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A 15 min empty mind guided meditation
“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Bruce Lee
The “Mind is the key to relaxation. To relax the mind is to simply let go, and letting go of the body is relaxation. While relaxation is performed through the body, the basis for relaxation is the mind itself.” This is posted on the Chan Meditation Center website. It’s simple, we know we need to relax and we need to quiet our mind to do it.
I practice Chan meditation and not those guided meditations. I personally do not find them useful, someone talking in my ear when I am trying to quiet my brain. But I have come across a 15-minute guided meditation that teaches how to do empty mind.
I recommend this until you feel you have the technique and then venture to meditate without it.
Good luck and enjoy.
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Useful Technical Magazines & Blogs
As a technical professional we are expected to keep up with the trends in our industry. The internet provides free access to several sources. The question, which resources are best for you?
Magazines
Blogs
Reddit
Of course this is a short list! I will continue to add as I find things and please share anything useful in the comments.
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Not failing at DevOps!
In a recent ZDNet article, “DevOps may finally help deliver the software automation we’ve been waiting for,” Joe McKendrick has a conversation with Sacha Labourey from Cloudbees and it caught my attention, Sacha said:
“within larger organizations, “it’s just harder — size is in itself a factor of inertia,” he says. “Silos are much stronger.. so even if there is a mandate from the top down to change, it just takes a lot of energy and time to fight all of those headwinds.”
Sacha Labourey from CloudbeesSilo’s, politics, and legacy systems do make the transition difficult, but not impossible. Focus on breaking the habits and start small. Gene Kim, Jez humble, et al.. in “The DevOps Handbook,” asserts that:
an organization needs to create a dedicated transformation team. Make them accountable, provide clear goals, and allow them to work autonomous from the current organization. Demonstrate real value through the new processes.
Jez humbleThe goal is to move away from the ingrained habits and politics. If you cannot — you will fail!
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Are you monitoring?
Continuous Monitoring is not an afterthought; however, it is for most. Monitoring through each phase (concept to cash) provides transparency to how the systems is acting and reacting.
This transparency helps you troubleshoot issues and identify risks in the process and system. Get a baseline and look for bottlenecks or performance issues.
Work with your customers. the business owners, and understand their questions. Monitor to answer those questions and be a superstar.