 Okay. It's 250, right? That's what I'm supposed to start. It is 25004. I am seconds late. Hi. Welcome to a talk that will involve absolutely zero references to form API or data migration. I wasn't expecting the positive reaction to that, but you know what? That works, too. My name is Eaton. For those of you who I haven't ranted at about structured content at some point in the past 48 hours, I work for a company called Lullabot and we do web stuff. Come by our booth, pick up a floppy disk, come to our party. Yay, Drupal. It's really cool. I really enjoy the work that I do. I've been working at Lullabot and in the Drupal community in general for more than a decade now, which is super sobering, because I just realized I literally did not have gray hair before I started working with Drupal, which I'm not saying it's causation, but, you know, it's a lot of fun, though, because it's an agency-style arrangement, so I get to solve problems and help people and like sort of like cool aid man in to interesting problems and help people wrestle through organizational challenges and stuff like that, and I get to work with cool and amazing and talented people, and it's just a load of fun. And one of the things that I love about coming to DrupalCon in particular and like other events where there's like a strong like community of people who are all sort of like, you know, we've gathered around some sort of cool thing that we care about and we make is that there's a lot of really amazing and fun stuff that we do that actually matters, like even outside of just purely the technical stuff, like figuring out like ways to communicate complexity and deal with complex data problems, that's an Edward Tuft graph for the data nerds in the house, or like, you know, even in the constant editorial track, which, you know, I'm a big, you know, constant strategy guy at this point, and so like figuring out how to how to make our communication clear and to be better at articulating both like internally our documentation or principles or goals to even helping clients with that stuff or like, you know, just building out websites that make a difference in people's lives. I mean, I think that was a big part of what, you know, Dries was talking about in in his keynote, you know, we are having an impact on other people and that's a really empowering and exciting and energizing kind of thing. And the intersection of all that stuff really matters. You know, I took that very seriously. I decided to take it out, but I had originally a photograph of me at like age five in Superman under Ruse, like with this look on my face that is just deadly serious. Like, yeah, yeah, I've got to go stop a train. This is serious. We're here because for the most part, it matters to us. Like, this isn't just a thing we have to go to. Obviously, you know, DrupalCon has gotten big enough that, you know, there's always a certain percentage of that and there's nothing wrong with that. But a lot of the people who are really consider themselves part of the community and who engage in like conversations like this are here because it really means something to them. And we care about what happens and we care about that impact on people's lives. And we want to make what we do better because that makes other people's lives better. And the community we're a part of amplifies that it makes it better. And so, oh, I guess I didn't take it out. But the thing is, is there's always a butt to that kind of exciting, invigorating, energizing force. That awesome power of like stuff that matters has a real dark side. And I mean, I think there's there's a real common thing that we're used to engaging with like crappy fake meaning. Like, you know, hey, we're going to come together as a community and incrementally reduce the amount of time it takes to deliver takeout in the Bay Area by 37 seconds. That's not like the kind of life-affirming meaning that I'm talking about. If anybody wants to explore that whole like meth, there's a great book by Evengi Morozov called To Save Everything. Click here. It's about the idea of the technology solutionism and like the idea that we can just throw startups at society to solve everything. That's a whole nother track. But I'm talking about a lot more personal side of things. And especially when it involves that kind of mission and meaning that we really do actually feel like it matters on human terms, not just, you know, making a new food delivery startup. Man, there's going to be somebody who works at a food delivery startup in the audience. That's Murphy's Law. I'm talking about like burnout and identity and the stuff that makes us who we are. So I'm going to start with talking about open source naturally. I'm going to talk about an unnamed community, a group of people that came together many years ago. They wanted to build something cool together. And as time went on, they decided they wanted to do something even bigger. They wanted to change the world. They wanted to build something that would make life better for other people who had to do similar things. They have like a cool origin story. They've got a charismatic founder. Yes, man, that is that is a gazing off into the distance thoughtfully photo if I've ever seen