 to be responsible for the code, for these communities, for keeping these things. Somebody called for a post. I've not talked to us yet. Come over and say hi. They're more likely to plug into these opportunities to use it. So I just went by and say hi. Community Pulse with PJ. Analytics and ROI, how to maintain a personalized to those selected, which is lacking for community emotional. All those things. Refer to my apartment as an expensive storage unit and do how often I was on the road and traveling, but I'm lucky enough to actually be there in person most of the time these days. So this picture is the number on the top of a place called Tank Hill. As you can see, I'm not someone who looks like they need a service dog. Like a service dog. A striped kitty dress. Super excited about that striped kitty dress. It's one of my favorites. A left wrist, which I still have today and I've worn ever since. This single fact is defined. Type 2 gestational, do a type 2, because that's the most common in conversations to have at two o'clock in the morning. Or shots for some people. Continuous glucose monitoring system. So it's heading towards level. And it delivers a certain amount of insulin per unit. Or my blood sugar is running high. And continuous glucose monitoring system. Attracts my blood sugar on a regular basis so that I can see the patterns of how I'm doing. For the amount of sugar in my bloodstream throughout, keep me from indoor skydiving, which is awesome. Should totally try and talk to you about it. Well, how to travel, how to behave in public, things like that. That they struggle with some sort of mental disability or illness. Including depression. They struggle with depression. And something closely related, which all you can do that I have to deal with. And that's fair. You don't have as much pressure as some of those people who do work in tech. So I didn't pick Google search for the term brown in tech culture. Can anyone see what the number at the top of the screen says? Let's assume that some of those are just people who have tagged articles with popular terms and things like that. But even if you take only 10% of that, that's still 200,000 results. That's still a huge number. It's still a big problem. I don't want to be an owner. I don't want to say that we're all going to wind up depressed because I don't think that's the case. And I think we should be the ones to start to fix it. The first thing we need to do is figure out what causes burnout in the first place. So there's two folks that I haven't seen today. I put the information up here. I'm happy to tell you about them afterwards as well. They're both fantastic resources. And I encourage you to think about what you have a chance. The first one is called overwhelmed. How to work, play, and that should kind of rotate. Sorry about that. How to work love. The truth about burnout makes some basic causes of burnout. And they resonate pretty well with everything I've heard and felt. The first one is a lack of control. We start out really excited and passionate and intense about this new hobby. We try to conquer it, and we try again. It enters the right company, the right situations. We wind up simply hiding, waiting for all the pieces to fall, hobbies as a result, which doesn't actually help burnout. One of the easiest ways to cover up burnout is changing jobs because it gives us that sense of a new challenge. It's the new excitement, the new relationship energy, if you will. The Christina Maslow mentions are unfairness and insufficient reward. So I'm sure you all know someone or maybe it's you who's the go-to person for our questions. You're the person who always picks up a quote of you who always mentors the new people, who always helps the new employer in the rows. And that's great. There's nothing wrong with that. But what happens when that starts to feel unfair or unbalanced? That you're getting just aren't enough. There's been a lot of articles and forums and entrepreneurs like social psychology, a whole bunch of different sites lately, that say past a certain point money is not a motivator. And yesterday that a lot of us have higher salaries than pretty much anyone else in other industries. But that only gets us so far. That only pays off so much, and it hits this point where it's just you can't pay me enough to continue to do the things that you're asking me to do. The next reason for burnout is work overload. I'm a close friend last year. I told her this. I said it's the constant overwhelming disfactor. The overflowing inbox, the never being in my microscope how long I have to actually clean and get things organized the way I want them to be. But to do this that's five pages long and it only ever seems to grow around shrink and the burden of feeling like I'm the only one who can do all of these things. The always being on at events, which isn't fake and I love it, but it's draining. The physical exhaustion from not getting enough sleep consistently and from my blood sugar is not being as under control as I would like. And also I think that comes with all the above. So these are things that I've heard repeatedly from a lot of people who deal with burnout and con on words and backlogs and things like that help a lot. But what about when those backlogs are overflowing and the teams are too lean