Message from the Editor: Decisive Actions

Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines a year and included in each is a letter from the editor. This letter is from the March 2026 Annual Aerospace Heat Treating print edition. In today’s letter, Bethany Leone, managing editor at Heat Treat Today, shares her insights on the tension between a surging editorial workload and the need for thoughtful, deliberate decision-making — and why choosing clarity over the rush may be the most important discipline we can practice in the busiest of seasons.

---

The holidays are past; the fervent rush of “let’s get things done!” has arrived. I’ve sensed the pressure build as the editorial team faces limited time, increased volume of articles, and competing priorities. Navigating the excitement to publish technical articles and make public news statements becomes the work of editing.

Influx of Activity

This past month brought an increased editorial interest from industry suppliers and partners. Industry experts writing about new technologies often are busy with developing those products and refining the processes. So when these individuals take the pen (the keyboard), we seize the opportunity to bring their thoughts to you. This ensures the wider North American heat treat community is benefitting from the treasure trove of instruction, guides, and practical warnings to best operate equipment and maintain processes in a timely way.

You’ve likely heard murmurs of events and in-person engagements. Case in point: Heat Treat Today’s Helium Leak Detection Seminars launches this month. These also have occupied our time as the editorial team prepares content and carves out time to follow up with new people, meet remotely with folks, and even attend webinars ourselves. All of this means processing editorial content sooner than usual and anticipating industry trends that come out of these forums.

This increase in editorial volume necessitates more focus and less time to reflect. As a curious and systems-oriented person, these times of focus, while invigorating, leave me wishing for time to reflect, research, and develop better processes. This is not order for the sake of order, but to ensure that articles truly capture and deliver the value that authors intend, and that they do so at the right time for readers.

All Movement, No Time to Think

It is now that I feel the first inclinations of the dreadful “r” word: rush.

There is no allure to rushing. In American culture, we do find ourselves busy, but rushing is never appealing — it is all activity without the direction of a thoughtful decision. The “r” word in the editing world means a missed opportunity to define an unclear metallurgical term or printing a graph too small that causes readers to squint. Bring that word up in an audit and everyone becomes uncomfortable. Hurriedly chip off February ice from your windshield to get to work and drive off dreading if your wallet was left behind in the rush.

More ideas, asks, input, and even adjacent activity by colleagues can often bring less margin. If only I could have time to think and execute everything all the time in a day, then I’d be happy! But instead of wishful thinking, I find the best first step is to stop yearning for an unchanging balance of priorities and readjust the expectations for output (or thought life) that I once held, even as recently as the day before. External demands pushing us into action require decisive thinking. The goal is clarity under constraint, not just endurance in the excitement.

Marching Orders

In all of this, remember: on the opposite side of my editorial conundrum is a slew of experts seeking to connect with you, our readers. In their own way, they too are in “execution” mode. Take advantage of their efforts and send us your feedback (editor@heattreattoday.com) whenever a question or idea strikes, or if you have more to add than that which was covered in the scope of an article.

And of course, here I am: send me your technical articles! You may find me joyfully drowning in grammatical questions, image requests, or word count conundrums.

---