Nobody at TU/e asked me to coordinate a multimillion‑euro EU doctoral network. Nobody required me to direct the Future Chips Academy or become a Confidential Advisor. I chose these roles, and I believe that distinction changes everything.

People still ask: how do you carry it all without burning out? Colleagues, students, people from industry, from every layer around me, the same reaction comes: "Shihab, it's too much. Nobody asked you to do all this. You're already doing enough. Take care of yourself. Take care of your family. Find balance."

I hear them. And they're not wrong to ask. On paper, what I do doesn't look sustainable. I hold a number of roles across research, teaching, international projects, educational leadership, and service to the university community. And people often ask me how I manage it all without burning out.

And here's what I want to say clearly, before anything else: I am not writing this because I think I am exceptional. I am not. My colleagues work tremendously hard and produce enormous impact. Their ability is not in question. This is not a comparison. This is a sharing. Because people keep asking, and I think the answer might be useful to someone.

So here is how I think about it. Not a prescription. Not a formula. Just my way.

1. It started before university

I didn't arrive at academia and suddenly developed the capacity to carry multiple roles. The training started decades earlier, without me realizing I was training at all.

In high school, I discovered electronics and mathematics. When something genuinely interested me, I would lose myself in it. Reading overnight, working through problems, forgetting how many hours had passed. 

I didn't call it discipline. I just had a passion that pulled me in. This was my first encounter with what I would later recognize as high quality time: the ability to give something your complete, undivided presence.

By age eighteen, in my first year of university, I was already connected to industry and earning money from technical tasks. I spent nights completing projects, not out of obligation, but because I wanted to finish, to deliver, to see the result. 

Then came years in industry: founding and running an engineering company, managing large scale optical fiber backbone projects over several years, working in crisis management, leading teams, delivering under pressure. Project management. Financial control. Stakeholder negotiation. And perhaps most importantly: learning what to do when things go wrong.

This was my gym. I didn't know it then, but I was building the muscles I would need later.

2. The bodybuilder and the construction worker

Let me offer an analogy. And forgive me, I am an electrical engineer, so I think in physical systems.

Compare two people who carry heavy weight every day: a bodybuilder and a construction worker. Both work hard. Both lift. But the bodybuilder can carry far more weight without getting hurt. The worker, after a full day, gets tired, feels the stress of the load, and over time, can break down.

Why? Four reasons.

First, the bodybuilder started as a normal person with no muscles. They were built through training. They have a program, maybe a personal trainer. They think deeply about every movement, bringing the brain fully into the muscle, executing each motion precisely to strengthen without injury. 

The worker's goal is different. They are there to accomplish a task. The weight is just something to move. They don't bring their mind into how they carry it. So the same load hurts them faster.

Second, the bodybuilder's mindset about the load is completely different. Their goal is strength. They don't see weight as something negative. They believe: the more load I carry, the stronger I get. 

The worker sees the load as just work. No training. No mental framing. The weight breaks them down.

Third, and this is crucial, the bodybuilder chooses to carry the weight. They want the benefit. They even pay for the gym, invest in a trainer. 

The worker must carry the weight. It is an obligation, not a choice. One is voluntary training. The other is compulsory labor. The psychological experience is entirely different.

Fourth, the bodybuilder invests to get stronger. The worker works to earn. The entire motivational orientation is reversed.

Now, apply this to academic work. My early career, the company, the telecom projects, the crisis management, was my training program. I learned to carry heavy loads long before academia asked me to. 

More importantly, I learned that the load doesn't hurt me. It strengthens me. Every task I take on, I choose. 

Nobody at TU/e asked me to become a Confidential Advisor. Nobody required me to coordinate the EU network or direct the Future Chips Academy. I chose these. I invest in them, time, focus, quality, because I know the return.

This is not about glorifying overwork. It's about understanding that two people can perform similar actions with completely different outcomes, depending on preparation, mindset, choice, and purpose.

With full respect to the worker, this analogy is not a judgment. It's simply a natural example of how training and framing transform experience.

3. Every problem is a success waiting to happen

We are surrounded by problems and issues. This is not a complaint. This is raw material.

Here is my first philosophical principle, and it's the foundation of everything else:

Problem → Challenge → Opportunity → Success

It works like this. When I encounter a problem, I don't feel stress. I look at it. I try to identify it clearly, characterize it, understand its shape. By doing that, the problem becomes a challenge, something I can engage with. 

If I work on that challenge seriously, think properly, devise solutions, the challenge converts into an opportunity. And if I accomplish that opportunity, approach it correctly, it becomes a success.

This means everything around me, all the problems, all the issues, is potential success waiting to be unlocked. There is no reason to be afraid of a problem. There is no reason for stress. You can be very busy, but without stress, because every task is just another problem on its path to becoming a success.

This is not blind optimism. It's a chain. And it works if you treat each link seriously.

4. The university loop and how to step outside it

University work is competitive. Everyone wants to give their best, and they do. The result is a non‑ending loop of heavy work and heavy tasks. 