one. And, you know, and they had a real community, you know, group of people who stuck together and did stuff and cared for each other. Like it's great. And, you know, year after year, it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And, you know, this community of people who used to just be, you know, some folks who talked to each other and, you know, brainstormed and did stuff, ended up doing conferences. Suddenly they needed people who did, like, infrastructure work to support the conferences just to tell people about the cool thing they were doing. And, like, the project itself grew to, like, dozens of people, hundreds of people, thousands of people, like, and thousands of volunteers, no less. But the thing is, is at that scale, they also needed people who got paid because, you know, you've got to have somebody, you know, some people that you can just assign and put on tasks, you know, regardless. And so, okay, well, you know, now there's paid staff. And, you know, it was really cool. And the thing is, is all these people were extremely passionate. They cared about what they were doing. And it was good stuff. But regardless of that fact, tension and pressure started growing. And, you know, lots of really deeply uncomfortable questions started bubbling up to the surface in the middle of this tension and pressure. Things like, well, how will we do all of this stuff that needs to get done? Like, even as many of us as there are, there is still more stuff that has to be done. We're still not big enough to do all of the big things that we care about. Like, how are, well, how are you contributing? I've, because I've been over here, like, you know, I pulled an all-nighter trying to, you know, trying to get this to happen. And like, well, okay, so hold on, I've been a volunteer for, like, eight years. And now that person's getting paid to do this? Like, I volunteered to do it. Meanwhile, all the person who's getting paid is saying, oh, yeah, it must be real nice to just be able to go home if you decide you don't want to do it anymore. This is my job. I have to do this. So this weird, weird dynamics of, like, you know, everybody was feeling, like, this growing sense of friction and tension. And everybody was, like, I won't say expected to give 110%, which is not a real percent. This kind of pressure generated really predictable outcomes. The people who just gave 110, who just sacrificed themselves and poured themselves out purely voluntarily became the heroes of the community. And healthy boundaries, things like, you know what, theoretically, I could, like, do that this weekend. But I actually am just going to take some time and, like, chill. And I need to pet my cat. Or, you know, heaven forbid, like, I've got kids. They might want to see me. You know, that kind of stuff can become rarer and rarer and rarer in those situations. And it's certainly not the kind of stuff that's lauded and celebrated. In the worst case scenarios, in the middle of high stress situations where everybody's under a crunch and everybody feels like, we, the community, we've got to come together. We've got to make this happen. It can even be treated as betrayal when somebody has those kinds of times, like, hey, I'm just, I'm going to get a coffee. I'm just going to go chill. How could you do that? How could you? And people burnt out. Like, I saw people drop out entirely just because it was just too much. They tagged out. And the thing is, is the survivors that were left behind, they had to pick up the slap because now there's fewer people to do all this stuff that we've got to do. And they got more stressed out. And the real problem is that looming over all of this was the big cause. The thing mattered. The thing that brought us all together and they gave us purpose and gave us direction and it's how we impacted people's lives. And if you stop to breathe, you're letting the team down. If you take a break, you're leaving us. You're leaving the team. If you leave, you're leaving the cause. So plot twist. I'm not actually talking about the Drupal community. Well, I am. But I'm also talking about a different project that I worked on. A different organization that I was a part of for years before I joined the Drupal community, which was Willow Creek Church in Illinois. Probably one of the largest mega churches in the Midwest. It has a food court and a bookstore. Now, there's some people who are like, ah, that's no star. But like, it's an interesting place. And I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. Like, it was founded in the 1970s in a movie theater, because like some 20 year olds wanted to get together and like, you know, the classic we want to do things differently. You know, and what it was one of the first churches to explicitly focus on people who didn't go to church and people who didn't like church and didn't like the culture of church. They said, okay, that's who we are for and who we're about. And, and, you know, it's just a couple of 20 something people. And now 20,000 people show up for the Easter service. They had to rent out Rosemount Horizon when they wanted to do like an all church meeting. So it kind of got nuts. And they just keep growing. Yeah, the food court serves excellent