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Anxiety and IT?
An anonymous reader writes "During these long breaks from work, it's refreshing to not have to worry about your job. Unless you work in IT, in which case you're salaried and constantly on the clock. To all the server room monkeys and desktop admins, do you suffer from anxiety? How do you deal with it? Does the crushing worry of a businesses IT infrastructure (and the rest of the business) coming to a screeching halt make IT occupations prone to anxiety?"
Get on the treadmill, go for a run, etc... Stop stressin' dude.
If it's being an anxious person that makes me good at my role in IT (disaster recovery/business continuity), or whether doing that job simply makes me more so, as I constantly have to anticipate the worst.. Either way, yes, I'm an anxious person (and prone to mild depressions), but hey, there are ways of dealing with it. In winter times, a SAD light really helps give a boost.. Every few weeks, I hit a health spa, and get a good massage. I work out at the gym, which gives a good energy rush and helps me feel better.. I dive.. Hanging around the 30m mark doesn't give your body any choice but to relax (the joys of nitrogen).. I keep a fairly busy social life, which doesn't let me dwell (there's nothing like people to keep you distracted!).. And being able to cook pretty well helps with that (and is a great distraction itself).. When you're at work, let the focus (and anxiety) creep up; it gives you an edge.. When you're away from work.. Keep yourself busy and distracted.. In general, that works for me.. And as a side effect, it keeps me pretty healthy and well fed too!
Most people I know that work in IT smoke egregious amounts of pot.
I've gotten a lot more disciplined in my exercise schedule, and have always eaten good foods, but I've started going to weekly mediation and have been going for about a year now. The exercise just helps me feel good (hooked on endorphins!), but meditation helps bring awareness and focus and has given me the ability to slow down and pause during the day, let my thoughts all line up, and then focus on one at a time. Having the ability to focus on one thing at a time is nice.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Spoken like someone new to the workforce.
It's not that simple, actually. As a lower-level worker, you definitely want time to unplug and get time away from the front lines. And there's always the stress of trying to patch something under fire, or deal with rickety systems that have gone completely sideways at the worst possible moment. It's completely stressful and can be a total nightmare.
As a manager, especially those of us who have manage departments of former co-workers, or departments that we would have previously worked in, that is never far from mind. The last thing I like to do (truly) is call at an inopportune moment on a weekend, a holiday, or after a long day. Those calls come after exhausting every other option -- is this really a 10:30 PM/Saturday/company holiday problem? Can it wait until the next morning? Is there a patch coming? Is there a workaround in the meantime? Do we have someone on hand who can patch it that ISN'T on a weekend or a vacation?
Unfortunately, sometimes that call has to be made. And in those cases, there are actually dollars on the line. I have the impression that you've probably heard "dollars on the line" and think it's a lie - there are always dollars on the line, right? Well, yes. And "dollars on the line" - or "account on the line" or whatever variation thereof means, "loss we cannot realistically sustain at this point". Subtext: "We are all in a really bad position if we don't do this."
When I can run interference or manage expectations, I can. But I know that the last thing you and I want is for me to jump in on systems that I'm, at best, a couple years foggy on (or only algorithmically familiar with) -- you really don't want me jumping in where I'm totally unfamiliar with the nuances. (Nor does QA). So in those situations, I can only hang around and answer priority questions, scope reduction questions on the problem at hand, etc. If we're in the office, I'll gladly buy you a drink, dinner, whatever.
But for the love of god, don't think I don't have anxiety. I have just as much as you - it's just a different type.
The best thing for all of us to do is to try and unplug as much as possible when we're out of work. Don't let the time off be tainted by "I could get an email" or "I could get a text", etc... yes, you can, but time off spent worrying about that is not truly downtime. If the call or email or text comes, the call or email or text will come, and worrying about it will not have made that moment any less stressful. I wrestled with that for ages and you really just have to do whatever you can to make it like a switch - off at the end of the day, and if an emergency crops up, on again. It's exceedingly difficult and sometimes you need to have the burnout moment where you realize the job just isn't worth it... some people have to go to therapy to be able to build that separation. Whatever it takes, it's critical to figure out, because it will eat you alive if you don't.
And remember... in most cases, I got a call before you, and I did everything possible to *not* have to call you.
But today - I'm not checking my work email. If the world blows up, Tokyo or London will deal with it to the best of their abilities. If they can't and NY or Chicago can't, then it will come to SF and LA. And we'll do what needs to be done. Even though it sucks. (Because the alternative in those cases sucks pretty badly for all of us.)
Well that lost a paragraph somewhere...
This (especially the bit about being too good - fake the occasional mail flow issue if you have to).
Make sure hardware is under warranty and your 3rd party software is supported with good SLAs in place. Set up server and systems monitoring so that you know when things are going wrong, rather than finding out when they have gone wrong. Hire competent staff to work with and under you that you can trust to set things up properly and fix them when they break. Never agree to support systems that you don't have the knowledge to fix within your team (unless they have reliable 3rd party support, see above).
Above all, know your infrastructure inside out, take good backups, test your backups and have a DR plan with SLAs for each system and agree it with your business so that people can't turn around in an emergency and demand that you fix *their* system right now because they suddenly decided it was important.
If you're stressed about the bits of your job that are under your control then you're doing it wrong; if you're stressed about your job due to other factors outside your control, you've got a job.
You are spot on. You cannot "think" yourself out of stress. Often, it has the opposite effect. But exerting yourself into some physical activity, can be a tremendous stress-reliever.
I've also discovered breathing techniques and yoga to be very helpful to relieve both stress and delusions about one's place in this universe, also on how important one really is ;-) Where mere physical activity can relieve your stress there and then, yoga and its knowledge, can relieve you of all kinds of fears and tensions, or help accept whatever comes, which is more important often than trying to "get rid of the bad feelings" - they tend only to get more stuck that way!
Some people become wise after a long life, but there are ways to speed up the process, if you're smart, and lucky ;)
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
The market is bad, yes, but paradoxically not bad for the already employed. I switched jobs in August.