ime managemen

huangyhg

time management
does anyone know a good book geared towards engineers about how to manage time?  need help in setting and meeting deadlines especially.  thanks.
i am sorry to say that i do not.
however, i often want to clone me self and like to have 36 hours per day! at least it feels this way. not only because i am an engineer; but i am a business owner who have other obligations to attend to survive. some of other duties besides designing are payroll, demonstrations, employee benefits, marketing, responding to clients, proposal writing, negations, human resources issues, quality control checks and deal with vendors. while most of our engineers go home at the end of the day my partner and i often spend few more hours preparing and catching up on administrative stuff.
in my years of experience working in the engineering field, rarely we are granted the proper schedule and time to complete projects. coupled with the fact the clients do not pay proper fees. this leaves us under the gun to produce engineering that is in my opinion lots of time not suitable! hence lots of problems during construction due to omissions, owner directed changes, etc.
i cope by setting priorities. this always works. also accept the fact things will never get done in one day. explain to boss and clients that more time is required. give your reasons. you know them best.
i hope this helps.
i think there have been some threads on this topic in the corporate survival threads like "overcoming obstacles to getting my work done" (
thanks for your comments.  lufti- i also run the business as well as do some of the engineering.  work very long days.  have a badly needed vacation coming up and would like to break a previous pattern of working like three devils to get things done beforehand, and being too wiped out to enjoy the vacation!
i am actually turning away certain types of work just now and warning all my clients that i will soon be gone for a week.  have several projects under construction, with shop drawings and field problems coming and going, as well as the current design work underway.  
there must be some way to correctly anticipate the demands on my time that will arise but so far have not found it.  i think in essence it involves leaving enough blank spaces in the schedule, and timing them, to absorb the inevitable unforeseen things that arise.  maybe i have to invent a way to do this.
in preparing a proposal it is relatively straightforward for most types of projects to estimate the design hours, shop drawing review hours, etc.  its how they actually fall into the work flow that is the problem. hard to predict.
running an office is sort of like a mama duck trying to get two dozen or so chicks to waddle across a busy road.  i have to frantically fly all around honking or some of them toodle off in the wrong direction.  if they don't move fast enough or too soon they get run over! its enough sometimes to make one quackers.
well thats my bad joke for the day.  time to get back to work. regards.
samdamon,
you might check out the project management institute (
samdamon, i actually sympathize and it sounds like we both live very similar situation, as do so many of our colleagues.
take that vacation because it is well deserved and there will always be tomorrow to complete.
i think we as engineers need a national sitcom to show how neat, creative and smart engineers are. i am tired of watching law and order and attorneys foaming off the mouth for one hour to say something i can say in few minutes.
regards to all
come up with a premise involving whodunits, and you can retire from engineering!  if "csi" can make lab geeks sexy...
until then, the "appollo 13" movie's the best we gots.
hg