Embedded Processing

The last few months have been challenging ones for my family. Over the past few years, we have known two coworker families that lost a family member during this time of year to asthma. This year, it hit close to home as my wife dealt with a life-threatening asthma condition. The good news is that after a three-month disability absence, my wife should be returning to work in January.

I share this with you because while working on what to write about here, the incident reminded me of an experience. As a junior member of the technical staff I attended a company training course with a group of senior managers. Normally I would not have been placed with this group, but I had missed the training at an earlier time, and this was the only meeting available that I could attend. Everyone else in the training course was older enough to have been my parent.

During the class, the group was asked to identify something in their professional life that they would like to do differently if they could. I was young enough in my career to think I that had no regrets, and I felt I did not need to do anything differently. The surprise came when I heard everyone else's answer. Even though there were over 20 senior management people in the class, they all gave the same answer: They wished they had spent more time with their families. I knew this was an important insight at the time, but it really hit home these last few months.

I have worked on my share of exciting, cutting-edge projects that demand intense focus over long hours for months. These types of projects often are part of what draws out our passion for what we do. They demand a tremendous amount of mind space that you gladly give to the project, not just on the clock, but in your quiet moments at home, say taking a shower or just before you fall asleep.

In light of ever shrinking development schedules, tighter budgets, and time-to-market pressures, projects seem to be demanding this type of intensity more frequently and for more time out of the year. The excitement of working on these types of projects can overwhelm our attention for the mundane things in our daily lives—until something kicks you hard in the face and brings the everyday back into focus.

It is my hope that by sharing both the current and past experience with you, you will be able to avoid answering the same way the senior management in my class did when asked what one thing you would do differently in your career.

I hope the holidays have been good to you and that the upcoming year brings you plenty of opportunities to excel.