[gluggymug]

"Doing these things properly requires learning more skills. But time spent learning these skills is time not spent engineering. It almost seems more of a irrational reaction against modernity than it does an actual path towards greater impact."

I don't think it was about the size of impact but about fixing your work/life balance. When it's skewing too much towards "all work/no play", most people burn out. By changing to learning something new and different, they get refreshed.

Personally I think I may have to write an article called "Join the Leisure Class, Leave the Engineering Class".

For me, I stopped working in engineering and life is awesome. Having made enough to pay off the mortgage and with leftover savings, I don't think I will need to work again. But when I was working I actually did get a certification in a completely different field of welding/machining.