foreign
[Music]
this morning the reason we're all here
um we've had a few technical issues with
this too um jono bacon is a leading
community and collaboration speaker
author and podcaster
he is the founder of jono bacon
consulting and provides community
strategy and execution workflow and
other services
he previously served as director of
community at github canonical xprize and
open advantage
now
the problems we've had is that john is
stuck in a hotel with sketchy wi-fi so
he'll be playing we'll be playing a
pre-recorded session
of his talk however with luck we have
him here now to um just say hi
and um we'll be going on to your keynote
shortly which is titled the conflict and
burnout survival guide handling when
things go wrong how you doing this
morning
oh pretty good i was i was really
tempted to just kind of like do this
kind of like
just pretend my mic's not working just
to screw with you all but so that would
be me
but this morning
wouldn't feel it
all right so we might we
start the video now if we can and we'll
come back um in you know 40-ish 45
minutes
thanks a lot
hello my friends and thank you for
joining me today for my session here at
lca i'm so stoked to be here lca is one
of my favorite conferences on the planet
um i've had the good fortune to go to
two of them in person and of course here
we are virtually um but thank you so
much to the lca team for inviting me to
come and do a keynote they're such a
wonderful team and they really work hard
to put on a great event so make sure you
give them all a big fist bump um as you
go through the rest of the event all
right
now uh if you're wondering who on earth
i am my name is john and bacon i've been
around open source since 1998 i used to
lead community for the ubuntu project uh
when i was at canonical and i've also
led community for github and xprize and
these days i'm a consultant i work with
lots and lots of different companies to
help them build really engaging and
productive communities okay now when the
lca team reached out and they said what
do you want to speak about um i wanted
to talk about a topic that's near and
dear to my heart and that is how to deal
with the underbelly of human
collaboration right how to deal with
conflict resolution how to deal with um
burnout and crises okay so what i'm
going to be covering in today's session
are some really practical things that
you can put into practice when you have
to deal with a crisis when you have to
deal with conflict resolution or when
you or somebody else may be burning out
so let's dig right in
all right now before i go on i want to
make sure something very very clear okay
because i'm going to be touching on some
elements of human psychology especially
when i talk about burnout a little bit
later on and i want to make it very
clear that i am not a doctor okay uh
don't take advice on on on health
matters and mental health matters from a
dude on the internet okay go and talk to
a medical professional if you do need to
speak to them um
some elements of burnout can get kind of
dangerous and
there's no shame there's no
embarrassment in going and talking to
you talking to your doctor and saying i
need some help i need some guidance all
right so i just wanted to get that
caveat out there
now when we think about these more
challenging elements of communities um
um i like to think of it as kind of
the pyramid of suck
is what i'd probably call it i just
named it there on the spot
and i break it down into three layers
and the the size of each layer reflects
how much it tends to impact us right so
at the top of the pyramid we've got
crisis management that's when something
disastrous happens maybe downtime or
there's a big security vulnerability or
there's a big interpersonal issue inside
of a community um it doesn't happen all
that often but it can be terrifying when
it does happen the middle layer is
conflict resolution this is when we uh
when two people don't get on when
there's personality conflicts or
differences in opinion or creative
disagreements um that definitely impacts
more people but then what impacts a lot
more people the stress and burnout in
fact stress and burnout will impact
everybody at some point it's not a
matter of if it's a matter of when okay
so i'm gonna go through each of these
three different layers and provide some
really practical recommendations as i go
through it okay one thing you want to
make very clear is that this session
session that you're watching right now
as i'm talking to you is pre-recorded
just so we can avoid any networking
issues because uh while this event is on
i uh at the last minute had to make a
trip um to tahoe and the there's all
kinds of challenges we're staying in a
hotel with internet uh you know the
quality of your bandwidth in a hotel and
all kinds of things so i'm recording
this bit but when i finish my session uh
my presentation here i am going to be
available online to answer your
questions all right so make sure you get
your questions in and i'll try and
answer them as we're going through it
okay so as i'm going through the session
get your questions in and i will answer
them in the chat all right all right
let's get back to it so
let's start out with with uh crisis
management so how do we deal with a
crisis so let's assume for the sake of
argument that you're you've got an open
source project and let's say there's a
big security vulnerability a log 4j type
situation how do you deal with that well
this can be
terrifying when these moments happen
there you know all eyes are on you and
it can be embarrassing and it can cause
all kinds of anxiety a lot of people
when that when this happens they tend to
just kind of clam up and they don't know
how to deal with it okay the first thing
we need to do when we deal with any kind
of crisis
