I was interviewed!

TLDR - I was recently interviewed about neurodiversity and leadership. The video can be seen on YouTube, and the announcement post on LinkedIn.

At the tail end of last year, I received an unusual message on LinkedIn. Paraphrased, it said "Hi - we've been connected on here for a while. Would you like to be interviewed for a podcast about technical leadership?" I'm normally terrible at self-promotion and a friend had recently been giving me a hard time about this, so after checking it wasn't random spam we arranged a chat.

This started something unexpected. I met Katelin Lovell, and after a really nice conversation she asked me about my writing on neurodiversity. As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I am quite passionate about normalising discussion of mental health and (since diagnosis) neurodiversity. She suggested that how I have dealt with autism and ADHD in the context of leadership would be a good topic for an interview.

It has taken a while, but that interview was recently posted on LinkedIn and the video can be found on YouTube.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome. I think we cover some important topics and hopefully it will give some insight into something that people find very hard to explain. "My brain works differently" is a really difficult thing to say, and living outside the societally expected norm creates many challenges.

We chose this topic for this interview in the hope of helping people understand a bit more. That might be a manager trying to better understand someone who is neurodivergent (or just people in general), someone who is neurodivergent and curious about the experiences of others, or someone wondering whether they might be themselves.

As I said, I find myself in a position to make use of my own experiences and limited platform to speak on this subject. I am not a clinical expert, but I can talk about my own experiences and I think it is important to help educate and normalise something that affects a significant slice of the population.

While Katelin was great, doing this interview was difficult. To speak clearly about my experiences, I have to dissect my inner thoughts, and that is both raw and exposing. One of the big fears that keeps people quiet about mental health and neurodiversity is social stigma and suddenly being labelled as "the person who can't cope". It is quite possible some people will see me differently.

That said, I've had some lovely comments and feedback since it went live. Way back when I first wrote about depression, I was told how comforting it was to have senior leaders open up about their struggles and I've held that comment close ever since - I see it as one of the responsibilities of being a senior leader in my industry.

Anyway, this post isn't to rehash the interview contents (go listen to it!) - just to mark that it went out and why I did it.

I want to thank Katelin for being great throughout the process, and for setting it up in the first place. We talked a bit about doing some follow-ups and answering questions, so maybe we'll do more if there is an appetite for it.

I do want to speak more on this subject, so if you're looking for someone to talk about neurodiversity and leadership, do reach out.

Celebrating different minds

Apparently this week was neurodiversity celebration week with the rather charming tagline "celebrating different minds". Last year I made reference to being diagnosed with Autism and ADHD and this week seems like a good opportunity to write a little about what it's like.

First, the important caveats. I'm not medically trained so I'm writing from my own experiences and reading. Also, different forms of neurodivergence have very different impacts on people's lives and many exist on their own spectrums - my experience with autism may well be very different from another's.

I'm not going to draw a dividing line between my experiences with ADHD and Autism here. I have both, which seems counterintuitive - you might think they would cancel each other out. They don't. Instead, your brain goes to war with itself. This can result in an outward balance - for example, my need to fidget being cancelled by my need to follow the social rules for not doing that - but inside, it's a constant tug of war between opposing impulses. Most of this is invisible from the outside.

So over time, I have learned how to ride through this. I have always struggled to do things in good time. At school, I would do assignments late in the deadline but then I'd have absolute focus to get it done - or rather, the drive would be to avoid failing. If this sounds stressful, then yes - it is. It has been the same with job applications.

Heavy procrastination in general is something to actively manage. I have to watch myself from a distance and ask pointed questions like "why are you still doing that?" or write deadlines to trigger my desire to not fail. I write daily lists to create this impulse.

My brain needs stimulus. I am very good at not being bored, but anyone who has read this blog for a while will see the posts popping up saying variations of "I am bad at resting". I need to be doing something, learning something, creating something, thinking five thoughts at once... Even while I'm writing this I am jumping to another screen to upgrade a Rails app in the background.

This leads to a very noisy inside life. One experiment mapped the brain activity of a neurodivergent individual vs a neurotypical person doing the same, mundane activities. Where the neurotypical person has nice smooth signals, the neurodivergent person shows signals which look more like a seismograph during an earthquake. This was a very powerful image for me - a picture showing that my internal world is both extremely noisy, and not "the same for everyone".

Much of that links to regulation of dopamine and reward in the brain, and that can lead to all kinds of behaviours. The more obvious are seeking stimulation, which can be very destructive if that leads to drugs or other harmful behaviour - this is a whole separate topic. It can also create other unexpected behaviours. For me, I find I struggle with snacks - I have to avoid keeping them in the house at all else I'll just eat them. For a long time I did not know why, but now I realise this was dopamine-chasing behaviour - in essence, I was inadvertently self-medicating. I also do not really feel the same high from exercise others describe, which makes it a real grind to actually do any. Combine these, and you can guess the effect on my physical health!

At the less destructive ends of the different spectrums, where I am fortunate to be (I think), life carries a lot of friction, but I see it as a series of tradeoffs like my brain is overtuned for some effects. Hyperfocus is a good example of that. Getting lost in a topic completely can be great for learning and progress - a benefit. However, unlike "flow" (something everyone can experience), hyperfocus adds destructive elements - losing track of time and reality to the extent I forget to eat, sleep or ... other functions. Without counterbalance and control, it can create serious problems. The same is true of other traits, such as strong pattern recognition which can progress to the point of overanalysis and over-interpretation, drawing unhelpful conclusions.

Another overtuned trait I experience is noise sensitivity. Like many neurodivergent people, I can hear the whining of electrical devices most people can't and my brain prioritises strange background sounds like electronic beeping of alarms in the distance. This makes me a pretty good sound engineer, and able to find electronic components which are not behaving properly. However, this isn't something I can turn off and the outside world is so very noisy. From distant alarms which crawl under my skin until I can hear nothing else, to feeling agitated in a room most people think is silent, to rooms I find so loud it physically hurts to enter. I had a long period where I had to sleep with all the windows closed because of the whining noise coming from the generator in the basement next door. Their management company had an engineer look at it, and they kept saying (quite correctly, to be fair) that their generator was behaving within normal parameters but that noise entered my brain and would not leave. So I lost sleep for months, while anxiety built and built. This was resolved when the generator failed because the component I could hear across the street died so ... painful vindication.

However all this happens below the surface. If you meet me, you may not notice anything different about me at all. Even if you do, I've managed to navigate the world successfully. Which is where masking comes in. In practice, this is deciding how to show up to different situations (which everyone does to an extent) but like most things here pushed much further than the norm. For me, this practice has been helpful with conforming to different sets of social rules or expectations but does also lead to problems with identity. When am I ever me? Masking, like all the different ways of behaving to fit the norm, is very tiring. It can also go further - prolonged masking can lead to burnout and the loss of sense of identity, along with experiencing dissociative symptoms.

All this can result in a lonely existence. People draw comfort from being around folk who see the world like they do but - put bluntly - we don't get that in mainstream life. This can be very useful - channelled right, a different worldview can challenge norms and drive change - but it is also isolating. I rarely get to relax around people, I'm always putting on a mask for the occasion.