to actually work as a lean team in our today? It is lack of community. So when we spend so much time investing in work in our code and learning new skills we sometimes fail to invest in our personal lives. And we start to drift away from the circle of people that are closest to us. As a friend Jason's tweet says, community is those people who come looking for you when we don't show up. I think all of us need to find that group of people and those people in our lives. People who are burnout as well. If you've come to the resolution during my talk so far that you are burnout or you're down that road, I apologize, but it'll get better if my cover is How to Be Revented. And what can we do for anything? You probably can't see this slide, but it's Alph, if you remember the character Alph. And someone's putting oxygen masks on him and they already have their oxygen mask on. So airlines are constantly reminding us to put our own oxygen mask on first. This isn't because they want children or people with disabilities to go with that option for longer, obviously. But it's because if we aren't getting oxygen ourselves we can't be expected to help others. So putting on our own oxygen mask first aka taking care of ourselves. Setting aside time just for us being selfish, because it's not a bad thing sometimes, is essential. So set that time aside or else you're going to be short selling your community and you're going to be short selling your company and most of all you're going to be short selling yourself. Getting oxygen is stepping away from your laptop. Throw your laptop across the room sometimes and just close it and leave it there for a while. And it's hard, I get it. Harder than why we do what we do is because we love solving problems. We love helping other people. We love being there for other people and being there for our team. We're going to be there for longer hours or complete unrealistic deadlines or review just one more pull request or figure out just one more blood if there's a problem. Good friend of mine helped stop if yes, call a firefighter. And there's a couple of important principles here. First of all, we should not be expected to be online at all times. No matter what. And if this is the expectation you need to sit down and have a serious conversation with your manager. This should not be the case and there are no exceptions to that. It doesn't matter how small or large your team is. It doesn't matter if there's a problem. It doesn't matter if your team is qualified for certain things. And yes, there's going to be times every once in a while when we have to stay up late fixing a problem or when we'll get a page in the middle of the night or things like that. But it should not be the norm. And if it is, talk to your manager. And if that doesn't change it, talk to people here today because I'm fairly certain there's people here that are hired. Step up and take responsibility for the things that you're doing when you can't. Again, we're not no matter how much it feels like it. We're not doing things that work so that I can't be responsible for those things. I don't have access to our support-taking system because it's not my job. We have a whole community service department dedicated to that. I actually make sure I'm not on sales calls because again, it's not my job. We have technical sales folks who are supposed to be on those calls. And if I am allowing myself to be on those things, if I am allowing myself to pick up the problems that everyone else is asking me to, I'm giving people the impression that I am the only person who can help and eventually teaching them to take advantage of me rather than allowing them to reach out to people who can help them the most. Next thing, learn to say no. A lot of us really struggle with this word and it's not that difficult of a word to say but situationally, it can be hard to bring up. It's the easiest way to learn to say no. Get your managers buying that you have to run things past them before you commit to projects outside of your department. Make them the bad guy. It's what they're there for. You are an extremely valuable part of your team and it's their job to protect you. Also, be okay with saying no to your personal life. Take time off just to focus on you. Speaking of personal time, use your calendar. Really use it. For two different things. First of all, time box your projects. So when you know that you have a big work project coming up or something that you really have to focus on, make sure you set that time aside on your calendar so that people can't put meetings on there or people know that you're gonna be unavailable. And then let your team know that you're gonna be offline or that you need to be on and you're not disturbed for a while. And again, if something happens, they'll likely be able to fix it. If you're the only person who can, they can reach out to you then. Keep things on your calendar so you can't skip them, including vacation. Plan for it. Every practice of always having a vacation on the calendar at some point. So when I come back from a vacation, if I don't have another vacation coming up on my calendar, it's just a long weekend and make sure I schedule one. This keeps you with something to look forward to, keeps you able to focus on what you're doing because you know that you're