tacos. And the interesting thing is, is it's not just about size. Like, they do important and meaningful stuff. Like, at that scale, they have thousands of volunteers, hundreds of full time staff, like programs to help like, you know, poor and homeless people locally, like single moms in the area, not members of the church even just like single moms in the area can say, I need a car and come and get a car for free because they operated a scale where they can say, well, if you've got a beater donated to the church and one of our 47 mechanics will fix it up and we can give it away to local moms. It's like, this is really amazing stuff that they do and they've been able to turn into impact on the organization. And you know, like a lot of open source organizations, they've got about a one to 10 ratio of paid staff to volunteers. And they have a huge well oil machine to keep the volunteer pipeline full. Because that's a I mean, you know, if they went down to 200 paid staff and no volunteers, this whole thing would fall apart. They do like yearly conferences, the whole deal. And the thing is, is like, despite all the work to make it work, it means pressure. And looming above that all, there's this big mission, you know, this purpose that drives us all. And I watched friends and coworkers and colleagues and loved ones in that environment go through the cycles of burnout and, and stress and feeling like they were betraying people they cared for by stepping back and taking a breather. I mean, forget, forget power the web, like power 4% of the web versus literally keep people from going to hell. Like, I mean, there's a mission you're going to step back from it's tricky. And the thing is, is like, the reductionist horror show endpoint of that is like, if you don't help set up chairs before the meeting, you hate Jesus. Like, that's just end of story. You're gonna have to live you want to live with that. Okay, sitting up chairs. And, but even at best, though, even without that kind of, you know, half jokie, you know, but not really jokie, we need to we need to set up chairs kind of thing. Like, it can be a huge source of self imposed guilt. And at worst, it can be really deliberately exploited by people higher up the food chain, who are part of the big machine that is running and say, Well, you know, what, we need 10,000 volunteers. You know, I, you know, okay, well, I'm really glad he wants to go to soccer for his kid. But you know, like, we need to keep, we need to keep gears turning. And the thing that I find really weird is that this is super predictable, too. Like, it happens, not just in churches, it doesn't happen just in open source organizations, it's in activism, it's in politics, it's in religious groups, it's in startups, this happens in like community theater groups. It's, it's huge. And so there's a book war is a force that gives us meaning written by Christopher Hedges. It's about the idea that in war time, people endure all sorts of terrible hardship. But afterwards, so many of them even coming out traumatized and in dire straits, come out with this feeling of lostness afterwards, because it, it was the big thing. Everything was writ large at that moment. Everything was immediate and intense. And it was part of this huge world altering experience, you know, it might have been terrible for me personally, but you know, it was the big thing. And the big cause is often what stokes people's passion for conflict, too. And it's, I mean, I apologize if I offend anyone, but like, it's, it's fucking heartbreaking. Because I've seen a lot of people that I love and I care for get fried on this. And the common factor is this purpose that is bigger than us, a thing bigger than everyday life, bigger than any of us as individuals. And it can inspire us and it can motivate us and it can encourage us when the hours are long and the odds are long. But it can also chew us up and turn us against each other too. And like, some of the professions that are most at risk for burnout, coincidentally are like social workers, doctors, teachers, nurses, they're people who the work that they do saves lives. And it changes people's lives for the better. And it matters. How do how do you justify going home and relaxing when like literally someone could die if you do that? That's a tough burden to bear. And that idea of caring for people and caring for a cause and caring for something bigger than just my own interest in my own comfort is so powerful and so dangerous if it's not approached very carefully, it can make stepping back and taking care of ourselves really difficult. And the worst part is, again, it's like with, you know, like with saving lives, if you're a doctor, the cause often does matter. I mean, it often is more important than making delivering fast food 15 seconds faster in the Bay Area. It's often things like, you know, improving city services or, you know, making it easier for people to get educational opportunities or, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. And, you know, in that kind of situation, like, how can I stop saving lives just to take a vacation? How can I stop fixing bugs just because, like, I want to spend some time with my wife? Or how can I stop when the team is