Even writing this is causing some anxiety as I expect someone to say "yeah everyone is like that".

These are just some of my experiences. I've found people often have questions about neurodiversity but don't feel able to ask them. If anything here raises questions, I'm very happy to talk - no question too strange.

ADHD Pathfinding and me

As ADHD Awareness Month approaches, I wanted to post something about ADHD Pathfinding. Here in England, access to ADHD assessment and long-term support is tricky and inconsistent at best. This is somewhat inevitable - the modern understanding of ADHD is evolving rapidly and the system was put in place to support something very different from the current position. However, this is still leaving millions of people (especially adults) undiagnosed and unable to access care or support[1], and costing the UK economy an estimated £17 billion per year[2] in lost productivity and wider social costs.

That is a huge number to throw about and, while the shock factor is significant, the actual cost is in the human implications. ADHD drives impulsive behaviour which can result in educational failure, long-term unemployment, crime, substance misuse, suicide, mental and physical illness (directly quoted from the ADHD Taskforce report). These behaviours ruin lives and break communities and with the right support, care and treatment much of this is preventable.

As I said above, the system is not designed to support the modern reality of ADHD. Assessment through the NHS can take years, and in some areas access to any kind of assessment for adults was nearly denied entirely to create capacity for children. Some commentators dismiss ADHD as a fad, and "everyone seems to have ADHD these days" but the research suggests it is actually chronically under-diagnosed. The current "trend" reflects people asking more questions because of growing awareness.

There are ways to move through the medical system, using Right to Choose schemes or indeed going private, but these require an unreasonable amount of knowledge of the NHS processes and mechanics to navigate. Add in that there is no specific requirement for GPs to have training in ADHD and you have an impenetrable system that can demand far too much of the patient. There is also a financial barrier to assessment and care - the private route is simply not open to many (if not most) people.

Under the hood, there are many, many problems. For just one example, ADHD medication is classified as a Schedule 2 restricted substance requiring monthly prescriptions (and thus time) from senior clinicians. However, ADHD is not classified as a chronic condition which means this administration burden does not come with any funding for the GP's office. Unlike heart medication, which also requires ongoing admin but GP practices are funded for the effort.

This is where ADHD Pathfinding comes in. We have come together to focus on the system, the context it was built in, and how it may change to be more effective in the modern world. We aim to raise awareness of these challenges and ultimately help bring ADHD into the NHS strategy where currently there is no mention of any kind of neurodiversity. The group was founded by Himal Mandalia, and at its core are people who have been in various forms of public service - so people who have experience getting things done in the highly bureaucratic government environment. We are also people who understand the challenges of the system. While I'm not going to rewrite our operating values here, I will highlight that we are looking to improve the system, not criticise the people working within it.

And yes, I said "we". I have been involved since the early days, lurking behind the scenes and helping formulate strategy. This is personal for me - this year, I have been diagnosed with both autism (not surprised) and ADHD (much more surprising). I can honestly say that if I hadn't had support from friends (especially Himal) I would not have got to the end of the ADHD process. I am very privileged to have knowledgeable friends, a pretty strong layman's knowledge of medicine, lots of experience navigating bureaucracy, and resources to help me do all this and I still would have given up. This is not right.

I'm going to write a post about my personal experiences coming to terms with this change in the near future, but for now I'll say I am very keen to help others walk an easier path.

If you're interested in ADHD or the system of assessment and care, please do reach out to us. We're building a community of people invested in this. We can build a system that supports everyone, but it is going to take effort and persistence to put it on the political map.

---

[1] According to ADHD UK
[2] ADHD Taskforce report part 1

Exercise in the new year

It's the start of a new year and I've made a few resolutions around fitness. Many are the same as the ones I made last year, which gives you an idea of how well these things tend to go for me.

I regularly see both a PT and a soft tissue therapist. Both are excellent (if you are in the Bath area and want a recommendation, give me a shout). My problem is that while it's very good for me, I don't really like the gym. I find picking up the thing then putting it down again entirely pointless and I don't really get much from the weight getting bigger. I've been trying to explore my thinking here with these two fine folk and I think we've finally brought together some disparate thoughts into something helpful.

First, I see the gym in general as a support activity rather than a means to an end. Rather than finding the activity and any progress compelling in themselves, I only get enjoyment when I see other activities getting easier / faster / better as a result. When I was younger, I did a lot of martial arts training - that was my exercise endpoint and I took pleasure getting better. Gym and other raw cardio training helped with the martial arts, so I enjoyed it. I have been out of martial arts training for some time, and I've been trying to use the gym as a substitute. This doesn't work for me, and I need to find an alternative.

Fortunately, I have just the thing. I have been a keen badminton player since I was a teenager and during my adult life I've been in and out of playing depending on time (ie work) and availability of people to play against. I've just started playing again and it is a lot of fun, while also being a great focus as a reason to get fitter.

Second, talking to these professionals has helped me realise there a third kind of fitness. Previously I've thought about fitness as important for health - which is obviously the most important thing, but really boring when abstract - and to power other sport as above. However, there is also the fitness that powers our ability to do basic "athletic" things like twisting and jumping.

Like many, I work a desk job and my current employment is remote. If I don't make the effort, I can easily clock in about 200 steps in the course of a day - sedentary doesn't really cover it. Continental plates move more than I actually need to, which is why I force myself to walk a few miles every day after work. Being like this is not that unusual in the modern world and many people of my age really struggle to walk any distance or jump a stream or physically twist. Our bodies atrophy and generally forget how to do these things. I realise I find this frustrating, and retraining simple jumps and twists and so on is something that I enjoy - and I get a lot out of seeing my progress. Some shifting around my training schedule has changed the focus and this has really helped with my engagement, which means I push harder and get a lot more out of it. Of course, training snowballs - when it starts going well it builds on itself. Getting started is often the hardest.

I'm sure many reading this will finding it blindingly obvious, but I have never really understood my own positive triggers when it comes to exercise and maybe recording my thinking here will help someone in my position. As I've said many times before, half of writing this blog is a way for me to arrange my thoughts so I understand myself and any readers are here for the ride...

Plus, it means I get to write about playing badminton again (and winning :-) ).

A few words for World Mental Health Day

Earlier in the week (Tuesday 10th October) was World Mental Health Day. As part of normalising mental health through openly talking about it, at work I posted something of my own experiences on our internal chat board. The reception was extremely positive - people pleased someone spoke out, feeling seen and so on. So - since mental health isn't just about last Tuesday - I'm reproducing a version of that below, albeit with the work-specifics removed.

For World Mental Health Day I wanted to share something personal. Mental health still has a social stigma attached, and while this is improving rapidly even from five years ago there is a long way to go. So, to make my small contribution, I'm going to tell you a little about myself.

I have suffered from depression throughout my adult life. I'm fortunate enough that this has very rarely reached the more intense levels where I can't get out of bed or worse, but I've certainly had ongoing difficulties with anxiety and feelings of emptiness, loss of interest in life in general and feelings of hopelessness, guilt, worthlessness, helplessness and others. Even writing this makes me feel like a fraud, since it's not "proper" depression etc etc...