is to be humble okay is to accept that
we don't have all the answers human
beings are fallible
and what we need to do is to figure out
what's going on and to rectify it as
quickly and as easily as possible okay
all too often what happens when the
crisis goes down is that um
is that let's say a company a crisis
impacts a company what they do is they
lock off all forms of communication they
tell their pr team to tell journalists
to go away they try to rectify the
crisis and then they publish some kind
of groveling apology on their blog
afterwards and it's not a particularly
great way of managing things
a great way of managing things
was was epitomized by gitlab so one
thing that happens a number of years ago
gitlab they had an issue where one of
their engineers fat fingered an update
and basically um their service went down
and they went through multiple backups
to try and rectify and all the backups
were failing it was a real issue instead
of get lab battening down the hatches
what they did instead was they
kickstarted a live google doc
um where they were debugging what was
going on they had a live youtube stream
they included their community in trying
to rectify and resolve the situation
especially when they were trying to
figure out what's going on and it was
incredibly refreshing and what actually
resulted in was hashtags on twitter
where people were like hugs forget lab
because it was so nice that they were
inclusive in how and how they were
dealing with this okay awesome and
credit where credit's due to gitlab so
when you're thinking about managing a
crisis situation these are the steps i'd
recommend you go through and hopefully
you don't have to do this very often
hopefully you can avoid these kinds of
crises but the first step is to stop the
rot okay and that is if there's
something going on if there's let's say
you've got a um
a piece of software in in a project
that's let's say in a in a deployment
that isn't working or let's say there's
a module in in an open source project
that's having some issues the first
thing you need to do is to try and stop
it as much as possible now this is going
to vary in different situations if
there's a security vulnerability you
know you can't roll that security
vulnerability out immediately right but
if you've got a problem with a piece of
infrastructure that's that's you know
erroring for example taking the
infrastructure down to fix it is a good
way of stopping the rot okay
the second thing you're going to want to
then do is to investigate and again
where possible where appropriate try and
include your community try and include
your customers in this right one thing i
always like to say in these kinds of
situations when i advise clients on this
is just
be vulnerable right tell them like look
we're human beings right human beings
make mistakes
our first and um
most important priority right now is
just to understand what's going on we're
not interested in assigning blame or
throwing shame at people just want to
figure out what's going on all right so
investigate what's happening um and and
one of the best things you can do is to
create like a shared channel like a
incident response channel on something
like slack or an irc where you can start
pulling some of this information
the third step then is to identify some
short-term solutions okay
now
again one thing that can happen when
that when a crisis kind of goes down is
that people can
um
often like switch everything off and
shut everything down and then go away
and come up with a much
longer term kind of resolution to it but
sometimes
the first thing you need to do is
acknowledge it and just say we're really
sorry something's happening we're not
entirely sure what's happening right now
you can go here to this google doc which
we've opened up and you can see updates
as it's going on and then as you start
figuring out what's happening what's
causing this crisis then you can start
putting in place some solutions some
short-term solutions that can rectify it
okay but as you're doing this you're
continuing to investigate all right
then what happens is once you've kind of
put in place some of those solutions and
the crisis has been somewhat mitigated
the best thing you can do now
is to not stop there it's not saying
okay now we've got things up and running
like gitlab didn't just you know get
their service back online and that was
it what they did is they continued to
evaluate what happened and they put in
place
measures and workflows uh to make sure
that it didn't happen again in the
future in fact it's not happened again
since then okay so this is kind of the
cherry on top is that as you're
incorporating and including your
audience in ex trying to figure out
what's going on investigating it and
then and then you present a solution to
rectify the issue with it with with the
crisis
then what you do is you you you continue
and say okay well that went down that
sucked now we've put in place these
three or four different things that will
hopefully rectify this from or prevent
this from happening again in the future
okay
and then what you do
is further down the line maybe three or
four months down the line is you review
it and you continue to refine it okay
so that's the summary of how i would
recommend you wreck you you you deal
with a crisis stop the rot investigate
what's going on okay provide some
short-term solutions
to just get things back up and running
provide some long-term solutions as a
preventative measure and then regularly
review and refine it all right make
sense
thumbs up
yep okay great
let's now move on to our second part of
uh of the
the triangle of suck
i think i'm gonna stick with this name
the triangle of suck i like that um
all right i'm getting distracted now i'm
thinking should i register domain should
i
