Thread by @wiredferret

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Mental Health in Tech Shops

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Tech has a problem — we are working hard even when we’re not working.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: When we think of burnout, we think of toxic situations, poor culture, and poor management, but this talk is about normalized chronic stress caused by productive involvement.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Stress comes in two types: Eustress is good stress. Short term, motivates you to do porductive things, may improve performance. Distress is the bad stress. It’s not voluntary. It can be short or long term, and can cause physical+mental problems.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Too much eustress can become distress. Your schedule can be filled with awesome things, but it can stress you out if it’s not balanced by actual rest and leisure.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Kent Beck: Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges:

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Interesting work is still work because it isn’t rest. Taking a break to just work on something easier is not really a break.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Context switching costs you a lot of cognitive work and time. The more things we are trying to do near-simultanously, the more we start dropping quality

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Multitasking makes you stretch yourself so thin that you can’t point to any one thing that you’re doing well, but tehy all seem good and valuable.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Stress makes it hard to fall asleep, or sleep well, and then we are mentally less resilient to deal with stress.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Strategies for recovery: If you just want to hide for a while, that’s a good plan. It’s not easy, but it’s a good plan. It feels impossible and irresponsible, but do it anyway. Stop doing all the things and ask yourself:

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: 1) What’s motivated me to continue on this particular effor to this point. 2) What actually happens if I walk away right now? (check yourself for cultural programming)

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: If you can’t walk away right now: Have a candid talk about expectations and boundaries. Call in reinforcements and ask for help.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: How do you tell if you’re in trouble? Anxiety, lack of effectiveness, not enough concentration time, too many projects.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: (Anxiety can be triggered by circumstances, but is also comorbid with several mental illnesses, including depression and ADHD)

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Meetings break up valued concentration time. Set boundaries to create larger chunks of time to work and think on one thing.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Prevention: Set expectations, say no (even to your enthusiastic self), use technology to help, learn to have healthy boundaries, and do regular checkins with yourself.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Seek support, from your friends, mentors, therapists, doctors, and yes, medication if you need it.

#pycaribbean Jessie Hedges: Mental health IS physical health. You can’t will away symptoms of anxiety and depression any more than you can will away diabetes.