Had a conversation with a senior drafter that made me question my whole workflow

Last Thursday I was talking to this old timer named Ray who has been drafting since the 80s. He watched me spend 45 minutes tweaking all the line weights and layer colors in AutoCAD before even starting my floor plan. He just shook his head and said 'you're polishing the drafting table before you've even cut the wood.' It hit me because I realized I've been avoiding the hard part of a project by fiddling with settings that don't matter yet. Now I'm wondering how much time Ive burned over the last 2 years doing the same thing. Has anyone else caught themselves doing busy work to put off the real modeling?

2 comments

2 Comments

xenar1423d agoMost Upvoted

Honestly, my pre-work ritual is basically just rearranging my bookmarks for an hour.

williams.amy23d ago

Ray's a smart guy. That's exactly the kind of thing I do too. Spent three hours once getting my pen plotter settings perfect for a job that wound up getting scrapped the next day. Caught myself color coding every single layer name before I even drew a wall. It's like I'm scared to mess up the real work so I just polish everything around it instead. Feels good in the moment but it's just burning daylight.