someone already right now is probably
registering triangleofsuck.com
it probably already exists i actually
don't go to that website it's probably
going to be something terrible all right
so let's now talk about conflict
resolution
now this is again this is something that
is kind of inevitable this is going to
happen
um
in your community or in your project in
your family and your business
at some point okay
and the question that i always have when
you kind of come into a
a conflict uh scenario
and i always ask myself this uh
privately is
why can't we all just get along right
like why is it that this has occurred in
the first place we're going to talk in a
second about um how we rectify and
resolve a conflict scenario but what are
the causes of
these people kind of not getting on and
there being this this this firing flame
between them and this can be conflict
between two people it could be conflict
between a couple of groups multiple
people um there's all kinds of forms in
which in which conflict can can can
manifest okay but let's walk through
some of the typical reasons why
conflicts can occur all right the first
one is unclear expectations and that is
that okay i was expecting you to do this
thing
and you were expecting me to do this
thing and then something completely
different happened and then there's
frustration there and we see this all of
the time this is the most common cause
of conflict is unclear expectations is
that um
you know let's say one person was
expecting this other person to work in a
project and they didn't actually work in
it and then you know the work didn't get
done and that can cause some underlying
issues what often happens with conflict
is let's say somebody's got unclear
expectations about you know what was
actually gonna be done by somebody what
can often happen
is that you get frustrated by that and
then you kind of think i'm not going to
make a big deal of this and you bury it
down okay
um and then if this keeps happening over
and over again then it all comes up and
it manifests in a complex scenario i'll
provide a stupid little example of what
i'm talking about here um when i was in
one of my previous bands i played a
metal band called baron carter should go
and check us out on spotify or wherever
um but i i used to play in a band called
seraphidian when i lived in the uk
and um i used to go and pick our
guitarist up and then drop him off uh
after band practice and he never said
thanks to me and it used to bug me but i
was like don't be pathetic like why
would you say that to him and it never
it i never mentioned it but every time
he didn't say thanks it bugged me and
bugged me and bugged me and bugged me
and then eventually i just come i
completely ranted it and he was just
like dude why don't you say something
i'm sorry i just i didn't realize okay
that's what happens all the time in
conflict all right so unclear
expectations now
another cause of of uh conflict can be
communication issues
of course in communities we have people
coming from many different parts of the
world
um um and you know and different levels
of experience with with communication so
people are talking across different
languages people come from different
backgrounds even different ages right
like
even just here in the in the us right
there's it's kind of well known it's a
bit of a stereotype but i think it's
actually true
that people on the east coast are much
blunter
a much more blunt and direct than people
on the west coast right
i've noticed as another
generalization that and this is one of
the things i love actually is i've
worked with a bunch of israeli companies
one things i love about working with
israelis is
israelis are really direct like there's
no screwing around you just kind of get
on with things right but i've worked
with various california companies where
sometimes people beat around the bush a
little bit more so these communication
issues
are pretty normal okay and sometimes
people don't like how they communicate
with each other like some somebody might
not like somebody being pretty blunt or
somebody may feel that somebody's not
being blunt enough this can cause
conflict all right another issue can be
uncertainty um and anxiety is especially
an element of this you know if you're
working on a project you're not sure if
it's going to work or
if if you've made a decision in an open
source project
to go down a particular architectural
path and you're not sure if this is the
right choice
that can cause nerves and anxiety and
sometimes people can worry about how
that's going to reflect on them as well
another another issue that can impact
conflict is power imbalances every room
you walk into there's some kind of power
imbalance right so classic example would
be a job interview if you go for an
interview at a job person sitting on the
other side of the desk who who you want
the job who's potentially going to offer
you the job
they've got the power in the room right
that's how the interview dynamic tends
to work
but there's power everywhere there's
power at this conference between the
people who run the conference and the
people who are attending the conference
there's power between the fact that i'm
the keynote speaker and i'm speaking to
you and you're the attendees i mean
frankly
there is no actual power with that
but there's a perceived power oh the
keynote that person knows what they're
talking about they have influence in our
community and things like that so these
power imbalances are everywhere
and when people feel like the imbalance
isn't fair then that again can cause
conflict another issue and i already
kind of covered this is culture you know
people come from different parts of the
world much as we live in a pretty
homogenized internet we all come from
different backgrounds like i i was born
