Why do we smile when we're happy? Is it because we're happy (we also expose a similar face when we're scared), or is smiling the purpose of feeling happy?
I never cried tears of happiness when the primary sex hormone in my system was testosterone. Now that estrogen is, I cry all the time. Not just from hormones, but also from how happy I am not not be living a lie anymore. And sometimes for absolutely no reason whatsoever. And it's emotionally cathartic as fuck.
This entire thing is so anecdotal and from-personal-experience, it's not remotely interesting in its attempts to generalize.
And immediately any webGL visualizations / games / necessarily resource intensive webapps are rendered useless as they're automatically throttled back by the browser.
Stimulants work because they activate the underperforming portions of the prefrontal cortex related to attention management.
Chalking it up to dopamine is a gross simplification.
Adderal, for example, stimulates the release / reduces the re-uptake of dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, serotonin, histamine, and CART peptides.
Sometimes you need to make a cry for help and the only lever you have is saying this.
It doesn't mean that what was said was the actual reason, which happens to often. Not enough follow-up happens, and the original trigger for the call-for-help goes unaddressed.
I'm glad that I was able to get appropriate treatment (15 years later) but how I was treated as a teenager in a mental health facility was atrocious. Misdiagnosis, over medication, and only keeping patients as long as their insurance held out was par for the course.
The Culture Series by Iain Banks. Love his style, love the setting, and love the stories. Really fascinating look at a post-scarcity galaxy spanning anarchist society facilitated by extra dimensional artificial intelligences.
I wonder if this also explains some of the benefits of meditation. While focusing on one part of our higher functions, more areas of the brain cam slip into this low power state, without fully entering sleep. Which is why people feel refreshed and relaxed after a session.
I feel the exact same way. And I've had the same exact experience: only one place in my decade long career has done agile well.
The Project Manager was completely on point with gathering information from stakeholders and direction from executives. The scrum master was a perfect neutral voice who really did an amazing job mediating. Our team was full of smart, capable, focused multidisciplinary engineers. It was absolutely beautiful.
I've also never ever seen it again. I've been trying to figure out what was different about that org than everywhere else. Because I've always worked with smart, social SWEs.
I think the problems arising from cargo cult agile are more fundamental than the methodology. In order for agile to work well for SWEs, the organization's infrastructure and expectations must be a fit. There are key things that I saw at the place where it worked and were missing everywhere else.
* Strong product ownership. The PM is the captain of the ship. They must interface with the execs, with the customers, with the technologists, with the customer service. They must synthesize the stories and effectively outline clear exit criteria for them. And they must accept input from engineering to prioritize tasks that must be done but do not necessarily directly provide customer value. But the buck stops with them. Engineering should not be subject to department infighting for prioritization of pet features. The direction must be clear, or you're foundering.
* A neutral voice in the planning meetings to keep things on track and ensure everyone who has a question / input is heard.
* Demo days. It's so important for the morale of everyone - on the team and off - for the exposition of the completed work for a given sprint.
* Respectful retrospection.
* Trust and verification. Micro management is toxic. The only time other than sprint planning that the PM should be involved with the daily work of engineers is when a story requirement needs clarification.
And modifying the scope of an in progress sprint should be relegated _only_ to emergencies. This cannot happen if there are _always_ emergencies, though. Which is why it's important for a PM to understand and allocate time for maintenance / infrastructure improvement.