I know that these feelings go in cycles and I've spent a lot of time identifying my own triggers so I know when I need to take a step back and protect myself before I get into a worse state. I also know that it sometimes sneaks up, and I suddenly find myself in a bad way. It's hard and deeply unpleasant at times.

I'm sharing this mostly because I don't think people talk about mental health openly enough, and World Mental Health Day seems like a good day to put something out there. For some people, I hope to show some solidarity. For others, this will be some small insight into a world that is totally alien to you.

On this blog, sometimes I post about mental health. If you'd like to see what I wrote after taking about a month off you can see that here, and you can see all my posts about mental health here. Obvious disclaimer - I am not a medical professional.

Most important - if you're in a similar position, know you're not alone. There are people who share your experiences and are willing to talk. If anyone would like to talk to me, please feel free to reach out. I'm also quite happy for the "but what's it like" conversation if you'd like to ask that.

At work, I suggested a discussion group and it occurs to me that that might be a useful thought in other contexts - either for people who have different experiences they want to share, or for a wider group to talk. If people think that is a good idea do shout and if enough people are interested I'll see if I can get something set up.

Take care everyone.

A break in the routine

When I started as Director of Engineering at Macmillan, one of my objectives was to build a department which functioned without me. I wanted to be able to pull myself out of the operational day to day, empowering others to own those problems, while I focused on overall direction and wider concerns. This was always an aim rather than a hard goal - similar to the sysadmin end game of a fully automated system, it's something I would like to chase and I think I can get close, but I don't believe I will ever truly achieve.

Over the last year and a bit I've set things up to work this way. I've created core areas of my division, and put someone in charge of each of those spaces. I've empowered them to make decisions and own their successes, and I've carefully worked with each of these leaders to identify and remove weaknesses. There is still a long way to go, but I think we've made a strong start.

Why write about this? Well, I took last week off as leave (booked some time ago) and at the end of the week:

The Boss: How are you doing?

Me: Starting to feel better! After about four days asleep, I finally started to feel human again.

The Boss: Want another week off?

Me: Is this some kind of trap?

It wasn't a trap, so after a quick conversation I decided against looking that gift horse in the mouth and spent half an hour with my assistant going through my diary. The first week off was all planned, so that hadn't been a problem but this second week was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Surely it was going to cause all kinds of problems if I wasn't around?

Nope.

Of the week, there was an hour which absolutely required me and needed rescheduling. Which means ... what? This is the question I've been pondering for a few days. On the one hand, my ground-in desire to be needed and adored took a massive hit. Being basically superfluous is not good for the ego. On the other hand, this is exactly what I've been building towards. The department can survive without me. It can make decisions, move forward, solve problems, etc etc...

We've got a way to go. The wheels most certainly will not stay on the wagon indefinitely and the more forward-planning functions haven't been tested in this short term. Plus, of course, people are covering  some bits of my role and I shouldn't underplay their help. There is still plenty of need for someone in my position to keep things steady and move things forward - I don't think they can make me redundant just yet. However, I'm pretty pleased with the results of this (accidental) test and what it means for changing my day to day when I'm back.

To be clear - I'm not wasting my time. The bits that didn't need rescheduling were parts of the job where I'm providing support or oversight, and direct support for individuals. All this should be done, but I can certainly ask some questions about what happens if I dial it back a bit. That means less oversight, but perhaps we're ready for that? Then I can focus more on the work I'd be doing myself which isn't getting done. However, the nature of the job is such that my work is (supposed to be) much more strategic which naturally has a longer burn. If it's delayed a week, that doesn't create the same kind of problem as operational work stopping. Fortunately, this also means focusing in on the part of the job I particularly enjoy.

So, in summary I am very deliberately in the process of making myself operationally irrelevant and it's time to reboot my focus list. Is this ... is this what success looks like?

Well, I had COVID

It has been a quiet month. Nearly three years after the world first shut down, I finally caught COVID. I'm writing this as a reflection for future-me just in case I ever think about getting it again.

The short version is that I don't recommend it.

The week before was a long, tiring and frequently cold week that ended with some very lovely but early morning / late night festivities. So come Friday, when I was feeling rough and exhausted, I figured that I needed some sleep and relaxation. I even cancelled my Saturday morning exercise so I could sleep in. Good choice since I woke up that Saturday morning with my skin and joints screaming, my head swimming and a bad reaction to the cooler air outside my duvet. That was a bad day, where walking the 10 paces to the kitchen was hard work.

Fortunately, the fever broke overnight and the next day I woke to find I could move more easily, although even with a heavy dose of paracetamol I was barely functional. My COVID tests had all dried up, so I dragged myself out to the local pharmacy for another batch and some flu medication - a 15 minute round trip which utterly wiped me out for the rest of the day. Got that test in and yes - positive. Sigh.

Thus began a week of sleeping and basically going nowhere other than a short walk around the block every few days. Coughing to the point of struggling to breathe, throat pain, photosensitivity and brain fog were the main symptoms along with utter exhaustion - it has been a long time since I've had so little energy. Each day consisted of a few hours awake, mostly spent watching things on Netflix and playing some videogames. Food was less than ideal - eating whatever would stay down did involve a significant increase in pizza and chocolate...

There were some positives. I watched all of Sonic Prime (enjoyable), Dragon Prince series 4 (good after a terrible start), and Wednesday (great atmosphere). I completed all my Christmas shopping (online). And as I got better I also wrote the first pass of an engineering strategy - although I haven't read it back so there is a good chance it is a terrible product of a malfunctioning brain.

It took about a week of being basically incapacitated before anything started to shift. There was a step change in the exhaustion, which stepped from "basically unable to move" up to "short distances are achievable with enough planning" and the coughing improved, although continued. However, the positive tests continued so I remained isolated.

Also, it's worth remembering that getting hold of a doctor to be signed off work is not easy. I called my surgery on the first day I was ill and the first appointment was thirteen days away - notably quite some time after the five days self-certification.

A couple of days into my second week, around 9 days after my first positive test, I had my first negative test. This was a huge relief as it meant I could go and sit in a coffee shop and actually see other humans from a distance. The short walk did, of course, completely exhaust me requiring an extended lie down and a snooze when I got home but it did help me stop going slowly mad. Symptoms continued to improve slowly, but didn't go away. The worst was the brain fog. Living alone and doing very little meant I didn't notice it so much, but any time I spoke to someone I realised that talking in complete sentences was a challenge. I'd frequently start talking and forget what I was going on about.

By the end of the second week I had returned (gently) to remote working. A few hours a day Thursday and Friday were enough to completely exhaust me again, leading to a weekend mostly asleep. The following week of lighter hours was another step better, but still struggling with some photosensitivity, ongoing exhaustion and brain fog. By this point I'm also having complications with fading fitness - three weeks off exercise and eating rubbish is not good in general. More significantly, any kind of illness like this triggers depression in me and the time of year (dark, cold and mostly wet) don't do much to counter it - so in addition to not wanting to get up because ill, I'm also not wanting to get up because depression. Of course I'm also still taking a heavy dose of paracetamol.