in the north of england and when i moved
to the south of england when i was 11
years old it was a totally different
culture right um and it was like 200
miles apart okay and just and then when
you think about people who live in
different parts of the world you know
the middle east or asia pacific or
europe or america or africa or wherever
we all come from different cultural
backgrounds different heritages
different norms all of these things can
cause issues okay so how do we go about
resolving this like what what's the best
thing that we can do to resolve conflict
well the first thing that i would
recommend you do and this is this is the
job for you
is to be a facilitator every conflict
situation needs somebody who's gonna be
able to say okay i'm here to try and
rectify and resolve what's going on here
i wanna try and find a solution to this
okay the challenge with conflict
scenarios is that people are often
looking for
somebody to say that either side is
right and that's not what the solution
is the solution isn't about who's right
and who's not right that's how children
solve problems okay the way in which we
solve problems is by finding solutions
and in almost all all conflict scenarios
that i've ever been involved i've ever
been involved in and i've been involved
in hundreds of them as a facilitator
no
no single side of the conflict equation
is ever 100 right there is always levels
of grain between them so your role as a
facilitator is to build trust in both
sides now to be a facilitator there has
to be a perception that you're going to
be objective okay if you know if there
is going to be a conflict situation
between person a and person b
and you are
the spouse of person a then you're
clearly biased there's a conflict of
interest okay so you can only be a
facilitator in situations where you um
you can be objective and the first thing
you're going to want to say to those
folks when you become that facilitator
is i'm not going to play favorites here
my goal here is to understand what's
going on
find the causes of this conflict and
find solutions so we can get back to
living our lives okay
the second step is to understand the
issues in the people now this is really
important okay our natural human
inclination is to jump to conclusions is
to think i know that person
and
i could see why they did that
or i know this other person and they're
a decent person and i can't imagine that
they would do the things they've been
accused of right
we have to throw that away we have to
look at the evidence you've got to be
like a a jury or like a judge here and
understand the issues the first thing
i'd recommend you do here
is you get on a call with each of the
individual parties and again conflict
can be two different people it can be
two different groups it can be three or
four different people or groups get on a
call with each of them it's got to be a
phone call it can't be on slack or email
or irc or anything like that you've got
to get on a call and the reason why
is that
when
you can hear somebody's voice
um you can hear the humanity in that
individual right so if i was having a
conflict scenario with a conflict
interview with you and i would and i
said to you i said just tell me what's
going on like there's obviously a lot of
frustration here i'd like to hear your
side of the story
um
and
as they start sharing this all you got
to do is listen and take tons and tons
of notes write everything down that
they're saying okay and what you've got
to expect in this situation there's
almost certainly going to be a lot of
emotion there's going to be a lot of
ranting there's going to be a lot of
exaggerating there's going to be a lot
of complaining bickering coping and
moaning okay
as they get all of this stuff off their
chest okay
and don't challenge them just let just
just let them get it up get it out
write everything down
and what you're looking for as you go
through this is you want to identify the
root causes you want to figure out
out of all of that noise and bluster
and complaining and accusations
what are the one or two things that are
causing a problem there right so if i go
back to my example
of um
me
being upset about the guitarist in my
metal band not saying thank you let's
say i have a big moaning session like oh
i'm sick and tired of this this and you
know you never appreciate this that and
the other okay the root cause of that
i would argue would be me feeling
underappreciated it's not really about
the fact that he didn't say thank you
after i dropped him off at band practice
um
it's that he didn't appreciate my role
in the band that's the root cause right
so from that root cause we can then um
we can then start thinking about what
solutions are going to be and these
solutions have got to be practical
solutions so when you go through this
process you get on a call with the
individuals you let them get everything
off their chest you take a bunch of
notes and start identifying some root
causes
and then what you want to do is you want
to get back on a call with or with
everybody together and what you do is
you say look i know this has been some
things have gone down here
my role as you both know is i'm here as
a facilitator and what i want to do is i
want to share with you some of the
things that i've explored and i've
identified and i've got some ideas for
some some solutions that i'd like us to
try okay
and what you do is you share those root
causes
right now in almost all of these
situations those root causes people will
privately agree with them but they may
not publicly agree with them
you know to give the example of not
feeling appreciated
that's something that people will
probably feel feel comfortable
publicly agreeing with
but um
saying that somebody else saying that
there's insecurity in members of the
