I haven't written a journal for a while because I’m very tire coming home from work. It's the kind of tiredness that is very mental, I'm just simply drained because all day I've been solving problems and trying very hard so our project could meet the deadline. Now I understand what my mentor said when he told me "working very hard mentally is like the end of 8 round of boxing." Using your head is as physically challenging as trying to fight somebody pound for pound.

School is never going to be as tough to deal with as real world situation because the worse that could happen to you is you flunk a class. In real world your responsibility goes much deeper, your action has lot of weight and cascading effect for not just your team, it potentially affects the company in a big way. I understand what company is looking for when they are hiring. They are looking for real experience over education. They are looking for talent over diligence. They are looking for energy and edge that would spark a team. If you combine talent with real experience along with strong will, you got a perfect leadership type employee. Those employees are very hard to find and keep. They are looking more for a challenge than a paycheck; money alone simply cannot satisfy their hunger.

Although I am always confident in my own ability, during the real execution of this project we're doing, I found out something about myself I never knew before. I guess you find out who you truly are when you are put under high pressure situation. Some people would crack under pressure; some will savor every taste of it like a rare opportunity to impose his will on a real challenge that unleashes his creativity.

Here is the situation, when you are facing a deadline that is only 3 days away, in order to complete all the works you need to do you would need at least a week. What can you do? Sadly it's a very common problem that many people faced time and time again in real world. Especially with the bureaucratic culture our company has, things are holding you up even though you are ready to start, chances are you have to wait for somebody else that would set you back at least 2 days.

Lesson #1 I learned is that you can never trust anybody else than yourself, therefore you want to minimize dependency on other department or people as much as possible. If a task requires somebody else to complete in 1 step and would require you to complete it in 5 steps. If there is a choice, chose to do it yourself even though it would need more steps. You have to weigh the cost versus benefit. The reason is that somebody else's 1 step could take 2 days even though it's a simple thing for him, while you could do it in 5 steps in 1 day. Essentially you are saving a day and you are in complete control.

Lesson #2: facing a tight deadline, you do not have enough time to finish your work, you need to improvise and also laser-focused on the end result. What I mean is that looking at these 100 steps you need to complete would make you go nuts and frustrated even before you start. Instead looking at the tasks you need to do by focus on the end result. You'll be surprised what a talented person could do when they are not looking at a safe (presumed tried and true way of doing something), looking at the end result you need, come up with your own way. If you are a talented person with lots of ideas, weight the benefit vs. risk and chose the approach that would be most efficient while minimizing risk.

It's a much tougher for me to apply lesson #2 because our industry is heavily regulated that anything I do have legal ramifications for the company and myself. I was surprised that I did not lose my cool under this very difficult situation. What did my boss do, he just told me we need to get this done by deadline or the whole team is going to be in trouble. He also told me that I don't care what you need to do, work weekends, don't go home whatever, just get it done. My group member Mike who has 30+ years of experience in this industry, he quickly put up a frown with a desperate look. He did not say anything to Pete (my boss), his look says it all "you got to be kidding, we're going to try but don't count on it." For some strange reason, I feel the pressure but I just don't feel threaten by it. My thought was "it's time to earn your money and prove yourself." I did not express this strange thought to Mike or Pete, or else they would think I'm out of my mind.

Lesson #3 never assume anything, do enough homework would always pay off. Preparation is extremely valuable to success of a project. The more homework you did, the less uncertainty you would have and you minimize your risks at the same time. In my case, I know our projects top to bottom down to the very minor detail. I know exactly what need to be done even though it's a complicated process with many steps. In Lesson #1, while I was waiting for somebody to complete something, I list everything needs to be done. In hundreds of tasks, I list them by importance and list all the dependencies of the tasks. For example, task B can not start until task A & F are completed successfully. However, task K & E & possibly F could be performed independent of each other. That means instead of executing hundreds of steps one by one (like you should in the perfect world), you need to pick the tasks that could be run in parallel independent from each other. That is a simple technique I picked up in project management called crashing when facing tough deadline. However there is a huge risk in doing things in parallel. The person that decides what could be done simultaneously has to be somebody with enough knowledge about the process, and someone with meticulous mind that would not forget any little detail. Any minor detail that was missed could cause a whole chain reaction that brings the entire project down. Crashing tasks increase the risk dramatically. It's something to only be try carefully with confidence and not just do it blindly out of pressure and desperation.

Using a little preparation, (instead of wasting my time waiting for somebody else to complete the job before we could start.)  I did my homework and group the tasks that could be run simultaneously in blocks. I also decided which block of tasks needs to go first, which block needs to go following the other blocks. Which blocks could be executed at the same time on different servers. I was extremely pleased that I was given a tough challenge that would allow me to express my ability. I feel like this project is a perfect show case of my experience, knowledge, talent and genius. I was surprised that with all these different blocks of tasks being executed at the same time, I was able to keep them all on track without anything going off track. My organization skills are something I acquired and proved to be very useful.

At the end of this phase of the project, I was able to successfully complete all the tasks in half the time that was required. With quite a bit of luck actually looking back, with all these different tasks being "crashed" together, none of them failed. I took a huge calculated risk applying the crashed concept, because if any one task failed, we would have to start all over again (according to our legal requirement). Logically my choice is right and at the time that was the only logical choice I could have come up with (that's assuming everything would go according to plan in a perfect world, it's luck that it turns out that way though.), however with all these tasks being run simultaneously on various different servers, any one of the servers could have go down in the any moment then we'll have to start all over.

Wiping the sweat off my face, I'm relieved that all my tasks are completed without any failure. 40% of it is due to pure luck, 60% is due to my correct decision making and knowledge at pressured situation.

Originally we planned the phase to be completed in 5 days. (In a perfect world, we should use 5 days for any regular executor) I was able to finish it in two days, even leaving one extra day for us to wrap up and do all the stupid paperwork. Realistically, without my effort and ingenuity our team would have to work nonstop day and night given the tight schedule we have. I appreciate the freedom that my boss Pete gave me (within legal bound of course). Lesson #4 a leader needs to know how to best use their people, give them enough trust and freedom especially facing tough challenges. We would all be in trouble not meeting the deadline if Pete did not give me what I needed (which is complete freedom within some legal boundary), of course the person has the freedom has to be open-minded and creative enough to look at things out of box.

Now that one of our phases of the project is completed, it's in somebody else's hand for the next phase. At the mean time, I need to savor this sweet victory and hopefully each time I run into a tough challenge, I would be able to respond well and come out on top. The real lessons I learned here all seems so trivial and logical, however people would not remember to use them even though they would agree with them.