Day after day, inside this loop, it becomes extremely difficult to assess what's happening, to characterize it, to see its value. You need indicators. But before indicators, you need space.

There are two ways to relate to this loop. The loop can lead you, pulling you reactively from email to meeting to deadline, just surviving. Or you can lead the loop, proactively, with perspective, seeing it from outside before you step back in.

I aim to lead the loop. I create deliberate space, an exit, between myself and the loop. From that space, I can observe how things are flowing, understand the rhythm, and then re‑enter with clarity.

My concrete practice: Sunday afternoon and evening. My family is also preparing for the week: my wife, my kids, everyone getting ready for Monday. I use this time to prepare myself. 

I review the week ahead: meetings, tasks, deadlines. I look further out: what's coming in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks? Is there something I need to prepare now that will have impact later? 

I don't take action. I don't answer emails. I position everything in my mental map. I reserve the high quality time slots for the signal tasks. I prepare my mental health.

This is not productivity. This is clarity. It connects to something deeper, which I will come to shortly.

5. The 80/20 and the SNR

Now we come to the question of selection. How do you choose what to do when everything seems important?

I use two frameworks. One well known, one from my own field.

The first is the 80/20 principle. You invest 20 percent of your effort and time, and you gain 80 percent of the impact. This is not luck. It is selection. You must be extremely selective about the tasks you take on. Only high impact work can produce this ratio. 

Even if the task is heavy, you are already trained to carry it. The key is to choose loads that yield disproportionate impact. If you did the same work the normal, slow way, without focus, without training, it would require far more time for the same outcome.

The second is the signal to noise ratio (SNR). This comes from my field, electrical engineering, communications systems. In any transmission, you want to maximize the signal and suppress the noise. 

Applied to work: you need to accomplish high value tasks, the signal, and reduce the low value activities, distractions, and clutter that surround you, the noise. 

This does not mean being selfish. It means being selective and efficient. Amplify the signal. Suppress the noise.

How these two ideas connect: you invest your 20 percent effort into the high signal tasks. That yields 80 percent of your impact. The noise is what you suppress to protect that investment. 

The 80 percent is the result, not the waste. Choosing high signal tasks automatically improves your ratio. Both require the ability to say no to noise, even when that noise appears urgent or busy.

Ask yourself: Is this task signal or noise? If signal, invest deeply. If noise, reduce, delegate, or eliminate.

6. Coherent effort: making investments feed each other

Selecting the right tasks is only part of the equation. The next step is to make those tasks feed each other. I call this coherent effort.

The principle is simple: I try to invest in efforts that are connected. My research feeds my education, and my education feeds my research. They are not separate buckets. They are one system.

When I explore a research idea, I bring it into the classroom. Students, whether bachelor or master, get exposed to cutting edge topics. Their questions sharpen my thinking. 

At the same time, the research brings better equipment, newer insights, and real world cases into the education. Both sides benefit. The impact multiplies.

The same applies to my summer schools, whether the Eindhoven Semiconductor Summer School or the Future Chips Academy. I built a framework from the first version. The structure, the flow of how students interact, the types of projects they work on, the network of people I need to contact. 

That platform already exists. Every year, I don't start from zero. I update. I improve. The initial investment of time and effort pays back repeatedly, year after year.

This is not financial investment. I am not a money investor. I invest in effort. The time and energy I spend today should pay back in a different form later: efficiency, quality, impact, saved time. The platform I built once saves me enormous effort every time it runs again.

Coherent effort means asking: does this task connect to something else I am already doing? Can it strengthen another area? Can I build something once and reuse it? 

If the answer is yes, the investment is not isolated. It ripples. It compounds. And this is how I can carry a lot without everything feeling like separate weight.

7. High quality time: be where you are

If you don't reserve high quality time for the important things in your life, you will never feel satisfied with the results.

Let me give a personal example. If I am with my family, physically present, but mentally elsewhere, not contributing to the discussion, not talking to my wife, not engaging with my kids, then I am not really there. 

They don't feel my presence. The time is wasted. Zero impact.

The same applies to work. For any high signal task, the 20 percent, the signal, you must invest high quality time. This means complete focus. Accomplish the task as fast as possible with the highest quality possible. Do not mix tasks. Do not multitask on high impact work.

Multitasking has a limited place. It can be used for noise level work, low impact tasks that still need to be done to satisfy some requirements. But noise work does not deserve your deep focus. Save that for the signal.

The main battle is: how to choose the right tasks, how to focus completely, how to invest high quality time in them. With this discipline, you can do many things efficiently and with high impact.

8. The tree: roots in the dark, leaves in the light

This is perhaps the philosophy I hold closest.

A tree grows in two directions simultaneously: upward into the light, and downward into the dark earth. The tree will never succeed in growing upward if there is no strong root growing downward in the dark.

The light is the visible work. The teaching, the meetings, the presentations, the publications, the results others can see. The dark is the silent, uninterrupted, deeply focused work. The thinking, the alignment, the heavy cognitive labor that nobody witnesses.

I reserve time in the dark. Normally two to three days per week, I make space, especially for very heavy thinking tasks that require deep, continuous concentration without interruption. These are complicated problems that demand sustained focus. In those moments, everyone is silent. I grow my roots.