team is something that people might not
be comfortable in in in sharing so you
don't need to get them to agree to the
root cause what you need to get them to
agree to is the solutions that's what we
care about and the idea here is that the
practical solutions are super easy
low hanging fruit you know so let's use
another example let's assume for for a
second that um
there's a conflict between two different
developers in a project
and um
and
they're both accusing the other person
of
intentionally complaining and getting in
the way of the project right
now
what you do is you talk to each of them
and you identify that the root cause
here is that they both have different
expectations about what this project is
supposed to be
right so when you get them back together
on the phone and again it has to be on a
video call an audio call something where
you can hear or hear and or see somebody
you say i think one of the root causes
here
is that both of you've got very
different ideas for what this project
should be
okay
and what i'd like to suggest we do as a
practical solution is that we schedule a
call and let's just talk through those
ideas and what i want to do is get both
of you on a call and before you get to
that call to show up with
three things that you feel like this
project should be
right three areas where you want to
focus this project on and then what you
do in that call is you review their
three suggestions and you identify okay
well how can we take some bits from this
bit and some bits from this bit and kind
of bring them together and that's how we
get to the solution all right make sense
yep and then the final thing we do here
is to document this and to maintain it
right so essentially what we're doing is
here is we're going to say okay well
we've identified these root causes
we've all agreed we're going to work in
these
three solutions three little things that
we're going to do
you write them down in an email and you
send it to everybody involved right and
then what you do is you say let's catch
back up in a couple of weeks and see how
we're doing
and the goal here is to get everybody to
agree to the things that you've
documented now once you get to the steps
four and five in this process the heat
will be significantly dissipated from a
conflict scenario in 98 of cases okay
now you may be thinking all right what
happens jono if people are just
unwilling to participate people are
unwilling to
go through this process well this is
when you're going to have to sit down
with them as the facilitator and
hopefully again from a position of a
trusted individual and say look
the only way in which we're going to
rectify this
is if we all play a role in finding a
solution to it
i can't help you if you're not willing
to play a role in finding a solution
and if they say i'm not interested in
finding a role
uh in i'm not interested in playing a
role to find a solution
then sadly those people have got to go
like you can't have those people in your
community because they will be actively
toxic okay
the good news is that i've experienced
that
literally a handful of times in my
entire career and over 20 years of doing
this that's only happened a couple of
times all right so let's now move on
to our third
layer of the pyramid and again if you've
got any questions get them into the chat
i'd love to hear them i'd love to go and
respond to them you know my goal here is
to uh is is is that you can take as much
of this away and apply um
this in in the future you know i hope
that this session is going to be
something that's in your back pocket
that you can use when you have to deal
with these kinds of situations
so this third layer is for me is the one
that definitely has the most amount of
impact um and it's definitely the one
that is
the most dangerous frankly and that is
stress and burnout
now
many years ago
i burnt out i'd been i've been working
at canonical for about
um
about a year um and you know the ubuntu
community was just
exploding right there was just in a good
way there was so much interesting
excitement around ubuntu
um and i was just
constantly on the road i was single at
the time i was flying around the world
going to conferences and speaking events
and meeting people and it was it was an
absolute blast
you know
one week i'd be having caprinas with uh
with my friends in brazil and the next
moment i'd be in spain
you know going out for tapas right it
was it was awesome
um
but i was i found myself getting a
little agitated and just generally being
quite grumpy
um and
um
a guy who works on my team called daniel
holbach who
uh who will be a lifelong friend of mine
just said to me one day i was like are
you okay
because you've you've been really
grouchy recently like really grouchy
and i was really happy that he said this
like a lot of people wouldn't feel
comfortable going to their their boss
about this but i had a very very kind of
loose knit team
and that's when i realized you know what
yeah
something's going on here
so i realized that i was burning out um
i'd heard about this thing called burner
but i really didn't know a lot about it
so what i did is i went online and i and
i did some research and i found this
article in this magazine called
scientific american mind on burnout and
it talked through the 12 stages of
burnout
it was this this wonderful study that
was done that identified these 12 stages
and you start out at stage one which is
being a bit grumpy
and stage 12 is
is you know basically
suicide in many cases sadly
um
so what i want to do is i want to go
through i've summarized these stages of
burnout and i'm going to and i'm going
to share them with you
because it's useful to know what they
are i'm not going to go through all 12
stages i've kind of condensed them down
into
into a smaller set of stages so we can
