 Okay, I would like you to take the next half hour and pretend that you're not programmers for a little bit get out of that programming mindset and Try to enter the mindset of a surfer. So please just stand up like five minutes We're gonna pretend That we're going surfing So it's very important to stretch We surf really uses a lot of your upper back muscles and stuff and your whole body So I'm gonna I want you Close your eyes Close your eyes, but don't go to sleep Follow along So you imagine you're on this beach. I want you to visualize the feeling of the sand underneath your toes The sound of the waves the sound of the ocean in front of you. There's some like loud Low sounds of the waves crashing in the distance and there's some higher pitch sounds of the waves crashing close to the shore And there's this general sort of like fuzz of the the water moving Imagine that you you relax a little nervous about a talk and you're getting ready to go surfing You take some deep breaths and you you feel the constriction of a tight wetsuit around your chest You look down at your surfboard in the sand You bend over pick it up feel its its weights in your hands. You feel that the texture of the wax It's like sticky but hard and there's some sand to it and you awkwardly stick it under your arm And you start walking into the water Purposefully intentionally You notice the sand underneath your feet getting harder Getting wet you feel a wave come up splashing your toes. It's cold You can feel the difference between where your wetsuit begins and your bare feet You continue into the water Gets deeper. It gets awkward. You can feel sort of a current pulling at your legs kind of making it hard to stand The surface of the ocean floor is kind of uneven and unsteady and you're not sure with each step Whether you're gonna go up or down or how much And you you get to the point where it's deep enough now And you you set that surfboard down or clumsily drop the surfboard into the water It kind of makes it splash and waves are coming by and splashing up against them And you like grab the board to make sure it doesn't run away Get further out Decide to hop up on that board you grab it by two rails you pull your body up Kind of scramble around half haplessly You focus and you notice how your hips line up on the top of the surface of that board the hard board against your hard hip bones You find your center of balance you take a deep breath and you start exerting yourself you paddle you Move your arms deep into the water Faster faster paddling out the waves and waves keep coming in and they're splashing up in your face And it's salty And it's hard to see and you wipe your face and you keep going and then you see a big wave coming on the horizon and Not sure if you're going to make it over that wave it's it's pitching up it's pitching up and you're paddling harder and harder and Exerting yourself and you launch off the top of that wave Airborne for a little bit well not completely airborne but the front of your board is at least and it smacks down on the other side Of that wave and then you smack down on top of the board and you kind of awkwardly stumble you sit up on the board Take a breath Catch your breath look around Look back at how far out you've made it from the beach And then continue forward Okay, you guys can sit down now relax I could I could go on with that Mental exercise of reliving the surfing experience for a whole half hour, but I have some other points to make So hello This is me surfing a wave in Pacifica where I live in a wetsuit where it's cold I have a lot of ideas to talk about and maybe I'll convey some of them Okay, and you can talk to me after I Don't want to sound too Arrogance like I'm like a motivational speaker here telling you how to live your life So really I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm gonna pretend like it for the purposes of this presentation Again, huh? Hot coals. No So again, this is me Jacob Burkhart. This is surfing in Mexico and And important part of me is Jayburn. She's over here in the corner. She's gonna help me out later This is what she usually looks like to me in the water catching a wave surfing right by me She usually the waves big enough that I'd like just see that for a moment And then she disappears down the face and I have no idea if she made it until I see her like way into the beach This is the presentations on github Show off you can download it right now and play along and if you want to tweet at me That's my Twitter. This is where I work at Engine Yard You heard earlier today Jessica talk about the standing desk. This is the bouncing desk There's actually these like half balls that we should stand on and listen music and code Okay, so what is presence I? Was I was trying to get you to perhaps experience some taste of it with my visualization So I was talking I was at dinner last night, and I met this guy Ezekiel where's Ezekiel wave Ezekiel told me a lot of things about being a Zen Buddhist when I told him I was giving this talk But the one thing that I want to share with you is this concept of your default mental state so the way he presented it to me you have two modes of thinking you have your default mode in which you are thinking about the past thinking about the future sort of anticipating what might happen and Sort of criticizing the actions you've taken and critiquing yourself and like analyzing And then the others mental state is sort of the mental state that you like have if you're being chased by a line where you're like completely in the moment completely aware and existing in the world and It turns out you're a lot happier in that second state, but your mind defaults constantly back to the first state You guys remember