As most of us ask ourselves at some point: “Why did I ever become a workshop technician?”

The answer normally starts when you’re a small child.

I was an addicted fixer of anything at an early age, addicted to Lego, Meccano, and even stickle bricks. Later, I became a keen builder of cars and motorbikes and there are pictures of me at 2 years old trying to fix a pedal car, I’m sure it will be shown as an epitaph somewhere eventually.

I got my first car at age 13, a Mini “thousand”, and started autograss racing in the junior class. In short, I’ve been a committed petrol-head for as long as I remember.

 

The truth is I struggled at school. My reports inevitably said things like “Andrew is intelligent but cannot concentrate”. Just to rub things in, I come from a family of published authors and journalists, with my sister being an excellent writer with a master’s in English and many other similar qualifications.

Obviously, this put further pressure on me. At 16 I applied to the RAF to become an airframe technician. I failed to get in, although they thought I had cheated on the IQ test, as my results were fantastic compared to the “miserable failure” in the English test.

The Struggle to Write

I was almost 25 before I discovered the reason for my difficulties in academia: I am dyslexic.  Even today I still struggle like hell to write this in the correct sequence of words. Luckily for us in the 21st century, they invented products to correct my errors and spelling automatically, and I now have lovely proofreaders to check if I’m making any sense at all.

 

So, I hear you asking, “What has this got to do with being a technician in the motor industry?” The truth is many technicians I speak to are also dyslexic, and that includes some of the very best. Perhaps they seem to naturally understand how things work.

I was inspired a few years ago when my daughter bought me a book by the genius F1 chassis designer Adrian Newey.

Adrian has dyslexia and just understands naturally how things like complex aerodynamics should work. After reading this it turns out so were Steve Jobs and Richard Branson. Not impressed by them? Well try John F Kennedy, George Washington, Steven Spielberg, and the list goes on. I now look at it as a blessing and not a curse.

Here’s the Rub

I work with mainly dealer diagnostic tools, software, computers, and network systems and have done for too many years to count. I feel I’m well-placed to understand the struggles many have.

For example, when I’m reading diagnostics instructions on a screen I must read through them many times, to make sure I’m not going to ”brick” the car.

When you are under pressure to get a diagnostic job done it can be stressful.

I now feel dyslexia has made me a far better technician, I‘m forced to be very methodical and I’m now able to think laterally and carefully about all sorts of situations.

I find many vehicle technicians learn simple kinaesthetic methods, i.e. Hand on practical work, not the classroom. Unfortunately, as vehicles advance, we will all need to have a level of electrical knowledge.

 

I’ve found the ideal way around this. There are so many helping hands these days, from text-to-speech software and the other way to speech-to-text software such as Nuance that I wrote this article on, it helps you with grammar, spelling and well everything really.