gonna have some time to relax when we have. But then also, when you're on vacation, be on vacation. If you use Slack or HipChat at work, make sure you change your username before you go to say, iBox or PTO or something like that so that people know you're not available. Make sure you set up your email bounce backs so that again, people know you won't be responding for a few days. Give yourself those extra boundaries so that people are aware that you're gone and can't be reached. I mentioned the book earlier called Overwound. And the author realized as she was writing the book and interviewing people for it that planning for leisure time takes effort. Here's a quote from the book. She says, I realized she was kept putting it off, like I was waiting to reach some tipping point. Like it finished picking all the weeds, chopping the bamboo, cleaning up the crayons and sharp teeth and math papers, buying more cat food. She goes on and on. Then, as a leisure was something I needed to earn. And she says something else that I think can resonate with all of us. Even when I seem to just have some free time it was often for such a short period that I was at a loss for what to do with it. So I just went back to the next item to do the list instead. We need to learn to put down our to-do list and to take that time for ourselves and plan for vacation or plan for a break. Even if it means spending a little bit of extra money to pay someone else to take care of planning it or taking a vacation when you'd rather go somewhere else or just taking a day off to lay around the home and being leisurely but plan for that time or else this simply won't happen. I would pause it. We all have four hours every two weeks that we can take out of our normal work day to take a step back see the force of both the trees and decompress a little bit. Don't believe me? I don't blame you. Totally understand how busy we all are. A lot of things on our plate. We all have a lot of pressure at work. We all have a hard time getting everything done every week. But one of my good friends Jay Coleray came in a little while with this idea before we decompress. It's a time to reflect evaluate and recent our goals and ideas and here's the thing. It's only four hours of every other week. Four hours of a week. Four hours that will make you stronger more effective more efficient with your work and more motivated to do your work on a regular basis. You can also leave great ideas of how to leave and grow your team as you take the time to step back and see the force as well as the trees. So here's find a location a place where you can relax get comfortable spread out dig into whatever you're going to be doing whether that's a coffee shop a library a hiking trail you'll find that spot. And during that first hour deliberately disconnect from your normal day to day work. So if you need to wrap up a few things before you can focus go ahead and do that if you need to spread out your equipment cool whatever you need to do in order to disconnect from your laptop for a few hours I usually wrap up a few things and then go for a run or a walk to kind of get myself into that mindset and get my brain off of work things. So then during the second third hour spine swing is constructive and helpful but allows you to disconnect from your early work. So for me sometimes that's digging into co-cademy or brushing up on lessons for coding sometimes it's reading the latest business or work-related book that I'm happening to be reading at the time or whiteboarding the latest topic that I've been looking into. And then lastly as you wind down from that thing that you've been doing in those couple hours that last hour brings it all back together. So I'll usually journal a little bit about what I read to learn how I'm feeling about work how I'm feeling about burnout make a list of things that I want to tackle and then back to the office and then pack up and then head back home. Next thing when you're sick be sick and let yourself be sick and don't be online. I'm really bad at this one but seriously take advantage of sick days and make use of time whatever it's called in your company and use it. So when you wake up not feeling all take the day off and don't be online. You'll be amazed at how much more quickly you heal. And speaking of healing when you're eating mental care get it. Mental illness depression anxiety all of these things are normal and it's mental health which means it's health which means it's importance just as important as physical health. So just like a broken hand or an infection it's a mental condition. