My wife's sick

My wife have come down with fever, high fever at around 39.2 degrees. She got a jab, some anti-biotics (doctor insisted) along with some pills for swollen throat and some "cough" mixture. Poor her, she was quite weak, and was trying to rest at each traffic light. Yea, I tell myself that I better call that driving instructor so that I can take the bloody exam soon! Life is short. No matter how hectic work life is, we have to acknowledge that there is more to it that working from morning till night, bringing back work (physical or mental) and sleeping with ideas that keep tormenting the mind. This has been me for the past few weeks. It usually occurs when I have something in mind, something new or radical.

I used to be in that state when I was handling my first project (called the Phillip Financial System). I remember that a certain logic/algorithm, to say compute the outstanding interest, would keep me awake the whole night. I was still too tired to wake up and write some more but not tired enough to sleep!

Indeed, the mental work can be more draining than physical work, especially the more mundane ones. Our brain neurons are hyper active when it comes to mental work. Trying to think of all possibilities, just like a compute is thinking of future moves in a chess game. There are times when nothing seem to come out of it but deep inside the conciousness, I believe that some solutions are formed.

Of late, it has been reading and researching on Business Process Management, especially the use of BPMN. Then it was on wiki and other collaborative tools. Spent many hours writing a paper on BPM and spent even more hours, days even, to build up our wiki (using Google sites, cos well, it seems easier to use and is free). Now, my brain is working on how/what to do to promote active collaboration. It would be useless to have a wiki with only one participants! But hey, start small, build content and then show by example. That's the way I've always fancied. Talk with no action leads to nowhere.

I remember that once, I was not so much of a "documentation" type. But I learnt my lesson in two ways. When taking over a new role, I realise that a lot of the learning is through the hard way, sometimes repeating the same mistakes. Then while handling over my previous portfolio, I realised that the transition can be easier with proper documentation. Worse, I realised that the person taking over is probably cursing and swearing the same way as I would when taking over the new role.

It then dawned upon me that documentation IS ESSENTIAL. Of course, the quality is important too but hey, start small. Ensure processes are documented. Then ensure that the documents are not done to please compliance or the boss... but that they are meant for the department itself. To get someone on board, use the stick and carrot. Anyway, doing good documentation is part of one's job description. Ask someone to learn something new without any help and challenge the person to think what they would have wished to have before doing the job.

Anyway... it's been pretty tiring because the mind cannot rest and since my wife started lecturing, there are some very early days, like today when she starts at 8am. Ends up spending my early morning at Starbucks putting more content into our wiki.

Very tired now. Will hug my wife and ensure that she rests well. Then, I'm going to sleep pretty soon so that I can be refreshed for another day's work... with lots of things to do, lots of projects to look at, lots of processes to improve, and lots of compliance issues to resolve, big or small.

It has been an interesting week so far. My assistant manager has been out of action for 1 week plus and she's probably taking another