Exciting and Satisfying Work

Now, this may sound strange, but I have recently experienced some very exhilarating times at work, and I have realised they come together with handling very difficult issues.  Yes, basically when I have a hard time or am facing a seemingly insurmountable or daunting problem, my heart starts pumping faster, my stomach clenches, my adrenaline flows, I don't feel fatigue at all even when I work long hours, and I sort of lose my appetite almost so I end up working into mealtimes without realising it.

And the feeling after a hard slog, and finally cracking the intractable complicated issue, untangling a knotty problem, or cutting through the thick fog of technical jargon to distill out the essence of the issue and present it in crystal clear, simple, correctly nuanced arguments, is immensely, deeply satisfying to me. 

Ok, so recently there have been 3 issues, which gave me that satisfying feeling.  First is an appeal, the second is a radiation-related issue, and the third is a response to a big boss on an issue of a trial.

Now, on the appeal, gosh there were so many twists and turns, and it was such a long-drawn drama, it could become a case study in itself!  Yes in fact I think I will write a short story just to make it funny and to remember what went on.  But most recently, my policy department haggled back and forth with an operational department on a reply to a big boss on  this appeal, in particular on some technical issue which he asked us to sort out, and both sides edited the reply to death.  We would craft it more in our favour and they would edit it further to highlight points in their favour - after 3 to 4 rounds of this, going late into Friday night and spilling over into Saturday morning, we finally ended up with a very carefully nuanced, finely balanced reply, where every word has been argued over and agreed and is so loaded with meaning behind it... I am very proud of our reply actually - proud of the final reply and proud of actually getting the other department to agree to it!  The trick is to limit our edits to highlighting facts which they cannot dispute, but the facts are actually in our favour.  The moment we add arguments, they would disagree.

This appeal also resulted in me staying up late at night after the kids have gone to bed, booting up my computer, pen and paper in hand, and trying to check the calculations of the operational department, which involved reading some technical document and following their formulae, and plugging in various coefficients which had their own formulae.  It was like solving algebra, and it was something which I had not done in so long and which I really relished!  And another day, my officer actually came up with an excel spreadsheet which was so beautiful, and he could generate a chart which was the holy grail that we were trying to find out from the Japanese, and it was absolutely thrilling to see him talk to himself "oh, I forgot to account for acceleration and deceleration", and he would go into certain cells, update the formulae, and press enter, and the graph would update itself and he would say "ok, now it's correct".  This is a sign of a true excel whizz.

What I learnt about myself through these few weeks, handling all these tricksy issues, is that I am someone who loves a good mental challenge.  I refuse to let something which seems awfully technical deter me, and will plunge headlong into it and try to figure it out. And when I do, and can argue my case with the best of them, men who have spent years of their life on this issue, I feel a sense of deep satisfaction and achievement.  And we gain mutual respect for each other.  And I feel the issue becomes clear as day and I know what to do.  It's a great feeling really.  I hope everyone feels the same way when we face problems at work - resolving them is super satisfying!!!