I'm really glad that the first week back was the run into Christmas and so quieter than it could have been otherwise. It also means that as I write this I'm holiday so I've been back off work for a few days recovering again. I'm certainly feeling better - my brain is clearing and the rest is very helpful. However, I'm still low on energy and coughing extensively. I'm hoping that next week (in the new year) I'll be well enough to start some proper exercise again and begin the slow rebuild of fitness. Either way I'll be back at work, trying to fight through all the email I missed while off.

Worse than this is the effect on my mental health. Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows I suffer from bouts of depression, and while right now I'm feeling ok I also require very little self-motivation and I'm "ok". I'm worried about myself for when I go back to work and have to push myself again, so I'm going to have to keep a close eye on myself and ensure I'm embracing sources of energy and joy as well as pushing through the energy-sinks and also the ripple effects into other parts of my life, such as maintaining exercise and cooking properly.

I appreciate this hasn't been a very interesting post, but I did want to document how I felt through this. I certainly didn't have the worst COVID, but I did seem to have a nasty dose of the simpler version and I'm not keen to go through this again. So, future-me - stay well.

Give me a task OR a problem

I was speaking to a colleague recently who was feeling very anxious. They were trying to lead a major organisational process - something well within both their job description and individual capability - but they were feeling awful about the whole thing because of a strong sense they were not doing the right thing. We dug into this, and as far as I could see, the problem came from feeling a general expectation they own this problem, while they were also trying to meet their delivery goals in specific ways. So wide responsibility with diminished agency.

When in a position of authority and / or leadership, we need to be constantly alive to the effect of our actions on those around us. When delegating, that means trying to cleanly delegate either a problem OR a series of tasks. Both approaches have their place, but going somewhere in between creates all manner of anxiety.

Delegating a series of tasks means telling someone exactly what you want. You retain the ownership of the problem and tell other(s) what you need in order for you to solve this problem. Importantly, that means you're are retaining responsibility for the end product and various aspects of quality control along the way. No matter how clear your definition of the task (an entirely separate post...), delegates will need to check in to find out if they are doing the right thing. Certainly, you can expect the individual to use their initiative within those tasks - essentially you've delegating a series of micro-problems - but you are retaining responsibility for bringing it all together and need to make sure the person receiving the tasks doesn't feel that responsibility.

This approach is best used for your own direct deliverables, or in short-term scenarios such as "we need to achieve X by next week, so I'm taking direct control of this process". The trade-off here is that you're keeping direct control at the cost of putting more of your own effort into the process. You get to have ongoing input on how something is achieved and retaining the definition of done, at the cost of having to spend your time doing this - something which can be very difficult dependent on your own availability. It withholds agency from those receiving the tasks so the more senior you are, the less you should use this approach as you've presumably appointed clever, able people around you and want to make use of their talents.

The other option is to delegate the problem. In this case, you set out the direction and the parameters for success and let the individual work through it and solve the problem themselves. This approach empowers the individual, giving them an opportunity to stretch themselves and learn. It also frees up your own headspace, because someone else is now handling this problem and you only need to check in with them from time to time to ensure they have the support they need. However, the trade-off here is that you're empowering another at the expense of your own direct control. You don't get to dictate every step of the process, which means you need to accept that they might do things a bit differently to how you'd have done it. Likely, this doesn't matter but it can certainly be difficult to let go. The emphasis on you is to create an environment where the person can flourish and feel confident that (assuming a decent level of communication to keep aligned) you will support them.

I'm labouring this point because it's all too easy to end up taking the middle ground. Trying to put someone in charge of delivering something, expecting them to make the decisions and for it to happen - but expecting it to happen the way you want it, and them to make the specific decisions in your head. Obviously this is impossible - and just as obviously, nobody does this deliberately - but it happens all the time and for the person on the receiving end it creates an environment where it's impossible to perform. If they are any good they want to do a good job, but in this case the definition of "doing a good job" is being hidden. The point here is stunningly obvious, but can cause severe anxiety.

However, this is not just something for the leader to consider. The individual receiving the work should also be aware of their situation and force some clarity. What are the expectations here? If it seems I'm being given tasks can we please talk clear definitions of success, and about regular check-ins? Or can I own this problem, and solve it my own way? In which case, back off please leader and let me do my thing. Especially if this problem is something that my department / job title should own.

When this is decided, both parties needs to work to the chosen paradigm. If it's a task, the leader needs to get the information required to move things forward, but shouldn't expect the delegate to take the lead of the wider problem. If it's a problem, the delegate needs to take proper ownership and not ask so many questions of the leader they are making them do all the thinking. However, the leader needs to support the delegate. Whichever, both parties need to keep sufficient communication to ensure things are progressing the right way, and all parties can work with confidence.

By this point, we're leaning into the territory of our personal relationships with our colleagues and that is a very different post. I've certainly worked with people I can trust to work very much at arms length, and others I've needed to spend more time directly supporting. The same is true of my relationships with The Boss, at different times in my career. Like so many things, confidence (and better mental health!) comes with clarity more than anything else.

Can we actually do sustainable working?

Ok, time for another rambling post about mental health.

Over August I took a week away from work, and I came back feeling so much better. I was away from Bath for a few days, and the change of pace and change of environment was incredibly refreshing. I felt ready to face some of the challenges that only a week before were making me want to hide, and for the first time in ages I didn't feel a sense of gnawing dread at having to face work again.

This is all great, and we all know about the healing power of a break from work - and why it is so important that the break is a proper, clean separation and not just answering emails in a less convenient way. A break always make me feel better, helping me recharge my batteries and replenishing energy to face the next days. However, this time, the change was dramatic enough to remark on it, which doesn't seem right. We talk a lot about sustainable working being an important part of a caring workplace culture but a properly sustainable working life should not really require holidays to recharge. Holidays should be a positive extra, enabling new experiences and life learning, not just a break between work-marathons to collapse and pull oneself together.

I've had seen this fatigue growing in me over the preceding months, and I can see it trying to grow again now I'm back. I am paid to work a certain number of hours a day, and (accepting that my role will require some flex in this) I should be able to enjoy the other hours in the day. However, if I am getting to the end of the day knackered and just looking to crawl onto a sofa and close my eyes that is not giving me any sense of life outside of work (and if it gets worse, it can knock on to bad behaviours like takeaway food replacing cooking, etc). This, for me, is where "sustainable" really kicks in.

Of course work is going to be stressful at times - that is pretty much a given. Also, I am certainly not currently in a strong mental state. I am very definitely still recovering from burnout and this has made me more vulnerable to mental exhaustion and less able to shrug off personal slights that wouldn't have phased me in better days. However, these things are amplifying existing problems, not creating new ones. Things that have been draining me for the last few months would also have done so previously, just less so. 

So what can be done? While I believe in trying to create a sustainable work environment, I also believe that many places of work are more about talk than delivery, and are unwilling to get under the hood of the problems. Often this is because it is the leaders who are talking about better working conditions, while creating the unsustainable environment. Where I am now, the leaders do indeed talk about sustainable working and energy ladders aaaand I'm one of the more senior leaders in my department. Damn. Better do something of that "modelling behaviour" thing.