get through them
now one of things you need to know as we
go through this is not everybody will
experience all of these different stages
and sometimes these stages happen in a
different order okay
um
and what i'd like you to do is as we're
going through this i'd like you to think
about which stage you have been at or
you that you might be at right now
if you feel comfortable
share that in the chat
um if you don't feel comfortable you do
not have to share anything okay this is
a very very personal topic totally
understand if you don't want to share
anything okay
but i want to go through this so you can
recognize when burnout's happening in
yourself but also when you can recognize
in your fellow community members in your
fellow colleagues and your fellow family
members and friends and loved ones all
right okay so let's go through these
stages
so again if you feel comfortable sharing
which stage you've been at in the past
or which stage you're at right now if
you want to probably in the chat but
don't feel like you have to stage one
is around insecurity and proof so
typically what happens at stage one is
is that we are
we're feeling tense
right something's going on
and um we are
um
we just know something's not quite right
you just don't really feel yourself
and what typically starts happening is
you start feeling a little insecure
about yourself
um especially
with your work
now i had this when i was at canonical
and i was burning out i was like
god i feel like i'm just not really
as good as everybody seems to think i am
um you know i was getting a lot of
attention back then in my in my career
and i was having just rocking imposter
syndrome which if you're unfamiliar with
imposter syndrome imposter syndrome the
basic idea of it is
um
is that uh
people really respect you for what you
do but you think you're actually not
very good and it's only a matter of time
before you get found out okay a lot of
period people experience this in all
walks of life it's especially common
with underrepresented groups all right
now
insecurity improve all right so you
start feeling a bit insecure and you
feel like you need to prove yourself
right so you start working more you
start checking your phone on weekends
more you start responding to your email
more uh you start cramming on some of
the things that you feel like you need
to know about that you don't know about
so you can feel like you're able to kind
of
deal with that all right so that's stage
one
stage two is that you just start working
harder and working longer right so you
you finish work later um you again you
kind of your work bleeds into the
weekends uh bleeds into your evenings
you start taking some time away from
your family
um um or your friends or your hobbies
your interests and replacing it with
work and it's all with this kind of
desire to try and prove yourself and to
deal with that sense of insecurity that
it's only a matter of time before this
house of cards that is my career starts
crumbling starts falling down and
crumbling okay
now because you're working harder and
longer
and in many cases you're not actually
doing better work you just
longer work right
you start getting tired
and that's when stress starts you know
it's here's the thing and i know it's
difficult to say this at a tech event
it is not healthy for us to be in front
of computers and screens as much as we
are like we all know this
but we we do it anyway right because
screens are really fun computers are
really fun
but it's not healthy for us right and
it's really not healthy to lay in bed at
night and look at your your phone okay
if you're going to look at screen before
you go to bed everybody buy a kindle
it's much much better for your sleep
i've literally measured this i have a
mattress that tracks how well i sleep
and i track it with my watch and
everything it's
the impact of screens is not good on
your sleep
but um
you know we spend time if we spend loads
more time on our computers and we're
constantly zoning our work we're not
spending time
uh you know relaxing and um
engaging in our hobbies which helps us
to to relieve our stress stress is gonna
start growing more and more and more
like for me
stress relief is my family and stress
relief stress really for me is my family
it is my music and it is drinking gin
okay those are the things that help me
to relieve my stress okay you don't have
to drink gin okay i do
because i think it's tasty
all right
step three or stage three in the burnout
cycle is that then you stop taking care
of yourself you start drinking too much
gin
you start eating fast food and junk food
because you don't have time or the
energy to cook you stop exercising as
much okay and again one thing that to be
very clear exercise is an unbelievable
medicine for
um anxiety and burnout um when i first
moved to the u.s 13 years ago i never
exercised ever
my wife who's who's a health nut has got
me into exercising every week and if i
don't exercise for a couple weeks i
start getting stressed so um you stop
you know stage three you stop taking
care of yourself okay
um so this is when things are starting
to get somewhat serious and this is
usually when people feel really worn out
i actually experienced this a little a
little bit about
about what three months ago um
and i took a fairly extreme approach and
i fired half my clients just so i could
ease up my life now i have i'm very
fortunate i have a lot of because i run
my own business i can do that but if
you're working for another company it's
harder to do that but just find ways in
which you can start taking care of
yourself a little bit more now
things are going to get a little uh a
little morbid as we kind of proceed
through this okay so here's a picture of
my dog posing to kind of relieve the
tension a little bit okay this is