depending on me? Even forget the deadline. It's just my, the people that I work with day in and day out, they'll have to carry the burden if I step back and that just makes it harder for them. So I guess we're just in it all together. The thing is, is like, even assuming that we are literally saving lives, the truth is that taking care of ourselves matters just as much as taking care of other people. And it's always a tricky balance trying to figure out how to articulate this without saying, yes, greed is good or something like that. But I mean, I hope that it's clear that that's not what I'm getting at. What I mean is that, well, if a cause can't live without you suffering for it, then that cause may just deserve to die. It may not be a bad goal, but like, it just, you know, you are not consumable fuel. And the more time I've spent in, like, missional organizations, like, you know, like, you know, religious nonprofits, open source, you know, political movement, stuff like that, the more and more I've been convinced this is true. Like, if a project or organization can't live without chewing you up, eventually you will burn out. And then if it really can't live without you, the project will collapse anyways. So unless you believe you are literally immortal and possess an infinite supply of Red Bull, it is unsustainable. All you are doing is kicking the can down the road. So like, don't feel guilty about hitting that point where you say, hold on, I've got to step back, I've got to breathe, I've got to do this because it's going to come. The only difference is whether you will be in a position to step back and breathe or whether they'll be wheeling you out. And so, okay, so I think I'm running along here. Stage hook me at any point. So how do we break this cycle? Like, you know, when we talk about organizational dynamics and we talk about like, okay, so what can we do about this? How do we like put out this giant hellish tire fire of mutual like obligation and guilt and, you know, pressure and like, I mean, like a lot of things, it's got to be done one bit at a time. And we do it with the people that are right around us. It's not like a giant, you know, a giant writ large thing we do for everyone simultaneously. I mean, and so I think about it in terms of like my own teams and the groups that I work with directly. One is we don't talk, we can't glorify death marches. When I was like a super, you know, young pup at, you know, when I got my first job at like a dot com consultancy, I thought it was so awesome that people slept under their desks and you got a private office with a futon. So you could just like stock up on like pop tarts from the company kitchen and you could just cruise. Now, like that is the worst thing in the world because it is passion, quote unquote, covering up bad planning, understaffing, burnout, poor resourcing and terrible expectations and saying, yeah, we're street fighters does not make that a healthy dynamic. Don't punish boundaries when people exercise them. I think like a friend of mine and I were working on a we're in the we're in crunch time for a book we were co-writing, which was actually the first edition of Using Drupal. And during one of the deadline pushes, like one of the other three, one of the other co-authors took a break to go see a movie with his girlfriend. And my friend, she turned to me, is like, this sucks. I resent my friend for going on a date with his girlfriend. Like, this is, something has clearly broken here. But like that's a natural impulse when that kind of pressure is on. And it takes cautiously assessing not just what's going on with other people, but our own reactions. It's like, okay, I'm still in it. And this person just tagged out. I can't treat them like crap because they took that breather. Another one is like giving gentle nudges to workaholics on the team. Because like, those like 110% people, the ones that like, oh, if they realize the ticket isn't done, you don't even have to tell them they will be there this weekend. And then coming on Monday and they're like, yeah, it shipped. You know, it's like, how much Adderall has gone into this ticket? Because it's easy to take them for granted, because the impact is never on timelines. It's never on budgets when those people are doing that. It's on them. It's on their bodies. It's on their psychological health. It's on their relationships with the people they care about and their families. That's what's being used in order to deliver that ticket on time. And we need to talk to them both to make sure that they are okay stepping back and breathing, but also to make sure that a culture of expectation doesn't emerge for all of the other people on the team. Other people shouldn't have to feel like they need to figure out how to keep up with that. And I think I'll keep it real short, but like a coworker of mine, I was responsible for estimating a couple of tasks for a client. He came in and was responsible for implementing them. I bet you can see where this goes. And I screwed up the estimate. I didn't spot a couple of key bits that were, you know, a part of it and it ended up taking like 40 hours instead of 20 hours. In the grand scheme of things, this is not like world altering, but