Let’s talk about Parking.

Parking is difficult. Ideally one would walk or bike to a grocery store, get some sun, get exercise, save on fuel. But when we do drive to a store, parking lots are a mixed hell of crowded stalls, uncertain pedestrian/vehicle interactions, stray shopping carts, and other threats to one’s peace of mind. They always drive me crazy, and I for one would rather park far away and walk, rather than be the person that makes a few laps around the aisles looking for a closer spot.

There’s something else I prefer to do at any sort of parking structure, and it puzzles me that in general people make other choices and leave this opportunity available. That is to park at a location where the number of car-neighbors is minimised. These spots are often free at the end of the lot, even though there are cars in the middle sections.

Hassle-free disembarkation

Finding an island or pillar to park next to reduces the chance of door dings or getting side scraped, being parked in, and just all the other hassles in dealing with the Sartrean hell that is asphalt and other people.  It’s well worth an extra couple meters to decrease that stress.

How is this generalizable to other issues engineers face?

A Web of Complexity

Large industrial projects usually require a collection of engineering/technical disciplines: architectural, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, controls, procurement, project management, dealing with equipment vendors, etc. As one gains experience in these projects, one discovers that 80% of the challenges in projects do not come from within one’s technical discipline (e.g. the challenges of our detailed analysis). We usually understand our own discipline-specific work processes well enough that things go semi-smoothly. Interfaces, rather, cause the vast majority of the challenges.

In this case, hell is the grey area of interfaces that lie between our disciplines and others, or between multiple pieces of equipment. Something gets screwed up due to a miscommunication between the mechanical engineer buying a pump and the structural engineer designing the foundation, and the anchor bolts don’t fit. The electrical engineer didn’t get the proper motor drawings from the vendor and now the cables are undersized, or cable trays interfere with the piping. Some people think (or hope) this no-man’s land between the disciplines is not their problem, and everything will work out, ostrich-like. But eventually, and usually due to poor communication, it Becomes their draining, frustrating issue.

Engineers and managers can be drawn to the technically complex. It’s more exciting to try to rig up an intricate mechanism or program more features. It’s energizing to try to orchestrate a big team with diverse skills and personalities. But every new component, discipline, or person in a project does not add one (+1) to the potential number of relationships – it may add (N-1). People underestimate this effect to their peril.

In our personal lives, complexity can seem appealing, especially when we are young and feel the need to “do more.” Multiple credits cards and shifting balances around to minimize interest. Multiple financial arrangements to extract differential benefits on fees, car loans, student loans, mortgages, and investments. Multiple romantic partners. All these machinations make us feel smart, ambitious, and cunning, but at the end of the day, the management of them can just leave us exhausted, if we are overextended like most people.

Stress Reduction (lavender also works)

From fluid dynamics, we learn that Stress is caused by gradients (differences) across these interfaces: τ(y)=μ(∂u/∂y) for those so inclined. In an engineering or personal project, you first try to mitigate this stress by reducing those gradients. Learning more about different disciplines. Communicating better with your neighbors. Putting systems in place that manage interfaces for better integration and fewer omissions (auto bill pay, cross-discipline checking). Clear lane and lot markers. An understanding that people will return their carts to the corral.

However, rather than mitigating potential interferences that come up across each interface, eliminating the number of any more than required seems preferable – professionally or personally. Don Miguel Ruiz would make the point that we have a limited amount of personal power. Each agreement/interface consumes some of this power. For those that have too much complexity to handle already, breaking those interfaces/agreements returns the power and tension bound up in maintaining them back to you.

Subtract unnecessary people or firms on an engineering team, despite the urge to “share the load” or “bolster qualifications,” if your people aren’t overloaded. Pay a bit of a premium to have one or two contractors do a job, versus splitting scope up on a project between multiple contractors for a slight savings. Avoid the temptation to add one more heat exchanger in a power cycle if all it yields is an incremental 0.001% of performance. Don’t open up one more bank account or credit card because this one has a niche bonus that would save one $50 a year. Your time and focus have value too, but may not be accounted for properly since they are difficult to quantify.

There are only so many things we can spread our attention across, and eliminating things entirely has an outsized benefit. Probably best illustrated by the story of Diogenes and the cup. Here’s an old guy that owns a robe and a cup, until he sees a kid drinking water from a fountain with his hands. So Diogenes throws away his cup. With that goes away the stress of maintaining the cup, remembering the password for it, fearing someone will steal it, potential hazardous cup-robe interactions, and a score of other related hassles.

So, eliminate, don’t just mitigate. Save me some of the single-sided parking spots however.