There are infinite variations on a sustainable working environment, but they must address two core points. First, the number of hours worked. People working long days and weekends are not working sustainably and the obvious question is why is this needed? Are they under pressure from the organisation? I know I do not deliberately push anyone to working antisocial patterns (quite the opposite, actually) but do I create an environment where they have to?

This is a more difficult question. I know I work long hours at times (with no good consequences - see all the above) which sets a bad precedent. I know I need to model the behaviours I want to see from those for whom I have responsibility. I also know they have far too much to do, as do I - I don't work long hours for fun. So the problem is volume of work against capacity? At least partly - and for this we need to aggressively take an axe to the department "to do" list. We've already pledged to do this, and the hardest part will be gathering the information required to enable the conversation properly. This is, of course, more work...

The second point is the activity during those working hours. My current boss likes to talk about energy ladders and energy drains (disappointingly, not energy snakes). To put it another way - things that make us interested / excited / give us an energy boost vs things that sap our will to live. There will always be things to do on both sides, but the balance is very important. For me, I'm realising that my balance has been horribly off for quite some time. I'm also finding that things I've previously found ok are more draining at the moment.

So I need to cut back on the things that make me miserable, whilst maximising the happy. Fortunately, my job is supposed to be all about strategy and future horizon scanning. I enjoy this. Unfortunately, we've been mired in tactical decisions and putting in the foundations to enable The Future. I usually don't mind this, but at the moment a typical working day is emails, then unbroken meetings for 6 hours, then more emails asking why I haven't answered the first emails. No matter how interesting the meetings (and some are great ... some) I find remote meetings exhausting and full days of the things are lethal. I can feel this affecting me. So I've decided to make some changes. I've blocked out a lot of my diary to get things done. Now people are complaining they can't get hold of me, but it's better than complaining I haven't done something.

So will this help? Can I make my own working life sustainable, let alone help anyone else? That remains to be seen, but I am sure that pushing away from "survivable" is the right thing to do.

Can we design a department to promote mental wellbeing?

Important - this is a brain dump of thoughts and ideas, and I am in no way a doctor or any other kind of medical professional.

I wrote last month about feeling extremely rough. I downplayed my experiences for the sake of a more readable post, but eagle-eyed readers of that post will have noticed that they are symptoms of clinical depression. Over the last month I've added a few (sleeplessness being an exciting new dimension) and I've started reading a rather good book on the subject by Dr Tim Cantopher. In this, Dr Cantopher talks about the current (published 2012) medical understanding of clinical depression, how it is a physical illness and what that means, and various treatment and preventative approaches.

The model he describes is the limbic system, responsible for a whole variety of functions including emotions, acts as a kind of fuse and like any fuse it is designed to blow when put under undue stress. This can cause all manner of conditions, one of which is depression. The reason it blows is usually cumulative and the actual trigger may be quite innocuous but when one reaches that point, it's game over for a while and proper rest and recovery is needed to reset the fuse.

Now, my lived experiences resonate strongly with this description. The book goes into a load of different pathways to this point, many of which are quite heartbreaking. I'm not going into any details here as (highlighting again) I'm not an expert and I don't think anyone would thank me for attempting to rewrite someone else's book. But it did get me thinking, and that at long last brings us to the point of this post.

The foundations for depressive illness are often laid in childhood, but there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong in adult life. Things which can be significantly unhelpful include unreasonable expectations thrust upon us, little to know praise, learning helplessness from erratic responses from authority figures, general erosion of one's sense of self-worth and value... The list goes on but many of these look to me like things that come up in any good management training. 

So where does this thinking go? Clearly, management has a huge role to play in the welfare of their staff. This is hardly insightful. But this responsibility cannot be discharged via a checklist of task. Performance development plan? Check. Conversation about the future? Check. Asked how they are? Check. Useful things to do, but without the empathy that should be driving them they are worthless.

A good manager can, in the work context, with very little effort provide for the psychological welfare of their reports. Or at the very least, they can avoid the pitfalls. Stepping back, a positive workplace culture can create an environment where people can perform without being put under stress and have the safety to take a step back when they need to. This is all common knowledge and hard enough to get right. But can we go further? 

When designing an organisation structure and layout, one looks at the needs of the organisation and optimises accordingly, weighing against the inevitable compromises. If the important thing is the processing of payments, then that part of the org design is optimised and that improvement may come at the cost of, say, making recruitment slightly harder. To do this, one can look at the way information and tasks flow around the department and where the bottlenecks and other pain points are. Now, what would a department which is optimised for psychological welfare look like? Or even, an org which is designed with staff welfare as one of several priorities? If the department itself is designed to promote a positive experience, eliminating uncertainty and providing ingrained ways for the staff to be empowered (note, not just FEEL empowered), what difference would that make - especially when a strong culture and individual management practice is layered on top?

My answer for the moment is that I don't know, but I want to find out. Staff welfare and staff satisfaction are particularly hot topics at the moment and with everyone feeling the burn of the last eighteen months that is right and proper. The NHS and other experts have been concerned for a time that the next public health crisis will be around mental health as a result of COVID. It would be nice to not be part of the cause of that. It seems to me that there is a something to explore, which could vastly improve the work experience for the people senior leaders are supposed to represent, support and (in some ways) protect. If I get the chance, I would one day like to see what is possible here.

If you're interested in the book, it can be found on Amazon here.

After ... erm ... 65 weeks?

Another month has gone, and I have nothing to say. This is just a collection of thoughts to capture how I'm feeling for myself and on the off-chance someone else relates and finds it useful. And partly because I've written a monthly post since Jan 2016 and I'll be damned if this is where it ends.

The wheels finally came off this month. After 65 weeks of trying to stay positive, push ahead, work through the problems, yadda yada, I think I've reached the point where I just don't care any more. The sun has come out, but it has rapidly become so hot I don't want to go outside. I have no interest in the day to day. I haven't really even taken any photographs this month. Weirdly, I think I feel worse now things are starting to open up than when everything was locked away as I should be excited about X and Y, but I don't know what those things are. I don't actually want to go outside, or see people now that I'm able to do so and I'm in a loop of waiting for lockdown to end, but also questioning why and what is on the other side. I feel deeply hollow and without purpose and I'm showing a lot of symptoms of burnout (not to mention depression). But this whole process is about maintaining optimism, so I need to think about what I am going to do, instead of focusing on the holes in my life.

There are some positives. After a block of time off, I've started writing again - both code and tabletop games. Having the energy, ideas and general interest to put pen to paper is quite a thing these days. I haven't written much as yet, but I take some solace that I'm writing at all - it's a good sign that I'm starting to spiral in a better direction.

At work, I've got things in place to re-energise myself. I've found a small project that can easily be delivered and will have a significant impact, so if I can get that out the door the small sense of accomplishment should help. I also need to kick-start some learning so I've bought a couple of books about strategy to read, which I hope will get the brain working again.

