Schalk Venter
🔧 Front-end Development / 🎨 UI Design / 🌍 Social Good / ❤️ Destigmatising mental illness
The Courage of Messy
Imperfection in a world of debugging
Table of Contents
Why Mental Health?
Can't we just talk about building cool things?
Computer Says No
What tech taught me about being human
Helpful Resources
When humanity is a feature, not a bug
❓
🤖
📚
🤷♀️ Why Mental Health?
Can't we just talk about building cool things?
Eating Dogfood
"Eating your own dog food or “dogfooding” is the practice of using one's own products or services. [...] he remembers is from the president of Kal Kan Pet Food, who was said to eat a can of his dog food at shareholders' meetings [...] argued that the phrase "dogfooding" was unappealing and should be replaced by "icecreaming""
The What?
"Write What You Know"
"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning
and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
On The Topic of Eating
"However, I'd like to let you know that I've started developing the same types of thoughts regarding my facial features/structure in January this year (for the first time at the age of 27) . I woke up one morning and realised that my smile is skew (the one corner of my mouth doesn't lift up when I smile)..."
Not Liking What You Know
u/broodjies
08:19AM , 28 April 2014
"...I fell into a episode of suicidal depression - not being able to sleep/eat and being convinced that people get uncomfortable in my presence due to my distorted face. I went to a plastic surgeon and he mentioned that although I (strictly speaking) have a skew smile, it's still within the parameter of a 'normal' face, and if I had to talk to him without pointing it out he wouldn't even have noticed it..."
Not Liking What You Know
u/broodjies
08:19AM , 28 April 2014
""...However, I kept on obsessing about it. And soon developed additional reason why my face looks strange and makes people uncomfortable (from my teeth being yellow, my features being asymmetrical, etc). I started going to a psychologist, in the hopes that he'll be able to help me either (1) see these thoughts as distortions/delusions or (2) help me accept myself/make peace with it should they be 100% true...""
Not Liking What You Know
u/broodjies
08:19AM , 28 April 2014
"... I only just started going, so I'm unable to say whether I'm actually making progress. But according to my psychologist, it's quite common for people with pre-existing social anxiety and an inclination towards low self worth to develop crippling obsessions about their appearance. I don't know the extent to which this is applicable to you..."
Not Liking What You Know
u/broodjies
08:19AM , 28 April 2014
""...But I think merely making the jump from 'I'm unattractive" to "I want to kill myself" is indicative of something deeper that needs to be addressed by a mental health professional.""
Not Liking What You Know
u/broodjies
08:19AM , 28 April 2014
Me Today
Since 2014
Since 2017
Also Me Today
Since 2021
Aaron Swartz
Legacy (1/2)
"He was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the Markdown publishing format, the organization Creative Commons, and the website framework web.py, and joined the social news site Reddit six months after its founding. He was given the title of co-founder of Reddit by Y Combinator owner Paul Graham after the formation of Not a Bug, Inc. (a merger of Swartz's project Infogami and Redbrick Solutions, a company run by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman)..."
Legacy (2/2)
"...Swartz's work also focused on civic awareness and activism. He helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009 to learn more about effective online activism. In 2010, he became a research fellow at Harvard University's Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by Lawrence Lessig. He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act."
Talking About Shame
"A lot people are blaming the US Attorney for Aaron Swartz’s suicide. Their outrage is justified, but Aaron struggled with depression for many years prior to the case. If we focus only on the US Attorney, we miss an opportunity to help thousands of developers struggling with the same problem."
Shame
"I have a lot of illnesses. I don’t talk about it much, for a variety of reasons. I feel ashamed to have an illness. It sounds absurd, but there still is an enormous stigma around being sick."
The Cost of Shame
Andrew Solomon
The Noonday Demon (1995)
"There is so much pain in the world, and most of these people keep theirs secret, rolling through agonizing lives in invisible wheelchairs, dressed in invisible bodycasts."
Open Sourcing Mental Health
Mental Health in Tech Survey (2020)
We Have To Be Better
It's Getting Worse
The Verge
How tech companies are ignoring the pandemic’s mental health crisis (2021)
"But a year in, at least one thing seems clear: the pandemic has been terrible for our collective mental health — and a surprising number of tech platforms seem to have given the issue very little thought"
Things Not Discussed
Andrew Solomon
The Noonday Demon (1995)
"Depressed people cannot lead a revolution because depressed people can barely manage to get out of bed and put on their shoes and socks."