biscuit biscuit the wonder dog he's a
ridiculous hound
uh
okay biscuit everyone everyone biscuit
all right
so let's move on to stage four
this is relief and rejection so just to
recap at this point
you feel a bit like stage one you uh
feel a bit insecure about how good you
are and you know whether you're gonna be
found out has actually not been very
good which is imposter syndrome so you
start trying to prove yourself more and
more you start working longer hours
working harder spending less time with
your family friends hobbies
you stop taking care of yourself as much
because
uh you're you're you're tired you don't
exercise you eat junk food you drink too
much alcohol maybe even indulging drugs
whatever
that kind of stuff not good
stage four is when serious burnout is
setting in luckily most people don't get
to this stage okay and this is where you
just need to find a means to get relief
you're so worn out you're so tired
you're so sick of being being scared and
anxious that you just need relief and
this is sadly when a lot of people will
well some people rather will will that
will indulge in drugs
alcohol there's been reports in the
study um that i read in that magazine in
american scientific mind magazine
that kind of unusual sexual practices
can sometimes manifest at this stage
um in the burnout cycle and
sadly what often happens here is that
uh when people start expressing concerns
and worry about you you reject them
right
i'm just going through a difficult time
right now right it's not me i'm not the
problem it's these idiots that i work
with nobody understands me
nobody's seeing the world for what it
really is people are living in la la
land right this is the kind of stuff
that people will say when they're going
through this stage okay
um
if you've experienced this in the past
or if you're experiencing in if you're
experiencing this right now
this is the time and i'm being serious
here to go and get some help go talk to
your doctor go talk to a therapist
because this is a serious level of
burnout and you definitely want to be
able to to deal with it the good news
is that
most of the time people can can get
through this they can deal with it
there's lots of things we can do to
rectify this but just knowing that
there's a problem is important
then what we do is we move on to the
fifth and final stage
and this is withdrawal and depression
this is obviously the most most serious
part of this okay
and this is typically when people are so
worn out that their mental health is
really significantly disrupted by this
they withdraw from people they stop
seeing their friends they stop seeing
their family members this is sadly this
is when real issues can be caused with
with people's uh relationships with
their spouses um
um and real depression starts uh setting
in right i mean and this whole burnout
cycle is going to be difficult enough if
you already suffer from depression uh
but this is when significant levels of
depression can kind of manifest and
sadly this is when
in in it's luckily a in in a relatively
small number of cases but in some cases
um this is when people can experience
suicidal thoughts and and those kinds of
things
so this is obviously a very serious
situation you definitely want to go and
seek a medical professional so as a
general rule i would recommend when
you're in stages one and two
just try to try to take a step back
and try to um
not worry as much
maybe some meditation some mindfulness
is good when you start again to stage
three
um definitely i would recommend going
and speaking to a doctor or a therapist
there's no
uh there's no shame in talking to a
doctor or therapist about this and
definitely if you're in stages four and
five definitely seek medical help um
because it's a serious situation and you
you know you want to make sure that you
can you've got the tools that
to deal with it all right
i wish i had that picture of my dog
because it's you know it's very serious
stuff okay
now um
the solution to this
is
is to go to when you see it in other
people right it could be team members or
your colleagues or your friends or your
family
one of the things you should do is just
go up to them and say hey i got your
back i'm here to help okay and to help
walk them through these problems the
challenge is that you know when we get
into this
when you get into the um
kind of the uh the rejection phase that
stage four and five sometimes people can
reject help so when you start seeing
people burning out that's definitely the
time when you should go and say i've got
your back let me try and help you out
maybe you should take a breather
checking in on them
you know these kinds of things can be
very very helpful okay you want to try
and help them as much as you can before
they start rejecting people
um but then something you might want to
consider for yourself is what i call a
stoic toolbox all right
um there's some amazing books out there
that i would recommend you read
if you are either burning out right now
or if you uh you want to prevent
yourself from burning out in the future
if you are burning out right now
the book you should go and buy is called
the obstacle is the way by ryan holiday
it's a wonderful book i was burning out
at one point i read this book it really
helped i have a stack of them in my
office and i give them to people when
they are struggling you know a friend of
mine had breast cancer she just been
diagnosed i gave her a book
another friend of mine got let go from
his job
due to covid gave him a book you know so
this is a really great book i'd also
recommend the daily stoic stoicism is
this really interesting kind of
psychology
um or philosophy rather which is all
about kind of building resilience in
yourself it's like training a little
voice in your brain that is able to um
