I’m normal-ish
- Grew up in Maidstone, Kent
- Computer Science at Bath
- Started a small agency.
- I’ve struggled with burnout and depression.
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Awareness
- Lucky that liberal tech community is ahead of the curve
- I wanted to share on my experiences
- Ultimately, seek professional help.
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My Past
- Experienced multiple bouts of depression
- Life has led me to a place where I take on too much.
- This leads to burnout
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Healthy Adult
- It’s important to have a forgiving, empathetic, balanced
internal voice
- I think I am better at doing that for other people than
myself.
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Road to Recovery
- Long term, gradual process.
- Habits and some foundations will likely need change.
- Just like in our profession, hypotheses need testing.
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Support
- Every one of us has a family member or friend that
experiences a form of depression
- Everyone is fighting a battle you don’t know about.
- Patience, relentless love and support
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Medication
- Short-term solution
- Address chemical imbalance
- Many drugs out there, I’ve only had one.
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Therapy
- NHS Group Sessions
- Private therapy
- Long term solution
- Hard decision for someone to make to invest in themselves
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Journalling
- Most mornings, I write out what’s consuming my thoughts
- Great way to cage the monkey mind
- Avoid the fallacy that thinking about something is me
preparing for it.
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Healthy Lifestyle
- Eat regular meals
- Shower, shave and get out of PJs even on days off.
- Have an exercise routine.
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Socialise
- Can be one of the more difficult things to sign up for.
- Making sure you spend time catching up with a friend at
least once a week evening/weekend.
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Timebox
“Productiveness”
- 6pm work cut-off.
- Limit the number of hours I commit evenings and
weekends on side-projects, events, etc.
- I’m an introvert so I need the space to recover.
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Experience Flow
- Flow is when you lose yourself in a task for hours
- Project managers don’t experience this.
- Studies concur this is great for happiness.
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My Journey
- Continual improvement process.
- Supporters:
- Patience and forgiveness!
- Experiencers:
- It’s shit and it’s hard, but one foot in front of the other.
- Please take care of yourself, you matter a lot.