Protecting Health

Make Safety A Prerequisite, a Modern Agile principle, includes protecting our mental and physical health. It's hard to be happy and at your best when you're unhealthy. In this article I’ll share some information and stories about how my colleagues and I at Industrial Logic protect our health. 

Mental Health

If you're upset or angry or fighting depression or down in the dumps or burnt out or unhappy about something, your mental health is compromised. If you'd like to do something about that, consider

• talking to friends/family about your problem(s)
• getting more exercise
• taking a break from work (sometimes called a "stress leave")
• seeking professional help from a therapist

For me, physical exercise and healthy relationships are keys to being mentally fit. The exercise part is easier, as it is completely up to me how often and how hard I exercise. Establishing healthy relationships takes work. It can help to go to lunch with someone with whom you've had difficulties. You can also get good ideas from books like Driving Fear Out Of The Workplace and Radical Candor. Psychological safety is key to establishing healthy relationships. Laura Delizonna describes how to help establish psychological safety in her Harvard Business Review article, High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It. You can also learn more from a Forbes roundup of 14 Ways You Can Improve Psychological Safety At Work and John Cutler's Of Course Psychological Safety…But How?

Low energy may be a sign that you need to pay more attention to your health. Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer of VaynerMedia, speaks about energy management rather than work/life balance. Yes, you might work more than 8 hours on a given day. And if you're passionate about what you're doing and your energy is good, you need not worry. It's when your energy wanes that you have to carefully manage it. Maybe that means taking a long midday break, or trying an experiment or taking time to re-discover what excites you most at work?

In shops that are outcome oriented, rather than output oriented, the actual hours worked matter far less than the impact you make.

Habitual stress contributes to poor health. Managing, reducing or removing stress is vital to our health. Constant deadline pressure can produce an overly stressful environment. While I’m not opposed to a few deadlines, I find that regular ones keep us in a constant state of stress. Another great cause of stress is routine “firefighting." This happens in poorly managed software environments, where people rush to fix one critical production incident after another. Better skills, practices and discipline can help fix such a stressful environment. Once you have that, you can handle the occasional emergency with speed and grace.

Physical Health

In 2003, at the first Agile Software Development conference, held in Salt Lake City, a guru named Gerald M. Weinberg gave a fantastic opening keynote. Jerry (as we call him) reflected on 45 years of experience in our industry and said, in the clearest of terms, that if you don't take care of your body and only live in your head, you are not a professional! It was a powerful message about what it means to be truly agile and it inspired me to keep making time for regular exercise.

If you've ever lost some portion of your health, be it a temporary thing, like a headache, or a more permanent condition, like chronic lower back pain, you've probably struggled to perform at your highest levels. Physical pain can also strain relationships, since it can be hard to be "nice" when you're hurting.

Yet it's never too late to work on what pains you. I find that getting started is easier when I have an experiment to try. For example, I once wanted to get rid of a little extra weight that was pulling my belly forward and hurting my lower back. I decided to experiment with advice in The Four Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss. A few months into the program I realized that my headaches had vanished! My new diet was very low in sugar and I believe that had much to do with it. To this day, I barely ever get migraines and when I do, I can usually trace them back to eating too much sugar. I spent decades getting headaches and suddenly, accidentally, via an experiment in my diet, I discovered how to live without the pain of headaches.

Sometimes physical pain just arises one day, at an inconvenient time. One time an Industrial Logic coach was having some pain in his mouth. He was due to fly to a client the following week. He took some pain relief pills but they didn't help. One of his work colleagues decided to flash our Stop Work Authority card to tell this person he needed to stop work immediately and the company needed to find a replacement coach for his client trip. That was a good thing, for it turned out that this fellow needed an emergency root canal.

I find that sitting for long periods of time, coupled with not getting sufficient exercise, is a sure path to low energy and poor eating habits. When January rolls around, I usually re-commit to getting regular exercise. I also make sure I'm standing instead of sitting as much as possible.

For years I wanted standing desks for my office but they seemed far too expensive. Then the prices dropped and there was no excuse. We now have wonderful, motorized standing desks (allowing one to sit or stand) that cost less than $800 each. I recently purchased a board to stand on at my standing desk, so I also move my legs and hips as I'm working. Others have invested in treadmill desks. Still others simply construct a standing desk using whatever materials they can find. Anyone can arrange for a standing desk setup.

I'm also a big fan of walking meetings. How many meetings do you have per week that could actually be done while walking? It’s better for your brain and your energy to get outside and walk around rather than spend day after day in a stuffy office. You could actively look for opportunities to turn meetings into walking meetings. 

What you eat or drink also plays a big role in your health. Depression, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and other illnesses are linked to certain foods and drinks. Be careful what snacks and drinks you regularly consume, for you could be indulging a habit that is bad for your long-term health.

I find that vacations are important for maintaining my mental and physical health. I like to take one vacation per quarter or some close variant on that. Others prefer bigger chunks of time away from work. Whatever the case may be, taking time away from work is important for your overall mental and physical wellness.

I'll finish with a story about Industrial Logic's Health & Safety Bonus. A few years ago, I decided to award everyone in our company with $500 to spend on whatever they liked that would improve their health and safety. The only request was that they had to share the story of what they had purchased with the whole company. The stories were amazingly diverse. One person gave up smoking, joined a gym and was taking classes regularly. Another person bought a package of shiatsu sessions. Another person bought a device that monitors his posture and nags him when he's slouching (it was so helpful that his wife decided to also buy him a Fitbit). Another person bought new compression leggings for her weight lifting sessions, along with supplements and gourmet olive oil and vinegar for healthier salads.

Protecting your health is good for your life, you career and your relationships. Take the time to try new ways to be mentally and physically fit. And be safe in your experiments, so you don't injure yourself as you work to get healthier.