Beyond Pathology
"mental health and mental illness are not polar opposites but may be thought of as points on a continuum. [...] Almost everyone has experienced mental health problems in which the distress one feels matches some of the signs and symptoms of mental disorders."
It's Getting Worse
Wikipedia
"A growing body of evidence suggests that burnout is etiologically, clinically, and nosologically similar to depression. In a study that directly compared depressive symptoms in burned out workers and clinically depressed patients, no diagnostically significant differences were found between the two groups; burned out workers reported as many depressive symptoms as clinically depressed patients."
Open Sourcing Mental Health
Mental Health in Tech Survey (2020)
Human Resources
Gregory Benford
Shipstar (2014)
"Remember that
people break down too,
not just machinery"
Commonalities
What Tech taught me about being human
🤖 Computer Says No
Human Computers
AV Club
For All Mankind Takes Off (2021)
"Krys Marshall, who plays
human computer turned astronaut Danielle Poole, appears in and out of character to set up the new episodes. "
Computers With Clothes
John Maeda
How to Speak Machine (2019)
"The first computers were not machines, but humans who worked with numbers — a definition that goes back to 1613, when English author Richard Braithwaite described “the best arithmetician that ever breathed” as “the truest computer of times. "
Hidden Figures
"As electrical computers became more available, human computers, especially women, were drafted as some of the first computer programmers. [...] the world's first professional computer programmers were women, namely: Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jean Jennings, and Fran Bilas."
Wikipedia
Computer (Occupation)
Wikipedia
Computer (Occupation)
Not So Hidden Figures
Offerzen
State of SA Developer Nation (2019)
PSA
Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Technically Wrong (2017)
"Study after study shows that diverse teams perform better. In a 2014 report for Scientific American, Columbia professor Katherine W. Phillips examined a broad cross section of research related to diversity and organizational performance."
Limits of Biology
Wikipedia
Computer (Occupation)
"Teams of people, often women from the late nineteenth century onwards, were used to undertake long and often tedious calculations; the work was divided so that this could be done in parallel. The same calculations were frequently performed independently by separate teams to check the correctness of the results. "
Tyranny of Biology
The Problem with Humans
John Maeda
How to Speak Machine (2019)
"Put most bluntly, in comparison with the computers we use today, the human computers were comparatively slow, at times inconsistent, and would make occasional mistakes that the digital computer of today would never make."
Squeaky, Creaky World
John Maeda
How to Speak Machine (2019)
" It’s a metamechanical machine that never experiences surface friction and is never subject to the forces of gravity like a real mechanical machine—so it runs in complete perfection. [...] This property is the first thing that sets computational machines apart from the living, tiring, creaky, squeaky world."
Yikes!
The Verge
How tech companies are ignoring the pandemic’s mental health crisis (2021)
"The one-question survey had a simple "yes or no" query: "Are you currently suffering from job burnout?" Of the 11,487 users who responded, over half of respondents (57.16%, to be precise) replied "yes." Frankly, it's a mindblowing statistic"
Burnout
Wikipedia
"Burnout is thought to occur when a mismatch is present between the nature of the job and the job the person is actually doing."
"Why are startups failing so badly everywhere we look? [...] They prescribe the steps to take and the results to expect in excruciating detail, and as in planning to launch a rocket, they are set up in such a way that even tiny errors in assumptions can lead to catastrophic outcomes."
Squeeky, Creaky Products
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
"Why are startups failing so badly everywhere we look? [...] They prescribe the steps to take and the results to expect in excruciating detail, and as in planning to launch a rocket, they are set up in such a way that even tiny errors in assumptions can lead to catastrophic outcomes."
Squeeky, Creaky Products
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
"At this point in our careers, my cofounders and I are determined to make new mistakes. We do everything wrong: [...] an early product that is terrible, full of bugs and crash-your-computer-yes-really stability problems. Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready."
Working Dumber
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
Renouncing Perfection
John Maeda
How to Speak Machine (2019)
"We need to fundamentally renounce the traditional notion that design ought to aspire to completeness. [...] Or, to put it in less techie terms, quality is about proudly embracing the attitude of working incrementally and completely underwhelmingly."
"Personally, I was worried that the low quality of the product would tarnish my reputation as an engineer. [...] Perhaps you can sympathize with our situation and forgive my obstinacy. After all, it was my work over the prior months that needed to be thrown away"
Pride and Shame
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
More than YOLO
"The solution to this dilemma is a commitment to iteration. You have to commit to a locked-in agreement—ahead of time—that no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. [...] Now, you’re open to achieving a more perfect understanding rather than a more perfect product."
