Another Award

...yes, I got another award in office yesterday as an appreciation and recognition of work that I did in the last release.

The last release that happened in the end of July was a real big release, and I had absolutely slogged out for that. I was handling three products, three writers, interacting with numerous, numerous people, and overall handling complicated information.

Out of the three products, the one that I was supposed to only manage was the one in which I ended up writing too. It was being handled by a novice writer, and ultimately I had to review and almost rewrite everything that the writer had done. It was a learning experience for me. It taught me patience and working in pressured environment. I learnt the lesson that for novice writers, I need to adopt a different strategy.

The second product was again being written by a junior writer. I spent a lot of time again in making the writer understand the mistakes, only to find the same mistakes being committed again and again. By the time I could again help the writer understand the fine nuances of writing, I had to concentrate on the third product, which was going to be the toughest of all.

I learnt a valuable lesson while handling the second product. I learnt that how much ever you try to be at all places every time, you cannot. How much ever you try to do all things on your own, you cannot. How much ever you try to make people do things perfectly, they will not. Because, they will do it only as per their capacity.

And finally, that you have to let go. You simply cannot do all the things, all the time, all the way. You have to stop yourself and not stretch. You have to let go and understand that you cannot be there all the time, and that you are not responsible if people do not do work as you want them to do.

The toughest was the third product. Information was hard to come by, and when it came, it came in hordes. Multiple people commenting on existing information in the documents, providing new information that had to be added, requesting to delete some information, requesting for a fourth or fifth review of the updated information. It was crazy! But there was method in all this madness.

I could handle it because I had learnt how it was to handle the third product from the last time. I had faced similar people and similar sources of information in the last release. I was prepared for it. The good part was that people had started trusting me with the documentation for that product and readily helped me.

There were days when I was struggling with my information. At times, I was at loss to understand where to start. For some information, I couldn't see when the reviews and comments would stop coming. A week before closing the docs, I was done with most of the documentation. However, with my past experience, I knew that there was one block of information that was still pending from a team.

That's what exactly happened. It was crazy handling the complex information. But I could do it and get the reviews too. It was a mammoth task of interacting with so many people and getting information from them.

But I have learnt so much from this. I have actually seen myself grow as a writer, as a senior person in a team, and moving on to handle bigger things. I really, really love my work here.

During this last release, it was only once that I was off my rocker when I was facing issues on my personal front and when there was  just too much of information to handle at work. But then, all my colleagues helped me and supported me. My manager especially knew how hard I was working and asked me to take a week off when the release was over.

I have really been lucky. I thank God for giving me opportunities to perform, to excel, to help me grow, and to test my mettle. And I thank Him for putting me in a set of people that support me, understand me, and help me grow!