From 598fbf198b1a69a00ae9c5f0ac091ffdd2946533 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Craig Maloney Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2018 08:58:42 -0500 Subject: [PATCH] More editing --- chapter07.md | 10 ++++------ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/chapter07.md b/chapter07.md index e181d2d..3b9bddf 100644 --- a/chapter07.md +++ b/chapter07.md @@ -86,17 +86,15 @@ Think of this practice as emotional triage. Hopefully you've never had to go to The more we do this practice the better we'll become at recognizing our emotions and why we're having them. We'll be better able to see what we're feeling and understand why we're feeling them. When we feel anxious we can recognize that we might be in an area of development where we don't fully know what we're doing. We can then feel the anxiety for a bit (don't try to chase it away just yet) and then think about what we're currently working on and the areas that might be new to us. We can then mentally note them, or (better still) write them down or journal them so when we complete what we're doing we can review the areas that caused us anxiety. -### FIXME - -With this practice we can turn our emotions from something that drives us into something that guides us. We can use our emotions as a tool to better calibrate our internal stories. We can stop telling ourselves stories that we're going to be amazing programmers who generate enormous amounts of production-ready, bug-free, readable code (which is not only fiction, but borders on the realms of legend and myth). We can instead say that we're going to spend the next 10 minutes exploring this area of our work and see where the gaps are in there. As we explore our emotions and anxiety can let us know where we feel we need to improve and adapt. We can then change our plans as needed to address those areas we feel are lacking or need improvement. +With this practice we can turn our emotions from something that drives us into something that guides us. We can use our emotions as a tool to better calibrate our internal stories. We can stop telling ourselves stories that we're going to be amazing programmers who generate enormous amounts of production-ready, bug-free, readable code (which is not only fiction, but borders on the realms of legend and myth). We can instead tell ourselves that we're going to spend the next 10 minutes exploring this area of our work and see where the gaps are. We can be curious about where this next 10 minutes will lead us. As we continue to explore we can notice our emotions and anxiety. We can then use our emotions and anxiety to let us know where we feel we need to improve and adapt. This will allow us to change our plans as needed and address those areas we feel are lacking or need improvement. This cycle continues with each practice container, with our emotions acting as a barometer for our comfort level with this topic, and a road-map for how best to proceed. We turn our discomfort and anxiety into indicators of where we feel we need to focus our attention. ## Burnout -One thing that our emotional triage can help us diagnose is feeling burned out. Burnout is a collection of emotions coupled with emotional and physical exhaustion. +### FIXME -Burnout can manifest itself in different ways. For some it may be the feeling of dread for working on a project. They feel like they are ineffectual in making any changes. For others burnout can be feelings of exhaustion. They feel as though they're on a treadmill that just will not stop and they wanted to stop a long time ago. Burnout can also manifest in feeling creatively drained, where imagining a different future is difficult and nothing that you do is interesting. +One thing that our emotional triage can help us diagnose is feeling burned out. Burnout is a collection of emotions coupled with emotional and physical exhaustion. Burnout can be something as simple as boredom or being overworked but it can also be the sign of something more serious. Burnout can lead to physical complications if we're not careful. We can work ourselves into serious levels of exhaustion and delude ourselves into thinking it's part of the price we have to pay as programmers. -Burnout can be something as simple as boredom or being overworked but it can also be the sign of something more serious. Burnout can lead to physical complications if we're not careful. We can work ourselves to exhaustion and think that's just part of the price we have to pay as programmers. +Burnout can manifest itself in different ways. For some it may be the feeling of dread for working on a project. They feel like they are ineffectual in making any changes. For others burnout can be feelings of exhaustion. They feel as though they're on a treadmill that just will not stop and they wanted to stop a long time ago. Burnout can also manifest in feeling creatively drained, where imagining a different future is difficult and nothing that you do is interesting. Burnout is tricky to self-diagnose because it is a collection of seemingly unrelated emotions. Our feelings of boredom, fear, exhaustion, and anxiety can all have different root causes, but when we couple them together with unrelenting working schedules we amplify them. Left unchecked and unexamined we can lead ourselves into places where we don't want to program anymore. We can cause ourselves more undue suffering by just "powering through it" which can lead us to compound our emotional state. -- 2.31.1