Debugging Your Brain
Often our brains operate on autopilot. That can be good and sometimes it doesn't serve us.
I first ran into Casey Watts through Empathy in Tech. It was a project that he and Andrea Goulet had thrown together to try and restore the human element in technology work. Through that organization, I was able to listen to Casey talk a few times and I also had a few opportunities to interact with him. I got a lot out of it. His unique background in neuroscience and software development led to some really good insights. He had managed to write some of them down in the form of a short book, so I thought I should check it out.
There is a saying among consultants that a junior consultant's bookshelf is full of technical books whereas a senior engineer's bookshelf has many more psychology related books. I've certainly found that to be true. This book definitely falls in the psychology category. However, it is different from other psychology books in that it is much more about self-analysis than analyzing others. As a consultant that can be useful. It's hard to understand others if you don't understand yourself. Also as a consultant sometimes we encounter situations where our initial reaction is not so helpful, such as when a client shows you some ugly code and your initial reaction is to recoil or blame. The insights in this book can help you to avoid that knee-jerk reaction.
Cerebral Autopilot
It's probably not news to anyone and it is well-established that your brain tends to function on autopilot a lot of the time. Most of us have experienced it driving to work. You remember getting in the car and the next thing you know you are at work. All the traffic lights and turning and everything that went into getting you there is just kind of a blur.
Sometimes being on autopilot serves us well and sometimes it doesn't. Let's continue the driving to work analogy with another common experience. Occassionally I've had to go to someplace that is near my work, but not my work location. I get in the car. I start driving and get distracted by the radio or the passenger or replaying some conversation in my head. Next thing you know I realize I'm in the work parking lot or I missed a turn because I am heading toward work instead of where I intended to go. The good news in this book is that it is possible to break out of the autopilot loop.
Mindfulness
The first step in untangling all of this is mindfulness. It is basically just paying attention to your surroundings and your thought process. It's about noticing things. Noticing when you've engaged in some problematic behavior. In the driving example, it's about noticing when you've missed a turn. For a work-related example, it is recognizing that you just blurted something out or that you sent an e-mail that you probably shouldn't have.
The first step is recognizing the problem after the fact and the second is trying to analyze what led up to it. Why did you miss the turn? Why did you send the angry e-mail? Maybe you were hungry, angry, tired, or distracted. Then you can analyze that information and pick up trends. I've learned that when driving to somewhere near my work, I have to turn off my radio until my route diverges from my work route. Otherwise, I get distracted and end up heading towards work. Once I'm past that point I'm all fine. I've also learned that I shouldn't send e-mails or texts when I'm upset or hungry. I need to fix the upset or hungry part first and then go back and reread the e-mail and make sure it comes off the way I want.
Analysis Techniques
Casey includes a bunch of analysis techniques for analyzing what occurred and trying to pick up on trends. Some of them like writing, talking to a friend or rubber-ducking are about getting the ideas out of your head so you can look at them a little more objectively. Sometimes just seeing something written down or hearing it when we say it out loud will cause something to jump out at us. As a contrast he also recommends meditation. This is much more inside your head and it is about clearing your thoughts so you can focus more on what actually happened. He includes a few other techniques as well.
BreakPoints
The last point from the book I want to mention is the idea of breakpoints. It is worth mentioning because it ties the neuroscience in the book back to software development. Once you start practicing mindfulness you can "insert" breakpoints into your thought process. This is where you can break your thought process for a second and just stop. At that point, you can analyze your thoughts, feelings, and environment. It's similar to inspecting the values of variables or memory when you set a breakpoint while debugging software.
Initially you'll start to notice these breakpoints trigger immediately after you perform some problematic action. As you start to analyze your feelings and thoughts, the breakpoint will start to move forward on the timeline. You'll start noticing as you make the wrong turn or as you are clicking on the send button. You might not be able to stop yourself and that might be frustrating and its a good sign. You are moving towards the goal of having that breakpoint occur before the problematic action so you can interrupt that autopilot function of our brains.
Wrapping Up
I highly recommend everyone read this book. It's useful not just for work, but life in general. It's also really accessible. It's really short it's less than 100 pages. It also explains things in a really basic way that's easy to understand. You don't have to be a neuroscientist (or even a software developer) to understand and benefit from the book. It's got a lot of good actionable advice that anyone can apply immediately.