this talk from yesterday by Katrina one thing she talked about that really stuck out to me that I want to reiterate is this idea of working memory and my interpretation of what she was saying is that If you're bogged down with lots of stuff you have less working memory in your mind to focus on whatever task and being present is the practice of clearing your mind and If you practice presence you will be able to have more access to your working memory essentially so other aspects of presence are Awareness and that's awareness of what's around you awareness of how your body is doing how it's feeling How healthy you're feeling Mindfulness it's it's doing things with a purpose and not entirely focusing on that purpose But being mindful of what you're doing sort of like like a surgeon is probably very mindful when they're operating on somebody And it's focus. I think there's a lot of multitasking happening with us in our lives and Practicing presence is a practice of focus and can help us in our ability to focus every day So who knows this feeling This this feeling of presence. How about how about this feeling of catching a wave? Pretty cool. This is my sister and in Costa Rica catching a wave. How about this feeling of catching away? really This is this is Jerry Lopez Famous Surfer he's still around living in Oregon Here he's surfing his signature wave on pipeline and he wrote this book that I've been reading called surface where you find it and Jerry talks a lot about Zen and presence and surfing and he does it in better ways than I can so I'm just gonna seal some quotes He's talking here about surfing the pipeline this massive wave Although instinct isn't the right word Something like it along with a clear mind work better than thinking because at the pipe there isn't enough time for thought a Zen like mine that is empty of thoughts allows a strong connection with the wave It lets the surfer be in touch with the wave as opposed to being a part of it So this is like I relate to this, but I don't need to surf pipeline to have this experience. I Could surf waves that are just beyond my ability and be completely engrossed and survival mode and Forced into this state of presence. So I'm talking more about surfing in general This it might be what you perceive of when you think surfing maybe nice warm beach sand This this was Huntington Beach last weekend in Southern California We were there For the same it was complicated reason. I don't have time to explain, but it relates to this Which is my wife and I have this company birds will calm go buy a t-shirt. I'm wearing one of them right now Well wave, that's that's not a model. That's just our friend So And at Huntington Beach, they were having this giant competition called the US Open of Surfing And Kelly Slater was there That's one aspect of surfing. There's there's the endorsements in surfing as the magazine pictures the selling bikinis Don't really relate to that but it's out there Big wave surfing. This is like your your compiler developers like your Lawrence who are writing Ruby motion when nobody else could I I admire what they're doing, but I'm scared Then then there's their style This is Dane Reynolds One of the pioneers the sort of bridging the competitive aspects with the free surfing and Pushing the sport forward and I really I really admire the this is Casio here her style or hanging heels is a really hard maneuver piece is a Aspect of surfing from the 70s that still carried on a little bit I Can relate to that and and harmony being in harmony with nature Being out there. This is this is the beach that's closest to my house called Rockway Beach Anyway, all those aspects of surfing I started here This is Hampton, New Hampshire, New Hampshire. I don't know how many people are familiar with Northeastern geography Hampshire doesn't have much has 13 miles of coastline and for about half a mile is this beach where everybody comes to surf It's called the wall and I'm gonna teach you a new vocabulary word here. It's called kook That's what I was when I started you'd see me bent down like super focused on this menial wave So we all start as kooks even even Jerry Lopez even Kelly Slater and Even as we progress We go back and we do something called cooking it up where we get together with a bunch of friends Hang out in the water catch some waves tell some lies And it's sort of like going back to this level of just having fun So here's some code So if I were giving a different presentation the point I would make here is that you should pair but in this in this presentation my point is that this code works and When I when I wrote this code I put a bunch of put statements in in between everything and Wrote it a bunch of times and had some tests and it was really long arduous approaches process that I should have been present for but because I wasn't I was being a kook and just sort of falling back on What it what I knew what I could get done and and I got it done and I Think that's okay. Sometimes just say I'm being a kook just Stingology so Jerry Lopez Not a kook pretty sweet yoga guy though. He has a quote about this after surfing in Some massive ways where he didn't know what to do And he said the answer may be so simple that it is easily overlooked If one believes that the truth lies within faith dictates that it will reel itself when it is most needed It's there so keep paddling where it leads that that one little line keep paddling is sort of a life motto I have So getting to the next level we were we were kooks. We were in New Hampshire. We were surfing on the weekends and Then I met this man. I started a new job in Boston Not there now anyway, but this is a while ago. This is Ed in his signature crouched style Important to have a style And