on Friday was when we realized, you know, okay, we're going to have to put this back for more time. I came in on Monday, checked in, he's like, okay, I did it. I was like, oh, and well, it's like, okay, one, congratulations, it appears to work and you did not hallucinate that check in. But two, like I screwed up, I misestimated something. That means I need to go to them and tell them I didn't estimate something correctly and we're going to need more time. That's on me. That's not on you to burn yourself up to go make my bad estimate, a true estimate. And it was like, you know, like the sound like you see a dog sort of like tilt its head and hear something in the distance. It was almost like this, like genuine confusion. It's like, okay. And I mean, so I've always thought back to that, like how easy it is in those moments for those 100% 110% people to feel like, oh, okay, this is what I got to do. It's like, we need to make it clear that that's not like part of the assumption. And if you're currently someone who's in charge of a business or a group or an organization like this, if your organization needs to squeeze people dry to function, if it falls apart when like everyone isn't in that 110% zone, the problem is not that your team is insufficiently passionate. The problem is not that the people working for you are not dedicated enough to this grand vision that we share. The problem is that you need a business model that works. I mean, I don't mean to sound harsh with that, but like it's very easy to get sucked into that cycle. And especially for those of us who have been a part of like small things that started and we were the ones, we were the ones who helped kick it off. It's so personal, it's so intense and it matters so much. And we want everyone to have that sort of life consuming passion about it. And that can often mask the fact that we just got to figure out a better way to do it. So that these people don't get killed by it. Another one, imagine a friend that you really care about, like literally right now, just think somebody that you know that sometimes comes to you and talks to you about like troubles that they're having or like what's going on or something they're happy about that you really care for and you've known for a while and think what you would say to them if they came to you and described the kind of guilt you sometimes face about making those choices. If they came to you and said, man, I feel like I really need to just take a breather because I'm totally fried. But if I don't, you know, man, nobody's nobody's going to get drop downs working on Android. I would say to them, no, no, you matter more than that. Go recharge. And I found that idea of thinking about someone I care about and asking how I would tell them what I would tell them to do if they experienced what I was experiencing, that helps a lot. Another one is recharging outside the team. Like it's very easy especially in like a tech industry that really values the idea of like building like campus experiences or like hobby open source contributors who are also professional open source contributors and in their sleep dream about open source contribution, you know, and recreationally we get together at the local board and have open source meetups. And like it's very easy to unintentionally build a personal support system that is 100 and 100 percent other people in the same zone. And one of the challenges is that it's very hard to get reality checks on whether you're in a healthy place if everybody else is in the same unhealthy place. And it also means that when you have to take those seasons of stepping back and recharging suddenly you find yourself cut off from your entire personal support system because everybody you know is over there doing that thing that you had to step back from because it was killing you. And that's really difficult. So like figuring out ways to recharge and build energy that aren't just the same thing is a big part of it. And finally like, you know, I think this comes up a lot in like self care and personal care stuff. Put on your own mask first like the core principle of like, you know, airplane crash, you know, instructions. It's do not be so concerned about helping the person next to you that you don't put on your air mask and then both of you pass out. Because if you can't help people because you're fried. Well, that's still not helping people. Like taking care of yourself allows you to come back for another season, renewed and refreshed. If that's what you care about, like it matters because the world, this world, the one that we want to go change and have an impact on is a better place for your presence in it. And your contribution to the world is more than what you do and what you make. You are more than the output that you generate. And you matter more than the mission that you have dedicated yourself to. You are worth taking care of yourself. And you as a healthy and whole person are a net positive for the world. Even if drop down still don't work on Android devices older than I think Kit Kat. That's it. That's all I got. You matter more than the cost. Thank you. I think I went over time. Oh excellent. I just kept everyone from getting caffeinated. I am so sorry.