And here's the return: one hour in the dark at midnight can equal or surpass four hours of daytime work. This connects directly back to the 80/20 principle. The dark hour is the 20 percent that yields 80 percent of the intellectual output. 

What grows in the dark reflects in the light. The tree grows upward, leaves shining, your work visible and impactful.

This is not a productivity hack. It is inspired by the tree. A natural, patient, organic model of how real growth works. 

You don't rush roots. You don't skip the dark.

9. The feedback loop: why quality sustains itself

How do I keep quality high across all these roles? The answer lies in a self‑sustaining cycle.

It starts with motivation. I choose tasks I genuinely want to do. I do what I like, and I like what I do. This is a double motivation. I don't feel tired when I'm working on things I've chosen. And because I choose them, I invest high quality time. 

Because I invest high quality time, the quality of the output is high. Because the quality is high, the impact is real. And because the impact is real, my motivation is renewed.

Motivation → Quality → Impact → Motivation

This loop sustains itself. It is why I can maintain high standards across multiple roles over the long term. It's not because I am superhuman. It's because the system feeds itself.

Where does stress enter? Stress appears the moment I feel a task or role will not have real impact for me. At that moment, I listen. Stress is a signal, a sign of misalignment between task and impact. 

I don't let stress take control. I have the full power to control stress by choosing where to invest my energy. I adjust. I refocus on the signal.

This is why I believe doing high quality work on high impact tasks is the right thing to do. It creates a complete feedback loop. When the loop is running, the load doesn't feel like load. It feels like growth.

10. On work–life balance: satisfaction, not perfection

Let me be honest. One hundred percent balance between work and life is impossible. What matters is satisfaction.

For me, work is life. I feel my life within the work. This does not mean I neglect my family. My wife knows what I am doing. My kids are busy and informed. But I could not do any of this without a very strong, understanding partner beside me. 

Understanding goes both ways. I don't expect my wife to carry the home alone. I make the effort to spend high quality time at home, physically and mentally fully there, not just sitting in the same room while my mind is elsewhere. Real presence. 

It's not always perfect. But the effort is real. A stable private life is not something you receive. It's something you build together. If your private life is unstable, if there are issues at home, if the foundation is not solid, this kind of workload becomes impossible. 

A stable private life gives you the mental space and physical time to accomplish much more than normal working hours would allow.

I take holidays, not as often as some colleagues, but when I do, I use them intentionally. I strengthen my thinking. I focus on how to do things better. I enjoy time with family and try to compensate for days when I was deeply absorbed in work.

Some people tell me I am doing the work of two or three full time equivalents. Through this philosophy and strategy, I can accomplish many things, still feel satisfied, still feel balance, and still produce more. Like the bodybuilder, I feel myself getting stronger.

But, and this is critical, even the greatest bodybuilder has a limit. You must respect your limits. If you exceed your limit in one day, you will go toward burnout. Burnout will collapse everything. You must have very strong mental health. 

The weekly practice of stepping out of the loop, the Sunday preparation, the roots in the dark, is what maintains this mental health. It keeps you at the right speed. It is the ongoing training.

If you don't train, if you just load and load and load like the construction worker, you get tired. The tiredness impacts the tasks. Then comes stress. Stress is the first sign. A very dangerous symptom. A signal to stop, think, and prepare your mental health before you come back. 

Be careful with yourself. Do everything you want, as time allows. Respect your limitation.

11. A thought on training

TU/e provides many excellent trainings. Leadership, education, certifications. The resources are there. But these trainings are general. They are designed for a broad audience, not for the specific person. They are not customized to an individual's background, strengths, gaps, or ambitions.

I understand this may not be practical at scale. But if the university wanted to cultivate people who can handle multiple roles effectively, the path would be personalization.

Go back to the bodybuilder. The personal trainer knows the shape of that specific body. Which muscle needs work. Which part needs rest. Where to push and where to pull back. 

The training is designed for maximum performance in that one individual. A general program, the same for everyone, will never fill the specific need of a particular person.

Most academics learn by experience. They spend years in a task and slowly become better. That works. But it's slow. Personalized development could accelerate this dramatically.

There is also a motivation question. Many people attend training because it's required—for promotion, for certification, for compliance. That's the construction worker mindset: carrying weight because you must. But if someone chooses training because they genuinely want to perform better, the same hours produce entirely different results.

I don't have a solution. I'm simply observing: if you want more people to carry more, and carry it well, the bodybuilder model suggests you need a trainer. Not just a program. 

12. Closing: not a prescription, just a sharing

I return to where I began.

Nobody asked me to do all of this. It came from within. And I am writing this article because people keep asking how it can be done. This is my answer. Not as a formula, not as a prescription, but as a window into how one person thinks about it.

My colleagues do tremendous work. Their impact is real. I am not claiming to be the best. I am simply sharing what works for me, in case it helps someone else find their own version of it.

I believe everybody can do a lot if they get the right training. The capacity is there. It just needs to be unlocked.