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
"The objective of ACT is not elimination of difficult feelings; rather, it is to be present with what life brings and to "move toward valued behavior". Acceptance and commitment therapy invites people to open up to unpleasant feelings, and learn not to overreact to them, and not avoid situations where they are invoked.
Acceptance & Commitment
Wikipedia
Acceptance and Commitment Theraphy
“So here is the happiness trap in a nutshell: to find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings, but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create.”
ACT Resources
Russ Harris
The Happiness Trap (2014)
"It is insufficient to exhort workers to try harder. Our current problems are caused by trying too hard—at the wrong things. By focusing on functional efficiency, we lose sight of the real goal of innovation."
Or Put Another Way
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
"This phenomenon creates a brutal incentive: postpone getting any data until you are certain of success. Of course, as we’ll see, such delays have the unfortunate effect of increasing the amount of wasted work, decreasing essential feedback, and dramatically increasing the risk that a startup will build something nobody wants."
Avoiding Imperfection
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
"When I worked as a programmer, that meant eight straight hours of programming without interruption. That was a good day. [...] I could see them, understand them, and show them off. Learning, by contrast, is frustratingly intangible."
The Super Employee
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
Staying the Path
"In my years teaching this system, I have noticed this pattern every time: switching to validated learning feels worse before it feels better. That’s the case because the problems caused by the old system tend to be intangible, whereas the problems of the new system are all too tangible. Having the benefit of theory is the antidote to these challenges"
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
The Enso
"In Zen, ensō (円相, "circular form") is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create [...] Ensō exemplifies the various dimensions of the Japanese wabi-sabi perspective and aesthetic: fukinsei (asymmetry, irregularity)"
Zen-time Baby!
Wikipedia
Enso
Embracing the Creaky
"Sacrifice—the purity impulse—marks off a zone of holiness, admitting the “clean” and expelling the “unclean.” Mercy, by contrast, crosses those purity boundaries. Mercy blurs the distinction, bringing clean and unclean into contact. Thus the tension."
My Own Tradition
Richard Beck
Unclean (2011)
"Disgust is one of the basic emotions of Robert Plutchik's theory of emotions and has been studied extensively by Paul Rozin. [...] It is believed that the emotion of disgust has evolved as a response to offensive foods that may cause harm to the organism. [...] This behavioral immune system has been found to make sweeping generalizations because "it is more costly to perceive a sick person as healthy than to perceive a healthy person as sickly""
Disgust Psychology
Wikipedia
Disgust
"Research has also found that people who are more sensitive to disgust tend to find their own in-group more attractive and tend to have more negative attitudes toward other groups [...] Patients suffering from major depression have been found to display greater brain activation to facial expressions of disgust. [...] Wilson links shame and guilt to disgust (now transformed, wholly or partially, into self-disgust) primarily as a consequence rooted in self-consciousness."
Neurosis as Disgust
Wikipedia
Disgust
"I prefer to call it the ethic of avoidance. . . . Persons are considered as success not because they attain some remarkable goal, but because their lives do not betray marks of failure or depression, helplessness or sickness."
Living from Brokenness
Richard Beck
The Slavery of Death (2013)
"Grace is the only thing in the world that is stronger than shame."
In Summary
Richard Beck
Hunting Magic Eels (2021)
"In an ACT approach to shame, rather than trying to reduce or eliminate shame, psychological acceptance techniques encourage clients to notice shame and other difficult feelings more fully, while reducing their conditioned link to problematic action, such as avoidance behavior. "
Accepting the Mess
ACT With Compassion (2015)
"In ACT, 'truth' is measured through the concept of 'workability', or what works to take another step toward what matters."
Focusing on Workability
Wikipedia
Acceptance and Commitment Theraphy
"It has to provide a method for measuring progress in the context of extreme uncertainty. "
Actively Seeking the Mess
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup (2014)
What Tech taught me about being human
📚 Helpful Resources
Sadag.org
Therapist-Directory.co.za
Student Internships
CrisisTextLine.org
7cups.org
OsmiHelp.org
MentalPod.com
zatech.co.za
#mental-health
zatech.co.za
#mental-health
The Courage of Messy Imperfection in a world of debugging
The Courage of Messy
By Schalk Venter
The Courage of Messy
Imperfection in a world of debugging
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