Reaping the Benefits of Ritual and Routine

@arthurdoler Arthur Doler Resources: Boring details about me are at
https://arthurdoler.com REAPING THE BENEFITS OF RITUAL AND ROUTINE

@arthurdoler Why hello there.

@arthurdoler When people ask what I do I always just
tell them I solve problems

@arthurdoler CARGO CULT PROGRAMMING Starting off with an audience question.
Classic.

@arthurdoler Welcome to sunny Vanuatu!

@arthurdoler An arrowing experience

@arthurdoler Amateur historians please note these are not actual troop
movements

@arthurdoler Images courtesy Travis Air Force Base

@arthurdoler Image courtesy The Smithsonian

@arthurdoler Original image sources unknown

@arthurdoler Image courtesy Abramovic Institute

@arthurdoler Image courtesy OriginalPeople.org

@arthurdoler Image courtesy Wikimedia BRONISŁAW MALINOWSKI

@arthurdoler THE MELANESIANS WEREN’T – AND AREN’T – STUPID. No
more or less than any other group of humans, on average, anyhow.

@arthurdoler This slide is cursed & I hate it the
most of any slide I’ve ever made

@arthurdoler Arguably, every talk I’ve ever given is about this
point

@arthurdoler https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-26043372

@arthurdoler WE AS A SPECIES ARE EXTREMELY FOND OF HABITS
AND ROUTINES To keep you off my mind / Ooh ooh ooh ooh / Ooh ooh ooh ooh 🎵

@arthurdoler AND WE FIND PROVEN BENEFITS FROM PERFORMING SEEMINGLY IRRATIONAL
RITUALS Turn around thrice widdershins, salute the sun

@arthurdoler This feels like another one of those perennially-useful slides

@arthurdoler Routine & Habits Making Use of Routine & Habits
Rituals What Ritual Implies about the Modern Software Process Making Use of Ritual at Home Making Use of Ritual at Work Strap in, this one’s gonna get weird.

@arthurdoler Xygalatas is opinionated, but it’s a fascinating opinion

@arthurdoler Valuable but well-trodden territory

@arthurdoler A thing you perform… A thing you perform… There’s
not very firm language around this stuff. ROUTINE HABIT Frequently Regularly, in the same context Possibly automatically Subconsciously & automatically In service of a concrete goal In service of a concrete goal

@arthurdoler A Venn diagram – this is now a Certified
Conference Talk!

@arthurdoler I’m carefully avoiding discussion of bad habits here

@arthurdoler The Basal Ganglia & Gang, airing at 8 AM
on Saturdays!

@arthurdoler Packard & Knowlton, 2002

@arthurdoler Bargh, 2014

@arthurdoler Fun trick: ask someone shooting a free throw where
their elbows are.

@arthurdoler AUTOMATICITY Bargh, 2014

@arthurdoler Raichle, MacLeod, Snyder, Powers, Gusnard, & Shulman, 2001

@arthurdoler Buckner, Andrews-Hanna & Schacter, 2008

@arthurdoler You remember the Lincoln/Franklin Chicken Timing Experiments, right?

@arthurdoler Buckner, Andrews-Hanna & Schacter, 2008

@arthurdoler IF WE’RE OVERWHELMED WITH THE IMMEDIATE, WE CANNOT BE
SUCCESSFUL LONG-TERM And boy howdy is the immediate loud.

@arthurdoler IF WE’RE NOT THINKING OF OTHERS & OUR RELATIONSHIPS,
WE CANNOT BE GOOD PARTNERS/FAMILY/FRIENDS Getting outside your own skull can take some work

@arthurdoler Let’s get some value out of this nonsense already

@arthurdoler •Lesson 1: Small habits make a big difference •Lesson
2: Forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. •Lesson 3: Build identity-based habits Yes, I’m basically assigning you homework. Deal with it

@arthurdoler Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts & Wardle, 2009

@arthurdoler @arthurdoler Lizard not included with purchase of routine

@arthurdoler NuPhone. It’s For Fellow Kids!

@arthurdoler Oh, we’re back to mindlessly aping billionaires again? Okay.

@arthurdoler Okay, here we go…

@arthurdoler Xygalatas, 2022

@arthurdoler RITUALS ARE OFTEN CHARACTERIZED BY THREE OTHER RS. “You
will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “By three Rs!”

@arthurdoler Xygalatas, 2022

@arthurdoler The Anytown Sports – They’re first in points!

@arthurdoler Image courtesy of CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/us/pastor-macarthur-church-california/index.html)

@arthurdoler The early aughts were a wild, wild time to
be alive

@arthurdoler https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/animal-grief/

@arthurdoler Ritual to us is pointless, but somehow sacred at
the same time

@arthurdoler GÖBLEKI TEPI Images courtesy Wikimedia Göbekli Tepe

@arthurdoler … are we still talking about sports?

@arthurdoler I offer no apologies to Ayn Rand; she deserves
none

@arthurdoler Noodles is tired of your nonsense

@arthurdoler YES HELLO THIS IS DOG

@arthurdoler I could have drawn anything, but I somehow chose
to draw jauntlets

@arthurdoler A Dagwood in the making

@arthurdoler Zacks & Tversky, 2001

@arthurdoler @arthurdoler Nielbo, Schjoedt & Sørensen, 2012

@arthurdoler Horner & Whiten, 2004

@arthurdoler Legare & Nielsen, 2015

@arthurdoler Imagine being the facilities worker who gets this request

@arthurdoler Don't you monkey with the monkey 🎶

@arthurdoler Don’t you know you’re gonna / swap the monkey
🎵

@arthurdoler Wosmek et al, 2011

@arthurdoler Gotta be something more than just shocking chimpanzees

@arthurdoler DOES ANYONE PLAY SPORTS, OR WATCH SPORTS CONSISTENTLY? Or
even watch sports religiously, if you will…

@arthurdoler Flanagan, 2013

@arthurdoler Bleak & Frederick, 1998

@arthurdoler Points if you can guess the song.

