Keep It Simple

This past Tuesday I received a call from my father-in-law, Ed. He is in the middle of an engineering project and needed some help with some electrical engineering. He is a mechanical engineer and often comes to me because of my electrical engineering degree. He described his problem and I took notes. I then informed him that I was tied up for the next couple of days with a project of my own but that I would do some thinking and see if I couldn't help out later in the week.

Yesterday my software project finished up before noon and so I had time to think about Ed's problem. However I was reluctant to start on the project because it has been over fifteen years since I have done any real electrical engineering. Sure I mess around with computers and build fun little projects every couple years or so, but this was real engineering work. I was going to need to create a digital state machine complete with reduction tables and a bunch of stuff I would need to relearn. So I put off starting the project until after dinner.

In addition to being a Scoutmaster, I also sit on the Snowbird Ski Team's board of directors. The official organization name is the Snowbird Sports Education Foundation but everyone knows us at the Snowbird Ski Team. Our monthly board meeting was last night and so I continued procrastinating Ed's project. I didn't get home until after 9pm and thought I could start in the morning.

Everyone went off to bed but I found myself with a slight case of insomnia and so I figured I should do a bit of reading. If there is a cure for insomnia it is reading old college books and so I pulled out one of my electrical engineering texts that I was planning on using as a reference to help with Ed's project. I skimmed the first five chapters and I started to remember the class. Then I started to remember some of the basic elements used to create digital state machines.

Thirty minutes after I picked up my text book I had reduced Ed's complex engineering work to two simple elements. I pulled out a piece of paper and drew up a quick schematic diagram. I have the parts in an old lab kit from back when I was in school and so I think I can build a prototype today and makes sure it works.

Sometimes we have a tendency to look at technical or computer problems and think they are too complicated. We then procrastinate getting started. When we finally develop the courage to attack the problem it turns out to be a lot simpler than we thought.