Exercise is slowly coming together too. I can return to the badminton court and, while it will be horrendous the first few times, that competitive element will really help me run around and supplement the HiiT class (which is starting to become two classes). I can already feel some benefit from the increased exercise, both with fitness and improved recovery times, and hopefully this will now accelerate.

I'm also cooking a lot more. My diet has radically improved over the last six months, and I'm recovering my skill in the kitchen (which has atrophied for much longer than COVID, sadly). Now I need to tweak it again to make it healthier, while also maintaining the interest. I think I'm going to game my calorie intake with MyFitnessPal again and see what I can achieve in July. Maybe I'll write about this next month?

Is that enough? I am not sure. It doesn't seem like a fulfilling life, but on the other hand it is much better than nothing. There are gaps I really need to fill, but there are lots of big changes in the works and these really need to play out to reset the framework of what I'm doing before I start putting new things around it. This is part of the current problem - the being stuck in limbo.

Not sure any of this helps me, but having written it down I can at least identify one of the core problems - impatience. It's not that nothing is happening, everything is awful, oh woe. It is that the changes are taking time and I am much better at dealing with problems than waiting for them to resolve themselves. Recognising that definitely helps me face it.

So - objectives this month: 

• Improve diet and track calories again
• Take more photos
• Do something worth writing about

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This post is from a series of shorter posts, written roughly once a week while the country is on lockdown to capture my feelings and reactions as we go. They are all tagged with coronavirus.

After thirty four weeks

It has now been around thirty four weeks of lockdown and the pandemic. After a period of the country beginning to open up, the rising number of cases and the increase in the R number has forced a return of a full England-wide lockdown.

To state the blindingly obvious, this has been a very difficult year and despite some signs that maybe the world is getting better (not least some promising news about a COVID-19 vaccine) a dip back into full lockdown, while undoubtedly the right thing to do, is a very hard pill to swallow. I deliberately stopped writing these weekly posts because, frankly, I ran out of ways to say “this week I worked hard and spent some time walking in the dark” but after a break I think I need to collect my thoughts on how I’m going to work through the next few weeks.

For me, the approaching winter combined with the loss of places to gather (ie coffee shops) means hugely increased isolation. I can no longer go somewhere to be around humans, which, as someone living alone, is very important to generate that low-level social contact. It also means I can no longer go places to do things. Outside of work, I normally take myself out of my flat to write (words or code) to put myself in a different environment which helps me think and focus. Now everything I do, whether it’s work or sleep or work or relax or write or work is all in these four walls and it makes it very hard to compartmentalise each area. That is making it hard to shut off work (especially at the end of the day), or “get things done” at the weekend.

So, with that recognised, what am I doing?

Firstly, running on low power, I’m going to make sure I set myself appropriately straightforward goals. I’m going to keep todo lists, but make them very achievable which should help motivate me to do them and give me small feelings of satisfaction if I do. I’m going to aim to do less, but aim to do it well.

Secondly, I’m going to make more of an effort to put things in my diary. Generally, I prefer a slightly more ad hoc approach to life since in work my time is dictated by the tyranny of my diary. However at the moment I think I need specific things to look forward to, and specific commitments to motivate me to get moving.

Thirdly, I’m going to pick up a new(ish) hobby. While people have been learning languages and so on, I don’t have the mental capacity to take on something completely new. However I’ve been doing a lot of photography over the years and I’ve found myself taking many pictures of the architecture here in Bath in the dark. I think I’m going to focus on this through lockdown and write a post about the pictures towards the end. It’s a mini-project that will give me some focus.

Fourthly, I need to contain my working hours. There is a lot going on at work at the moment and given my “office” is a few paces from where I’m sitting right now, it’s far too easy to still be sorting out that last thing at 8pm every night. Then a walk, then food, then the evening is more or less done. Done continuously, this way of working has a significant negative impact on those around me and it is very unhealthy for me too. So I’m doing what I can to make sure I am done by at the latest 18.30 every day. That is still a long day against my contracted hours, but it’s a positive step towards putting work in a sensible box.

So that’s four concrete steps I am going to take through lockdown 2. Let’s see how it goes.

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This post is from a series of shorter posts, written roughly once a week while the country is on lockdown to capture my feelings and reactions as we go. They are all tagged with coronavirus.

After seventeen weeks

It has been seventeen weeks of lockdown. I’ve taken a few weeks off writing these posts because, frankly, I lost all enthusiasm. Lockdown has been a long, dark time and that’s before getting to the things that have happened during this time and I took a bit of time to work through how I’m feeling.

The answer is: rough.

I’ve been staring at the same four walls for seventeen long weeks. In that time, I’ve had almost no human contact outside of the supermarket and phone calls. I’m a solitary person most of the time anyway, but that is by choice. This enforced isolation has eroded my patience and sanity and I’m definitely ready for a change.

More significant though is the way life is on pause. I, like many others, have had an enforced change of pace and life patterns and that has caused me to reflect on what I do with my time and what I want to be doing. Where I’m spending my time and energy and where long-term change is needed. I’ve come up with a lot of ideas for things to change, and I’m ready to do them, but I’m just not allowed. That was a problem for a while, but now my patience has snapped and I’m getting increasingly twitchy.

There are lots of factors contributing to how I feel which I can’t write about here, but the upshot is I’m finding myself pacing like a caged lion.

However. However. All times pass. This lockdown is easing (as I write this I’m in a coffee shop - something I’ve missed more than I realised over the last nearly 4 months) and things are going to change again. I’ve made some life choices, I face some new challenges, and while some parts of my life are still a long way from where I want them, finally I’m starting to feel something I’ve not felt in a long while. Hope.

Time to face life properly again.

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This post is from a series of shorter posts, written roughly once a week while the country is on lockdown to capture my feelings and reactions as we go. They are all tagged with coronavirus.

After seven weeks

Seven weeks down, more to go and I’m struggling to write anything this week.

Everyone is having a difficult time during lockdown. Some folk are carrying problems in their life. Some are trying to keep sane in a small space with children climbing over them. Some are entirely alone. There are people who have it much, much worse than any of this.

It feels churlish for me to complain. I have too much to do for sure. But I'm not in financial difficulty. I'm physically healthy. I’m in no more physical danger than the majority of people. However, this week has been the week things have hit me pretty hard.

I didn't come into the lockdown period fresh. I was exhausted - counting the things I needed to do before I could take a proper holiday from work. Get some time back and spend some time breathing. During this time I've been on the front line, working through all manner of things to do my job effectively and that has included long hours and weekends without break. I'm far from the heaviest affected but that doesn’t mean all is well or anything is sustainable. I'm certainly not getting a rest.

I'm keeping this short this week. I was going to talk about ethics in modern software engineering, but I don't think I can face it at the moment. I'm going to be a bit kinder to myself today and take some time doing the things I want to do because I need to give myself some space right now. No clever insights or anything, but that's not the point of these posts at the moment. This is a weekly(ish) diary of my experiences during the coronavirus and the UK lockdown. This week I am low.

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This post is from a series of shorter posts, written roughly once a week while the country is on lockdown to capture my feelings and reactions as we go. They are all tagged with coronavirus.

Turn the year off and on again?

