These days my work is mostly on
Internet. But there's one principle that I use nearly every day. And I learned it from my dad almost 40 years ago in a very different line of work.
My father ran a plumbing shop in competitive western Chicago suburbs. Now and then, when a man didn't show up or called in sick, he'd ask me to fill in for one or another of his regular laborers. I wasn't union, but apparently it was okay. He had friends.
One day he set me to work breaking a concrete floor. We had to chip out cement around a drain, replace it, and trowel in new cement to seal it.
Now, you need to understand. My father was built like a tree stump, while I ran more along lines of beanpole. I was not his favorite worker because I "thought too much and wasn't very strong."
This floor breaking job was not kind of work I enjoyed. It involved holding a cold chisel and swinging a five-pound baby sledge hammer at it really hard. Often my aim was bad so hammer missed chisel and slammed into my wrist instead.
About ten minutes after he put me to work breaking floor, dad came back, expecting to find job completed. It wasn't.
"Son, just what heck have you been doing all this time?"
"Well, dad," I told him proudly, "I figured out a good way to do this more safely. I just tap chisel and move it, tap it and move it. I'm generating a circle of shock waves down into concrete. That way, it'll break along lines and I won't hurt my wrist again."