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Start by taking a look at your company insurance policy. A lot of insurance policies allow for a small number of psychologists or psychiatric visits at no charge. I have a friend at a former company who used to just go find a therapist they hadn't seen before a psychologist they hadn't seen before. And we have four free visits a year under our insurance policy and you just pick a month and say cool I'm gonna book four visits with this psychiatrist and I'm just gonna talk to them and get their advice and wrangle about what I was on my chest and get things off my chest and kind of get a pulse of how I'm doing and it doesn't cost me anything. So take advantage of those things. I mentioned earlier that one of the things that we lose track of is our personal communities our personal hobbies. So do what you can do in Best in Us communities this is the picture of San Francisco and it's kind of cartoon like but it's divided into all these different neighborhoods and the hobbies and the things that people do. And it's a difficult thing to do sometimes if you're not as willing to invest or not as able to invest in those things I'm gonna do a hint though made up is for more than just tech talks. Everyone knows that. It has a lot of hobby groups has a lot of adventuring groups hanging groups outdoors groups things like that as well and it's a great tool to be able to connect with people in your city outside of tech. It also says they connect with you where you feel better or you can feel at peace where when you know that you're stressed out things that you can go do to allow yourself to decompress a little bit. So who am I to be saying all of these things? Obviously I'm not a doctor not a medical professional. Haven't studied psychology or psychiatry or any other line of thought along those lines but I do know what I'm talking about to a certain extent about a year ago almost two years ago now I burnt out a really hard and I'm better now not 100% but I'm better and part of the reason it took me as long as it did to start recovering from that was because I didn't do a lot of these things I've been talking about today I didn't take care of myself I didn't reach out to my community I was really scared about the repercussions and I was terrified of perception but that hurt me more because it forced me to keep going and to keep doing the things that I was doing before So these days I'm lucky enough to have a community both professionally and personally who I know will keep an eye out for me and check in on one of my coworkers who's actually here today will ask me on a regular basis like So it's awesome to have those people around me and I say I'm lucky enough but it didn't come from luck it took for me working to build those relationships and working really hard to have that community and I have to continually work at it but it's worth it everyone in this room understands the stresses of being in the tech industry everyone understands the difficulties that we have keeping up with everything that's going on everyone knows that you need a community to rally around you So as you're attending events as you're at meetups as you're doing various things throughout your day and meeting new people don't be afraid to say hey people understand what you're going through and it says if I can't help you in person I'll just plug my computer and this is one of my favorite things about tech and working in the tech industry these days is that we might not all live next to each other we might not all work next to each other but we're all online we all most of us have an online presence or on Slack channels or I or C or Twitter and being able to reach out into the internet void and say hey to help or does anyone understand these types of situations and getting that support in return is huge and don't underestimate the value of that worth taking care of even for the ones that I'm having to take care of ourselves talking to damaged women who seemingly help all the time in the world for a leisure and feel no guilt about it but also manage to get a lot of things done in a time of fashion so the woman that she's speaking with says having leisure time for myself isn't something we even have to list gaps it's just natural the author replies you don't feel guilty or selfish but you're neglecting your children you're worried about what you do to work the woman here perhaps know their worth need to know our worth as well and she talks about you some of the numbers around depression and burnout and people in tech as well as some of the specifics about causes burnout about what to do about burnout both how to prevent it and how to slowly recover from it and it is a slow recovery I mentioned earlier I'm doing better and I add a few percent most days and that means the seven days are awesomely productive and I feel really good about it and every once in a while when it's perfectly bad and most days they're somewhere in the middle and it's a process but most importantly I know that it's real I know that it's a process I know that that's okay and I know that I don't need to be ashamed of it and I know I have a community help me as well it's interesting because I was listening to Brian's talk I don't know if he's here but as I was listening to him yesterday he was talking about passions and things that were involved in and I think it really applies to this it says passion which could be your job your open source projects your side hobbies whatever is what drives you and gives your life meaning obsession is what happens when you're fixated on something forsaking all the rest understand the difference between passion and obsession to change your thoughts and actions find balance by cultivating other interest offline so let's remember to be awesome let's be incredible let's be passionate about what we're doing but let's be balanced about it as well if you have any questions you can kind of see my Twitter handle on the front of the video so I appreciate it have a good one