A month ago I wrote a post about time vanishing and it suddenly being the end of the month. I decided I was going to do things differently and looked forward to the rest of 2020. How has that worked out?

Well, I find myself writing the same post but this time a week BEFORE the end of the month. I'm not sure this is real progress but since I don't have a lot to write about again, perhaps it's time to unpick this differently. Am I solving the right problem?

My question here is: why don't I have anything to write about? Last month I focused on prioritisation to lessen my cognitive load. That was actually quite successful. Beyond what I wrote, I have addressed some real sources of worry and anxiety and reset some relationships (mostly at work) which have helped clear my head. I'm feeling less anxious than a month ago, which is a real blessing, and I intend to continue this for the next month. This has and will continue to help.

However that still leaves me approaching the end of the month on the back foot with nothing to write about. My posts are normally about something I've been turning over in my mind, some interesting challenge or something I've experienced or learned during the month and often I've got them mostly written in my head before I sit down to write anything. So while I'm feeling better, and while I've done a few more things this month, I still haven't cleared enough headspace to be able to think ahead and around anything. Given my job is strategic in nature, this is ... suboptimal.

One thing I have learnt over the years is that "clearing headspace" doesn't necessarily mean "doing less". Anxiety seems to be like a gas - it will expand to fill the available space. For me, that often means that rather than doing less and less until I feel better (which has a habit of triggering mild depression, especially when I can't actually clear enough - yay thanks brain) I instead need to use something positive as a focus to drive out the worry.

Lent is coming (already?!) and that is a time to change habits - either by giving up things, or adding something positive. In unrelated news, while I've been writing this I've also been doing some light development work and really enjoying it. Hmm. I seem to remember that working through a neatly atomised project with clearly defined goals has helped me in the past...

Rebooting the year

It's the start of a new year and I find myself on the back foot already. After a 2019 which can only be described as "a year that happened" I was hoping to launch into 2020 full of excitement and wonder with new hobbies and ... well, basically more fun.

Then I got the flu. Which always triggers depression in me.

Then I got back to work and had to catch up after having the flu while still getting through the depression cycle.

And now it's the last days of January and honestly I have no idea where the time has gone. I've just finished uploading the pictures from December to my Year in Pictures site, which is normally done mid-month. I've got a list as long as my arm of pretty basic things I needed to do this month and I seem to be running around attempting to get anything (let alone everything) done.

I could complain about this, but I think there is a more interesting question - what am I going to do about it? How do I get back on top of "stuff" without just pseudo-working through the weekend, and undoing the point of rest time?

Getting in front means working through my list and being in a better position to do / react / ignore as I choose. So, I suppose the question really is "how do I accelerate through this list?" Ok, this is a prioritisation question. I can do this.

First off, email. I find that since my working life has become all about managing my email inbox I have become very poor at my personal inbox. I can blitz this quickly though - mostly by deleting all the rubbish sent to me by LinkedIn and then raising the threshold required for a response from "probably should" to "must" and binning the rest. Coffee, typing, and it's down from about 40 to 9 which immediately makes me feel much much better. I practice inbox zero - poorly - and this is one of those little things that gives me a small boost. I really need to delete more email in the future.

With email dealt with, I've got a long list of actual Things that need doing ... or do they? I could take meter readings for gas and electricity, but the world will turn if I don't. I can ignore an estimated reading this month and correct next month. What else can I ignore? I need to vacuum, but honestly the world will keep turning if I skip this one... Most social engagements are not that interesting... Anything else that is not utterly essential can also go...

There is so much basic tedious admin generated by life that I find it too easy to get buried in the detail and forget what's important. For me, before the end of the month, it is important that I sort the pictures (done) and write a blog post (nearly over, don't worry). These matter to me and so are now sorted. I need to fill in an application form (nearly done after a REALLY boring afternoon). Everything else outside of work can take a distant backseat.

So the tedious answer to the tedious question is apparently simple. Delete everything. I'm rebooting the year.

But, after a rather dismal start to the year, I think it's important to look forward. This year I've got a new outlet for writing. I'm helping out gamesmastering on a MUD and it's the first time in a long while I've been genuinely excited by a new hobby. Part of my frustration right now is that I've got other stuff to churn through when I want to be getting on with that. More on this another month, I'm sure.

Welcome to 2020.

Failing to relax

This is going to be a brain dump and may not have an actual point. You have been warned.

I've just had a week off work. Time to relax, recharge and reset. Only ... it hasn't worked. My normal pattern for time off is a few days doing very little, then I'm ready to re-engage with the world around me and I get a few days doing some kind of chunky project. This time, it took until Thursday before I managed to think about dragging myself back into the real world and I found myself wishing my week off was starting at the end of the week.

At the same time, the various activities I use to enthuse myself haven't worked either. I can't write, as the two main outputs for my writing are this blog and RPGs. This blog is increasingly (and deliberately) distilling my thinking and learning from the office which is very useful in general, but not something I want to be writing when I'm supposed to be disconnected from work.

My life in roleplaying games at the moment is largely dead, thanks to weird work / life patterns so there isn't much scope for writing there. Even when I do get into a game, I find myself wanting to hide at the back more than I used to. I don't fancy playing a character making significant decisions that can affect large groups of people when that is literally my day job these days.

I can turn to coding. Unfortunately, I'm between projects at the moment and starting a new one is much less fun than writing some code to fix specific problems. Anyway, writing code is hardly the best way to avoid thinking of work - last time I picked anything up, I spent my time looking at testing infrastructure and different ways of populating test data.

This leaves me in a difficult position. There is a hard question about what I actually do to relax. But more importantly, I think I need to ask some very pointed questions about why it is so hard in the first place. Why does it take a whole week away from work before I feel like I've actually left? Am I really saying that I should only take holiday in two week blocks? That doesn't seem healthy - if true, it feels like work is taking far too much out of me on an ongoing basis. So what do I do about that? What CAN I do about that? Wouldn't it be great if I had an answer to that question?

Still, I got a blog post out of it...

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This post is the fourth of five written in NaBloPoMo - the National Blogpost Month which, yes, is a thing. My plan is to write one post a weekend for the month of November. Due to some amazing planning, that means I have to write five posts rather than the four you might immediately expect. These posts will be a bit shorter than normal most likely and all of the posts will be tagged with (sigh) NaBloPoMo2019.

Growing is intimidating

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Not exactly the most original question in the world, but I've found it a very important one in my career. Moving to GDS and London were very big, very frightening steps for me. Later, my manager and mentor left the organisation and I had to step into his shoes - another huge and terrifying step which plunged me into a very different working environment. Then later again, my role was reassessed and deemed a Senior Civil Servant role - and the game changed again.

This came to mind recently when I was talking about next steps with a friend. We were discussing a job that, on first look, was huge and terrifying. As we talked, we broke the problem down and it became a lot less frightening and started to look distinctly manageable. The scary part remaining was the change in scope and perspective.