@arthurdoler Xygalatas, Maňo & Baranowski, 2021

@arthurdoler Damisch, Stoberock & Mussweiler, 2010

@arthurdoler I probably messed this up, mathematicians please don’t get
mad

@arthurdoler Herrmann, Legare, Harris & Whitehouse, 2013

@arthurdoler Lang, Krátký & Xygalatas, 2020

@arthurdoler Hockey, 1997

@arthurdoler If you get this joke, you should probably stretch
after the talk’s over

@arthurdoler RITUALS CAN REDUCE ANXIETY AND STRESS! This is interesting
to me, on a personal level

@arthurdoler Sosis & Handwerker, 2011

@arthurdoler THIS WORKS ONLY FOR THINGS THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL
Sosis & Handwerker, 2011

@arthurdoler RITUALS MAKE THINGS SPECIAL! Celebrations and ceremonies help differentiate
our time

@arthurdoler Kapitány & Nielsen, 2015

@arthurdoler RITUALS BIND US TOGETHER AS A GROUP! No, this
isn’t the Tajfel Minimal Group Paradigm Experiments yet again

@arthurdoler @arthurdoler Wen, Herrmann & Legare, 2016

@arthurdoler You know, that thing we do.

@arthurdoler It’s time for some Opinions™!

@arthurdoler WHAT RITUALS DO YOU THINK WE HAVE IN MODERN
SOFTWARE? There’s really no wrong answers here

@arthurdoler https://www.sitepoint.com/what-are-scrum-rituals/

@arthurdoler “Your sign could have been an email!” “Oh no,
I am destroyed!”

@arthurdoler This seems like a flammable situation. Luckily, it’s metaphorical

@arthurdoler BRB moving to Denmark

@arthurdoler And we’re back at repeating practices we’ve seen work
for others…

@arthurdoler CATERED FOOD Image courtesy of Microsoft

@arthurdoler Image courtesy https://neil.fraser.name/news/2015/08/20/

@arthurdoler WE NEED TO BEGIN RELISHING THE THINGS WE DO
TOGETHER Or mustarding, take your pick.

@arthurdoler Uh…

@arthurdoler As the citation bar I claim no part of
this opinion

@arthurdoler Go, quick! Find some help to stop him!

@arthurdoler THE OUTCOME OF OUR INTERACTIONS IS MORE THAN JUST
THE DELIVERABLES WE PRODUCE… Especially given the lack of non-work social spaces anymore …ESPECIALLY VIRTUALLY

@arthurdoler OUR JOB IS NOT TO WRITE CODE, OR TO
TEST, OR TO DESIGN, OR TO MANAGE A PRODUCT. OUR JOB IS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS. We just tend to do that with code.

@arthurdoler Levi, 2017; Levi & Cadiz, 1998

@arthurdoler And now a reading from Knuth, Volume 2, Chapter
3.2.1.1.

@arthurdoler Stop him, before he talks again!

@arthurdoler The dev police, they come to me in my
sleep 🎵🎶

@arthurdoler Your space, your rules

@arthurdoler For a lot of coffee nerds, their process is
already mostly there

@arthurdoler Do you go seasonal, or contrasting? Choices, choices…

@arthurdoler He’s gonna be there a while

@arthurdoler @arthurdoler With our powers combined…!

@arthurdoler YOU CAN MIX RIGID RITUALS WITH FLEXIBLE & OUTCOME-FOCUSED
PROCESSES You have to play with the boundaries to find the right balance

@arthurdoler Or unintentionally hilarious, one of the two

@arthurdoler That book is thick for a reason

@arthurdoler CONTEXT MATTERS A LOT HERE It matters a lot
everywhere but here even more so

@arthurdoler Arr, mayhaps ye might find these dueling swords more
entertainin’!

@arthurdoler Doesn’t take Hercule Poirot to figure this one out

@arthurdoler Medieval polearms are completely nonsensical

@arthurdoler Hey, what did you do to that candle?!

@arthurdoler “This was starting to get itchy.”

@arthurdoler HABITS AND ROUTINES ALLOW US TO BE EFFECTIVE IN
OUR USE OF BRAIN POWER I certainly need all of it I can get

@arthurdoler RITUALS CAN EASE OUR ANXIETY Especially ones that are
personally meaningful

@arthurdoler RITUALS CAN GLUE US TOGETHER… There’s value in the
valueless! …ESPECIALLY THE POINTLESS ONES

@arthurdoler BUT CONTEXT AND SINCERITY MATTER. A LOT. Trying to
force someone to do this is going to end poorly.

@arthurdoler You could bore your coworkers to tears, for starters

@arthurdoler That’s a very large magazine

@arthurdoler FIGURE OUT WHICH ROUTINES SHOULD BECOME RITUALS Time to
engage with COFFEE TIME!!!

@arthurdoler We should not and must not think of ourselves
as automatons

@arthurdoler @arthurdoler In the filing cabinet marked “Beware of the
Leopard”

@arthurdoler START SMALL! •Birthdays! •Work anniversaries! •Holidays or other cultural
celebrations! •New hire ceremonies! Fill the everyday with special import

@arthurdoler Only the freshest of political cartoon memes in my
talks!

@arthurdoler Oh no, thinking!!!

@arthurdoler Arthur Doler My website is probably still https://arthurdoler.com Resources:

Reaping the Benefits of Ritual and Routine

Reaping the Benefits of Ritual and Routine

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