uh that is able to
um
just help to get you through situations
in a very productive manner you know
imagine for example your you're you're
you you get called in for a meeting with
your boss and your boss is unhappy about
something and they start telling you how
all of this work that you've done is
wrong and maybe they're not handling
very well and they're kind of being
a bit mean about things
a lot of people in those situations they
snap and they react and then they go
home and they think oh why did i say
that why did you react in that way
what stoicism would teach you is to
train a little voice in the back of your
head to say okay
this is suboptimal
this is a uncomfortable situation but
what
do i want to learn
and what decision do i want to make that
will be the best outcome at this moment
in time
that's kind of what stoicism teaches us
it's really hard but it's incredibly
worthwhile another book i'd recommend is
the seven habits of highly effective
people when i first heard the title of
this book i
snorted
in disgust at the title i thought it was
so stupid like one of these cheesy
self-help books but it is one of the
most incredible books i've ever read i
definitely go recommend you go and check
it out by
stephen r covey all right
all righty my friends i hope that was
useful um just to kind of cap this
off um
you know i love sharing uh things that
i've learned if you go to john
www.johnabacon.com forward slash pack
and you pop in your first name and email
address you can
you can sign up and i'll i'll send you
tons of really useful stuff i'll send
you a couple of free uh chapters from my
book people powered which is the best
seller it's won a business book award
it's been doing really well i'll send
you some audiobook chapters i also like
to send people out templates and cheat
sheets for how to build communities
tips and best practices i send free
training i do mentoring sweepstakes
where i get on one-on-one sessions with
people
so anyway so i hope that might be uh
useful feel free to go over there and
i'll keep you posted i don't i don't
spam people with sales stuff and you
know i don't i don't share your
information with other people
you know people who suck do that they
should be in the triangle of suck anyway
thank you so much again for joining i
hope you have a wonderful week and
weekend um thank you to my good friends
in the lca organized organizational team
they do such a wonderful job with this
event and definitely go
and uh and give them your thanks all
right
thanks everyone
hello hopefully i'm back here on camera
now
um i don't suppose we've got jono around
all right
well done that was really interesting i
i thought um when you hit the burnout
stuff
everyone in chat's going oh that's me
it is weird i remember the first time i
ever talked about burnout
um was actually a canonical all hands um
and uh just i walked through the 12
stages of burnout and i had one of my
colleagues come up to me um and said
that they were at one of the later
stages and then um i found out without
making this too morbid i found out that
they were actively you know having
suicidal thoughts they went to see a
therapist and you know
just their life became a lot happier
because they knew that they could
they could kind of distinguish where
they were in the cycle and they knew
that there was a way around it so um
it's so valuable that not enough people
know about that stuff so yeah did um i
wasn't there in the chat the whole time
were there any sort of big points you
thought worthwhile talking about
yeah i mean one of the things towards
the end actually was uh
the books like there was a
few people saying you know i struggle
with these kinds of books um and i have
a similar kind of issue with you know
these books about self-help and things
like that often because they're
written by uh nauseating individuals um
and sometimes they're too fluffy in
general um but i'm a big fan of anything
that provides really practical
guidelines to do in these things um and
the thing that i've learned is you just
have to practice right like stoicism is
a good example i touched on that towards
the end
it is a really really powerful
philosophy
for how you can evaluate the world in a
really objective way the problem with
stoicism is that
when you go down that rabbit hole um all
anyone talks about is marcus aurelius
and like these roman emperors and
and it kind of gets a little weird um
so but i would definitely encourage
people uh
to check into that um
and then there was just also some
comments in the chat about um
you know how to
the conflict resolution part seemed to
like spin up a lot of discussion which i
thought was interesting um
in how people kind of approach that
manage that
um and you know especially when people
aren't seeing eye to eye when people
aren't even willing to get in the same
page so yeah
yeah
all right well um thanks very much that
was really interesting i think you've
really hit pretty much everybody in the
in the chat room with um
a big you know nerd sniping arrow and
here is your
live illustration
will hopefully give you a hard copy of
this when it's all complete
that's cool oh by the way there's one
other thing which i need to outline i
mentioned triangle of suck in my session
which i made up when i was recording it
somebody went and registered the domain
at lca
which is awesome so whoever whoever that
perfect human being is thank you for
doing that
ah good show
all right so um we are now coming up to
the first break of the day um i'd like
to
ask all our attendees um to remember the
main sessions start at 10 45 so we're
back into the full conference now
and then there's the linux agm at
lunchtime and the pdns session with
anthony green at 6 30 tonight so please
go have fun
and we'll see you a bit later on
thanks everyone