Continuous Improvement: DevOps and Mental Illness
A presentation at DevOpsDays Buffalo 2019 in in Buffalo, NY, USA by Fen Aldrich
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT DevOps & Mental Health 1 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
Aaron Aldrich COMMUNITY @ ELASTIC ! # ” : aaron.aldrich@elastic.co : @CrayZeigh : noti.st/crayzeigh 2 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
3 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION MONTH 4 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
HOTLINES ! : 800-273-8255 ! : CONNECT TO 741741 5 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
DISCLAIMER I am not a medical professional and cannot diagnose or recommend treatment for any disease. These experiences are mine and represent my personal experience. This talk will mention depression, anxiety and ADHD. While it’s not intended to go very deep, please be responsible for your health. I am not offended if you need to leave at any time. 6 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
ADHD 7 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
DOPAMINE DEFICIENCY POOR WORKING MEMORY 8 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
EXECUTIVE FUNCTION ▸ Wandering Attention ▸ Impulse Control ▸ Emotional Regulation ▸ Sense of Time ▸ Hyperfocus 9 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
10 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
11 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
Wall of Awful ▸ Stare at it ▸ Go Around it ▸ Hulk Smash 12 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
Wall of Awful ▸ Stare at it ▸ Go Around it ▸ Hulk Smash 13 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic ⚠
Wall of Awful ▸ FREEZE ▸ FLIGHT ▸ FIGHT 14 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
Wall of Awful ▸ climb the wall ▸ build handholds 15 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
16 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
FAILURE 17 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
DEPRESSION ANXIETY 18 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
19 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
PREVALENCE OF MENTAL ILLNESS 20 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
21 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
22 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
OBSERVABILITY 23 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
METRICS 24 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
“SASHET” CHECK-INS 25 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
ERROR BUDGETS 26 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
blame-aware retro 27 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
YOUR PERFORMANCE IS NOT YOUR VALUE 28 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
MANAGE WIP 29 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
RECAP ▸ We Are Complex Systems ▸ Get you some observability ▸ Error Budgets ▸ Give Grace ▸ Manage WIP 30 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT 31 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
RESOURCES ▸ OSMI: osmihelp.org ▸ Mental Health First Aid: mhfa.org ▸ Emotional API (John Sawers): emotionalapi.com ▸ Let’s Keep Talking: Make it OK to share, here in an open space, elsewhere 32 — @CrayZeigh | #DevOpsDays | @elastic
Mental illness is stigmatized and hard to talk about publicly. Doubly so in the tech industry where we assign much of our personal value to our brains. I want to share my struggles with mental health and the lessons I’ve learned from Systems operation and DevOps that have helped me get by and frame my struggle in a manageable way.
In this talk I:
- Help reduce the stigma of Mental Illness by talking about it
- Provide some illustration of things that have helped me, so hopefully they can help you
- Show how the concepts of DevOps have application reaching beyond High Technology
- Spark further conversation about Mental health and DevOps
Resources
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
-
Open Sourcing Mental Illness
Changing how we talk about mental health in the tech community — Stronger than fear.
Excellent resource for mental health in tech/the work place. Research tab contains links to past and present mental health surveys.
-
Mental Health First Aid (USA)
First response training for Mental Health. Learn, teach, donate.
-
Emotional API
Amazing resource from John Sawers about your “emotional API”. The bad news: it’s publicly accessible. The good news: you can refactor it. Seriously check out this talk if anything I say to you resonates.
-
How to ADHD: “Why is it so hard to do something that should be easy?” (The Wall of Awful: Part one)
This is the first video in the two-part segment on “The Wall of Awful”. This put so much into perspective for me and helps me on a daily basis, just by having the concept in mind. Watch this one! (And all of Jessica’s videos, they’re seriously great and easy to digest especially for, you know, the target audience.)
-
How to ADHD: “How to do something that should be easy (but…is…not)” (The Wall of Awful: Part two)
Part Two of the Wall of Awful videos. Watch part one first. Go on to consume additional content from this channel because Jessica is great at distilling problems, Current Research, and Things That Worked for Her in the realm of dealing with ADHD and deserves every additional bit of success here.