On reflection, this is also true of many of the earlier changes I faced in my professional life. It wasn't so much the change in circumstances that scared me, it was the required shift in the scope and therefore the potential risks from failure. Moving to GDS, suddenly I had to think about the wide development needs of all of GOV.UK - the website which provides information from the government to the nation. Then, becoming Head of Software Engineering, I expanded that to other corners of GDS as well as accepting responsibility for the careers and development of every technologist working there. Now that is all still true, but I'm also involved in the future shape and function of the whole Cabinet Office and my role has influence much wider than that.

Each time, considering the problem has been much more frightening than actually dealing with it. Each problem has turned out to be a collection of smaller, and distinctly more manageable problems but with a shift in breadth which has made them look far more difficult.

It's not been easy, for sure. I've had to learn new skills and new approaches (especially around dealing with ambiguity), but that is hard work and not in itself something I find overly scary. I've had to learn to allow myself the space for the mental reset to deal with the new context - definitely something I have messed up more than once, with unhelpful side effects.

There is a world of difference between "terrifying" and "hard work" though. The latter is something to get through. The former can be a hard block to something new and interesting. Certainly, forcing myself (or being forced...) to work through it has utterly changed my life and "what would you do if you weren't afraid?" now sits alongside "ask and answer the obvious question" and "what would make you happy from your next five years?" as trite, but very important questions at the heart of how I think about working life.

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This post is the first of five written in NaBloPoMo - the National Blogpost Month which, yes, is a thing. My plan is to write one post a weekend for the month of November. Due to some amazing planning, that means I have to write five posts rather than the four you might immediately expect. These posts will be a bit shorter than normal most likely and all of the posts will be tagged with (sigh) NaBloPoMo2019.

Mental health checkin

Back in January 2018, I wrote a post about recovering from some pretty bad experiences. Nearly two years on it's time to check in, celebrate success and declare myself completely ok again. Because that's how mental health works, right?

Yeah, I'm fine. No problems here.

Reading back, I'm reminded that two of the most powerful things I did back then were to set my sights on some things that made me happy (partly by identifying some of the things that didn't) and create positive feedback loops around them. I was getting back into the habit of creating things and achieving some of my goals. I was starting to lose some weight and work at my fitness. Now in the future I have to take a hard look at myself and see which areas have worked, which haven't and which are at risk of backsliding. Then I can set some more targets and attempt to achieve them.

Why am I writing a post about this? Well, as I've written about before, writing helps me arrange thoughts into something logical and practical. It's like rubber ducking, but with a keyboard. It also puts out a public declaration of intent. While nobody will ever hold me to these, it helps me focus my mind by declaring a definition of done. It's possibly a negative experience to force myself to do something because I've committed to unnamed Other but it does work as a motivation, so it'll have to do at the moment.

On the health front, I managed to lose a huge chunk of weight (hurrah!) then I put an annoying amount of it back on (sigh) which has resulted in much unhappiness. On the plus side, I am significantly healthier than I was at the start, so this isn't a yoyo situation because my yos are different sizes. However, emotionally this journey is a total failure. I'm going to have to adjust my diet and eating patterns again, and mess with my exercise routine. This is something I (like many others) find very rough and the key needs to be finding some exercise I really enjoy and want to really commit myself. And lo, time problems.

Speaking of time, I built up some bits of hobbies (primarily coding and game writing) which worked well. More recently, however, I've been finding that I haven't had time to code and I've not been impressed with the quality of my own writing. Some of this is a lack of energy and I place a significant amount of the reason for this on work. My job changed again and settling into the new role has, for a variety of reasons, taken a toll on me. If I'm going to keep doing it, there needs to be some changes. I need to be more rigorous about leaving at a sensible time each day, and I need to find ways of experiencing positivity as well as crushing waves of negativity.

I've also got other hobby-related problems to sort out. They are supposed to be fun, so I need to recapture the enjoyment. I'm not going to go into specifics, but most of the things I used to enjoy have slowly turned into a grinding chore and I need to find a way of fixing that or put an end to them before they become yet another drain of energy.

This is all very negative. Before, I found positive experiences and amplified their effects as well as shut down some negative behaviour. At the moment, everything in my head is about fixing sources of unhappiness, which means lots of DON'Ts. Almost nobody finds that approach motivating or uplifting. I am struggling to turn this around as so much of my time is rammed full of draining activities, adding something positive just feels like a chore.

The point of writing these posts is to take a step back and really think about what is going on. This time, it is all about managing my time - and I think it's important that it's not about optimising my time. I can't just cram more in, I need to get much much better at creating time. That way I can "waste" more time on activities I enjoy, while still keeping up the useful things that I do. I have found that simply having spare time - time not pre-allocated - is something that makes me happy.

I wonder if Hermione can lend me her time-turner?

Timesheets make me angry

I have a strong hatred of timesheets. I had to fill them in early in my career and every time the organisation increased the importance of these things, I found myself getting more miserable and also working fewer hours. While I chase others off home at a sensible time, I am for myself a "get it done" person at work. However when it was in black and white, I wasn't going to stick around.

For me, timesheets are an invisible eye watching all the time. They are a piece of bureaucracy that adds nothing other than a sense of unease. No place I've worked has been short changed by my hours and counting them places value in the wrong part of the job. I like to think the work I deliver is why I'm paid, not the time spent sitting at a desk? Timesheets also emphasise the power dynamics of "minion" and "management" when the manager either doesn't timesheet or effectively signs their own one.

Looking back, this has impacted my mental health over the years without me realising it - and this is without ever working in an environment which actually cares about them. I don't recall ever having a conversation with my line managers about the contents of my timesheets. I can only imagine what it would have been like if they were reviewed "properly" as they certainly are in some places.

So at one point, many years ago, I just stopped. I could have written a script to keep filling the things in, of course, but I prefer to tackle this kind of thing head-on so I informed my manager I wasn't going to do it any more. I expected at least a discussion and maybe an argument. He just shrugged. I was surprised at the sense of release I felt getting rid of the creeping anxiety and cognitive load associated with The Organisation looking over my shoulder - so surprised, I'm still thinking about it a decade later.

So why am I writing about these things now? This was one of the events I keep reflecting on in my current role. There are significant human (and specifically dehumanising) costs to process and as managers we owe it to those we look after to keep those processes as light and relevant as possible. There are things we have to do, but let's keep it minimal and that includes stopping unnecessary processes.

I was also thinking about this in the context of the increasing push against productivity culture. There is a trend in the modern world to make every second count, to optimise your life patterns and be the best you. This has the same effect - the constant sense of being watched and judged - and is not healthy. I want to be able to enjoy my spare time without worrying that spending the afternoon playing videogames means I haven't learnt a new programming language, or read that paper about emergent techniques in machine learning. My friend Iris has written a rather good post about how productivity culture brings misery, which I recommend reading.

Reading this back, I think I've finally understood why I so dislike timesheets. They are a control over people, not projects - a way to directly turn a human into a pile of money. They are also a way to stoke paranoia through being watched (there is a reason the right to privacy is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - and yes, I know that it doesn't technically apply here) and strongly suggest one isn't trusted. Even when I'm not actually being watched, they push me towards feeling I should be "on". However you look at it, monitoring time hour by hour just isn't healthy and has significant impacts beyond simply filling in a box on a spreadsheet.