he showed us two very important things one. He showed us there was a place to surf that was half an hour from work and He showed us that as director of engineering with two kids and an important job He was surfing at least once a week before work during the day and we were like we can do that So we stepped up our dedication This is a picture of winter surfing in Maine The water is probably 38 degrees at most you can see there's snow on the ground We surfed in the winter maybe like three times that year But but we extended our season we went further into fall We started more in the spring and we started to really prioritize surfing because on the east coast The best surf is right before a hurricane And if you know about your hurricanes, they have a season. They're not your round so you got to be ready for when the swells are up and You can be patient when they're not So I have some more advice for you about priorities These are the five priorities that were communicated to me by my dad who got them from somebody else There there there are five priorities there in order. I like to think of them on my hand They health family friends work I'll go into them each four in a little bit detail, but first I want to talk about Buddha again So I don't I don't know that much about Buddhism, but the the one documentary I watched Told it told the story of Buddha Well before he was the Buddha about how he was this rich spoiled brat And he lived this life of decadence and then he rebelled against that into the teenager and live this life of piety and restraint and sacrifice and Then he came to Buddhism as the middle path the the balance of things and With these five priorities They're in order, but it's important that you balance them like you can't completely neglect work to go surfing Even though surfing is more important So here you can see this is you know Ruby. This is an assignment operation Faith I'm a signing surf as my faith Jerry has a quote about this. This is Jerry in Indonesia Anytime I go surfing can be a religious experience if I let it It is a close encounter with one of our world's greatest natural wonders Out here on the edge of the known world far from the distractions of civilization. I can more easily find this space But in reality any of us can find it anywhere because we carry it inside of us everywhere we go So first our second priority. We just talked about faith second priority is health You got to take care of yourself before you take care of other people and I'm going to relate to things about how Surfing is good for your health. So really surfing is all five priorities, but Morning exercise, how many people will have an exercise regimen before they do anything in the morning? You should all adopt one Exercising in the morning gets your heart rate going increases your metabolism Gives you benefits throughout the day my my self explanation for this is evolution and bipedalism so Standing upright and walking on two feet was one of the first traits that our ancestors evolved that distinguished us from the chimps and We evolved that trait because we had to travel long distances for our food and our shelter and On top of that evolved our ability to think and reason and other things that make us human and so I feel like you have to think of those things as connected and exercising and using your body Comes in concert with your ability to think and they reinforce each other Wrist strength who has ever had problems with carpal tunnel or repetitive stress So so what I've read and learned and heard about this is that if your wrist hurts The last thing you want to do is put a brace on it and not use it The best thing to do is to exercise it and the important thing is that you exercise it in ways that are complementary to the stress you're putting on it and Surfing obviously exercise the whole body uses a lot of arm motion You can see me flexing my wrist here as I catch a wave So family third priority Here we are Thanksgiving so some people in my family. This is this is Shiva. He lives in LA he was one of the first people that I knew that surfed and I went surfing with him in LA when I was still in college and I was still figuring out my life and I think that struck me about his lifestyle was that he was he was doing it He was getting up every morning going surfing Packing his suit and board in the car and driving straight to work and He was just so happy with his life. He didn't have a lot of other things in his life figured out, but that really made an impact on me and Of course, I have to give credit again to Jay bird Having her with me to be there almost every time I surf in the morning and all the adventures we have in surfing has really reinforced the positive vibe I guess friends Almost as important as family So I was I was in the water surfing with some of my friends and I told him about this talk and Asked them what I should talk about with surfing This is a this is Cynthia. She's really short and vegan But but the things she relates most to in surfing is her addiction to surfing and how it has replaced all other things that you might be addicted to like caffeine or nicotine and She says she gets Jonesing she hasn't been in the water for a while. I don't need caffeine by the way. I call surfing This is Chris Starts to talk a little funny if you haven't surfed in a while. This is the source of sanity makes up words like post mango surf Mangoes are delicious by the way This is Perrin She she she told me how much surfing has taught her patients She's a little relatively a beginner when it comes to surfing and But she'll go out there and she'll spend hours in the water and she'll try and she'll try and She may she'll finally catch like one or two good waves but it's all worth