I don’t think people realize how much of working with data is just… doing the same kind of thinking over and over again. When people picture data work, they usually imagine insights, dashboards, maybe something complex running in the background. That part exists. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. But it’s not what most of my time actually looks like. Most of my time is spent earlier than that, before anything is ready to be shown, when the work is still just rows and columns and a lot of things that don’t quite make sense yet. A lot of it starts with cleaning data, or honestly just figuring out if I even have the right data to begin with. I’ll sit there staring at a field, trying to understand what it actually represents. Not what it’s labeled as, but what it means in practice. Those two things sound like they should be the same, but they’re not always. Sometimes they’re close enough that you don’t notice right away, and that’s almost worse. It takes time before something feels slightly off, and then you’re stuck trying to figure out why. I spend a lot of time thinking about how different pieces of data relate to each other. On paper, something can look straightforward. One table connects to another, everything looks clean, everything looks like it should work. Then you actually start working with it and realize it’s not that simple. It’s a many-to-many relationship, or something close to it, and suddenly nothing connects in a clean, predictable way anymore. What looked simple turns into something you have to slow down and walk through carefully, because if you don’t, you can very easily duplicate something or misrepresent it without realizing. That kind of thinking doesn’t happen once and then go away. I’ll check something, feel okay about it, move on, and then come back later and question it again because something else doesn’t line up. The same questions come back, just aimed at a different place this time. Does this actually match what I think it does? Why does this number look slightly different here than it did before? Is this field actually consistent, or does it just look consistent at first glance? It’s repetitive, but not in a mindless way. The actions repeat, but my brain doesn’t get to turn off. I’m actively thinking it through every single time. I’m holding onto context from earlier steps, comparing it to what I’m seeing now, checking if the logic still holds, and noticing when something feels even slightly different. Even if I’m doing the same join, or looking at the same type of field, I’m not thinking the exact same thought. I’m reworking it, adjusting it, questioning it again from a slightly different angle. Sometimes I get pulled even deeper into it. There are moments where I’m manually mapping values between systems, copying and pasting things just to make sure older data lines up with newer formats. It’s slow, and it’s detailed in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve done it. It also doesn’t look like what people think “data work” looks like. But it matters. If that part is wrong, even in a small way, everything built on top of it is wrong too. Most of this happens in a pretty plain environment. Just a screen, rows, columns, the same tools open for hours. From the outside, it probably looks like I’m doing the same thing over and over again. In some ways, that’s true. But at the same time, there’s a constant layer of thinking underneath it that doesn’t really stop. After going through that cycle enough times, there’s a point where things start to feel stuck. Not in a dramatic way, just in a quiet, repetitive way where nothing new is happening. I’ll keep trying to make something line up logically, checking it again, adjusting it slightly, running it again, and getting basically the same result. At some point, I have to recognize that the issue isn’t something I can solve just by looking at the data longer. It’s not that I haven’t tried hard enough. It’s that I’m missing context. Something about how the data was created, or defined, or used isn’t clear, and no amount of rechecking is going to give me that answer. That realization takes longer than it probably should, because my first instinct is to keep going. It feels like if I just think about it one more time, or try one more variation, it will click. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. That’s usually the point where I need to step back and ask a question. Not a perfect question, just an honest one. What am I missing here? Why does this not line up the way I expect it to? Do I need to clarify with someone else? It sounds simple, but getting to that point is part of the process. Projects can stay in this phase for a while. It’s not a quick step where you clean the data once and move on. It can take weeks of working through the same kinds of problems, just in slightly different forms. You are making progress, but it’s incremental. It doesn’t always feel like progress while you’re in it, because it’s not obvious. It’s just small corrections, small confirmations, small moments where something finally makes a little more sense than it did before. There also isn’t a clear moment where everything feels completely done. It’s more like you reach a point where you trust the data enough to move forward. Not because every question has been answered, but because you’ve asked enough of them, enough times, and you understand the shape of the data well enough to stand on it. That’s the part people don’t really see. The part before anything is presented, where the work is just making sure the data actually means what you think it means. It’s not the most exciting part of the process, and it’s definitely not the most visible. But it’s probably the most important. Because everything that comes after, dashboards, insights, decisions, depends on this part being done carefully. If something is slightly off here, it doesn’t stay contained. It carries through everything else.