There are a million reasons to write. To express emotion. To tell a story. To create. To refine your thoughts. Or, in this case, to solve a problem. 

I started having migraines when I was 20 years old. I remember the first one clear as day. I was watching TV in the living room of the house where I was renting a room when I started having trouble seeing the screen. Being 20 years old and invincible, or so I thought, I closed my eyes and hoped it would go away. 

Ignoring it was ineffective. About 20 minutes later, it hurt to blink. Every beat of my heart sounded like an under-water kick-drum in my head. I have a reasonably high tolerance for discomfort, and that was hell. 

Mom used to say her migraines were debilitating. I’d say this qualifies.

I didn’t write anything down that day. Three is a trend. Two is a line. One is just a point, and I only had one at that time. I had a few more migraine headaches over the next five years or so; some caused only the visual aura, some caused a debilitating headache, some with both. I wrote them all off.

Mom got migraines. I get migraines. C’est la vi.

At 26 years old, I was working in a big dysfunctional shared office, replying to an email when I noticed that I couldn’t see the words I was typing. After trying to struggle onward for a few minutes, I stopped and noticed many red squiggly underlines indicating misspelled words in the text I had just typed, but I couldn’t see words I had just written. I looked at my coworker, and while I could see his figure and the color of his clothes, I couldn’t see his face. I could see it was there, probably with a confused look on his face, as I looked at him with a confused look on my face, but I could not make out any details. 

“I know I’m pretty, Steve, but there’s no need to stare,” he joked.

I smiled back, “You might be the prettiest man on earth, but I can’t make out your face for some reason. I think I’m getting a migraine.”

Another coworker, Karen, who was unfortunate enough to share that weird workspace, spoke up, “A migraine where you can’t see is not a migraine. You need to go to the ER.”

Had I been at home alone, I would have drunk some water, ate some food, taken something for the pain, and had a nap. My coworkers disagreed vehemently. Eventually, they convinced me to go to the ER, where I was given a prescription for Imitrex to treat migraine headaches. 

I don’t like the idea of taking a drug instead of solving a problem. Maybe Imitrex was the solution, but other than migraine loosely fitting the narrative I gave at the ER, I didn’t have a real diagnosis. 

Ok. I’m an engineer. I’m analytical. I’m a problem solver. This is a problem. I should write this down and see if a trend pops out at me.

So I started writing down my migraines. If I was near a computer when I got a migraine, I wrote down exactly what I saw and felt. I wrote down as much about the prior 24-48 hours as I could remember; what I ate, what I drank, how much sleep I got. 

I was looking for patterns. I figured that when I eventually did go in again, I’d at least have data. 

Karen recently reminded me that she prompted me to go to the ER, and when they sent me home with a prescription, she advised me to get checked out. She said that it’s not normal to lose the ability to see sometimes. Maybe that’s why I decided to start keeping a Migraine log. 

Regardless, it would come in handy.

I’m house-sitting for some friends. One of the things they asked me to take care of while they’re out of town is to feed the birds. They buy suet in bulk and have seven feeders with suet blocks in various states of consumption.

As requested, I am dutifully filling the suet feeders.

Heres’ the thing, they’re feeding far more squirrels than birds. Five squirrels are fed to each bird, by my estimate.

That is to say, I’ve been watching a log of squirrels go about their lives in the last few days, and I noticed something I found interesting.

Squirrels spend most of their lives in trees, or in the case of the free-loading tree-rats which I’m watching right now, climbing things designed to keep them away from food intended for birds. The interesting thing is, with every move they make, the world responds to their presence. When they jump from limb-to-limb, the limbs give way; both the one they jumped off from, and the one they landed on. The tree-limbs are forever changed from claws grasping them and from the stress of jumping and landing. All this from a one-pound rodent.

As humans, the world around us mainly appears fixed. Apart from doors, cars, and some chairs, when we move, we know the ground, the floor, the stair-steps, will always remain where they were before we got there.

The world we interact with, while it feels stable, is more like those branches the squirrels play on. Each move we make, each interaction we have, each decision, causes a ripple behind us where we were before, and a matching ripple ahead of us where we land. These ripples spread to infinity, intersecting each other, adding to the ripples left by others. 

Imagine life as a squirrel. Imagine the universe shifting under your weight with every step, moving with every interaction, and oscillating trying to find the new center of gravity because of the shift you made.

Then imagine if each move was deliberate.

What would the universe look like if you treated every interaction as an opportunity to bring your plan into being?

You are more powerful than you can imagine.

I got that question a lot when I told my friends and family that I was taking a new job for less pay in a new industry in a town 60 miles away.
They were even more confused when I told them I was stepping away from running a 40-person organization supporting plants across the USA and Canada, to be an entry-level engineer. I was leaving a job that reported into one of the brothers that ran a number of companies and taking a 20% pay-cut in the process.

They cared about me. They were looking out for me. But they were wrong and I knew it.

I knew it because I had kept a Career Development Plan for years, and that plan enabled me to realize not only that I was entirely unhappy in my job, but also realize that the company I worked for didn’t have a job that I would be happy with.

The template was given to me by my first Plant Manager, Dan. He described it as follows:

• Get your professional history on paper including education back to High School, and the first job you ever had.
• For each past job, make notes of why you took it, what you liked about it, what you didn’t like, and why you left.
• For your current job, ask yourself if it’s the ideal situation, if it’s time to make a change, or if you need more info.
• If there is a change in your future, write down what you can do now to be ready at that time.

I had been keeping this plan for 4 years when I decided that -a- I no longer enjoyed my job, -b- I had stopped learning, and -c- the job I wanted didn’t exist at that company.

I share this template with every intern, co-op, and young engineer I get to work with. Some use it. Some don’t. But in life, you always end up somewhere. If you set a plan and act on it, you’re more likely to enjoy where you end up.

I have kept that Career Development Plan for 18 years and with one brief exception (due to company culture, not the job itself), have enjoyed each new job more than the last.

Thanks Dan! I’m a heart patient who gets to make tools for cardiac surgeons to help other heart patients. I never would have ended up here without following the process you laid out.

I turned 40 today.

I spent the day at work, like I’ve done essentially every weekday since I was 20. Over half of my life has been spent in this routine.

When I was in my 20’s I was fortunate to have an older coworker, not my boss but more of a mentor. He helped me set a deliberate and thoughtful career plan, to check in on progress toward this career plan, and use this career plan to guide my decisions regarding my career.

It was a fantastic exercise. I do love my job, and I love my job because I deliberately set a plan to get it. You’re a lot more likely to like where you end up if you planned to get there in the first place.

But as much as I love my work (I make tools for surgeons to treat heart-patients), work for most of us is just that; work. What about the rest of my life? My relationships? My free time? What do I want the rest of my life to look like outside of work?

Why do we ask kids, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Instead, why don’t we ask them, “What do you want your life to be like when you grow up?”