it for her and she's she's learning and She says that that patience that she has and then the reward of finally catching a wave that carries on through the rest of her life Finally fifth priority work. Just Tom at work doing work I'll go back to Ed again for some advice on surfing related to work I emailed for him for a bigger picture of that Crouch style wave catch and he sent me this quote He said it's critical to always mix work in surfing The yellow board which was in that last slide was picked up while I was in LA repairing COS's and meeting customers and COS is just the product that we worked on at my last job And he goes on to talk about all these different places that he surfed with that board and customers that he met with And he said it's more complicated than sending a tech or paying shipping on a new board But that's far less satisfying So the lesson from Ed was Have a fulfilling work life have a filling surf life. Let them reinforce each other So my surf lifestyle. It's not all infinity pools in Mexico On a good day I wake up at six o'clock or rather J. Berg drags me out of bed at six o'clock Get in the water by seven o'clock. This is roughly what it looks like at seven o'clock Try to get out by nine o'clock It's good two hours session free salad Have a quick shower and Then get into work by ten o'clock for a stand-up. This is did not actually stand up because we're drinking Roughly what stand-up looks like without the whiskey And then the massive lunch so that morning surf that morning exercise Really burns a lot of calories and I get really hungry and all my co-workers know when I surf because I steal their food Pura vida who's heard of this before this is the the Costa Rican motto it means pure life And this is this is how I feel about a good day and Jerry has a quote obviously Such as the life we can know living in the past and in the future in recollection and in anticipation Creates a less clear picture of the present By being in the here and now we understand that the past and the future only exist in the present That was pretty deep. I don't know how it's to introduce that basically he's saying There is no past there is no future there's only our memory of it and an participation of it and Being present is literally acknowledging that So I want some audience participation here tell me your source of presence if it's not surfing yoga Surfing I heard snowboarding How about travel I Think Whatever your source of presence is you should attempt to experience it in as many places as you can So this is this is Mount bachelor, which is nearby where I traveled to once Westport is a place you could travel to I came to Seattle on Wednesday night conference was didn't start till Friday So that I could rent a car and drive down here. It's about two and a half hours from Seattle It's the closest place to go surfing here But you should totally check it out. There's a surf shop there. They rent boards. They rent suits waves are pretty good I was actually impressed Another place to go The place that I go locally is Santa Cruz I want to tell a little story about Santa Cruz that the problem with Santa Cruz is That the waves are so good that there's so many people there and When you have a lot of people in a concentrated area like that you have this problem called aggro So this is one of the character types that Ryan Davis didn't mention yesterday, but now you guys can use this in your vocabulary An aggro surfer is somebody who's so frustrated with the crowds that he will take every opportunity to Verbally assault anybody that he thinks has slightly slighted him or done something wrong in the water J-word experience this last weekend where somebody was actually yelling at her for being too good at surfing It was completely contradictory, but he was very angry Hap Moon Bay. This is a One or two towns over from Pacifica And we were there a little while ago This is great because Hap Moon Bay is where Mavericks is and so we'll have some screenings sometimes and some big wave surfers Will come and talk about Their experiences after we watched a little film about it so this is Grant Twiggy Baker on one of the supposed worst wipeouts ever and he said something at One of these film screenings that really stuck with me. He said don't panic after you've panicked And I think we can relate to this as programmers When things go wrong and immediately we panic and our our lesson from surfing and our lesson in work Is that you have to relax and figure out the problem and stop panicking The other guy in the room Grant Washburn explained that All of us have built into us physically about nine or seconds nine or ten seconds We have a timer where if you go underwater and hold your breath Your body will panic at nine or ten seconds Everybody even even people that free dive and hold their breath for five or ten minutes They have this in them and what they have to do is they have to go underwater wait for that moment to pass Regain composure and continue I thought that was interesting And of course Jerry has a quote about Being stuck underwater This is after he tells the story of a three-wave hold down in which he had an out-of-body experience Moments of surf liberalization are here to remind us of our true potential If that is why we surf that's good because surfing reconnects us to who we really are This is all the more reason to keep surfing Life is good surfing reminds us how good life is You guys do any activities that like make you think you might die and then get really stoked when you survive It's really worth it not intentionally all right That's basically all I had to say We're gonna have J bird here close it out for you. Are you ready? I guess I have to be have to be present right? That's right