1. Spend 45 minutes without distractions. Try to drink a lot of water while working.
  7. Spend the last 15 minutes of the four-hour workday answering e-mail or making any phone calls.

In the afternoon, you can organize your office or work on the things that you have been meaning to catch up on, but try to get the majority of your work done in the morning.

Following these steps will help you to recognize how much you can get done if you have your priorities straight. Practicing these steps will cultivate that mentality of focus in your life.

Have you found this post useful? Have you tried working four hours a day using these steps?

Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success, found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website at EngineeringCareerCoach.com and subscribe for access to the top three resources Anthony used to become a partner in a firm at the age of 27.