Lesson number three: be open to opportunities, especially those outside of your comfort zone.
You don’t grow as an engineer (or a person) by doing the same thing over and over. You grow by taking on challenges just outside your comfort zone, succeeding, and building from there.
At the risk of sounding cliche, it’s a lot like weightlifting. You don’t get noticeably stronger by doing the exact same repetitions of the exact same weight for years on end.
But it also doesn’t work to throw four 45 lb plates on either side of the bar and try to rip it off the floor. (You’ll actually probably hurt yourself if you try that.)
You do a certain number of reps and sets at a certain weight for a little while. When that starts to feel manageable, even easy, you add a few more reps. Or you add 10 lbs to the bar. And that’s your new baseline, and when that starts to feel manageable you push it again.
It’s all about progressive overload.
Same thing in engineering: you don’t grow in your field by doing the same work your entire career. Even if you want to become an expert at one very specific thing, you try to work on harder and harder problems to improve your skills. Your experiences build on each other.
You grow by trying new things too. I went from operating a wind tunnel, to supporting wind tunnel tests, to managing tests myself. I’d be out of my depth if I went straight from pushing buttons on a control panel to coordinating a million-dollar test. But I didn’t, so while it was a challenge, I could still handle it.
Always be honest about your capabilities and bandwidth—please don’t take on something you have no experience with, or no time for.
But push your boundaries a little when you can. Step up to lead a team that you’ve been on for years and know better than anyone. Raise your hand to test out some new software and be the teacher for everyone else.
Months or years from now, you’ll look back at all that progressive overload and you’ll realize just how far you’ve come, without even noticing it happen.